Ranks visibility in Open World and Battle Mode

[Count Maurice Benyovszky]

Hello, this morning I came up with the brilliant idea...

READ THE WHOLE THING TO GET THE IDEA

 

On 6 September, near the Rock of Gibraltar, she encountered an unknown ship in the darkness. Constitution went to general quarters, then ran alongside of her. Preble hailed the unknown ship, only to receive a hail in return. After identifying his ship as the United States frigate Constitution, he received the same question again. Preble, losing his patience, said: "I am now going to hail you for the last time. If a proper answer is not returned, I will fire a shot into you." The stranger returned, "If you give me a shot, I'll give you a broadside." Asking once more, Preble demanded an answer, to which he received, "This is His Britannic Majesty's ship Donegal, 84 guns, Sir Richard Strachan, an English commodore," as well as a command to "Send your boat on board." Preble, now devoid of all patience, exclaimed, "This is United States ship Constitution, 44 guns, Edward Preble, an American commodore, who will be damned before he sends his boat on board of any vessel." And then to his gun crews: "Blow your matches, boys!". Before the incident escalated further, a boat arrived from the other ship and a British lieutenant relayed his captain's apologies. The ship was in fact not Donegal but instead HMS Maidstone, a 32-gun frigate. Constitution had come alongside her so quietly that Maidstone had delayed answering with the proper hail while she readied her guns. This act began the strong allegiance between Preble and the officers under his command, known as "Preble's boys", as he had shown he was willing to defy a presumed ship of the line.
 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Constitution

 
At the current state of the game when we're sailing in Open World we can see ranks of every captain. What I suggest is to limit the "Rank visibility" so that we only can see ranks of captains in our nation.

Why?

In Open World:

1.Because it would make a lot of sense. In navy you can more or less determine the rank of friendly captains. But how can you determine ranks of hostile captains?
   Short answer is, you can't. You're not a spy + enemy navy is not giving away ranks of their captains just like that.
2.It's more realistic comparing to what we have now.
3.This brings the element of a doubt and element of surprise. For example:
   You see an enemy Constitution on the horizon and you think two things:
   a)there is no way he is sailing this thing fully crewed, you take your mates and attack the fellow. What can happen?
     -boom, you're right and you sink that bastard
     -holly cow, he is fully crewed and he sends you and your buddies to the devil
   b)damn, if he's sailing this thing on our waters he must be confident enough and he must be fully crewed. What can happen?
     -you run as fast as you can
     -some of your friends tags him, you get into battle and it turns out he's sailing that ship with 50% crew. You outmanouver him and fire 10 broadsides to his 1 which means he's dead
On the other hand imagine YOU are sailing the Constitution and you see an enemy or a bunch of enemies on the horizon. What can happen?
   a)you are fully crewed but they don't know it. What can happen?
     -they run like flies due to your Fear Factor
     -they think you're undercrewed and they attack. And then the fun begins...
   b)you are undercrewed but you think your Fear Factor will do the job. What can happen?
     -they run like flies due to your Fear Factor
     -they think you're undercrewed and they attack. Turns out they were right and you're literally torn to pieces

In Battle Mode:

1.This whole thing leads us to one great feature we ALL want you to implement - THE SPYGLASS -
2.Imagine how many good things this would bring. The only way you could determine enemy rank, number of crewmembers, number of working cannons could be only possible through spyglass.
  We could exclude the armor and rigging status, pump status, rudder status or magazine status so that is stays visible all the time (it would be hard to determine those things with the spyglass).
3.By opening the map in Battle Mode and clicking the enemy ship silhouette you could only see:
  a)Armor
  b)Percentage of sails (85% Sails etc.)
  c)Type of ship (Cerberus etc.)
  d)Shocks
  e)Pump, Rudder, Magazine status

THE SPYGLASS should have limited realistic range (obviously) and it should be some kind of mechanism, for example:

(the loading circle would appear with the message "Gathering information" - similar to the one when you Capture a ship, but you could move the camera and your ship to track the enemy with your spyglass)

a)If you want to determine the Rank of the Enemy Captain you should SCAN that ship with the spyglass for let's say 60 seconds 
b)If you want to determine the more or less accurate amount of crew on enemy ship you should SCAN that ship with the spyglass for let's say 90 seconds
c)If you want to determine the type of cannons on the enemy ship you should SCAN that ship for let's say 45 seconds
d)If you want to determine the amount of working cannons you should scan that ship for let's say 120 seconds

(time of each scan is just an example, it would have to take further tweaking once you would like to implement the Spyglass mechanism)

So whay do guys think?

I know it would make the game even harder, but "spotting mechanism" is at the moment ridiculous.
Too many information about the enemy is within arm's reach.
The current state limits the PvP capabilities by a large margin.


EDIT: Almost forgot - by using the spyglass in battles you could also implement a thing called "Captain's Log" or "Captain' Journal" in which every player would have the database about players he had encountered.
          The database would be updated after the battle ends with the information you gathered by scanning each captains ship.
          The database would (of course) be one time registration. Which means that to get the latest info about the captains you've encountered you would have to encounter them again.
          The information you store in your Captain's Log would be: Captain's name, ship, rank (or whatever information you think will be suitable)
 

Edited February 6, 2016 by Count Maurice Benyovszky

[Galileus]

It's very romantic. Nevertheless, I don't see any of these romanticized scenarios happening.

 

Instead, I imagine this:

 

"Bah, again some asshats tries to show off with a ship he can't handle... 15 minutes of redying up down the drain, great"

"Is she sinking yet? Is she sinking yet? Is she sinking yet?"

"Ok, there is a brick on my keyboard, now I can go eat dinner while the game decides it wants me to know what I'm doing"

"Welp, RNG decided to NOT tell me how much crew she had. Alt+F4"

 

With all due respect, "scanning" for 2 minutes? Of exciting gameplay consisting of holding shift? And the requirement of this to have any idea of what is going on in the combat?

 

And this romanticized argument that always comes - the possibilities. NONE. If you force players to wait 2 minutes before they can make any tactical decisions, they won't make tactical decisions. They will rather make up a macro that shoots cannons all the time and go watch a movie. And you cannot blame them - you want to make the most exciting and action-packed element of the game have advertisement breaks, except worse. Advertisement breaks at leash have flashing colors, audio and you don't need to hold shift while watching them...

[Tonnerre de Brest]

Hello, this morning I came up with the brilliant idea...

READ THE WHOLE THING TO GET THE IDEA

 

 

At the current state of the game when we're sailing in Open World we can see ranks of every captain. What I suggest is to limit the "Rank visibility" so that we only can see ranks of captains in our nation.

Why?

In Open World:

1.Because it would make a lot of sense. In navy you can more or less determine the rank of friendly captains. But how can you determine ranks of hostile captains?

   Short answer is, you can't. You're not a spy + enemy navy is not giving away ranks of their captains just like that.

2.It's more realistic comparing to what we have now.

3.This brings the element of a doubt and element of surprise. For example:

   You see an enemy Constitution on the horizon and you think two things:

   a)there is no way he is sailing this thing fully crewed, you take your mates and attack the fellow. What can happen?

     -boom, you're right and you sink that bastard

     -holly cow, he is fully crewed and he sends you and your buddies to the devil

   b)damn, if he's sailing this thing on our waters he must be confident enough and he must be fully crewed. What can happen?

     -you run as fast as you can

     -some of your friends tags him, you get into battle and it turns out he's sailing that ship with 50% crew. You outmanouver him and fire 10 broadsides to his 1 which means he's dead

On the other hand imagine YOU are sailing the Constitution and you see an enemy or a bunch of enemies on the horizon. What can happen?

   a)you are fully crewed but they don't know it. What can happen?

     -they run like flies due to your Fear Factor

     -they think you're undercrewed and they attack. And then the fun begins...

   b)you are undercrewed but you think your Fear Factor will do the job. What can happen?

     -they run like flies due to your Fear Factor

     -they think you're undercrewed and they attack. Turns out they were right and you're literally torn to pieces

In Battle Mode:

1.This whole thing leads us to one great feature we ALL want you to implement - THE SPYGLASS -

2.Imagine how many good things this would bring. The only way you could determine enemy rank, number of crewmembers, number of working cannons could be only possible through spyglass.

  We could exclude the armor and rigging status, pump status, rudder status or magazine status so that is stays visible all the time (it would be hard to determine those things with the spyglass).

3.By opening the map in Battle Mode and clicking the enemy ship silhouette you could only see:

  a)Armor

  b)Percentage of sails (85% Sails etc.)

  c)Type of ship (Cerberus etc.)

  d)Shocks

  e)Pump, Rudder, Magazine status

THE SPYGLASS should have limited realistic range (obviously) and it should be some kind of mechanism, for example:

(the loading circle would appear with the message "Gathering information" - similar to the one when you Capture a ship, but you could move the camera and your ship to track the enemy with your spyglass)

a)If you want to determine the Rank of the Enemy Captain you should SCAN that ship with the spyglass for let's say 60 seconds 

b)If you want to determine the more or less accurate amount of crew on enemy ship you should SCAN that ship with the spyglass for let's say 90 seconds

c)If you want to determine the type of cannons on the enemy ship you should SCAN that ship for let's say 45 seconds

d)If you want to determine the amount of working cannons you should scan that ship for let's say 120 seconds

(time of each scan is just an example, it would have to take further tweaking once you would like to implement the Spyglass mechanism)

So whay do guys think?

I know it would make the game even harder, but "spotting mechanism" is at the moment ridiculous.

Too many information about the enemy is within arm's reach.

The current state limits the PvP capabilities by a large margin.

EDIT: Almost forgot - by using the spyglass in battles you could also implement a thing called "Captain's Log" or "Captain' Journal" in which every player would have the database about players he had encountered.

          The database would be updated after the battle ends with the information you gathered by scanning each captains ship.

          The database would (of course) be one time registration. Which means that to get the latest info about the captains you've encountered you would have to encounter them again.

          The information you store in your Captain's Log would be: Captain's name, ship, rank (or whatever information you think will be suitable)

 

The spy glass is at the present a missed opportunity for sure.

There is barely a difference whether in spy glass mode versus regular view.

 

I posted a while ago on the subject (http://forum.game-labs.net/index.php?/topic/16072-open-world-ships-telescope/#entry303030) not as complete as your suggestions but a similar idea of making a more realistic analogy of the real world in the game by at least having a different view or viewing enhanced information when in the spy glass mode.

Edited September 24, 2016 by Tonnerre de Brest