Better weapons for Windcutters

Knivek

I believe that windcutters should have another weapon that the Arcanium arm. Or at least an ammo type to foul the sails and escape. They are for speed I understand, but you cant run with no sails.

Santar

No. Windcutters definitely don't need 'another weapon'. What are you going to give them? A ballista? Then they'll be incredibly strong.

Ammo type - Could be neat, but again, you run into the problem that if you give the arm an ammo type worth a damn, cutters are too strong.

Knivek

It may be a fine line, Im more looking at defense. Im not saying let them damage the hull, or actualy damage the sails, just foul them

Santar

I think you're probably just overreacting to the fact that you just got sunk 10 minutes ago, when you probably could've easily prevented your death in some other way.

Knivek

Possible, but I have thought that since before I got sunk as well. The armaments are a joke on a cutter, and one of the first skills you get is a passive dodge of the war disks

Mannimar

Seafaring as a whole favours the defenders too much. The manoeuvrability of a cutter paired with those defensive skills is pretty damn hard to beat with an attentive captain.

Xith

Yes, even occupied with a couple friends in the cabin and poking my head out to a 75% sunken ship, I managed to escape without much fuss.

Jonathin

Before you post an idea, you should at least have a basic idea of wtf you're talking about.

• First, it's Arcanian Arm, not whatever you put.
  
• Second, windcutters are built for maneuverability, not speed.
  
• Third, seafaring is already geared toward defenders. All you have to do is not sail in a perfectly straight line and it's pretty hard to catch someone.
  
• Fourth, you can run without sails. It's completely feasible. You won't outrun a strider or a galley on rowing alone, but you weren't going to do that with sails anyways.
  
• And lastly, windcutters are already extremely useful in an engagement with 2+ ships

Oh, a few more bullet points:

• ship weapon accuracy is atrocious, so your one weapon while moving isn't going to make a difference unless you're really, really lucky.
• cutters can tack into the wind better than a strider or a galley, use it to your advantage.
• learn the subtleties with cloaking
• learn to wavecall
• hey, look, jink- it's a neat ability.
• oh and whirlpool- you can use it defensively too.
• shield, hullgird, sailsgird
• I've been corrected on this point.

In short, no. This is not necessary. 

Lianca

Can't dip wardiscs, but can use flares to fire at another ship to set fires!

Blujixapug

Knivek said:

I believe that windcutters should have ... at least an ammo type to foul the sails and escape.

I disagree with this bit. Cutters already have the manoeuverability advantage. And fleeing is boring. Giving them further advantages in fleeing is also boring.

But!

If you wanted to encourage more naval battles, it makes sense to be able to equip cutters with better weapons. Right now, there's no point trying to fight a strider if you're on a cutter, because you're at a huge firepower disadvantage. War discs suck. So your best option in a fight is almost always to flee. Which is boring. If cutters weren't at this huge weapons disadvantage, they might stand and fight more often, which is exciting.

If you allowed cutters to use their weaponry slot for a ballista, they'd have access to the superior darts. Although this would come at the cost of being able to fire boarding decks, the great equaliser, which I suspect most people planning to engage in ship battles would prefer. If you gave cutters two weaponry slots, they could do both. But maybe that's not something that cutters should have access to. I don't know.

Cutters do have their weaponry disadvantage for a reason. It's a tradeoff for their higher manoeuverability and lower cost. It depends whether people consider this restriction necessary, and to what extent people are willing to reduce the gap between cutters and striders.

Accipiter

The lower cost tradeoff is detrimental to ship combat though.If striders and cutters were exchanged with the price, people would still use the cutter for fishing/trades (though the decent trades are usually done on every ship you can captain) but those with less money to spend on the ship could buy one and not get into the habit of running every time they see a different ship appear.

That isn't really a change that can go in now without a lot of controversy though.

Ruth

Cutters are immensely good at cutting ships off and using them as boarding ships, aside from flares + wardiscs.

Kinilan

Blujixapug said:

If you wanted to encourage more naval battles, it makes sense to be able to equip cutters with better weapons. Right now, there's no point trying to fight a strider if you're on a cutter, because you're at a huge firepower disadvantage. War discs suck. So your best option in a fight is almost always to flee. Which is boring. If cutters weren't at this huge weapons disadvantage, they might stand and fight more often, which is exciting.

If you allowed cutters to use their weaponry slot for a ballista, they'd have access to the superior darts. Although this would come at the cost of being able to fire boarding decks, the great equaliser, which I suspect most people planning to engage in ship battles would prefer. If you gave cutters two weaponry slots, they could do both. But maybe that's not something that cutters should have access to. I don't know.

Cutters do have their weaponry disadvantage for a reason. It's a tradeoff for their higher manoeuverability and lower cost. It depends whether people consider this restriction necessary, and to what extent people are willing to reduce the gap between cutters and striders.

Lack of weapons isn't the disadvantage of cutters. You could let a cutter equip three weapons and it would still have it's one massive disadvantage. It has half the hull health of a Strider and fewer shipmates for repairs.. In a shot for shot engagement between a cutter and a strider the cutter would lose every time. 

But fights never play out like that. As has been said seafaring is heavily defensive. It takes one person loading and firing dipped darts 4 minutes to sink a cutter that isn't repairing and all shots it. Now that's the very low end of things. You can cut that down to 2 minutes with someone loading and another firing, but again that's if every shot hits and the other ship isn't repairing. And of course times go up if you're trying to sink a Strider. The point is ship battles aren't won by the exchange of shots. they are almost always won by a boarding action. One ship gets boarded, a fight breaks out, then one side surrenders/abandons ship/is dead. This is something Cutters can do.

Another thing to note is that people that sail cutters almost always do it alone. They want to sail they drop 2.5 mill + equiping costs on a ship then they go to islands and they fish or dive or make a houseboat or whatever but they almost always do it alone. Those keel breaking fire setting day ruining Seatsriders out there are out there with crews. People with clearly outlined roles and duties in all situations. like clearing rigging for example. That magic cutter that us flinging spidershot isn't going to outrun a strider because you can be damn sure that Strider will have it's rigging cleared well before the cutter
.

If more guns = more better you can be damn sure I'd be out there with a galley. But that's not the case and it's not for a lack of funds. the extra weapons only help if you have the crew to man them. Plus galleys with Elite crew, fanatical morale and someone at helm doing emergencies, that is a galley with the best posible cnondistions, takes 30 seconds to turn 90 degrees makes them useless in a chase and the chase is the key part of seafaring because the end of the chase is the start of the boarding.

In the end it comes down to crew, not weaponry, that wins a ship battle. you sail alone you die alone and no change in weaponry or ammo or price swapping will change that fact.

Jonathin

Kinilan said:

If more guns = more better you can be damn sure I'd be out there with a galley. But that's not the case and it's not for a lack of funds. the extra weapons only help if you have the crew to man them. Plus galleys with Elite crew, fanatical morale and someone at helm doing emergencies, that is a galley with the best posible cnondistions, takes 30 seconds to turn 90 degrees makes them useless in a chase and the chase is the key part of seafaring because the end of the chase is the start of the boarding.

In the end it comes down to crew, not weaponry, that wins a ship battle. you sail alone you die alone and no change in weaponry or ammo or price swapping will change that fact.

not bolded: qft

bolded: this, this, a thousand times this,

eta: gdi, I punched my mouse to try and get a super-agree, but I only ended up hurting my ring finger a little.

Kresslack

I liken ships to Achaea based on the following historic ships and their sizes:

Windcutter - Schooner: a small, two-masted ship, generally used as a fishing vessel which is quick on the water.

Strider - Frigate: A three-masted warship with some speed and maneuverability still. 

War Galley - Man of War (Galleon): A slow, but powerful ship which trades off speed and maneuverability for attack power and durability. 

Basically, you trade off speed and maneuverability as you go up from each class. If anyone can attest to how easy it is to survive on a Cutter if you are a competent Captain, it can be @Taurus.