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Ship Docking/Grappling
Kresslack
Florida, United States
Two part suggestion:
Docking Ships
- Make it to where cloaked ships cannot be passed through and register as occupying an ocean room to other ships when cloaked ( I -think- this is still an issue, but haven't been able to test. If anyone knows, please advise).
- Treat docking the same as any environment collision by removing the autostop when someone barrels into a harbour. Captains will have to pay closer attention to their speed and approach of a harbour in order to prevent damaging their vessel, especially when making a very speedy approach.
Grappling
- Convert grappling to require player based interaction from those with the skill in Weapons. Instead of giving an order to grapple ship, Weapons users will need to have rope and a grappling hook (purchasable same place as ship axe) on hand and will need to 'SHIP GRAPPLE <direction|ship name>'
Ungrappling would require use of a ship axe to DISENGAGE/UNHOOK SHIP in the room which the hook landed (such as with spidershot and boarding planks). This would sever the line and forfeit the hook and rope used to cast it. With that in mind, these could be reasonably priced at 100gs per or maybe even a little more.
Both actions would require a balance to ensure they could not be spammed/instantly reversed.
Things like this would add a better feel of immersion to what comes off as a sometimes rather bland and mechanical environment when it comes to Seafaring.
Docking Ships
- Make it to where cloaked ships cannot be passed through and register as occupying an ocean room to other ships when cloaked ( I -think- this is still an issue, but haven't been able to test. If anyone knows, please advise).
- Treat docking the same as any environment collision by removing the autostop when someone barrels into a harbour. Captains will have to pay closer attention to their speed and approach of a harbour in order to prevent damaging their vessel, especially when making a very speedy approach.
Grappling
- Convert grappling to require player based interaction from those with the skill in Weapons. Instead of giving an order to grapple ship, Weapons users will need to have rope and a grappling hook (purchasable same place as ship axe) on hand and will need to 'SHIP GRAPPLE <direction|ship name>'
Ungrappling would require use of a ship axe to DISENGAGE/UNHOOK SHIP in the room which the hook landed (such as with spidershot and boarding planks). This would sever the line and forfeit the hook and rope used to cast it. With that in mind, these could be reasonably priced at 100gs per or maybe even a little more.
Both actions would require a balance to ensure they could not be spammed/instantly reversed.
Things like this would add a better feel of immersion to what comes off as a sometimes rather bland and mechanical environment when it comes to Seafaring.
0
Comments
The only thing I can speak to right now for certain is the docking bit. Put yourself in the shoes of not-POM captain and crew who manage to almost make it to harbor (obviously at speed), and "faildock" as you suggest (having likely already taken some heavy damage), and sink. I also use it as an example of how those people are going to feel about exactly that sort of thing in general.
On the one hand, right outside the harbor is objectively the best place to sink if you've got to sink, but imagine how the players are going to tend to feel. You guys want more non-pirates on the water (and sailing in actual crews) right? Or maybe not. Either way, I really do think introducing additional complexity to sailing (which seems almost as if it has intentionally been kept relatively simple - especially compared to regular Achaean combat) is going to have a marked chilling effect. Really, it depends on what people envision the seas looking like. Is it somewhere that "non-coms" start to learn something combat related and feel like it's something they might be able to take on, or does it become a no-kidding hard core PK-er only playground?
Regarding the change to sailing into a harbour - Nope. No reason for this. A harbour is not an environmental barrier. Players are -supposed- to sail into them. There's no need to add more tediousness there.
Grappling change - This only compounds an issue already present in seafaring. It puts more emphasis on numbers and needing a bigger crew to operate the various functionalities. It would end up being the same base gameplay as is present now, just with more fluff, along with the fact that any ship without a shipaxe would just immediately die. Unless offensive grappling was made to be pretty terrible mechanically, then it'd be very overpowered compared to the defender. A ship with 2 attackers vs. 1 defender would have an almost insurmountable advantage in subduing the ship with grappling hooks. The complex mechanics would also favour the attackers over the defenders. Any increase in complexity will favour the people who are focusing their study around those mechanics, thus putting the defenders at an even larger disadvantage from having to learn complex mechanics as opposed to just using the ungrapple command.
Grapple change = What @Santar said + more gold sink placed on sea combat
zGUI 4.0 - A Free GUI for Mudlet 4.10+
The cloaking of ships: Just because the ship is closed doesn't mean it's not there. It's still there, just invisible. If a person is Shrouded or Hidden, they're still there, so if they are blocking an exit you're still going to run into them whether you can see them or not. It should, in my opinion, be the same for ships.
The grappling part can be reasonably balanced but allowing the general use of a shipaxe by anyone to dispatch of the grappling lines, such as it is used by dispelling boarding decks. That would likely make it to where even a lone captain could fend off the efforts.
Typically by the time you are grappled, you can expect a boarding plank to be landed immediately after, if not before, in any case.
I just feel as if Seafaring needs some long overdue TLC to make it more balance both for people who are interested in sea battles and the average-JimBob sailor out fishing or running a trade. I feel as if that, on top of having various levels of interaction while sailing, to prevent one person (the Captain) having all the work/fun and everyone else just mulling around bored would be a very big step in the right direction.
It was fun, but honestly if that hadn't happened, I'd probably have been sunk. I was alone as a lot of sailors tend to be. Cause really, there are just some times in the day when there's nobody to crew with you and even then, getting them to go with you is a pain due to the time commitment. If I had to run around chopping boarding plank and grapnels, I'd have been dead before I could do anything.
While I agree that you should take care with docking, I think this is an instance of good RP is its own reward. Greys takes pride in properly handling his vessel. Also, it always seems when docking at Targossas he gets thrown a metron up or down so would have crashed into the shore if he did not stop.
Regarding cloaking, I thought this was how it worked already. Cloaking just makes the ship invisible, not out of phase so no reason it being invisible should make it easier to pass. That reminds me, I so want ramming damage even if it requires a new ship weapon to be added to do it.
Regarding grappling, I do agree something needs to be done as right now its either impossible to hold someone and 100% useless or impossible to break out of. If it was treated like a hinder like gravehands where if you move you have a chance to get out just by moving (something reasonable like 20-30%) or you can work breaking the grapple which takes a couple seconds to finish and consumes crew balance. I'll try to think on it a bit more.
Unfortunately, I don't think seafaring is high on the administration to do list.
But this was pointed out in another "Ship updates" post along with about 3 others ship suggestion posts. Pretty sure there are 5-6 long ship upgrade post ideas. Don't see ships getting love anytime soon.
This same grapple issue being talked about in ---2012---
http://www.achaea.com/forum/ship-combat-1
http://www.achaea.com/forum/seafaring-changes
zGUI 4.0 - A Free GUI for Mudlet 4.10+
^We got to experience this in the shiparena. We had a Strider and a Cutter and were playing "chase the cutter" and "run from the pirates". One of our guys had just such a trigger and had either ripped or gone AFK, and there we were, stuck together like a rat king. Or something. I can't even remember how we finally resolved it, whether we got his attention, or somehow forced him to stop re-grappling...
I don't think I like the concept of requiring "items" to pull off a successful disengage/grapple (because it only means that offense will just run around with 600 grappling hooks and a rift full of rope -- which we do anyhow), and there currently -is- an associated balance cost with it. It also bears mentioning, I think, that grapple is a specialised skill, whereas the same doesn't hold true for disengage - but that holds true to the theme that any captain can be a defensive captain without needing specialisations, but not every captain can be an aggressive one.
It's p. common knowledge seafaring is in need of some loving (in both a mechanical/coding aspect, as well as the eventy-engaging-RP aspect), but the admin have indicated that it isn't necessarily a priority (and I do understand this: seafaring is sort of niche, so parcelling/rationing the resources and expending a lot of time and effort on a system that only speaks to a small portion of the playerbase isn't unreasonable) - and my point here is that the small amount that is currently allotted would be better directed towards making the -entire- environment more engaging (more reasons to be on the sea, different/better/new trade options, ocean events, sea monsters!!, etc) than dazzling up individual skills in the set.
Seafaring isn't really going to get looked at until after the Renaissance, Multiclass and bashing changes. Upcoming classleads. Oh and the summer event. Plus whatever else pops up between then and now. No point in getting all worked up about it. I think we all said what needed to be said in the great big seafaring Thread Sarapis opened...like 6 months ago.
Docking at speed, meh.
You can move through a cloaked ship (it isn't THERE) but a cloaked ship can't move through a normal ship. To me that is more of a feature. Of all seafarings problems this is like way way down on the bottom of the list.
Grapple. Oh grapple. It's a pretty stupid mechanic. You need the ability in weapons to grapple, anyone can ungrapple. Crew balance based and yet morale and crewmate xp level isn't a factor and if someone has a trigger to regrapple there is only one way out. Two if you count sinking. Ah but that one way out invalidates the whole ability. BUT you need it. Ships take forever to sink. Between Shield, cloak, wabecall, crap weapon accuracy, misfires, wavecall, weapon damage, WEAPON DAMAGE FROM MISFIRES, wavecall, hullgrid, Hullmaintenance and wavecall it's one broken offensive ability in a sea of broken defensive abilities.
Point is the whole mess needs work and any piece meal adjustments won't cut it. All or nothing.