General Seafaring Ideas and New Ship Commands

Trevize

This may not be the best fix, but throwing out an idea someone else mentioned to me a while back: what if defensive skills came naturally with seafaring, as well as utility and basic 'captaining' skills, while SPP were spent in offensive sections?

Greys

Oh! Oh! Oh!
Almost forgot!

Why is the deckhand specialist at a location so much harder to reach? I mean we have weapons on the mainland, watch a ferry trip away, helm and command a reasonably 1/4 day round trip or so, then we have deckhand which probably takes at least a day. Just is a massive deterrent from people picking it up.

Taraus

Jonathin said:

Access to strongboxes. Nobody but the captain should ever have access to strongboxes.

Taraus

Another fringe question, only perhaps mildly related to seafaring -- why is there a restriction in place for how close to the harbour you can disembark on the coast?

There may be a perfectly logical, valid explanation for it, and I'm just too daft to see, but could we maybe loosen that a little? I don't know what the current exact number of rooms is, and generally go by the rule 'get the harbour out of sight', and getting that tweaked a bit to not be so far away would be lovely.

Tharvis

Taraus said:

Another fringe question, only perhaps mildly related to seafaring -- why is there a restriction in place for how close to the harbour you can disembark on the coast?

There may be a perfectly logical, valid explanation for it, and I'm just too daft to see, but could we maybe loosen that a little? I don't know what the current exact number of rooms is, and generally go by the rule 'get the harbour out of sight', and getting that tweaked a bit to not be so far away would be lovely.

7 rooms iirc

Kinilan

Back before ship weapons people wouldn't dock, they would drop anchor along the shore to avoid docking fees. people learned real quick once the darts started to fly through the air though.

Kinilan

As for taking gold from the strongbox I'm actually against that. Right now people have a choice. It is up to the the pirate's victim to pay a little to the pirate or a lot at the harbour. They are still losing something but it is up to them just how much. Some people choose to pay more to the harbour out of spite. You really don't pirate to make gold. It is very much a personal/character thing.

Boarding a ship, taking the gold and killing everyone on board is very one sided and would remove pretty much all the character interaction reducing the whole thing to the level of old theft. At the end of the day the PoM, pirates, are a High Clan and there needs to be that base level of required character interaction and everyone that falls victim to them should have the option to interact, negotiate, fight, beg or just bail with a token or gare or whatever and say "fuck it".

Anaria

So tonight I logged on to discover that one of my ships has been drydocked without warning and I get to waste gold re-hiring all of my swashbucklers... This just goes to show just how long it's actually been since there was a trade deal available that was worth doing!

After a brief rant to the Mariner's Guild it was more or less universally agreed that the following idea should be added here:

Have the port authority send out a warning message one real world day prior to a ship being drydocked for inactivity.

I am told this already happens for a depleted strongbox, and I assume for depleted stores as well... and it is easy to lose track of time when crown and credit deals only turn up about once in a blue never.

Suladan

Or have a config setting to NOT dry dock unless you run out of money in strongbox. No idea why it auto dry docks in the first place. 

Praxides

Suladan said:

Or have a config setting to NOT dry dock unless you run out of money in strongbox. No idea why it auto dry docks in the first place. 

So people don't fill up harbours to only use to SHIP RETURN and block other people from using it.

Tibitha

I um, I like chops  I like the challenge of trying to sail through them at full speed. Though I guess I can understand them becoming just a chore when you're doing a route regularly (like Meropis).

What I would like to see is to have the entry requirements for taking PART in Seafaring be lower. Novices should be able to jump on a ship and help out (at a limited level) without investing all the lessons they require for their class skills. Most people can't actually be useful on a ship until much later and by that time they've lost their starry-eyed wonder.

If they can be dragged into that world earlier on AND BE USEFUL IN SOME MANNER, we'd get a lot more interest in Seafaring. And if you add some kind of "hunting" activity that requires a full crew with appropriate awards (for everyone on board) you'd soon see full crew city hunting ships all over the place.

Perhaps don't make Seafaring require lessons but rather experience points gained by actually sailing (or some other mechanism?).

Kinilan

Well, you CAN get in to seafaring and provode a meaningful contribution to a ship with just one SPP...but only in ship combat. Your accuracy is shit but with just rank I weapons you can load for someone which raises your potential DPS by 50%. Congratulations you just won the shooting match. Problem is that is really the only low level contribution. If you don't go out and fight, if you don't have someone to TAKE you out and fight you can't d shit to help out until  much higher.

Sybilla

Anaria said:

Have the port authority send out a warning message one real world day prior to a ship being drydocked for inactivity.

You could do this using the REMINDER system in game. Your FLEETSENSE (or SHIP LIST?) tells you the date you docked into harbour so you can work out to sail out before 2 IG years pass.

Kinilan

Crew experience! Oh man, fucking crew xp, we touched on this earlier with pirates killing crew and shit. It is not just the costs of rehiring it is TIME. And a lot of it. Crew experience takes FOREVER to gain and there is a noticeable difference in the performace of a new crew over a very old one and there really isn't a way to go out and do things to raise your crew xp to sort of level the playing field against others. You have to suffer through shit crew performace and that isn't fun.

I'd love to see crews and ship performance standardized. No more hiring X number of shipmates and crewmates. You buy a ship, Pay a flat fee to hire a full crew of a given rank and your ship is good to go. You can level up your crew faster by sailing or just pay out right for a great crew. As they level up your crew demands more wages.  When your ship is sunk all hands are lost. You have to hire a new one.

Morale would then be tied not to what you pay and feed your crew but what you do with your ship. You sit in harbour all the time and do nothing your crew is going to hate you. you go out once in a while and your crew will be ok with things. Kill a sea monster, complete a trade, active stuff like that and morale goes up. so if you want to keep your ship performace high you have to be out there doing things.

Cook ship artifacts could either remain as a morale boost or lower your daily wages.

Greys

One idea regarding shields is to institute a drain on the figurehead much like there is for cloaking. Not a complete fix but I think a step in the right direction.

Kinilan

Or fix it so it doesn't stay up while you move.

Ruth

Kinilan said:

I'd love to see crews and ship performance standardized. No more hiring X number of shipmates and crewmates. You buy a ship, Pay a flat fee to hire a full crew of a given rank and your ship is good to go. You can level up your crew faster by sailing or just pay out right for a great crew. As they level up your crew demands more wages.  When your ship is sunk all hands are lost. You have to hire a new one.

Not fond of this! That would make the SoW effigies or the clay figurine effect essentially a waste of money for people who have them and get sunk or sink due to natural harbour wear and tear on the ship.

Though I agree that crew and shipmate performance should be standardized. 

Skye

Ruth said:

Kinilan said:

I'd love to see crews and ship performance standardized. No more hiring X number of shipmates and crewmates. You buy a ship, Pay a flat fee to hire a full crew of a given rank and your ship is good to go. You can level up your crew faster by sailing or just pay out right for a great crew. As they level up your crew demands more wages.  When your ship is sunk all hands are lost. You have to hire a new one.

Not fond of this! That would make the SoW effigies or the clay figurine effect essentially a waste of money for people who have them and get sunk or sink due to natural harbour wear and tear on the ship.

Though I agree that crew and shipmate performance should be standardized. 

This could be fixed by making the effigies and figurines reusable/continuous effect instead of one-off. 

Suladan

Praxides said:

Suladan said:

Or have a config setting to NOT dry dock unless you run out of money in strongbox. No idea why it auto dry docks in the first place. 

So people don't fill up harbours to only use to SHIP RETURN and block other people from using it.

So get rid of harbour limitations. Was an ayp a while ago where they said they were going to do that. 

Greys

It did also occur to me it may be interesting if we don't know the speed of the ship and have to figure out how many knots we are using by having a crewmate tossing something over the edge and counting the knots. It would be a general ship command nothing tied to a specialization or seafaring ability. Thoughts on this? Too much realism?

Shirszae

Seems like a hassle more than anything, honestly. 

Anaria

So a couple things we learned tonight:

Boarding Planks need to vanish when a ship docks. The tactic of jumping out of a port when a ship casts off, firing a plank, and then redocking so that your ship is not vulnerable while still being able to board the target vessel is... cheesy to say the very least.

Ship Identification on the Map is desperately needed. So. Desperately. We were all zooming around each other and nobody could tell who was who. It was awful. And good luck making sense of shipwarning to figure it out with four or more ships on screen all maneuvering frantically...

PK rules about ships need to be made clear. Half the people I spoke with felt that getting a gank squad to jump on board a ship and kill the people on it was a violation of the rules, particularly in that they were acting to prevent already dead people from getting BACK onto the ship. The other half felt that since it was a naval battle this was a.o.k. Since the people involved did not chose to ISSUE I won't say anything more, but here is how help PK currently reads:

7. The Oceans. In simplest terms, ships can be attacked at any time, by anyone on the seas. This 

does not extend to player versus player combat on a ship, which must adhere to the guidelines above. 

(It is not considered player versus player combat if collateral damage is taken in consequence to 

ship versus ship combat.)

Anedhel

I don't sail, buuuut! It'd be pretty cool if, when commissioning a ship, you could pick between different sail configurations, making certain sailing points advantageous and others disadvantageous!

I'm not entirely sure about the general qualities of the different ships (I've heard Windcutters are more 'nimble,' but that means nothing to me, since I haven't ever really spent enough time comparing ships!), but it'd be neat if you could pick between, say, a fore-and-aft (sloop or cutter) rig or a schooner rig for a Windcutter, and either traditional square-rigging for ships of bigger size (three-master, like a frigate, I suppose) or a brig-style rig (or, perhaps something like a polacre); a little diversity never hurts in combat situations!

I'd love to see captains be able to choose between maneuverability and better performance at beam reach or close-hauled, versus really excellent speed running (I'd certainly have more interest in sailing if these little things mattered!).

Obviously, one of the specialisations would probably have to give captains more information about ships they spot, including their favoured points of sail, that way, a more considered tactical approach can be made! (And, perhaps, escapes can be made more interesting, as well, depending on whether your ship is in a good spot to outrun someone, or not).

Perhaps I'm missing something very obvious and this is already factored into Achaean sailing, but I can dream, for the time being

Tharvis

how would you identify them on the map @Anaria? bear in mind the way the wilderness map works is that you'd have spot for 1 identifying character to individualise a ship.

Saeva

Anaria said:

Ship Identification on the Map is desperately needed. So. Desperately. We were all zooming around each other and nobody could tell who was who. It was awful. And good luck making sense of shipwarning to figure it out with four or more ships on screen all maneuvering frantically...

If you struggle with it why don't you snag the lines echo'd back and delete them and replace them with something that's easier for you to read?

Kinilan

Shipscan gives name and direction relative to your position. The lookout should be relaying this information. Don't sail alone.

Jinsun

Anaria said:

So a couple things we learned tonight:

Boarding Planks need to vanish when a ship docks. The tactic of jumping out of a port when a ship casts off, firing a plank, and then redocking so that your ship is not vulnerable while still being able to board the target vessel is... cheesy to say the very least.

Ship Identification on the Map is desperately needed. So. Desperately. We were all zooming around each other and nobody could tell who was who. It was awful. And good luck making sense of shipwarning to figure it out with four or more ships on screen all maneuvering frantically...

PK rules about ships need to be made clear. Half the people I spoke with felt that getting a gank squad to jump on board a ship and kill the people on it was a violation of the rules, particularly in that they were acting to prevent already dead people from getting BACK onto the ship. The other half felt that since it was a naval battle this was a.o.k. Since the people involved did not chose to ISSUE I won't say anything more, but here is how help PK currently reads:

7. The Oceans. In simplest terms, ships can be attacked at any time, by anyone on the seas. This 

does not extend to player versus player combat on a ship, which must adhere to the guidelines above. 

(It is not considered player versus player combat if collateral damage is taken in consequence to 

ship versus ship combat.)

If you're referencing last night when you guys chased me with four ships, I'm pretty sure attacking a ship with multiple other ships is a pretty good reason to kill someone .... Just an observation. And yes we kept killing them. They started that and were free to negotiate surrender at any time. There's a simple solution if they've died and don't want to continue dying. Negotiate surrender or wait for their ship to sink. Also, boarding decks have a very limited range. If someone docks and you stick around harbour with say several ships waiting and still get boarded from a docked ship, that's just dumb sailing. A lot of things do need to be fixed, but we don't really need to prevent people from making their own poor choices.

Anaria

Tharvis said:

how would you identify them on the map @Anaria? bear in mind the way the wilderness map works is that you'd have spot for 1 identifying character to individualise a ship.

In in the original post I suggested colourizing the wilderness icon based on the colour of the ships flag. In other words, the = that currently represents a ship would be highlighted in the colour of the flag the ship is flying. Keeping in mind that the colour blue would need to be slightly darker. A flagless ship would remain the current default colour used now.

Alternatively, or even in addition to that suggestion, what if a captain could select between a list of @Tecton approved possible icons? For example: = + / ~ - % *  (If any of these example icons are already used on the wilderness map, just replace them with something else. It's just for an example after all). In this case the icon and possible icons would show in SHIP INFO and there would be a command like SHIP ICON SET [icon].

OR, if that seems too complicated, what about simply having a single different icon and/or background colour for ships on your ship target list? Granted that would not be as good as either of the suggestions above, but at least you'd be able to tell friend from foe at a glance.

Ship combat between multiple ships is a spammy affair. Not only are ships moving around and maneuvering constantly, they are also firing at each other, yelling, and trying to manage resources. By the time you shipscan and sort out who is who, who is going where, and how fast, the information is already well out of date.

 Jinsun said:

If you're referencing last night when you guys chased me with four ships, I'm pretty sure attacking a ship with multiple other ships is a pretty good reason to kill someone .... Just an observation. And yes we kept killing them. They started that and were free to negotiate surrender at any time. There's a simple solution if they've died and don't want to continue dying. Negotiate surrender or wait for their ship to sink. Also, boarding decks have a very limited range. If someone docks and you stick around harbour with say several ships waiting and still get boarded from a docked ship, that's just dumb sailing. A lot of things do need to be fixed, but we don't really need to prevent people from making their own poor choices.

This is exactly why the rules need to be clear. Because the way they are written, no, it is NOT a justification. And lets be honest here, you were attacking, we were counter-attacking.

If all it takes to receive a free license to PK people on a ship over and over again is the argument that once a boarding plank lands the battle is either over or taken into the realm of PK, then that's pretty much the end of naval combat right there. Rest assured, had it been me, I would have ISSUED. Either way, the rules concerning this are something I feel the Garden needs to examine closely and clarify.

Jinsun

Anaria said:

Tharvis said:

how would you identify them on the map @Anaria? bear in mind the way the wilderness map works is that you'd have spot for 1 identifying character to individualise a ship.

In in the original post I suggested colourizing the wilderness icon based on the colour of the ships flag. In other words, the = that currently represents a ship would be highlighted in the colour of the flag the ship is flying. Keeping in mind that the colour blue would need to be slightly darker. A flagless ship would remain the current default colour used now.

Alternatively, or even in addition to that suggestion, what if a captain could select between a list of @Tecton approved possible icons? For example: = + / ~ - % *  (If any of these example icons are already used on the wilderness map, just replace them with something else. It's just for an example after all). In this case the icon and possible icons would show in SHIP INFO and there would be a command like SHIP ICON SET [icon].

OR, if that seems too complicated, what about simply having a single different icon and/or background colour for ships on your ship target list? Granted that would not be as good as either of the suggestions above, but at least you'd be able to tell friend from foe at a glance.

Ship combat between multiple ships is a spammy affair. Not only are ships moving around and maneuvering constantly, they are also firing at each other, yelling, and trying to manage resources. By the time you shipscan and sort out who is who, who is going where, and how fast, the information is already well out of date.

 Jinsun said:

If you're referencing last night when you guys chased me with four ships, I'm pretty sure attacking a ship with multiple other ships is a pretty good reason to kill someone .... Just an observation. And yes we kept killing them. They started that and were free to negotiate surrender at any time. There's a simple solution if they've died and don't want to continue dying. Negotiate surrender or wait for their ship to sink. Also, boarding decks have a very limited range. If someone docks and you stick around harbour with say several ships waiting and still get boarded from a docked ship, that's just dumb sailing. A lot of things do need to be fixed, but we don't really need to prevent people from making their own poor choices.

This is exactly why the rules need to be clear. Because the way they are written, no, it is NOT a justification. And lets be honest here, you were attacking, we were counter-attacking.

If all it takes to receive a free license to PK people on a ship over and over again is the argument that once a boarding plank lands the battle is either over or taken into the realm of PK, then that's pretty much the end of naval combat right there. Rest assured, had it been me, I would have ISSUED. Either way, the rules concerning this are something I feel the Garden needs to examine closely and clarify.

Ok, How were you counter attacking? When did I attack your ship?

Also, the PK rules are pretty clear that you can't just roll up on someone, board them, and kill them for no reason. I.e. if I see you fishing, and I just sail up, cross over, kill you and laugh. There has to be some justifiable reason under the help pk rules to do so. i.e. if you were to attack me or my ship. Under the rules as you interpret them a theoretical person could be sinking your ship, board you, and you shouldn't attack them because you "do not have a reason." I think the rules work fairly well for people capable of breathing independently and who provide enough ventilation when they have spray paint. I've honestly spent all day wracking my brain, attempting to figure out how -you- could possibly, in any remote possibility of a glimmer of a cohesive thought, could come up with a valid argument that, by rolling up and shooting at my ship without provocation, you were indeed counter attacking and I shot at you for "just no reason." I still can't figure it out, and don't even know how you have the sufficient cognitive abilities to type in your password to login.

Shirszae

I do believe she means the fact that you keep on killing us over and over whenever we boarded, not the fact that you killed us once or twice. I am somewhat divided on that respect. On one hand, I don't begrudge the fact your group killed us, because we really were the aggressors on that one. However, I do believe killing people over and over and over and over probably veers closer to being against the rules than being within them. After all, that helpfile clearly states that while SHIP vs SHIP is openpk, once you actually engage the people within the ship in adventurer vs adventurer combat, it ceases to be openpk, and you are not actually, under any circumstance, allowed to just kill anyone on and on and on and on.

Those are my thoughts, though. Someone will have to ISSUE at some point and see whether I am right or not. Probably when someone gets sufficiently tired of your shit.