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Seafaring and ship combat
Jonathin
Retired in a hole.
Disclaimer: This is a long post and there is no tl;dr version.
I also tried to find other seafarers to check this with, but there really aren't many seasoned ship combat veterans out there these days.
Here are classlead submitted ideas that I like: 52, 57, 58, 63 (see below), 108, and 109 (solution 2).
I added this one down here because it's actually the biggest problem with ship combat right now.
Report #63
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Submitted by: Kinilan Status : Submitted
Skill : Seafaring Ability : Fireweapon/weaponaiming
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Problem:
Weapon accuracy even under ideal conditions feels very very low. Given the high cost of ammunition
the low firing rate and overall damage output of ship weapons, the high number of defensive ship
abilities and the ease of escaping ship combat all together I feel that accuracy and damage values
neef to be adjusted
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Solution #1:
Raise overall weapon accuracy and/or damage in all conditions
Solution #2:
Reduce the balance cost of loading and firimg a ship weapon as well as the weapon's own balance time
Solution #3:
Adjust Weapoinaiming to give much better accuracy over range and speed while increasing the weapon's
balance cost aming the choice to use weaponaiming much more tactical
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If both ships are moving, you will miss 9/10 times regardless of rank in the skill. This means that you will not sink a ship, no matter how much ammunition you waste on it unless the captain doesn't know how to order repairs or put out fires. I have some ideas on how to fix this problem that I posted on one of the older forums, but the numbers themselves are just ideas that I'm throwing out there, not exact 'this is how it should be' numbers. Unfortunately, due to game mechanics, the way seafaring is, we can't just get close and broadside another ship like they would centuries ago in the real world.
First, take into consideration the rank in weapons for accuracy, it only makes sense that someone that has spent more points in weaponry should be able to use it more proficiently.
- Rank 1 being a base accuracy of 10%. This would be pretty much the same as it is now.
- Rank 2 being a base accuracy of 20%.
- Rank 3 being a base accuracy of 30%
- Rank 4 being a base accuracy of 35%
- Rank 5 being a base accuracy of 40%.
This means someone at rank 5 in weapons would have a 40% chance of hitting another ship (at close range).
Next, take more consideration into distance. Allow the weapons to be fired at long range (but keep extreme out of the mix) and have an accuracy modifier for each distance.
- Extreme is out of range
- Long has a -70% accuracy modifier.
- Moderate has a -30% accuracy modifier.
- Close has no accuracy modifier
- Adjacent has a +10% accuracy modifier.
- Stopping either ship adds 10% to each modifier.
- Stopping both ships adds 20% to each modifier.
- Grappling increases accuracy to 100%.
Finally, make weapon aiming give a 10% bonus to the base accuracy of each rank that has it (rank 3 and up).
- Rank 3 would become 40%.
- Rank 4 would become 45%.
- Rank 5 would become 50%.
Finally, weather should play a rather large role in it as well however, they should only provide negative modifiers or no modifiers at all. There are 9 (I-VIIII) known weather statuses: glassy, smooth, calm, choppy, whitecapped, rough, stormy, tempestuous, and raging.
- Glassy: no modifier.
- Smooth: no modifier
- Calm: -5% modifier
- Choppy: -10% modifier
- Whitecapped: -15% modifier
- Rough: -30% modifier
- Stormy: - 50% modifier
- Tempestuous: -60% modifier
- Raging: -80% modifier
This would make it so that completely clear weather would allow someone at rank 5 at close range with weaponaiming up to fire at a moving ship from a moving ship with 50% accuracy while that same person firing at the same ship in raging seas would have an accuracy of about a 12%.
Combined with distance, the weather would be computed first and then distance would be computed off of the remainder. So, that 12% at long range would be 3%
The numbers themselves don't have to be so large, nor do the ranks have to have to jump so far, however a change like this would create a necessity for a much more strategic battle plan for ship combat. It would stop being solely about who can grapple who and become more about sailing ability.
There may be something I'm missing here, but I think I covered the vast majority of it.
If you have suggestions or whatever, please post. Sea conflict, I feel, is one of the most sorely lacking aspects of the game and any ideas you might have could possibly make seafaring as a whole more fun.
Edit: some of my numbers were wonky.
I am retired and log into the forums maybe once every 2 months. It was a good 20 years, live your best lives, friends.
1
Comments
I bet @Kresslack will have words on this. And I can't dissect the numbers like @Sena will, but on the surface it sounds like you're probably onto something. But ships are big lumbering things and I don't want them to become too sinkable in too short a period of time. So if accuracy goes up, speed or damage have to go down.
Gonna like your post just for the disclaimer, because I should have included it in the topic I just finished.
As for sea monsters and the like, that is a whole mess that doesn't deserve to be looked at until the PvP end of things is solidified.
Well, realistically speaking, you fire a few salvos to find range, and your shots become more accurate as you adjust from the misses to compensate for the target's speed, course, wind, and distance. During the WWII era, (before most ship-to-ship munitions were guided, anyway) accurate fire between two ships moving in different directions at high speeds (25+ kn, 30+ mph) up to 25,000 yards (Nearly 15 miles) was expected of naval gunnery crews. Obviously, our classical-era ships don't have the technology for that manner of range or accuracy, but the principles are the same. Shoot once, miss, adjust, shoot twice, miss, adjust, and so on, and you grow more and more accurate as you fire at the same target.
Anecdotal facts aside, ship combat should prioritize fun over realism, and "running" battles are more fun than "sitting still and whaling on each other" battles. I agree with the folks that say the dismal accuracy between two moving ships is worse than it needs to be. Ships don't need to be so accurate that they can easily sink a target who is just trying to escape, but it doesn't need to be as bad as it is, where one or both ships have to stop to actually sink each other.
Also, we launch "living boarding decks" that we cut from our own hulls at ships to magically teleport to them, while they conjure waves to escape and whirlpools to get in our way. We summon rainstorms to douse fires and can repair hull damage and sail damage at the same time without ever leaving the ship's helm. We can even become "part of the ship" to magically reinforce our hulls and sails, or summon magical shields to prevent all damage to us, entirely. There's really not that much "realism" in our current system, to begin with. Realism is immersive and I enjoy it as well, but the game's combat is based around balance and fun. Unless you want to start asking questions about how we can out-rift and chew herbs while paralyzed and not fall down with two broken legs, I wouldn't get drawn into that realism vs balance debate.
I'm arguing that ship combat should be more harrowing and engaging by making ship fire more accurate so that ships can shoot at each other while on the move and actually achieve results, which I think would be more fun than slowing to a crawl and pounding the hell out of each other until one sinks like we do now. That's like two pre-traits Troll Knights pounding each other with untargeted DSLs, and is about as much fun. I even offered some real-world examples from classical warfare about how an accuracy boost would make "realistic" sense.
You're arguing against that, saying that our IG weapons should not mirror their classical and real-world counterparts (which is not realistic) and then arguing that realism should take precedence over fun, when there is very little about our sailing system (aside from the authentic naval terminology and jargon) that is realistic, and very little about Achaean combat that is realistic, in general. I admit that I don't know everything there is to know about ship combat, so if you have a balance concern or a reason why better accuracy would be detrimental to ship combat, then let's talk about it, but right now you're kinda contradicting yourself.
For a second, I thought we might have a civilized, productive discussion, but I suppose we can't have that.
So you're saying the idea of better accuracy is a bad one because it might not happen soon? This would not require an "overhaul of seafaring". It might require an overhaul to one, specific aspect of seafaring: weapon accuracy. Even if it did require an overhaul to the accuracy equations, why would rebalanced hit tables be a bad thing?
You did mention variables such as weather, distance, speed, and helm maneuvers in your post. So did Jonathin in his opening post. No one is forgetting those variables in the accuracy equation. The crux of the issue is that some of us contend that accuracy, after factoring in all of those variables, is unreasonably low across the board. Yes, when you reduce distance and speed to 0, you hit reliably, but that's boring, and an indication that the penalties for distance, speed, weather, and/or helm maneuvers are too great, and should be lessened or re-optimized to allow "run-and-gun" fights that are more exciting than what I've participated in, so far.
I do pay attention to all of that when I steer a ship, and while I man weapons. It's all very realistic flavor, and I enjoy it. The Tekura katas are also very realistic flavor for learning martial arts, but they have no relevance when discussing issues with Tekura's combat balance. Likewise, we're discussing ship combat balance, and so arguments of how it should be realistic over fun is a mistake, because that's not how Achaean combat balance works. The vast majority of the "unrealistic" aspects of seafaring are all combat-related, because realism and flavor is fun, but they take a back seat to the mechanics of combat. Since combat is what we're discussing, realism arguments need not apply.
Besides, we're trying to buff accuracy so we can accurately shoot at each other while moving, as real ships do and have done since the first Greek sailor pimped his ride with a ballista on the bow. Rebalancing accuracy would be more realistic, not less.
I have not failed to account for that. That was the sole reason for my anecdotal notes about actual, historical naval warfare, if you read them. Is it harder than aiming a ballista on land? Yes, but navies have been leading targets and doing it reasonably well for thousands of years. Do some research. The advent of ship-mounted catapults in the classical era made the traditional fast, maneuverable ships of the day obsolete. That's because the catapult and ballista fire from Roman-era ships was accurate enough to quickly kill the oarsmen that powered the smaller, faster ships, even while they were well underway. Your claim that ship-to-ship fire should be terribly inaccurate against moving targets is just factually incorrect when you look at naval history, so you can't play the realism card.
We're not asking for 100% accuracy, here, we're advocating for a boost or a revision to the accuracy tables to make ship combat more dynamic. Should firing a weapon from a moving platform at another moving platform be easy? No. Should it be as abysmally inaccurate as it is, now? I don't believe that it should. Again, if you disagree, let's talk about why, as long as it's from a game balance perspective, and not a "realism" one.
I think the debate has run its course, but in the interest of scholarly discussion, here's more links talking about catapults and ballistas in naval combat, excerpted because the articles are long. Your link is dated 800BC, before the catapult was even invented, so it naturally wouldn't mention use of naval artillery. Ballistas and catapults were invented in 399BC by Dionysius of Syracuse, and really came into use naval use during the Roman era. Yes, ramming remained a major tactic, but ship-borne catapults and ballistas meant changed the nature of the game. (Boarding remained a major tactic even up to the Age of Sail, so I'm not debating that.)
First, the one that I posted already and you apparently missed:
One that talks about why catapults and ballistas were effective:
And one that gives an account of their use by smaller ships to defeat bigger ships, instead of boarding as was usual:
I wish I knew how to do spoilers to save on space.
In response to your other point @Kresslack: