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The Big Ship Thread
Jinsun
TN, USA
So, following the major ship changes last year, ships sort of just stopped as far as an evolving dynamic. I think this is partially due to the departure of the Celani that was over ships. Regardless, the admins have a ton of shit going on, and ship aren't top of the list, so I thought a thread where we could discuss issues with ships, ways to fix them, or just general ideas for improvements.
Problem 1- Ships is almost entirely DPS, if a ship with 3-4 people on it attacks a ship with 1 person, that person is screwed barring inexperience on the part of the opposing crew.
Proposed Solution- Defensive forceboard. It would work only if the opposing ship hookshotted you. This gives the victim the chance at some last ditch effort to fight back. Open to more eloquent solutions.
Problem 2 Shiplogs don't include plunder rewards
Proposed Solution- Add plunder rewards to shiplogs
Problem 3 lots of random ship items left over from trades, plunders, etc, and no way to put it on another ship to combine it.
Solution 3- allow ships at the same dock to transfer ship trade goods, or to hookshot each other and transfer adjacent.
Problem 4- Galleys have an exponential leaking rate, that is nearly impossible to stop if hull gets below 40%.
Solution- I'm blank, but it really is overkill.
Problem 1- Ships is almost entirely DPS, if a ship with 3-4 people on it attacks a ship with 1 person, that person is screwed barring inexperience on the part of the opposing crew.
Proposed Solution- Defensive forceboard. It would work only if the opposing ship hookshotted you. This gives the victim the chance at some last ditch effort to fight back. Open to more eloquent solutions.
Problem 2 Shiplogs don't include plunder rewards
Proposed Solution- Add plunder rewards to shiplogs
Problem 3 lots of random ship items left over from trades, plunders, etc, and no way to put it on another ship to combine it.
Solution 3- allow ships at the same dock to transfer ship trade goods, or to hookshot each other and transfer adjacent.
Problem 4- Galleys have an exponential leaking rate, that is nearly impossible to stop if hull gets below 40%.
Solution- I'm blank, but it really is overkill.
3
Comments
Problem 1: Frustrating as it is, it's not really a problem. It's the same as if you're jumped by three people when hunting, you either fight back and hope to get lucky, or you run. Admittedly, there are easy ways to prevent a target ship running, but seafaring was never intended as a solo pursuit.
Problem 2: Agreed, and also include the amount plundered in the victim ship log
Problem 3: I'm on the fence about this one. The issue I see here is a ship-based trade - one ship loads up with extra cargo, does all the sailing around, other ships receive the final cargo and complete the trades. Perhaps an alternative would be some kind of warehousing system, where a captain can order cargo to be stored on a dock somewhere (Thraasi and Tasur'ke could have docks). The warehousing system could come with a monthly / annual storage fee, with a maximum capacity of 20 or so, so it's for storing odd bits, not stocking up on loads of furs from Suleil, etc.
Problem 4: Agreed, once a galley's leaking, you're SOL unless you have hordes of people on board to maintain hull.
Problem 1: I think this is more how hard it is to get a crew if the intent is to not-combat. Being on a ship is damn boring if you aren't the captain and if people are going to idle why not do it in a city? 3v1 should always be heavily in favour of the 3 but the chances of having more crew than the other is pretty high and I think that should be addressed. Let more people do stuff on the boat at it might be easier to get a crew. Granted seamonsters has helped this a fair bit
Problem 2: How is this even a thing? Of course there should be a log of it
Problem 3: Trading between ships has problems, I think the least problematic solution would be to be able to sell all commodities back to Tasur'ke and Thraasi for cost. So Wool gets you 1k and Spices gets you 12k.
Problem 4: No idea, but it sounds like an issue if it works as described.
Not at cost, should be a loss, otherwise people would sail about to get the spices to make 12k from 1. Maybe pay 100 per cargo, regardless of what it is.
1) Not a problem, intended design as stated by admins in past since sailing is supposed to be a group endeavor.
2) agree
3) probably abuseable somehow and the current way is likely intended
4) no opinion
But, ambiguity is the consequence for being the victim plundered. Same reason city logs report who blew up the room only to the attackers, but not to the defenders.
2. Agree entirely with proposed solution.
3. Admin has said no to this already in the past. I agree it should be possible to transfer cargo, but you are yelling into the wind on this one.
4. Like Kiet I also have no opinion. I've been in a few battles with my war galley and haven't noticed excessive leakage being a thing, relative to the seastrider. This is actually the first time I've heard it brought up.
Also guys, this is for you guys to express concerns and ideas. Please add new ideas and problems, no need to address just mine.
As to the responses that 1. is as intended. That's the thing with proposed fixes, they may be working as intended but may not be the most elegant implementation. Just because something isn't broke doesn't mean it doesn't need to be tweaked. Also because of the flat DPS nature, if you have a fully crewed strider, and a galley with 6 people rolls up, you're getting owned, no point in fighting back. There's not a lot of interplay between the sizes by design, but it's still really dull at times. I know that there have been times where I'm on a galley with one other person and a strider of 2 rolls up and we're screwed. That doesn't make a ton of sense, either. Like I said, I don't think my solution is eloquent, but I do think the options of 1. don't hookshot the person if you're worried about a hard fight on the other end, or 2. bring a huge crew still play directly into the strategic nature of ship combat without opening up a dumb mechanic like boarding decks.
The entire point is that a fully crewed galley is a floating weaponized fortress. If they're not fully crewed, they're pretty vulnerable and that's the point.
If you made ships with bigger crews have a benefit in the movement part, which as I have said it the majority of time spent sailing, then you will find bigger crews for all of the activities, evening out the crew sizes between the different types and have it more likely to be a test of skill.
Granted, the down side for that may be making ships to be irritating if you just want to be a passenger, maybe they tried it that way already and it failed during the times I wasn't around. But the 'group' part of ships never made much sense to me when I am mostly reading reddit while someone else is steering.
I feel like 2 ships v 1 ship is always basically a get-fucked scenario, unless the one ship is a fully crewed galley. In which case I hope you have 3-4 people per strider, or else you're probably going to get burnt, and burnt hard. I am, in general, okay with the discrepancy between Striders and Galleys. The only thing that really kinda sucks is that Cutters are such easy targets. I'd probably be okay with Cutters being harder to hit or something. It'd give people a reason to run the Harpooner trait as well as the Helm maneuvers that increase accuracy.
I have a lot of feelings about ship trades. I feel like the ones that go to Karbaz or Orilla or Suliel could probably pay a little better. Not only are those trades super risky, but they're also kinda shitty sails. Orilla and Suliel especially, unless you're in a cutter maybe. Karbaz isn't as bad, but it's still a hell of a long way around. It'd also be neat if the rewards were a little more varied as well, or didn't decay/die or anything like that. i know there are a couple that give like, birds and kittens and things like that, but those decay/die or something? That's kinda silly. Also the ship morale trades suck a LOT. The only one worthwhile is crew experience.
You also can't hunt seamonsters in a Cutter, which kinda blows. A Strider and Galley are fairly easy to level up by killing seamonsters. Throw on some helm aura, pew pew, and golden. Put up some good rations and pay, and you can watch your morale and crew xp skyrocket. Not saying it's easy to hit elite 50 rank, but it's a lot easier than it is on a Cutter imo. It'd be cool if there were some seamonsters small enough for an armed Cutter to bash, that don't give any kind of gold reward or something like that. Could maybe increase Cutter armament limits to allow for 2 throwers, too.
As far as giving cargo to other ships...I don't really see an issue with it. If anything, I feel like this might somehow make seafaring a bit more lively? For example...hire soandso to sail the trade routes and do the trading for you, then they come back in and give you the goods for some gold or credits or whatever, where you turn them in. Making it so that you can take the extra leftovers from trades or plunder and sell them would be pretty cool too. I don't think it would be too difficult to put the plundered goods in a separate cargo hold from the ones you would normally have left over. Normal goods can be sold at equal cost to their purchase depending on what level they're at. So like if it's just extra ore, you'd just sell it for 1k. Plundered goods might give half of a return. Hell maybe it'd depend on where you sell them at.
Last, but not least....we need a goddamn Tortuga!!
Artie dragons tears tank: Doesn't even have to generate tears just a nondecay tank I can fill would be hot AF.
The very last thing seafaring needs is more incentive for pirates to hide in harbours and cherry pick which helpless ships they ambush while taking absolutely no risk whatsoever themselves. One pirate sitting in a major port can shut down everyone's sea trading for as long as he feels like sitting there, because what few defenders there are can't retaliate. He either won't come out, or he'll just re-dock. We don't need to give those people shore batteries.