The Big Ship Thread

Jinsun

Btw not all harbours salvage. All -manned- harbours.

Krypton

Nope. ALL harbours. Precisely for the reason I said -- to reduce overall distance-based salvage costs.

Shimi

Jinsun said:

Btw not all harbours salvage. All -manned- harbours.

I've salvaged out of Valho quite a few times. It's a natural harbour with no manning.

Jinsun

Must've changed.

Alrena

It would be nice if some trades had rewards to divide among the crew. The best ones are the personal deals that start and end in the same harbour so you have good incentive to make it a group trip. There are some deals that won't take three hours, but some routes (Karbaz, Orilla) will take substantially longer. I can see how it'd be depressing to be near the end, only to get sunk. Even if you don't lose all the cargo, losing just 1 too many to complete the deal is enough.

More incentive to sail as a group would help, though. Seamonsters are pretty great for it and more interesting than tradedeals, at least!

Klendathu

In some ways, being 1 under the amount needed to complete a trade is worse than losing the lot, so frustrating. Top tip: Don't sink

Jinsun

Quarterdeck of Crystal Lightning.

         

The stars twinkle in the clear night sky. The quarterdeck is the command centre 

of this small vessel. There is no bridge as such - just a wheel of highly 

polished brass and shining lacquered wood which stands forward and centre on the 

deck. The captain and his executive officer do their main work (along with the 

helmsman) from this place, however cramped it may be for more than those three. 

The area is ablaze! There are 8 shipmates here. A heavy bait tank stands here, 

water sloshing from its sides. A large red flag flutters proudly from the 

mainmast high above, bearing the city arms of Cyrene. Suspended by a long, 

thickly braided cable, a massive diving bell hangs here. There are 3 tethered 

hookshot here. Emery, Initiate of the Ithmia is here.

Hookshots are bugged as fuck!

Laedha

Alrena said:

It would be nice if some trades had rewards to divide among the crew. The best ones are the personal deals that start and end in the same harbour so you have good incentive to make it a group trip. There are some deals that won't take three hours, but some routes (Karbaz, Orilla) will take substantially longer. I can see how it'd be depressing to be near the end, only to get sunk. Even if you don't lose all the cargo, losing just 1 too many to complete the deal is enough.

More incentive to sail as a group would help, though. Seamonsters are pretty great for it and more interesting than tradedeals, at least!

What about making it so personal deals can be accepted by multiple people on the same ship at the same time? Then only those same people can complete their own deals at the ending port. Then all personal deals could be run by a crew sailing the whole route together, not just the ones that start and end at the same port. 

Siduri

Laedha said:

Alrena said:

It would be nice if some trades had rewards to divide among the crew. The best ones are the personal deals that start and end in the same harbour so you have good incentive to make it a group trip. There are some deals that won't take three hours, but some routes (Karbaz, Orilla) will take substantially longer. I can see how it'd be depressing to be near the end, only to get sunk. Even if you don't lose all the cargo, losing just 1 too many to complete the deal is enough.

More incentive to sail as a group would help, though. Seamonsters are pretty great for it and more interesting than tradedeals, at least!

What about making it so personal deals can be accepted by multiple people on the same ship at the same time? Then only those same people can complete their own deals at the ending port. Then all personal deals could be run by a crew sailing the whole route together, not just the ones that start and end at the same port. 

I very much like this idea. And it's in line with the very intent of the personal trades.

Xaden

Laedha said:

Alrena said:

It would be nice if some trades had rewards to divide among the crew. The best ones are the personal deals that start and end in the same harbour so you have good incentive to make it a group trip. There are some deals that won't take three hours, but some routes (Karbaz, Orilla) will take substantially longer. I can see how it'd be depressing to be near the end, only to get sunk. Even if you don't lose all the cargo, losing just 1 too many to complete the deal is enough.

More incentive to sail as a group would help, though. Seamonsters are pretty great for it and more interesting than tradedeals, at least!

What about making it so personal deals can be accepted by multiple people on the same ship at the same time? Then only those same people can complete their own deals at the ending port. Then all personal deals could be run by a crew sailing the whole route together, not just the ones that start and end at the same port. 

I actually thought this was how it worked. Was astounded when it wasn't the case. 

Side note: Did the 100k deal yesterday on my windcutter with untried 11/12 crew and it took 5 hours. Either I'm a fucking awful sailor or I need a strider.

Melodie

Naw it's not the ship type bruh, it's the crew. Your crew are scrubs and will continue to suck for a long while. I mentioned to you the trick of getting a couple of experienced ship/crewmates to join your scrubs to help the leveling - still the best thing to do!

Krypton

Armaments for 100k should take <3hrs for anyone familiar with the routes, but that is still not worth it for the time investment.

Xaden

Melodie said:

Naw it's not the ship type bruh, it's the crew. Your crew are scrubs and will continue to suck for a long while. I mentioned to you the trick of getting a couple of experienced ship/crewmates to join your scrubs to help the leveling - still the best thing to do!

See, the turning isn't the issue, I've managed to time my turns to compensate for the slow balance return time. Does a better crew make the ship faster over open water? I've been told mixed things

Krypton

Use Emergency manoeuvres. That is already like 2x faster turning / crew balance.

Nazihk

Sinking/Plundering costs too much time:
Let's look at an incense trade. Getting incense requires a trip from Thraasi(ore) to Zanzibaar(fruit) to Thraasi(glass) to Shala'Khulia(incense) and then back to port to turn it in. If I get up to, say, glass before I get sunk, I'll lose some of the glass in my hold. This necessitates going all the way back to the start with a load of ore from Thraasi. And then if you get sunk on THAT trip, well, start over again.

Sure, you can overstock just in case, but the nature of the trades makes that very bothersome. If you want to bring 2 extra incense, you'll need to drop 8k more on ore and you'll need to take up 8 more cargo spaces with it. And then what if you lose 5 incense? That's 24 more slots needed, which is a quarter the capacity of a strider. It's possible, sure, but it sucks and if it sucks people won't want to do it. And it gets prohibitively expensive if you're trying to run multiple trades in one go

I can think of several approaches here that might work, but not sure what would be best. Let people pay gold to upgrade the cargo holds on their ships for secure storage? Salvaging from a harbour or a Deckhand 5 salvages with inventory intact? I don't mind the actual gold costs of salvaging ships or getting deckhands or whatever, what gets me is the lost time from starting over. I am pretty much okay with trading gold for time, as long as it's a reasonable cost. 

This one would be a problem for me no matter how fun the voyage is. These things take too fucking long as it is, and when the cost for failure is a hard reset then I'm just not going to do them. I got sunk on a long trade one time and I pretty much gave up ship trading entirely after that, because I realized that the work of the previous two hours had been completely nullified.

Bann

Krypton said:

Armaments for 100k should take <3hrs for anyone familiar with the routes, but that is still not worth it for the time investment.

This.

Also @Xaden, if you need to level your crew, then I suggest doing the easier crew xp routes. Get someone with helm aura to tag along, and make sure it's up before you turn the mission in, as it increases the xp gain from those too. Rank 5 helm aura is the way to go, though anything below that is more than you'd get without it.

You CAN make gold from sailing, but it does take a time investment and stuff like that. Need to get a ship, hire a crew, train them up to at least Expert(which is when it starts to get noticeably faster) and high morale. Then you can zip around places a lot faster than if you have a poopy crew.

Xaden

Have helm aura, maybe only level 3/4 though (will finish that off today I think)

There's only been two (i think) crew XP trades since I bought my ship and they both involved Karbaz (did one of them). 

So basically: Learn the winds and persevere until my crew get better?

Jinsun

Could also try hunting the easy seamonsters. Not sure how difficult it is in a cutter, though.

Xaden

Jinsun said:

Could also try hunting the easy seamonsters. Not sure how difficult it is in a cutter, though.

I got annihilated by a baby sea monster on accident the other day

Jinsun

Xaden said:

Jinsun said:

Could also try hunting the easy seamonsters. Not sure how difficult it is in a cutter, though.

I got annihilated by a baby sea monster on accident the other day

Well that answers that!

Alrena

Laedha said:

Alrena said:

It would be nice if some trades had rewards to divide among the crew. The best ones are the personal deals that start and end in the same harbour so you have good incentive to make it a group trip. There are some deals that won't take three hours, but some routes (Karbaz, Orilla) will take substantially longer. I can see how it'd be depressing to be near the end, only to get sunk. Even if you don't lose all the cargo, losing just 1 too many to complete the deal is enough.

More incentive to sail as a group would help, though. Seamonsters are pretty great for it and more interesting than tradedeals, at least!

What about making it so personal deals can be accepted by multiple people on the same ship at the same time? Then only those same people can complete their own deals at the ending port. Then all personal deals could be run by a crew sailing the whole route together, not just the ones that start and end at the same port. 

I like this idea. 

As for losing cargo, maybe going out and salvaging your ship with the specialization saves all your cargo, to make that more appealing? Or perhaps you can pay extra to recover cargo you lost to sinking/plundering, like a black market thing. It'd have to be substantial enough to sting a bit, so you have to consider whether you want to lower your profit to finish the deal, or just start over with new cargo. The closer to the end, the pricier it gets. Obviously, you can only buy up to what you had, so you're out of luck if you just miscounted and come up 2 incense short.

Honestly I understand the need to have risk, but it'd be a lot more entertaining to see more people sailing and not worry about getting sunk so much. So people would just risk it to try and dodge the pirates, or fight back!

Xaden

How about an insurance racket at every port?

You pay 50% extra to insure your cargo against pirates / sinking etc ?

Klendathu

Xaden said:

How about an insurance racket at every port?

You pay 50% extra to insure your cargo against pirates / sinking etc ?

Great idea. No sarcasm, actually a really good idea.

Jinsun

Being deadass honest, pirate policies are much cheaper than 50% of trade amount.

Xaden

Jinsun said:

Being deadass honest, pirate policies are much cheaper than 50% of trade amount.

Not 50% of trade, +50% on cargo

Ahmet

Xaden said:

Jinsun said:

Being deadass honest, pirate policies are much cheaper than 50% of trade amount.

Not 50% of trade, +50% on cargo

Would this apply when you trade one cargo for another? Would you have to pay each time you exchanged cargo? Would it expire after a certain amount of time, or would it last indefinitely so long as you had the same cargo in your hold? If you don't have to pay for each exchange, is there an extra fee for the later (more valuable) goods?

Seems like an interesting idea on its face, but I can't imagine it actually turning out decent.

Jinsun

Xaden said:

Jinsun said:

Being deadass honest, pirate policies are much cheaper than 50% of trade amount.

Not 50% of trade, +50% on cargo

I took 84 wool on my trade yesterday. That's 84000 gold. 50% of that cargo is 42k. A pirate policy is 40k for one year and cheaper after that first year. Wouldn't even remotely be worth it

Xaden

Jinsun said:

Xaden said:

Jinsun said:

Being deadass honest, pirate policies are much cheaper than 50% of trade amount.

Not 50% of trade, +50% on cargo

I took 84 wool on my trade yesterday. That's 84000 gold. 50% of that cargo is 42k. A pirate policy is 40k for one year and cheaper after that first year. Wouldn't even remotely be worth it

I don't even know know what a 'pirate policy' is

Alrena

Jinsun said:

Xaden said:

Jinsun said:

Being deadass honest, pirate policies are much cheaper than 50% of trade amount.

Not 50% of trade, +50% on cargo

I took 84 wool on my trade yesterday. That's 84000 gold. 50% of that cargo is 42k. A pirate policy is 40k for one year and cheaper after that first year. Wouldn't even remotely be worth it

Doesn't that just make it interesting? Whether you want to pay more, or give in to pirate demands! Or just risk it without insurance!

Anywho, you could have the cost depend on how long the insurance is valid, or perhaps a flat 25 ic days for it. Get sunk or plundered, Thraasi/Tasur'ke will give you the cargo that you lost back. You'd remain insured even if you get sunk a second time. This is mostly so the time lost is minimised, so perhaps you only pay 25% up front and another 25% if you need cargo back (regardless of what or how much you lost). Not sure how viable that is code-wise, I suppose.

Jinsun

You pay us not to sink you.