The Big Ship Thread

Ahmet

Xaden said:

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

@Xaden "Pay me x gold and no member of the PoM will sink you, and if a non-member attacks you and we happen to be around we'll come help. Maybe. If we're not pretending to be mindless."

Jinsun

Yes, it would make it interesting, only saying that a 50% rate is untenable for most trades and certainly if you factor in big trades. I don't want to see you guys spending 40k a trade not to be sunk. That's ridiculous and bad for the game. 5k maybe.

Jinsun

Who pretends to be mindless to the detriment of their own business? @Ahmet you've got some serious angst, and that's not what this thread is for. Keep it civil or take it to rants.

Ahmet

Just make it so that as long as you have crewmates and extra tokens, crewmates can use extra tokens to save cargo too ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Xaden

Ah.

How about a gold cost per unit of cargo that increases / decreases depending on the cost of the cargo.

Let's say you can insure cotton out of shastaan for 100 gold per unit. That's insured up until you've exchanged the cotton.

Marble out of Karbaz however will cost you 400 gold per unit to insure.

Every port / cargo type has a rate to insure what they sell / exchange.

This way you can mix and match. For example: yesterday I may have decided not to insure my cotton for the trip to Tasur'ke, but I most certainly would have insured my Marble from Karbaz to Colchis.

Whatever, I'm just an ideas guy

Jinsun

One thing I like about an insurance idea is it gives options while not taking out incentive for plunder (at least as presented. You can keep your cargo, I can get some of your cargo and some gold and it adds into the market instead of inflating the cost of conflict.

Ahmet

Also, would either have to nerf plunder or make insurance much more expensive, or it would be abuseable, I think?

Get cargo -> insure -> have your friend plunder -> extra cargo at half the cost? Even if it were the full cost you'd still be up the time you invested to trade up to that cargo.

Jinsun

Ahmet said:

Also, would either have to nerf plunder or make insurance much more expensive, or it would be abuseable, I think?

Get cargo -> insure -> have your friend plunder -> extra cargo at half the cost? Even if it were the full cost you'd still be up the time you invested to trade up to that cargo.

There's a simple solution to this. Shrub people who do it. Also, I've plundered my own ship after messing up cargo before. Plundered it three times. Didn't get a single piece of cargo. Wasn't even remotely worth the effort.

Krypton

Having max swashies probably didn't help with that

Alrena

Ahmet said:

Also, would either have to nerf plunder or make insurance much more expensive, or it would be abuseable, I think?

Get cargo -> insure -> have your friend plunder -> extra cargo at half the cost? Even if it were the full cost you'd still be up the time you invested to trade up to that cargo.

In theory you could already do something similar: having a friend plunder you three times, effectively making you immune to further plunder by actual pirates later on as long as the cooldown lasts. I'm not sure it'd be worth the effort though, as you might get one or two pieces of cargo, which won't really help you out, as often you'll need 3-4 of them to get a batch of the next ones. I'm not sure this will be a big issue. Especially if abuse is cracked down on!

Krypton

Alrena said:

Especially if abuse is cracked down on!

So there's a safety period of 1 year for abuse, as we learned from the last tradebug crackdown.

Rispok

Neros and mergendered folk steal cargo first, and supply harbours with trade so pirates can't beat harbours

Or diving merman fights with spiders at reefs

Nazihk

One thing I think would REALLY help seafaring is removing a lot of the chop mazes. They're slow and finicky and irritating to deal with, but ultimately easy to deal with. It's just time consuming and unfun, so much so that sailing to places like Suliel and Ilyrean is basically not worth it unless you plan to leave the ship up there forever. Who wants to deal with a hour's sail up to visit the island, just to have to sail back?

Look at this fucktastically huge sailing map:
[spoiler] [/spoiler]
Bottom yellow arrows are Thraasi and Tasur'ke, upper yellow arrow is Suliel. That's a fucktastically long sail even without the chops. With them, it's basically impossible to make those islands worth visiting without making them crazy fucktastically overpowered because the sail is so long and requires so much attention.  Even without pirates and seamonsters it's not a long sail where you talk to friends, it's a long sail where you're changing course every 20-30 seconds.

So here's what I say. Get rid of all the chops along the eastern side of those islands there. Then fill the area with some hefty seamonsters, moreso than it already is. Larger spawn areas, etc.  Make it something more like this:

[spoiler][/spoiler]

This kind of map would be way more fun, imo. Captains would be encouraged to get people to crew their ships, so that they'd have the hands to fight the seamonsters, and people who crewed for them would have things to do along the sail. Much more engaging, much more involved, much more fun than weaving the chops. And you'd still have the long boring safe route along the western side for people who don't want to deal with monsters.

Kiet

Not really all that much engaging about wavecalling away from 10 leviathans in a row either tho

Accipiter

If they changed all the chops to the new style even it would make sailing up there more pleasant, but I doubt anyone would go up there anyway.

Tahquil

I would. I hate finelytimed manoeuvres with my ping.

Zulah

I know it's been mentioned but why isn't there a SHIP TRADEIN or SHIPS FOR SALE system yet? It seems like it would benefit the servers to lighten the load of the 100s of ships sitting in drydock with 1000s of crew and 100000s of stores. It's been long enough there are more than enough ships in Achaea to constitute a trade system for them. It amazes me when I see people commission a new ship knowing how many people want to sell theirs.

Also ship artifacts. Why can't they be traded in like other artifacts? Nothing in the help scrolls says they cant be. No real reason they shouldn't be able to tradein.

Krypton

Probably because unlike any other artefact-level purchase, ownership CAN be transferred. Even if you're having difficulty selling off ships and ship artefacts, fact remains it is possible to transfer them at all -- unlike regular artefacts, or housing.

Siduri

Zulah said:

I know it's been mentioned but why isn't there a SHIP TRADEIN or SHIPS FOR SALE system yet? It seems like it would benefit the servers to lighten the load of the 100s of ships sitting in drydock with 1000s of crew and 100000s of stores. It's been long enough there are more than enough ships in Achaea to constitute a trade system for them. It amazes me when I see people commission a new ship knowing how many people want to sell theirs.

Also ship artifacts. Why can't they be traded in like other artifacts? Nothing in the help scrolls says they cant be. No real reason they shouldn't be able to tradein.

We commission new ships because we know what you've been up to on the deck, cabin, heck, in the nest.

Greys

@Zulah sounds like you have an IC opportunity to start a business selling used ships.

Antonius

The upfront costs are primarily intended as a gold sink. It's a much less effective sink if you can recover some of that cost at a later point.

Rispok

Why do refire capability messages appear shipwide?

Cooper

Chops take the fun out of sailing

Exelethril

If the admins drastically reduced the gold cost and all the other penalties associated with being sunk, they'll open up a whole new field of gameplay for a lot of people psychologically.

I'd love to learn how to sink other ships but the time/monetary cost of being sunk plus how finding another ship on the sea is like finding a needle in a haystack just isn't a form of entertainment for me.

Klendathu

The cost of being sunk is relatively low without cargo. If you're sailing out to attack other ships, don't go with a load of gold in the strongbox and no cargo, and your only costs really are tokens for the crew if you're sunk, and they're 250 gold per crewmember. You're a dragon, you can bash that amount of gold with trivial effort.

Tysandr

Sailing's been pretty fun for me so far; it's quite unique.

Bann

Sailing is basically the only aspect of the game that's like, FUN fun for me. Can ask people I've sunk alongside. I don't get mad about it, I like to look and see why we got sunk and then try to fix it. (Usually it's because we have 2 people and Greys has a ship full of 4-5 people, but hey. Them's the breaks.)

I like that idea that @Nazihk put up about making there be a thing to the east like that. Even if you're having to run like hell from big bad seamonsters, it's still preferable to having to fly like a butterfly and sting like a bee to get through all those effing chops.

Kinilan

Exelethril said:

I'd love to learn how to sink other ships but the time/monetary cost of being sunk plus how finding another ship on the sea is like finding a needle in a haystack just isn't a form of entertainment for me.

Different strokes for different folks. One of the things I always found exciting was when you DID find a ship. You have to spring into action from a sort of stand-still, the sudden burst of action. There are things you can do to increase your chances of finding some action like watching a specific harbour, scanning harbour counts, other more devious methods best taught in game.. There are skills to develop outside of the ones you spend lessons on, an understanding to develop.

Tysandr

I was incredibly irritated the first time I encountered chops. I thought "I'm never fucking doing this again" and then I wondered why it was designed to be so infuriating. I think they create great chokepoints for seamonsters and pirates (maybe).

I wonder if rather than having the navigable chops be impassable, consider making them a rougher version of the # type waves and making them impassable at a certain hull threshold.

Tysandr

Boredom struck while studying: