Fargo

Sorry, but these ideas of BR based restrictions are nonesense. Groups of players outnumbering you is not a problem but a viable tactic. It just becomes annoying when people only use specific gank ships, start to run from every even fight, and nobody is able to catch those groups. To prevent this, think about mechanics that arent favouring those ships and tactics. Wood types are imbalanced. As a result fast ships loose all combat capability and there are no other choices. Laser guided sternchasers let you escape easily with those ships. OP repairs on one hand allow you to escape very easily, on the other hand they compensate your hull weakness while youre aiming for crew and boarding. Too powerful boarding mods also increase efficiency of those ships. Etc.

Seriously, fix the real issues that keep people from PvPing or playing the game at all, instead of trying to compensate with nonsense like this. And even if those ships really are too expensive, why not simply balance ship cost instead?!

I think measuring player PvP+RvR activity would be the only fair solution. You could do it with a simple reputation system: The more BR you sink in PvP, the more reputation you gain. Joining a PB gains extra reputation. In the end your nation gains marks depending on active players (online last 14 days, or those with reputation), and each palyer recieves marks depending on his reputation. Not exploitable with alts, and fair for all ranks. The only problem is a general problem with marks. They have to be bound to your character, like reputation would be. Marks are ment to give you access to special items, not to increase your income by 1000%. Even if youre super rich, if you dont fight for your nation at all, you wouldnt be allowed to sail 1st rates and special ships. Yes youre forced to do some kind of PvP, but its a PvP game and how you do it is totally up to you.

Either description, or boni are the wrong way round. F11ed it already.

I would remove all repairs from the battle inctance. Since we have repairs its a very simple system that gets abused. Invulnerability while sailing with 0 hull until you repair. Imbalanced repair mods. Run and repair tactics now.... Like OP says, when you beat a fast ship, he simply turns away and repairs sails. He can even keep you in battle for 10 mins to repair hull again. When you simply increase the timers, such fights would last even longer. I recently watched a PB stream and the amount of armour ships are able to repair with mods is still ridiculous. I guess repair mods still increase total percentages. While many are complaining about the actual speed meta, note that the actual repair system increases the importance of speed by alot. If repairs, then with a serious drawback. Make repairs only possible in battle sails e.g., many problems would be solved. Also repair mods should not relate to the total HP. When 25% is default, a +10% mod should make it 27,5%, not 35%. Also repairs should not be able to repair anything back to 100%. Repairs in battle were alway improvisations not able to reach the original quality. It could be capped at 90% for example. It would make sense to regenerate a small amount of crew and cannons over time, but not simply back to 100% via hull repair or "repair crew" button.

Youve seen that i made this topic to think about a fair victory mark system, not rewarding alts?;) Comment on it, or let it be, but posts like this arent helpful. This suggestion is about a fair way to distribute Victory Marks within a nation, to promote PvP and RvR for the nation by rewarding players doing PvP and RvR. How conquest points work, or how many marks each nation should get, is a different topic i think. Its not contradicting, cause its not ment to force you into crafting. Reputation from those ships should be very minor compared with what you get from PvP and RvR. Its only ment to promote the shipbuilders to craft more for the nation.

I think the idea of rewarding each player of a nation depending on the nations success is genius, cause it could promote PvP, RvR, and acting for the nation in general. But just handing x Victory Marks to each player is way to simple... Its not fair, cause some players did more, some did less, some did nothing, and some are alts. Its not rewarding individual actions. Players are promoted to join successful nations, not to do more PvP and RvR. Especially for new players free tradable marks equal lots of free money. How it could work: 1: Measure individual effort. Keep it simple. Take the kill counter, and extend it to "amount of BR sank/captured in PvP". Participation in a port battle provides extra boni. Maybe call it "National reputation points". Optional reputation gain for specific PvP could be increased, for example within your nations area (coast guard gets rewarded), or while a PB is active to reward screeners more. 2: Multiply Victory Mark costs and rewards. You cant hand out 0.25 marks, multiply all numbers by 100. 3: Bind marks, Permits and BPs to the character. The goal is to reward individual effort, not the rich guys and their alts sitting in port. Also people shouldnt be able to sell their marks or items only using marks, cause thats destroying the income-cost-balancing. It would make sense that ships including a permit cant be traded aswell. 4: Remove permits from shipbuilding. The current system only works with tradable marks. In general it would make most sense that each player cares for his own permits, not the shipbuilder selling the ships. Add an additional slot to place the permit in, without permit the ship cant leave port. To trade the ship, players need to delete the permit. 5: Fair distribution of marks. The winning nation gains a pool of 100 marks per active player (14 days). Each individual player gains Victory Marks = [player reputation / average reputation] * 100. I think other nations should be rewarded aswell with less marks per player, but thats another topic. 6: Balancing. 7: Think it further. Maybe reward economic actions aswell, to promote more people to craft for the nation. Each ship you crafted e.g. could grant a tiny amount of reputation when someone else (from your nation) sinks someone with it. I think we had this with XP already, did we? Should be easy to implement then. Tell me if i missed something, if you see problems, or if you got other/further ideas. Thanks for reading!

Im not so sure about it. The killboard only shows who spends most time with PvP, not the best players. Its not fair for groups, unless assists count as kills. When they count as kills its not fair for solo players. A real PvP Rating would decreases when you die, while the increase would depend on your enemies rating and BR difference. Thats fair, not rewarding pure playtime, and not promoting gank groups or solo guys farming newbies. I would either do it right, or remove it. A kill counter just for fun is fine, but were talking about rewards here. It promotes PvP, but only specific PvP, and never fair/fun PvP.

You cant fix the speed meta, cause there is nothing broken. OW PvP ships will always be fast and its nothing wrong with that. The difference is that ships are able to catch each other. And when fast ships will catch you nevertheless, you dont need to build your ship as fast as possible. And faster ships will be weaker. Currently i can get my Teak/Bermuda Bellona to the same speed as a Renommee.

Removing the speedcap shouldnt take more than minutes. And balancing needs testing and observation over time, what we are supposed to do. Regarding marks, i guess Victory marks are tradable like Combat marks? In general, whats the point of marks when you can trade 1 mark for x gold, and x gold for 1 mark? Either lots of marks are around, you can buy them cheap and you dont need to do anything for the stuff you need. Or marks are rare and they provide a huge income boost, effecting the general income-cost-balancing. New players selling their victory and combat marks probably wont need to care much about gold anymore. Also tradable Victory marks are going to reward alts even more... I think it might be nice to have, but NA neither needed battle groups, nor a leader board or a second global chat. Basic mechanics are not working as intended or imbalanced. We need better RoE mechanics, better upgrade mechanics, a better mission system, better combat balancing, better economic mechanics and balancing, etc. I cant see any changes really improving the current game. And this while well reasoned suggestions and criticism are getting ignored.

1. Remove unnecessary/unreasonable mechanics: Why speedcap instead of reasonable ship/wood/upgrade/skill balancing? What is the current hostility system doin positive? Why marks instead of reasonable cost-income-balancing, or a reputation system (similar to marks, but reputation cant be traded)? 2. Improve ROE and escape mechanics: Why are ships still spawning and escaping right next to each other? Why is defensive tagging possible? Why are revenge ganks possible again? Why do we need BR limits to keep ships from starting unwinnable battles? 3. We dont need reduced ship cost yet, but a functional economy. Ship value/cost is affected by: Not existent material market. Why are people able to self supply everything? Rare upgrades. Why arent upgrades player crafted consumption goods using availiable/craftable resources? People cant buy their own permits. Why force shipbuilders to buy the permit for ships they are going to sell? Ships crafted with goods from the market include ~20% fee. Why are auctionhouselike fees punishing us for using the open market? Rare/expensive and imbalanced wood for frames and planks. Why are only 1-3 out of 9 wood types competetive for combat ships, why are those woods limited by NPC production? No trade with player related goods. Why is trading seperated from player economy via npc trade goods, instead of e.g. having different production rates and costs for different regions?

Gustavia market PvP EU, 5 Belle Poules, 200k-390k. When you cant afford this youre doin something wrong. You can sell upgrades or skillbooks for more. One lucky drop and you can afford a new ship. Just your labour provides ~100k each day and more when you use it smart. Invest in something profitable before you buy an expensive ship or more dockspace, and money goes to money. PvP isnt profitable atm, but thats not killing the game, its a temporary balancing issue. Learn the game and stop whining. If you got problems, people are very helpful in this game. Posts like this are not helpful. After you tried different stuff, talked with other guys and informed yourself, then you can come here and post what exactly you tried, and why it didnt work for you. When youre still pissed that this game is going to be what it was supposed to be, a slow paced sandbox style game, just keep out of it. The amount of mindless BS in most topics became annoying. No matter what happens, there are "this kills the game" and "game is dead" voices, nobody is going to listen anymore.

ROE are the cause of the problem. When it would be harder to start a battle, but inside the battle a fight would happen/escaping would be more difficult, we could allow teleport to friendly/neutral port after the fight. Obviously this would be a bad idea while people can attack, just to escape (defensive tag). I think the only thing we could do now is an intelligent system that gives you different options, based on your role in the battle. Only when an enemy sank, allow teleport. Also when you attack, no ship sinks, and you escape, the enemy would be able to teleport. This cant fix defensive tagging, but it allows you to get away after a fight, or lets you avoid a revenge gank after you got tagged defensively. Teleport should be possible within a short timer after spawning in the ow, so you could see if its necessary or not.

I said the post that you quoted is wrong, not your post. You were only off topic:P

The example you quoted was just bad and wrong. Reno still has an advantage in turn rate. There is a reason to sail a reno over a frig, but compared with stronger and similar turning ships, like surprise in this case, there isnt. Sure as a low budged hunter without need for upgrades, but thats not balancing. No ship should have a role like this.

Again, the higher base speed of the reno cant compensate its weaknesses. And if it could, it still would be a weird system. Why not make the reno slower and tankier by default then?! You wont find arguments in favour of a speedcap. Instead of a speedcap you could give all cappable ships equal base speed, and adjust their hull strenght according to actual balancing. It would be exactly the same situation, but nobody would get to a weird idea like this. Strenght of a Surprise and a Reno might fit their BR, but we dont get variation that way. Lower BR ships need specific strenghts to give them a use. Like ships of different classes. You use 5th rates over 4th rates for speed and turnrate. It needs to be the same within a class. When all 4th rates only differ in hull strenght, there would be simply one best ship.

Ofcourse you can beat it in a reno, but thats unimportant. You can beat a frigate in a snow with enough skill difference, but this has no meaning for ship balancing. The point is that you can do it in a surprise even better, while it does nothing worse. Imagine you should duel an equally skilled player, why should you currently choose the reno over a surprise? Even a teak/wo reno has weaker armour than a teak/bermuda surprise, the surprise is faster over the whole sailing profile, has +6(4) guns per broadside and more chasers. Your only advantage is that you can pick 1-2 more non speed upgrades. The reno also isnt ment to be as powerful as the surprise, its not the same BR.

I havent really played anymore when we got the endy, so maybe thats true. Changed stats for those ships with the wipe? The renomee became weaker, but i cant say if this happened with the wipe or before. Its not a problem to see specific ships in specific roles, ofcourse hunters use fast ships at best with chasers. But these ships need to be balanced when it comes to combat or other ueses. Thats not a reason to give all ships the same speed. And its not changing much. Now the surprise became the best hunter, cause it was a very good allrounder before. Now its a very good allrounder as fast as the ships build for speed, even faster upwind.

Either you do proper ship/wood/upgrade balancing, or you set artificial restrictions like this to avoid it... Thats just bad game design, and lazyness. I dont see any argument in favour of a speedcap. It makes no sense when you think about it. What was the problem before? I dont remember a renommee meta. Look how weak the reno is because of its speed, or how bad the endymion sails. There is no use for these ships anymore, besides beeing cheap throwaway ships. I dont see variation, i see uncatchable surprises everywhere. In case only renos would be used, you would just nerv its stats... but no need for a speedcap. Ship balancing seems not too bad, just nerv those stackable upgrades. Every other game has mechanics to reduce boni when you stack them. When ships are still too fast, reduce base speed for all vessels, or fast wood boni. Yes its cheaper to speedcap them, but thats not balancing. Youre on the wrong way here. You cant balance a ship in terms of gameplay by making it cheap. Thats like saying an OP upgrade isnt OP, cause its rare. Not true. When i want to invest in a good ship inc. upgrades, i should have the choice to pick a renommee or endymion. I currently can use more upgrades for turning or so, cause i dont need that much speed upgrades, but this cant compensate the weakness of those ships. They are build for speed, not to be a good allrounder. Maybe its working to build a very tanky endymion and speedcap it, but how stupid is that? When the difference base speed - speedcap defines how tanky you can build a ship, you would simply make it slower and tankier in terms of base stats. A fast connie would probably still be stronger and better.

You could simplify it like this: [PvP&PvE activity = (fun / time + rewards / time) / risk]. PvP currently is "high risk, low reward", PvE "low risk, high reward". Obviously this is not working. Regarding PvP its not much effort to increase rewards. Also rare upgrades increase the risk unnecessarily. The difficult part only is balancing, in this case e.g. evaluating the risk, translating it into correct rewards. The question is how to involve more risk in PvE, so people can choose between "Low risk, low reward" and "high risk, high reward". The problem is that taking a challenge currently is not rewarded. Larger ships provide more rewards, but they also take more time to sink. In terms of rewards/time its more efficient to grind easy missions. I think a slightly dynamic reward system would improve alot. A simple system could look like this: Equal enemy = default rewards, -20% BR = ~30% less rewards, +20% BR = ~50% better rewards. Further increasing BR differences wont result in more/less rewards. Fleet missions would use average BR, so doin kapten fleets solo in an indef would provide less rewards. Enemy BR is higher in that case, but its no risk while ships cant penetrate your hull. We also might need missions based on ship class, not rank, so people can pick the challenge they want. Rank 4 missions e.g. vary alot cause its 5th rate and 4th rate rank. More risk in PvE means PvP becomes less risky relatively. PvE becomes more exiting and less grindy in general.

When people can pay twice as much and more for upgrades than for a 5th rate itself, ships are definitely not too expensive. And again, durability has nothing to do with ship cost. One dura is most reasonable and we should be super happy that devs didnt hear on the majority talking against it neither having any clue what theyre talking about, nor a single valid argument. Upgrades should be consumption goods crafted by players, to generate an upgrade market and make them much cheaper and accessable. Good upgrades can use more resources or labour, so they become more expensive this way. Could also someone explain why most important logs need to be excluded from player production? This will always cause overproduction, shortcuts and weird pricing, cause its not dynamic. Assume we even can successfully balance it, it would only be balanced for actual player counts and ship consumption. Upgrade power level is still way too high in my opinion, and when they dont want to change this upgrades atleast need to be accessable for anyone. Making such important items rare cant work. Overall balancing is also a problem, using a fast wood build forces me for example to use all speed upgrades. Otherwise slower builds with speed upgrades would get to the same speed while beeing better in any other aspect. Personally i like to optimise my ships, so i wont use many ship without good upgrades for PVP. And ofcourse im not taking much risk with a ship that has two times its value in upgrades equipped, while i dont even have access to new upgrades. Then PVP mostly results in chasing or running, cause ROE allows battles to open without fights to happen. Even if people have good chances of winnig they run, and when they get picked up one after another and half of them escaped already chances became 0 and as the attacker you wasted time chasing for a boring fight and poor rewards. PVP is risk, and this needs to be rewarded. We should atleast increase marks from pvp by x3 to motivate people a little more. That cheap ships and economic easy mode, PVP just for fun, is not resulting in more PVP got proofed pre wipe when everybody owned everything. Making paints or special ships accessable only by PVP, some kind of special reward is needed. Is it okay that 90% are max rank is the question. A healty rank distribution would help with problems like frist rate only PBs and would give ranks more meaning, make high ranks special. No, we need a working market. When you want more ship supply, you need more people selling materials. Either their is no mat supply, or mats are super expensive cause there is no competition. We should do "professions" to stop people from self supplying, and a fee system that doesnt punish you for not bypassing the market. Also crafters having to use the permits for crafting is a stupid mechanic. They have to buy expensive marks, while people wouldnt bother to use their own marks for the permit. A connie itself is worth 500k, but currently you need to put it in the shop for 760k+10%, 850k. The only option is to bypass the market and let people buy the permit for you.

Remus guide is pretty good, but its a guide for self supplying. As a shipbuilder with the goal to sell ships, maximise profit and supply the market, you only want to use your labour for the ship itself. This way you can craft about 3-4 times more ships. More XP, and more profit. Youre also helping the contract based market alot not doin self supply. All resources can be bought via contract for pretty much the same cost as harvesting them yourself and often below, dont waste gold in production buildings! When you got some gold to invest in something, start to buy materials you need from the market. It can take a while for material contracts to fullfill, so start buying before you run out of mats. When contracts dont work, maybe team up with someone who crafts materials for you, or buy the resources and pay random people for crafting the mats. Its important to know for what prices you can buy materials for, depending on the prices you can sell ships for. With fixed resource harvesting cost you can calculate a labour value for any crafted good. When ships sell for 100g/lh, buy your materials for 90g/lh. This is where you make profit. When youre selfsupplying, youre only selling your labour for a certain amount. But this way each material included in your ship gains you a little margin. Not much, but it adds up. You can use simple lists like this: https://www.docdroid.net/58eQDoN/price-table.pdf.html, to check for what prices you can buy for. This is a very basic one though. Always watch the ship markt and what ships people use. Compare prices to see what ships are currently selling for good profit, and what ships are selling fast. When a ship is not supplied, and you see people using this ship, it probably sells well. Traders lynxes are well supplied in our capital e.g., but not traders brigs. I crafted one earlier today, and it already sold. But e.g. dont craft traders snows even if the market is empty, when you dont see anybody using it. It might be just a bad ship, what is true in that case. Dont craft "trash" ships. Combat ships should always be made of teak frames, while the best planks are whiteoak, sabicu and bermuda. Teak/bermuda is a good pvp speed build, but on a ship that already is very fast (renommee e.g.) it doesnt make sense, cause there is a speedcap. Use sabicu only when you dont have access to whiteoak. Even when you need to buy whiteoak for a high price, as long as your ships sell for an accordingly high price, youre fine. Good luck and have fun!

There is a multiplier for planks on all ships. Its 1,9 for whiteoak.