Fargo

I dont think the general idea is so bad. With different types of food you could compile different proviants that could have different (slight) effects on your crew. Would also be good for economy that needs different people producing different goods and enough money sinks. Just dont make it another resource that simply needs to be refilled, or that just more expensive food provides better boni. Crew should consume proviants very slowly, so people are not afraight of loosing money by sailing around for fun. However right now there are more important problems.

In addition pro: -Realism/immersion. Might not be important for everyone, but the game claims to be realistic so it is important. If we refuse realism there should be a good reason for that. con: -Less dockspace. Increasing dockspace might technically not be possible (maybe someone into this can tell more). Question is do we need to store 15 ships in each outpost. -After beeing sunk, spawning in the closest port wouldnt be possible. Assumed that we could choose one outpost to spawn instead, would this be a problem. Could even be a pro that people you sank recently are out of the way a bit longer. Maybe open a new topic for this discussion?

Hi, did you try low graphic settings? Anti aliasing has much impact on fps in NA.

Bloody hell:D If thats average for you, maybe stop drink and sail! No, but you would need to track playtime and count ships losses for a week atleast, to get a meaningful number. Thats actually something that can be helpful, unless they have logs about this nevertheless. Btw you still got two ships left in the harbour... enough for another session. In time buy 3 new ones and send them to the harbour.

Its less than a day for sure, ergo no problem at all. Of course you can get sunk every fight, but thats not the case. You cant balance stuff after extreme scenarios only happening in your mind, you need to look at average numbers. Thats the problem, you dont care about anything else than beeing able to sail.

Guess how long it would take to increase the dock space in case thats really a problem. I can just estimate how long it took me sinking 5 duras, i would guess about two weeks... Captured ships not taken into account. Also if players are able to store 22 ships in each port, there is something seriously wrong with the market and inflation control.

Maybe give us some points in favour of multiple duras that cant be refuted instantly, instead of continuously posting meaningless opinions?! The only problem with one dura is that other mechanics need to be adjusted, but that is going to happen for economy nevertheless, probably for mods as well.

The more time it needs to craft/buy something, the higher the value. But as long as the time per durability is the same it wont increase the value per dura. Maybe call it less flexibility, because you are forced to buy 3 ships at once. Assumed that 3 dura would cost you 16 hours of income you would be able to buy a one dura ship after ~5 hours. Playing 16 hours accross two weeks you would have access to a first rate 9 days earlier. The end result wouldnt be the same if you dont want to spend 16 hours on three first rates.

No, the crafting itself cant cost more than 2k LH (=2 days) unless they change the cap. 22k LH over 2 days means you need 10 players to craft for you to achieve the maximum production rate. If this can be achieved, first rates will be produced 3 times faster than now. Have you read any post here?! It got explained multiple times now in multiple topics that less durability has nothing to do with expensive ships.

Exactly, thats the problem and a reason that discussions are so difficult. Durability is only one parameter within economic balancing, they should change it when overhauling the whole thing. Tbh we only have these balancing issues now, because they didnt care about it for the last two years. In general when we argue about pros and cons, we should always assume that other mechanics are functional. Dont justify bad mechanics by other bad mechanics or actual imbalancing! Sure players can be happy in PVE, but economy is pointless without player ships sinking. The market would by hyperinflated very quickly. This is PVE only.. i like having PVE aspects, missions etc.

The pure cost is the same, but there are a few differences you might not see directly. When palyers have to buy more ships, they are interacting with the market more often. Also 1 dura would make ships cheaper, because more competition on the market would lower the prices. Its also a mind thing. Imagine 5 dura 5th rates and 1 dura first rates would be balanced considering the durabilities. A 5th rate ship would be more expensive than a first rate... thats weird at the first look. And people complained about actual 5th rate prices, while these were actually really cheap. One dura makes prices comprehensible. We are trying to explain why 1 dura wont make anythin more expensive, and why its simply better than multiple duras. This has nothing to do with opinions, but looking at pros and cons. Btw. pure PVE isnt working, because you dont loose ships. But the game needs you to loose ships.

Please tell me. I think distance based ROE would be very plausible... if it works and it can be realized. This is the question.

I thought about this mainly with defensive tagging and screening issues (small ships wasting larger ships time) in mind. This idea is to open battle instances when ships get into cannon range, because thats when a real battle would have started. This might save a lot of sailing time in the battle instance and bring screening fleets into more danger. BR limit is a resonable restriction to solve screening issues, but it is an restriction and will be annoying in some situations. This could be a natural solution that would remove devensive tagging tactics in addition. The basic problem: People starting battles for the only purpose to escape it again, as fast as possible, or after a certain time. Battle instances are opening, without any combat taking place. What is causing this within the actual ROE system: Ships can start battles at far distances. Ships can prevent escaping over far distances. No additional restrictions to leave the battle instance for the attacker. No mechanics to force the attacker into combat. Proposal: ROE dependant on distance: Open world: After starting the tag timer, the attacker needs to close distance, represented by a smaller circle. Circle size represents effective cannon range. As soon as an enemy contacts the circle, the battle starts. No specific enemy needs to be selected. When the timer runs out, nothing happens. When attack started and enemy is within the circle, battle starts immediately. Larger circle to pull allies, as usual. Battle instance: Opponents always spawn at the same distance within cannon range (~500m), and loaded. Allies spawn depending on ow position. Area control as general mechanic, area size larger than spawning distance. Removed tag mechanic, or damage to sails doesnt prevent enemies from escaping (reasoning: our cannons are much more accurate than rl cannons). Maybe additional escape mechanics, e.g. your bow needs to point away from the enemy, or a short timer after area control is left. Pros: Less pure sailing time in the battle instances, especially for pursuits. Better immersion/realism when colliding with an enemy, instead of crossing each other while waiting for the timer. Defensive tagging not possible. Open world sailing and positioning more important, enemies cant sail through eachother. No enemies spawning / escaping right next to each other. Bow chasers less essential, more use for stern chasers. Screening atleast more risky and difficult. No restrictions/prohibitions. Requirements: Speed boni and sailing profiles need to work in the OW (atleast studding sails/extra staysails wasnt last time i checked). Regarding screening the thought is that ships need to stay so close to the enemies, that these can actually damage their hulls. The attacker is forced into combat, if he doesnt want the enemy to escape. In addition the closest ship would find itself spawning in front of a few loaded SOLs. Optional: The battle instance appearing in the open world could work similar: Instance appears as swords with circle. (~half the size of the actual large circle) For ~1min each ship colliding with the circle joins the battle. Ships spawn depending on open world position with a distance penalty (ca. 200m). Perfect would be a penalty increasing with time, but thats optional. The thought is that the OW position remains important, while players gain more freedom to choose if and what battle they want to join.

Assumed that everything is balanced in the same way for both cases, the only real difference is that palyers are interacting with other players more often when they need to buy three 1 dura ships instead of one 3 dura ship. Thats a really good thing (E.g. more ships on the market results in more competition). Besides that, one dura is realistic. Two good pros. The question is what are the pros to have multiple duras? And if there arent any, why dont go for 1 dura?! You wont find a positive aspect. We got used to have duras, thats the only reason there is a discussion about it. From a rational view its simply stupid. When i want to make ships better accessable, why ever would i invent multiple duras instead of just decreasing the material cost?! Thats like increasing gravity to decrease cannon range. Statements like "1 dura isnt working" are simply wrong, because that is only for actual balancing, including lots of parameters. When you want to change the actual balancing, there are multiple ways to do it. When you only want to change single parameters you have to adjust the others. I also wonder how this was tested with 20 players on the test server

Did we have special attention to new players when the game was well populated?! All we need to keep people playing is an overall good game, no matter how slow or hard it is. Nothing else should be more important.

I just dont like the way fleets are used. When attacking a trader with fleet i want to take down the fleet and finally beeing able to cap the trader if successfull. But what i have to do is ignore the fleet and just try to cap the trader asap (fleet surrenders). So in the end the fleet ships are only used to shoot sails, the trader will escape asap. Then have fun hunting the AI ships set to escape. When fighting battleships with fleet you will focus on the player, for gankers its just a tool to slow down enemies as well. Fleets dont improve gameplay in any way, and i dont think we can change this, other than prohibit traders with fleet to escape e.g.

There is no real difference, but thats not how you did it in the game. The material cost from 7th to 1st rate increases linear. That would be reasonable if all ships had one dura, but with 2 to 5 dura all ships beside 1st rates are 2 to 5 times too cheap (for the main server that is). We shouldnt care too much about one or 3 dura, if the cost is set accordingly. And the cost should depend on player income and ships sinking. When i have to do missions for two hours to buy a ship that on average lasts 20 days, thats really bad. The difference would be that one dura seems more realistic, a one dura ship would be faster to buy, and capped ships are as valuable as crafted ships.

Typical dev statement. Work on balancing: make bad ships better, increase mats for good ships. The improvement for spending more gold needs to decrease exponentially. Like buying a good camera. At some point twice the price equals only a few percent improvement. A good reason for different quality ships is that at the same time everybody can have easy access to competetive ships, and there is a motivation to work for the perfect ship. Can also work for mods, if they become consumption goods.

I want to point out how overall balancing is missing for wood, crafting boni, modules, regional boni and perks. This table shows some actual balancing issues. With resonable balancing the value of stats, e.g. for each wood type, would be very similar. https://1drv.ms/x/s!ApKoyZ6EWUMSgQ7EO_c5dfJ_dkO5 The references are imbalanced as well. Three, probably four wood types out of six are unnecessary. They could add 10 more wood types, without proper balancing, this wouldnt add much to the game. Decisions make these features fun, but these require options. I dont understand why nobody realises. I mean, they invest time and money to implement stuff, that is actually doin nothing in terms of improved gameplay. When everybody is using the same wood, mods, boni and perks, all these features have no meaning. The only result, they become necessary to be competetive, they are annoying. How balancing could look like based on a concept: The difficulty: finding the right references (1% speed = x% hull = y% armour = ...). The woods, trims and perks themselfes can be shaped how you want them to be with a simple table like this. For this i propose: More depth for wood types including less heel and less leaking for heavier woods, more acceleration and turning speed for light woods. Also speed could be devided in up- and downwind (heavy woods with higher penalty upwind). Boni in percentage for everything effecting different rated ships. Wood boni having 3-4 times more impact compared with other boni. The payoffs for tanky and fast ships could not be negated by upgrades that easy anymore. That means high quality mods and ships become less important, the wood would define the main characteristics of the ship. Here a simple balancing tool. Use the right table (main sheet) to define the boni, then adjust the references. Note: armour is in percent here. https://1drv.ms/x/s!ApKoyZ6EWUMSgRROpo5UOlW8nF_J I hope this can be helpful somehow. Have fun testing around, post your opinion how this balancing should look like, and feel free to post your setup if you found a good one.

Important problems to be solved Remove artificial restrictions for port battles and shipbuilding. Its irrational that players cant craft everything in their capital, or some ships cant be crafted in general. Hostility makes no sense. If there is no better idea for port battles, return to the flag+timer system: simple, effective, reasonable. Increase total XP again. Make high ranks (and first rates) special, mid ranks valuable again. Balancing of crafting/shipbuilding. Material cost for ships still isnt related to durability (ships are 2-5 times cheaper than they would be). Crafters shouldnt be able to produce 5 durability ships each day (who shall sink all these duras?!). The connection between the amount of ships sinking, player income and ship cost is missing. Crafted rep kits are still useless, etc. Balancing of shipboni, mods and perks. Mods, crafting boni, regional boni and perks shouldnt be able to completely outclass the basic ship/wood characteristics. Then competetive PVP could be possible without golden ships, mods and perfect officer builds. Maybe remove mods, or change how they work. Also balancing for wood types should be improved. Realize what type of game you want. "OW is currently torn between being a bad matchmaker and a gritty sandbox, don't try to merge the two into a bad compromise."(Aegir). We need a clear concept when thinking about new ideas, problem solving, or development priorities. Discussions are not productive when two factions are arguing with different types of game in mind. It says realistic sandbox in the description, is this still what we are aiming for?! Features (additions or cutting) Cut irrational perks (signaling, thrifty, etc.) Make area control and prepared default mechanics. Cut ow ai fleets (we have forts, fleets take away lots of immersion) Change regional boni, so when your nation has access to it, it can be crafted everywhere. Add crafting specialisations. Remove alt. accounts

In simple words: players are the content of this game. The devs are just building the environment. Its about the freedom to do what you want, make friends, invent your story, be successful in pvp and pve or with your nation, etc. The problem atm: there is no motivation to do anything other than playing your own story or enjoying the great ships. But many players want to achieve something special. For NA this could be a rank, a ship, a blueprint, or just a lot of money. But beeing successful in conquest has no meaning, beeing a good trader or crafter has no meaning. Beeing successful in the game has no meaning... You cant give easy access to everything and reward more hardcore players at the same time. I think partly thats the result of players complaining about everything they dont get immediately. Pls dont punish me, but i think one thing this game needs is more grinding... Not exiting, not necessary to just play the game, but motivation.

Nobody can tell what will happen, especially when multiple things are going to change at the same time... The point is these 25 first rates might face 250 3rd rates crafted in the same time for the same mats. If 25 ships can fight 250 ships because of tow times, there might be something wrong with it. Its not like a nation decides what ships will be crafted. If crafters can sell 3rd rates for better profit than 1st rates, there would be more 3rd rates around. You cant really predict this, the price development alone is quite complex. Well, then set BR limits that favour mixed fleets... But restrictions like this contradict the sandbox style of NA. If you have 25 first rates availiable, you should be allowed to bring them as the strongest fleet possible in deep water. Simply because there is no plausible reasoning why you shouldnt. I mean if i restrict it in this simple way, i accept that economy has no meaning for conquest.

You mean the best mix to win a battle, but this mix might be worse when its about winning a war... Another fact is that at some point all these stored ships, gold and mats will be gone. If then 1st and second rates are very inefficient to craft, it would become more important to gather full 3rd rate fleets. The first rate only nation would get outnumbered very quickly. 3rd rates could become the efficient and sufficient ships to fight port battles, if they are valuable enough to keep crafters busy over time. There is no need to bring full 1st rate fleets when the enemy doesnt. If "inefficient" here would mean 30+ days to craft one first rate, then yes its extreme, but it is an possible option. Even if there was high demand for first rates, the availiable amount of labour/mats in the nation would limit the production. ...any changes before a wipe are not worth thinking about. Arguing with broken mechanics or their results is very short minded while the goal is a game that is working and balanced.

I think it does matter, at some point people wont be able to keep up the production. There is also the option to go away from insta-crafting. A first rate atm takes about 7 days to craft in total, but one crafter can produce one ship in less than 2 days if all mats are stored. A crafting duration of 7 days would be completely different. I dont see the difference of your proposal and BR limitation. For example define Frigate BR = 1 Slot, total BR = 25 x Frigate BR.