maturin

What is the point of this thread?

So catching someone in a speed-fit Essex requires skill and a perfect tag. Catching someone in a live oak extra-planking Trinc requires zero skill, and can be successful even with a terrible tag. Because the former has no chasers, while the latter has four. If you don't see how this is a terrible distortion, I don't know what else to say. Essex and Trinc are very similar ships in reality.

Let's be realistic here, though. Given a normal encounter between competent players, perfect tags are almost never going to happen. In a complicated scenario, one player might outplay the other. Or a trader might be AFK, trapped against land, etc. But the ship without chasers can't catch anything in an equitable situation where its quarry is attentive and behaving rationally. Hell, half the time you can successfully disengage from a fight even if you have been brought to close action. Choose a moment when your opponent is tacking, then turn tail and flee. Without chasers, they will probably be incapable of reaching you in time.

I meant exit timers affected by closure rate. No locking distances. Base Exit Timer = 2 minutes Closure rate with closest enemy = X (positive or negative) Actual Exit Timer = 2X So a speed-fit Renommee could give a 5-minute exit timer to a Santi, but the Santi would only have 40 seconds to catch the Renommee. Yes and yes. Ships without bow chasers are useless for solo OW PvP and this does them a huge injustice.

The navy actually did keep guns loaded. The unloaded guns are for technical reasons, AFAIK. Ships can spawn really close together in the instances now, so it's sort of an extension of the battle warmup time.

There's physically no room in the privateer's bow for a gun. Hopefully the 'chasers for all' option would not apply to light vessels.

I think there's a very good chance of blueprints being retained. The devs know how much effort it requires to get them. Either that, or BP-access will be reworked entirely, hopefully to be less restrictive. Even the asset wipe is looking less likely.

Don't fret. Every single time someone mentions wind on the forums, admin comes out of nowhere to say "No calms!" I'm sure we are talking about mild differences here. Enough to make Ship A faster than Ship B, but no more.

I just thought of a partial solution here: Whenever you enter the battle circle, that's where you will spawn in the instance. Touch the circle and your entrance position is recorded, regardless of your position when you press Enter. That way, if you want to encircle someone, you will have to take the long way around the circle, avoiding its perimeter. Combined with a slowly-growing circle, this will make entrapment very difficult.

I think the idea floated about the chasers is getting a lot more attention. The goal with chasers should be to make them less important, not make them totally equal. Chasers should slow your opponent down, not lock him in combat. Only high damage from broadsides should be able to lock ships in combat. To compensate, exit timers would be longer and dependent on closure rate. Many, many ships successfully caught their quarry without using chase guns.

Daaaang. I look outside and it's snowing in April, so that means it must be Christmas? Here is an old rough concept of mine for the windforce idea. The Medium Windforce "Fresh Breeze" panel is exactly what we have in-game ATM. Note that the usual speed adjustment is 5-10%, and that this affect closehauled sailing much more often than downwind courses.

It's a good idea, but without limitations it would immediately run off the rails, with pirates using it to jump players as they left the port, basing whole SoL fleets there, blockading, etc. Workable limitations would involve stripping players' right to enter the port if you catch them entering or leaving.

Seamen didn't wear uniforms.

It's supposed to stop the suicide bombing, ramming attacks and blue-on-blue kills by people who don't want their ships captured. If surrendering halves your crew loss, then we will see more captured player ships in the economy, which is fun. I think some numbers would be helpful with explaining things to the community. What is the maximum crew accrual for a solo player flag captain (no lands or recent PvP victory points) who hasn't played for a few days? How many times can an influential flag captain with several ports under his control replenish an SoL crew in a day?

It's not the stack limit that's annoying, it's the lag. The game can handle 52 cannonballs flying through the air to impact a forest of masts and sails, but somehow the damn Craft button makes the servers agonize over the decision for five seconds.

Check out the 'Such is a Lord' thread. Soon crew will need to be replenished, so suicidal captains will suffer in their ability to get back into the game.

To stop being a landsman you need to leave your vessel and sit in an internet cafe making forum posts until you make midshipman.

If I'm not mistaken, sharpshooters were frequently drawn from the non-marine crew as well. After all, there would be plenty of men in the tops, and it would the topmen who lashed yardarms together and (very rarely) boarded from the tops.

Yeah, I have already abused the positioning to trap fleeing gankees.

Try and get in touch with a moderator of your faction via mail, while he is online to investigate. It's probably too hard to build a case after the fact. A mod can challenge the alt directly in chat.

What is the point of this? The devs have shown zero interest in changing the durability system, and no one is interested in a few votes cobbled together on the forum, unsolicited.

The new owners of the port should get the ships for free.

Hi yourself. I've heard Admin muse about increasing heel in the past. Although realistically speaking, most ships would be very stiff, except in high winds. SoLs were supposed to heel only a very few degrees even when close-hauled in a topgallant breeze. Boudriot specifies 6-7 inches of heel as ideal in this case. That's under 2 degrees! Although admittedly I suck at math, I'm pretty sure in-game stiffness does apply to heel as it should. Not sure whether optimized ballast affects heel or roll, or whether the game distinguishes at all.

Yeah, people would have to spend time playing instead of hunting the meta.