Jack Lowe

@Angus MacDuff the point to the discussion isn't about saving people, although being a bit of a side discussion it may be hard to pick out. It's about those instances where joiners magically appear right in the middle of a fight. Sometimes a fleet appearing right on top of an inferior number of attackers with perks the first thing they know about it is when their hull is coming apart. Conversely a lone joiner might land magically in the middle of a group of enemies. Either way how do you say this is ok? That's the issue at its extremes. The discussion is about how to have joiners from either side enter in such a way that is relatively fair to both sides and realistic-ish. Also consistent and simple enough to be easily understood by players in game. No ones trying to give extra advantage to your prey. The fact we even need to have this discussion is rather ridiculous I agree. However current mechanics allow it thus sadly.....

If by signaling entry you mean reinforcement then I think that distance is to great. When wind is taken into account the result will be many situations where your help must travel to far. Equated to approximate time to get into the fight roughly 10 mins in average or more. In a unequal fight your friends are likely sunk or beyond beaten to ineffectiveness. The reinforcements become the second part of the gank, or simply never get into the fight. 500 m is probably to little if I judge correctly 500 is about the range you start seeing player names roughly. At that range your already in cannon shot and essentially engaged. This would lead to unfair situations for the attacker to often, not allowing them enough time to adjust to the new situation. I would propose something like 1 km to about 1.5 km. That should allow friends to get into the fight in about 5 mins or less give or take depending on wind and give the other side time to reevaluate and adjust. I'd rather not put much more effort into this idea unless there is some indication from admin that it's something they think worthy of consideration. If it is then it's worth further effort and time to work out and discuss, otherwise although a interesting conversation to this point ultimately a waste to continue.

You can literally add a invisible circle to the ships which will always follow them. It can be of any radius. 500m to use your example. Then take the realitive position of any joining ship and the desired target shipping instance. There is another point required I believe.You use those three positions to get an angle of entry and have the joiner(s) spawn at the edge of the circle at that angle on the circle. That should be enough to give a spawn point. I did this once to create a LOS system for a character where i needed to know the angle the enemy was at so i could simulate different fields of view. Main, peripheral and blind side or behind the player or enemy. I wanted to allow back stabbing or the ability to sneak up on an opponent with the possibility of detection determined by skill in an RPG. It wasn't real difficult just dont remember exactly how I achieved it. Yes it would take a bit of coding to get all the calculations, and it's probably a rough and perhaps inelegant solution. Still that's roughly what would be required. As well as the logic for the program to know which circle and ship in instance to use for the calculations.

If joining in such a fashion didn't actually represent the exact point in instance you joined the fight but simply meant you were within engagement range, what then. If you joined at a position as mentioned around 600 meters from the engagement just outside of most effective gun ranges but close enough to have an impact on the fight within a reasonable time in most cases. Then it's a bit more fair to both sides as well as a bit more realistic. Those joining dont have to deal with a "bad" join spawn putting them well out of position to help. The other side still has time to react to these reinforcements without the nasty occurence of having a fleet magically appear in the middle of them guns loaded. Let's not mention the bad luck of a single joiner accidently spawning in the middle of an angry enemy fleet. Determining what is a fair point for each yo spawn would then be the remaining question.

Ok so since I've seen most agree on the idea that at minimum 1. huge ganks say 5v1 is bad 2. Balancing a fight by BR is at best problematic, (i.e. complicated formulas, hidden magic numbers, or lacking these two we have exploits. Let's trash the balance by BR and go with straight numbers. If as in the example you get ganked 5v1 the defender can reinforce up a max of 5 more ships. The ships appear 600 meters from the friendly or in the case of say 2v5 the friendly furthest from the enemy. They also appear opposite the enemy force. The idea being 1. If you are attacked by a superior force 6 or less the defender can reinforce up to a total of 6 ships. That enter in such a fashion as to provide the attacker the option to withdraw. If one side has a force equal to 6 the other may reinforce to 12, or if the BR of the reinforcements is say 2x the opponent(optional). Now the defender can reinforce a gank. If they choose to do this to the limit of 6 the timer resets allowing the attacker to reinforce. Provided the numbers stay below 6 the battle closes as usual. In this system we have the opportunity for escalation to a full fleet sized brawl. We also have some limit to the size of a gank or counter gank. Neither side is going to feel very good about reinforcing to the limit knowing the other side may counter. A attacking force has some assurance they won't get counter ganked by a fleet of 12 once a tag is made. The timer limit can be discussed. This adds IMO more thought with the least amount of complexity. The current number of possible reinforcement and BR limit can be shown when clicking on the battle. Making it rather easy for the user to figure out. All they need remember is 2x and max number limit. The battle can update to show if either threshold is reached. The reason for the new spawn idea is this in the current system a lucky join point can allow you to literally spawn on top of the enemy. This is crap IMO. You really expect me to believe an enemy fleet spawning 200m dead in front of my escape route went unnoticed? It takes away the other sides ability to well do anything. In fact with TS and discord players will literally pop in one at a time each reporting their position to the enemy the next adjusts and pops in. No ship is going to allow one much less a group of enemies to get within short gun range without noticing. It's a bit of an exploit. I got my first PvP kill by accidently appearing 200m off the starboard quarter in a battle. Split one ship from his team mates and cut off his retreat to them. If he wasn't screaming BS he should of been. Thus the idea of changing join distance to allow some ability for the other side to assess and respond in an intelligent fashion as apposed to simply bend over in the face of a clearly exploitable mechanic.

This is a game you are correct. The part your wilfully leaving out is that it is a SIMULATION of WAR in the age of sail. Those two capitalized words are key. There needs to be a certain amount of realism or this game might as well be a recreation of pirates of the burning sea with better graphics. Complete with magic voodoo skills and zombies. War is war its hell, its unfair, its brutal. It's also dangerous, treacherous, and an adrenaline rush. Think that's in part what is advertised on the screen when you click onear server no? Ganking is part of war on the sea. You really think in real life if two frigates came across a lone trader they let it go or allowed him to get friends so the fight would be fair. Nyet. If you want only a fair fight then you might as well just scrap the whole OW, RvR and economy. We dont need them for that just a lonby and a match maker will do. Wait didn't that happen already? Ganking will happen it has a rightful place. It is senseless to expect an enemy to not commit its whole force or to ask those that would unbalance a fight to sit vulnerable on the OW waiting for their mates for up to an hour to satisfy your ideas on fair. Griefing will occur as it is a loophole allowed due to the idea of delaying actions, a valid military tactic. Things that we can do because it is a GAME to simulate war thus needs to be fun as well as realistic. We can add a few limiters on ganking such as reducing the group size to 6 and allowing multiple groups in a squadron say 4. One group may engage one group or single ungrouped player. Leave the timer as is. That's a bit of a spit ball idea off the cuff and could be crap or require at minimum further refinement. The idea is to balance in some fashion the expectations between reality and fun. RL and game. Griefing can be limited by inducing the correct level of risk on the action while still allowing the legitimate delaying actions. IMO conversion from diameter to weight as a metric for damage is going to help induce that risk as most reported griefing is a smaller ship against a much heavier target. OW taging skill becomes key for both in whether the delay/grief is successful or ends on the initiator taking a fast ticket to Davy Jones. Perhaps some additional change will be necessary to make increase the risk to regulate griefing to a annoying but rare occurance. Ganking and griefing for better or worse are going to happen in some fashion or frequency because this is an OW simulation of war. If all you want is fair fights you need to uninstall and wait for NA legends to release.

If its repeated 10,000 times do we win the toaster oven? Better yet one of the dev's says "hey guys I think I'm noticing a trend........". Apologies I'm usually rather sympathetic to the devs in this case couldn't resist poking a little fun.

Absolutely correct my mistake. Let's remember that the connie wasn't kedging to escape one British frigate in chase. She was running because that frigate was attempting to hold her in battle, "grief" her so that an entire British squadron could come up and "gank" her. Real life application of what we see in game. This is generally how wars are fought. Destroy or deny assets to the enemy while preserving your own. Fair fights don't accomplish that. From this point of view NA does an excellent job mimicking reality in this regard. Now reality doesn't always equal fun. Therefore some modifications to the general ROE may be neccessary to allow the proper blending of fun and realism. Slims idea of a 1.5 BR difference being the factor is fairly valid and remains a certain amount of realism although examples are fairly limited. Maybe the number to give a good feel is off and perhaps a timer should remain in conjunction with the limit, say 5 min joiner can only enter if br is within 1.5 of the difference. Something like that. I really can't see to opposing sides setting sails up staring at each other joining one at a time to fill the lower side BR for 5 mins. I'm betting they just try and start several other smaller fights in the vicinity trying to deny one side helping their buddies. There's more PvP for you. With that out of the way we can focus on balancing combat so that the PvP that's generated is a good quality experience on average, or we can just leave this part as is and embrace the realism of ganks.

Ganking is a rather abstract term. Even in its purest definition it is going to happen regardless of what steps are taken to prevent it. The best these steps can do is reduce the most egregious instances. The reason it happens has nothing to do with design or mechanics but with player perception and the reasons people play. Most people come to the game for the ships and more importantly to sink other ships that's the fun for those who fight. Vetting sunk as long as it's a rare occasion is acceptable, but not fun. Getting sunk is losing, losing is not fun in the average person's mind they will avoid it. Easiest way to reduce the risk of losing have more or larger ships than the enemy or both. Thus ganking is born. Players will only engage willingly in a fight they think they can win however the average person is so risk adverse that this essentially means a 85% or better chance of winning in order to seem like "a good fight". Add to this the known steep learning and the uncertainty of who your tagging and they may have "super fittings" and it's worse. The mere perception kicks in a fear response that means they won't engage unless victory without loss is practically certain. Forget the ship costs and all the other in game distractions. Fear of losing or failure is the number one reason for ganking. There are others revenge, trolling but those are generally limited to a minor number of players or are situational. You can change any and all the rules of the game and ganking will remain, unless you go to evenly matched death match duel rooms. Ganking is not a result of the game or a reflection on it, ganking is a result of society and psychology. It's a reflection on all of us as human beings. In short admin unless you have some mechanics that can change the way people in this modern age think on a massive scale you will have ganking, like it or not.

@admin IMHO this conversation is a bit like getting the cart ahead of the horse. Does not, as you have proposed, conversion from diameter based damage to weight based damage solve to a degree many of the issues. I tag a wasa with a requin as an example. Under the current damage model I can get a mistake or two and still survive. Under a weight based model any mistake at all means being dismasted or sunk in one decent broadside. In my mind that is as it should be. Each vessel is more or less designed to fight against ships with similar sized guns. You want to tag for any reason at all a ship with guns 2 or 3times the size of your main battery then one mistake thet your enemy takes decent advantage of and your done. Very high risk, practically suicide should generally be how it works. Only the most highly skilled should be able to pull it off to even a 25% chance of success. The vast majority of such attempts should end in a retreat by the attacker after a perhaps 10 min delay or the attacker gets sunk probably in a few minutes. I dont like griefing but I do support the idea of tactical retreat or delay to allow a retreat. In most cases such delaying actions should be short lived buying a few mins. the majority of the time. The presumably weaker force either sacrificing themselves or taking a rather fierce beating. Few should result in extended delay or the delaying force escaping without significant damage or loss. I don't really want to dumb down the game further and dont see how it helps the game to be better in any practical way. Sounds more like using a battle axe to "cure" a paper cut. Fighting withdrawals and delaying actions for a variety of reasons add tactical and strategic depth to the game. Griefing is a result of an imbalance in the way combat works. Solve the imbalance or reduce it and things will work as intended without taking a chain saw to the current ROE. I will end by returning to the beginning. I truly believe shifting from diameter to weight based damage with some tweeking will be helpful in resolving the issues your observing as it will make these undesired behaviors much more risky to engage in. It will also still allow for more legitimate uses of fighting delays creating opportunities for heroic feats, encourage out of the box thinking, and in general add a subjective form of content that will make your game better. If after the damage change this problem still persists then we can look at getting out the chain saw if you feel so disposed, although I fear the results.

Well although I disagree with one counter claim for not wiping the PvE server, and I'll explain in s moment. I do think that a full wipe, as the devs have laid it out, specifically on release day is not the best idea for the overall health of the game moving foward from that day. First why wipe anything from the PvE server. The PvE server is a unique beast from a testing and data stand point. It is essentially like a sanitized laboratory environment. Which provides alot of good "uncorrupted" base data. This is because of the lack of the more complex interactions that occur due to PvP and RvR on the war server. Each server provides it's own unique set of data that taken together helps determine areas of deficiency. This along with feedback from players is what determines many of the adjustments and priorities for future development. In the case of a major patch which will fundamentally change mechanics and there interactions such as this upcoming econ patch having a clean slate to start from can be necessary for both servers. This is because they provide two different unique types of data. Now when I say wipe that should not be interrupted to mean toss out everything. Only those things that will possibly corrupt the testing data needs to be reduced or removed. Its not a matter of the devs hating on us and cruelly taking away our toys it's an unfortunate necessity in order to get the best possible game they can produce. Now as for the release wipe. I think in the first place a wipe on release day itself is probably a bad move. When the game is released new players should come into a vibrant living world with a community in game willing and , more importantly, able to help them along there grind. However we dont want to drag in things from old ideas or exploits that will start us out on a bad foot from day 1. I like the idea of allowing us to keep 3 to 5 ships as well as all experience and knowledge. I just dont think allowing each player to pick is practical. The game has sold over 100,000 copies. Even if only 10,000 place their desired choices that could be an overwhelming task for such a small team draining all resources from other endeavors for days or even a couple weeks. Also what of those who didn't get the message and thus didn't get to put in their request. Thus here is what I think provides the best compromise. The player base will vote on a number of ships they would most like to keep as a community. This should equate to the overall most popular models. They may get to choose 1 SOL, 1 Frigate, 1 shallow or any other combination as determined by the devs to be fair. Those ships will be given as redeemables after wipe. They may not be gold and all might not be each players favorite but there should be something there for everyone. Second wipe should occur 2 to 4 weeks prior to release. During this time RvR is suspended so we have a fresh start on release day. All other OW ROE is in affect. This short period allows us all time to get things prepared so we will on be ready for war and second ready to help the influx of new blood we expect to receive. I believe that provides the most seamless transition from test to launch. We get some starting ships, which is all any enterprising captain should need to make his fortune. We have time to get ready for each other as well as our new and returning mates, and on launch day players coming in should find what they expect a world that's already prepared for them to jump into and immerse themselves in. They will also find a community ready and able to do what they can to get them off to a good start and having fun as quickly as their skill level will allow.

I have a possible counter proposal. Let's leave aside the join timer issue for the moment although there are some good ideas germinating on that I think. Let's look at the endless revenge gank issue which seems to cause a rather large problem by forcing people to stay in game much longer than some would like or can afford to spend. Now it's my understanding that when you exit a battle instance you appear on OW at the point and with the heading you had when the battle started. If this is not so then just ignore the rest. Assuming this is so then with invisibility and speed buff there is still a fairly finite area to search which is what makes serial ganks possible. We go into battle instance at a point and heading that corresponds to our OW position. Seems logical to me that we should return to OW from battle the same way. We should be at the point and heading from which we exit. Now the thought just occured to me reading this thread so there maybe some obvious exploits I'm not considering, however it would help mitigate revenge and serial ganks by creating a much larger area to cover looking for the target also the escaping ship gets the right by having evaded his opponent to have more choice over where and with what heading to make his OW escape. After a battle ends he has 15 minutes to run of course that might need to be shortened. On the other hand if his opponent wishes to chase him the full hr. thirty that is the aggressors choice knowing he can't catch him. The defender still can pop at anytime he feels he has the advantage. There are still I imagine some issues to be had but I do think that most gankers have something better to do than a hopeless chase for over an hr. Thoughts?

Old navy guy as well. I just decided to make learning some programming and development a hobby in my spare time. Curiosity really, still enjoyable hobby. Unity is a nice platform. No insult intended just to say any idea can be made digital reality. o7 mate.

Is it codable yes of course it is. Practically anything is codable. In the scenario you mention MacDuff it's fairly simple. The crossed swords is a unity game object. We won't go into all that that means just to say it is an object we can attach code to directly to send or receive information like your mouse over it or a left click. In this case we would need the swords to do a range check to a certain distance the moment they are created. Anything within that range gets flagged as insight. The swords will be active for those players or visable. Meaning also those players that can see the swords can interact with them, click and enter battle. Anyone outside that range the swords are inactive or masked and player interaction disabled. Those players can't see them can't click them they shall not pass. Nothing terribly crazy.

I disagree with this. Although the currency changes caused an upheaval for the players it was really only a step in the transition from the old economy to the new. The upcoming update is where a wipe should take place as it puts the final parts of the new base economy in place. Retaining vast resources and cash imo has a larger chance of resulting in bringing old problems into the new system giving deceiving or outright faulty data and feedback. This can result in development choices that harm or worst case wreck the new system. Some will disagree others will argue who cares I just want pvp and the economy doesn't interest me nor does it matter beyond giving me new ships to sink/fight with. They are wrong the economy is in my view at least as important as good combat to this game. A well developed economy provides reasons for players to get out to make money to acquire resources for new toys. Evidence of this exists now the current economy is lackluster, at least we can agree it needs work or is missing something. Posts to this effect are out there from ports lacking enough value to encourage RvR to not being able to find good PvP opportunities. Yes low pop and other arguments that are advanced are factors as well but to deny the importance of the current economy plays in this is a mistake. In this game as in reality the reason we fight is simple money, power and control. People will achieve that thru different avenues and have different ideas on how to achieve those goals, but diluted down the motives are the same. Combat is essential to this game we can have all the reasons to fight but if the combat isn't engaging or hopelessly broken the game fails. Combat still has its problems but it's good enough to keep people engaged. The economy simply is not. It's not doing its job to get people out fighting and helping support and give meaning to RvR. If this new economy similarly fails due to poor development choices this game will do what the doom sayers keep crying everytime something happens they disagree with, die. IMO the best chance to ensure good data and thus good development choices for the new economy going foward is to wipe removing variables that can corrupt data and feedback.