Devante del Nero

Website's new address is armsofchaos.wix.com/headquarters Join up lads!

Big changes made to the Black Mongoose Tavern and Forum! The Black Mongoose isn't for AoC Members only, but sailors of all kinds -- there are several boards for public forum members: http://theblackmongoose.freeforums.net/, Including a non-moderated board. Ever had a quarrel with another sailor or group in Naval Action, and found that the language acceptable in a public board just couldn't quite communicate your ire in an adequate fashion? Out Back of The Black Mongoose is the place for you!

Also, your ship should perform at its highest in all areas (not accounting for crew experience) when you have a completely full compliment of crew, but as you lose crew switching them between sailing, gunnery and survival has a much mroe significant effect.

I could see officers having randomized names and progressive stat bars... and I believe crew experience would be a great dynamic. Maybe a few special crew like a cook which offer morale. A player could see heightened performance on their ship (more accurate aiming, faster sail raising/lowering, faster steering, reload) as more crew last while you gain exp and officers gain exp, but that boost goes down as your experienced crew die and you take on fresh recruits. So it's a kind of active give and take experience bar. That would also be incentive not to be reckless with the lives of one's crew which could contribute to more realistic sailing practices among players. To put it mathematically, your ship's general performance boost could be an average of the total experience of the entire crew. I also think it would be a good addition to have the option to "exercise the great guns" while sailing, to train your crew to be better shooters at the expense of shot and powder. Historically as I understand it there was a divide between captains who thought it was worth the extra expense to shoot at targets every day or week to train their crews and those who thought it a waste of resources. And since unnecessary expense was frowned upon naval captains often had to buy their own shot if they wanted their crew to be able to train every day. (was it our time period when in the British Bavy you could only use a certain fraction of your allotted shot for practicing?) But as far as interacting with your crew, managing them individually, reviewing and hiring specific crew, I think that's a step or two too far. We do already have a kind of crew focus between firing, sailing and survival modes on the ship. Whatever happens with crew management I believe it should be fairly simple, mostly passive and not a game in itself.

Well the point of sailing is to get somewhere you aren't, nor would one need to play arena pvp and indeed could sail their ship manually over as long of distances as their circumstances allow them and they want. But the option would exist. Many options could exist. And I know it isn't happening, believe me. I simply find the idea interesting and wish to explore it conceptually, this is general discussions after all. In fact I voted against it in this poll and tend to lean more gamey in the game vs reality scale. As it is, Naval Action is set up to be physically very unlike any previous sailing title in combat. The difference I'm trying to describe would be more spiritual, a different way of going about open world actions that would require much more forethought and planning and I don't believe it would necessarily destroy the possibility for instant gratification in playing. Another thing to add could be chance pve encounters expressed retrospectively, so you might log on to find a notice on your voyage and choose to explore it or ignore. Sails spotted for example. Not stopping your progress, maybe lasting for a certain amount of time a couple of hours before expiring.

I suppose it wouldn't have to necessarily be pvp instances, some games also have queued missions and "dungeons" or for the sake of Naval Action perhaps cooperative pve campaigns. And it certainly would only take a few hours to very thoroughly patrol waters around a port particularly operating on a somewhat shrunken map area, or to sail to a neighboring port. But understand I intend to play devil's advocate, because though I do find the kind of mechanic used by PotBS, Sid Meyer's Pirates and every sailing game I've played (that is, a greatly shrunken Caribbean with enhanced sail times) working and adequate... I don't believe any of these games have been more than moderate successes and short-lived. And the graphic elements and more realistic combat mechanics will make Naval Action something different in a flesh-deep capacity, but this idea of real distance would have the potential for a very deeply unique experience -- risky to be sure but then all untrod ground is in game development. In any case I understand the developers aren't attempting this route and I don't disagree that it would be work to make it not a boring waiting game like the original Eve where you would click your production then wait for it all to happen or similarly like many basic browser mmos.

If you had to manually sail the entire distance yes. It wold only be around 10 days if your ship could sail automatically while offline. And simultaneously be brought into queued instanced pvp if nothing is happening while on the voyage not unlike queue pvp instances in many popular games. I think it could work like that, the only question is ship's behavior and player vulnerability while offline. The coolest thing about having such travel times would be a whole new kind player and community interaction... if it takes that long to sail great distances, chances are most people are going to operate in the open world in their chosen local waters primarily, moves into other waters being major undertakings. And making the momentous move of a couple weeks all the way across to the other side of the Caribbean would be like starting a new life. Guilds would probably be locally operating around a certain port or ports and the taking of ports would be of immense significance due to the amount of time it takes to gather an organized fleet in the same place and get there. The dynamics of it could make for a pvp world where long-sighted planning and tactics are brought to a whole new level in gaming. IF players still had plenty to do during the long voyages such as the queued pvp instances.

The thing I disagree with in the original post is not sailing when you're offline. I think if there were going to be real world sailing distances and time it would be critical to let your ship (or one of your ships, or one instance of your ship) sail while offline assuming you could plot a course for your crew to follow while you go below decks and nap for 8 hours. But not to let it become one of those waiting games like the hundreds of browser empire builders where you get on and click a few things then wait a day for stuff to happen. You should at the same time be able to take your ship instantly into their 24 hour ongoing battles or switch to other ships for those or instant action. And also be able to take command of your sailing ship to handle npc or pvp engagements. The only tricky thing with that is handling the pvp, so would it be fair to let an offline sailing captain be attacked by online players while on their voyage?

I believe you would have to be able to let your ship sail automatically while you were offline... it would be far too excruciating to manually sail for weeks on end to reach a destination. And while your expedition in one ship was taking place, you could also enter into separate ongoing combat instances for instant action. Meanwhile monitoring your progressing ship, respond to sails spotted or pursuers or attackers/pirates. It could be fun to jump into your ship real time in the middle of the ocean, go up on deck and pull out your spyglass to train it on distant sails and either move to engage or alter course to avoid confrontation if say you were a lightly armed merchant. In that sense it could operate much the way Star Citizen plans on it with a dynamic connected galaxy only with a living breathing ocean where all happenings are connected. That works well for SC because of hyperspeed travel, but it could even be a very cool thing with the ocean as long as you could delegate the tedium to your lesser officers most of the time and always switch to other characters/vessels for the easy action. In fact the more I think about it the more I like real time travel... or the idea of it -- it would certainly be unlike anything attempted before and make for very protracted and meditative pvp and trade actions. Deep Ocean travel wouldn't be something you simply do on a whim.. it would require great consideration for provisioning and route planning, and players would need to move their fleets uniformly to maintain proximity for engaging in the open world pvp actions together.

Seems legit.

I think by organic he means battles that occur because of open world movements, trade routes, national borders, hunting grounds, etc. and not because of arranged arena instances. But I don't see why it isn't a grand idea to allow both. Most modern MMOs have pvp battlegrounds that run constantly and players can jump into anytime, and also circumstantial pvp in the open world. I think it's smart practice to not make it so the queued pvp is arcade mode and open world pvp doesn't matter, like most MMOs. I think they should both affect one another, like... perhaps the battlegrounds that are operating depend on actions on the open sea. And the accumulated outcomes of the queued pvp battles affects the ownership of the open sea. So... I guess kind of like PotBS if when you flipped a port a continuous port battle began that lasted until a certain time or until a certain number of victories was accumulated by a side...? I don't know. Back on topic so my post is still relevant to the thread; I still stand behind pay currency being trade-able in-game.

The best way to deal with this issue is how PotBS did it. (which is a sentence that isn't used often) That is, the buyable game "currency" is tradeable in-game. So, if you are a player with more time than money and want to grind for the extra coin you could buy the special currency in game from a player selling it to use for the pay content. And if you're a player with extra money to spend or more money than time, you can buy the currency and sell it in-game to make big gold on your toon. Everybody wins. I played PotBS for almost two years and never spent a cent on it, I like the game but it always seems on the brink of going under and I never like the direction they're taking the developments. Even so, I had one of the largest ships in the game and p2w repairs/etc just from playing the game because I could buy the pay currency from the auction house.

Certainly shiny shiny, but another feature of U5 is much more efficient memory usage. At least from what I've seen of devs and independent stress testing using the same animation/equipment between U4 and U5, U5 renders at a much higher frame rate. And the point remains that the sooner it happens, the easier and less dev time it would be.

It isn't like Unity 5 is a completely different engine from Unity 4. 5 is able to update ported code from 4 with only small manual labor. It isn't like switching to Cry Engine or Infinity. So that softens the Iphone syndrome -- that is, by the time you get set up with the new one the next one is out.