Crafted cannons and the trader/warship distinction.

[Idle Champion]

Under the current system gun carriages are included in the blueprint of a ship and these gun carriages give the ship the potential to be armed. The purchased 'cannon' is much more of a ticket, with no weight and no variation in cost for the number of cannons on any fitted deck. Once the ticket is added, the gun carriages now behave as carriage-mounted guns, adding weight to the ship and enabling it to load and fire and generally fight with the cannons of that deck. There is a massive by-design difference between traders and warships, with the traders having a minimal armament and a massive hold and warships having quite the reverse; the difference is so pronounced that the largest warships can carry less cargo than the smallest traders.

 

But this difference is artificial: many small warships were not purpose-built but purchased commercially and subsequently armed, merchants sailing in convoys might concentrate weapons in a few ships, otherwise no different from their sisters, to serve as escorts. Pirate captures and by extension pirate ships themselves were largely ex-mercantile ships. The differences between a large merchantman with full lines and two stern galleries, pierced for cannon on two decks even if not armed on both, and a fourth-rate ship of the line were so marginal that even ranking naval officers could be fooled, and several ships were built for one role only to find themselves in the other. Even warships in naval service could be armed en flute if carrying capacity was required for a particular mission. Even in-game the difference is artificial - the gun carriages are the only blueprint elements separating trader and warship variants of the Lynx, Cutter, Brig, and Snow, and the models for the traders have not covered or filled the gun port piercings.

 

What I am proposing is removing gun carriages from blueprints and removing the 'cannon ticket' from the shop, and replacing it with crafted and, within limits, NPC-generated carriage-mounted guns. This would also call for replacing the existing twofold abstraction of 'Cannon weight slowing warships' and 'Trader ships being slower by design than warships' with a unified 'Cannons and cargo both add load which slows all ships' system, and replace ships with otherwise identical 'trader' and warship variants with a single ship.

 

Crafted cannons and unified load capacity in summary:

No gun carriages in ship blueprints. Labour hour cost and craft xp reductions in proportion to lost carriages in each ship blueprint. Cannon blueprints added, unlocked at all levels. The blueprint for a batch of cannons consists of several carriages and some additional materials to reflect the labour cost/craft xp difference between unarmed and armed ships and the price of an existing cannon ticket. Gun deck UI is updated to show number as well as class of cannons that the deck can accommodate. Once crafted, cannons can be added to gun decks - eventually, going into gun decks should open up a deck UI that lets cannons be assigned to each gun port for maximum customisation. Every ship has a 'Capacity' - adding cargo to the hold takes up capacity, adding cannons to decks takes up capacity but does not take up a hold slot or count as cargo for the purpose of teleporting, adding cannons to the hold takes up a hold slot and a lower amount of capacity to reflect the gun being dismantled for storage and the lack of powder, shot, and tools needed to operate the cannon as a weapon. The 'Trader X' label gets removed from players, and is left to only mark AI vessels (think of them as mercantile ships, flying a national flag but no naval ensign)

 

The intent: Removing artificial distinctions between trade ships and warships. Slightly increase the carrying capacity of dedicated warships, give traders more options in their defensive and economic play, and create the opportunity for hybrid play as armed merchantmen/warships armed en flute for both trade escorts and commerce raiders.

 

Other advantages: Crafting conservation - crafted ships represent slightly smaller lumps of time, a player going up into a new ship can get a lot of the arming done by taking cannons off their previous ship, a player can arrange cannons throughout their personal fleet as fits their resources and play style. Payoffs for marginal play and customisation - e.g. lightening the broadside of a commerce raider also increases its free capacity for cargo, a leveling player can craft and crew a lightened armament and get into a ship they are interested in sailing easier. Cannons become a resource which can be shared or looted. Low-level Traders no longer stand out as a target from a mile away in the open world.

 

Main disadvantage: Increased cost and detail management for maintaining a mission-variable armament for a given ship - the cannon ticket makes it easy to switch between carronades for search and destroy and long guns for PvP. Increased cost and detail management for arming a fleet that doesn't use overlapping cannons.

 

Complications: Balancing the capacity cost of weapons and the capacity of ships is not entirely straightforward - there isn't a single relationship between capacity and combined gun mass between existing Trader ships and their warship variants, and there isn't a clear reference as to how much cargo an unarmed, unladen warship should carry. Its fairly evident that an unarmed Le Gros Ventre should be able to carry more than an unarmed Renomee, for instance, but how much more? Too much and the differences between trade ships and warships are as pronounced as before, too little and the role of specialised traders is compromised.

 

Tl;dr: Remove gun carriages from ship blueprints, craft cannons instead, make cargo affect speed and cannons affect cargo. Y/N?

 

 

[Hethwill, the Red Duke]

I've proposed this a while ago but without going to lengths. Simply make cannons craftable and add Foundries and all that while completely reducing the NPC production step by step - atm we have stocks by the thousands and tens of thousands...

 

I completely cannot understand the non trader vs trader and disregarding the carriages doesn't make them the same. They are actually very different ships with different structural strengths, just happen to same similar name and looks.

[Idle Champion]

I completely cannot understand the non trader vs trader and disregarding the carriages doesn't make them the same. They are actually very different ships with different structural strengths, just happen to same similar name and looks.

 

You may be overstating how differentiated the in-game Trader variants are from the standard warships. All have identical structural strength and armour with their warship variants, all have the same turn rate. The Trader Brig and Snow are slightly poorer sailors as they approach the wind compared to the warships, the Cutter and Lynx have identical sailing profiles as Traders or warships. It appears the Trader's Lynx has a smaller sailing crew than the standard Lynx, and the Trader's Snow has a larger sailing crew than the Snow (5 being the difference in each case).

 

As a whole, they are slower as a substitute for a cargo encumbrance model, they have more fragile sails and masts to facilitate disabling and boarding, and they lack the weapons and the gunnery crew requirements of the warships. With hired crew replacing automatically generated crew, ships being crewed to their needs rather than their limits seems likely to become the norm, and armament becomes the only salient and naturalistic difference between a Trader variant and a standard warship. You describe them as "very different" - I see them as very similar.

 

Perhaps there is a case that a ship might be sitting low in the water if it were a laden trader, but in-game Trader variants are identifiable as such even when laden. As for their armament, no one would mistake an eight-gun schooner for an unarmed merchantman with its guns run out and matches burning, but otherwise the two look much the same. Why is a Lynx recognisable as a Lynx when it is unarmed and a Trader's Lynx recognisable as a Trader's Lynx when unladen? Why can't an unarmed Lynx carry cargo or an unladen Trader's Lynx carry weapons?

 

Basically, what difference which actual ships might have is the game attempting to represent? If it's just cargo capacity versus armament, then the difference being represented as inherent to the ship is only a difference in material and equipment brought aboard the ship which could be removed or replaced.

[Hethwill, the Red Duke]

Lynx is slightly faster than Trader Lynx if exactly same built even with guns.

[maturin]

Craftable cannons are a natural extension of the crafting system, especially since the carriages are an infamous plague that needs to be eradicated.

 

 

When it comes to expanding hold space of warships, crew size should be the most important factor. Ideally we would have a Crew/Cargo slider and Guns/Cargo slider. The Guns slider would partially arm gundecks (allowing 2-18 carronades on a trader's brig, for example). A ship could carry a full battery of guns without sacrificing too much cargo space, but with a reload rate penalty (since the gundeck would be encumbered with cargo) and limited ammunition.

 

Merchant vessels should be divided into two types:

• Merchantmen that are essentially just warships without guns, and more than capable of fighting if converted.
• Vessels with capacious hullforms that sacrifice speed, particularly to windward (effected by a Trim choice at the crafting stage).

As for cargo's effect on speed, it would be unrealistic to handle this by percentage. Ships were designed to carry heavy loads, and were often unsafe if too light. So performance penalties should only come in once a ship surpasses 70-80% of total capacity, with a different threshold for each vessel. Speed penalties for overloading would affect downwind performance more than upwind sailing.

[Anne Wildcat]

IMO, the less crafting the better.

The last Econ patch, in 2014, in POTBS was a killer with more structures and everything, it seemed, requiring more parts to make. And everyone, it seemed, hated it.

I like NA crafting as is. It's a breath of fresh air compared to POTBS crafting.

I like how a shipyard is the only structure necessary to make a ship and hope it stays that way.

There is already enough to eat up labor hours.

When you have more to make a ship, smaller nations, smaller clans & solo econ players suffer.

Right now with low player numbers, a largely structured economy is not needed.

Im for player crafted cannons to add a separate line of crafting. But do not add more to ship building. Adding to ship building will inflate prices even more. If you never played POTBS, download it, take a look at the auction house, and see the price of non NPC provided ships. A year ago, I think it was 3 mil for a 3rd rate, probably more now.

Edited June 28, 2016 by Anne Wildcat

[Thonys]

What i also want to see is

 

having the choice > to craft :

 

> Bronze cannon ( more expensive ) 

 

> Iron cannon (who needs a cool down, and therefore a slightly longer loading time then is counterpart the bronze cannon)

 

> bored out cannons:

(for more shrapnel ) refurbished cannon ( where a 12 ponder becomes a cannon with a wider bore for more: glas /lead/ and iron parts/ and stone to injure crew)

this type of cannon had a dedicated role for shrapnel

[Hethwill, the Red Duke]

The differences you present with bronze and iron guns have no substance.

First of all it was a matter of resources availability, some nation had more tin and copper while other had more iron.

Lifetime in use was defined by its own characteristics. Where one became brittle and could blow the other would get deformed and blow.

 

I would introduce it flat with two ways of crafting, by iron and by tin and copper.

 

The bored out ones carve me out as another unnecessary thing given we cannot load independente decks or guns in the same broadside.

 

What could be introduced would be swivel guns as an upgrade if anything.