Patch 9.9 - Officers, Fishing, Provisions and other things

[admin]

Preliminary Patch notes 9.9

 

What's new:

 

Officers.

• Basic implementation of officers added to the game
• Player can now recruit a first lieutenant that will sail with him.
• Officer can level up with the player opening new possibilities and options
• Officer will be wounded when your ship is lost - implemented as lives
• Officer does not lose lives when you surrender in battle
• Total number of lives = 10 and if you lose all of them you will have to hire a new officer
• Starting set of perk is limited - a lot of things had to be reworked to support them. The set of perks will be drastically increased in the next patches adding open world perks, crafting perks and trading perks and of course more battle related perks. The main goal of officer perks is to provide unique and exciting bonuses without any useless options (so called filler). 

A lot of perks were proposed by players and as promised - captains whose ideas will get into the game eventually will receive rare ships as rewards.

 

Starting perk set

• Double charge – officer knows how to efficiently use double charge powder allowing using this option in battle
• Double shot – Officer knows how to efficiently use double shotted guns (cannot be used on carronades)
• Determined defender – Officer knows how to prepare the organized defence on boarding. Your ship can only be boarded if the attacker has 40% higher crew. It also gives you the option to use the defend command for free (during boarding) 
• Thrifty – Repair kit is not consumed if you use them in battle
• Prepared – Ship starts with loaded cannons
• Pirate Hunter – Officer hates pirates and is able to motivate his crew better, allowing faster reload if the enemy ship has a pirate flag. Reload bonus is 20%. In the future this perk will only be available to nationals
• Pirate – officer with the shady piracy past, allows to extract more sailing performance increasing battle speed by 1 knot if the enemy has a national ship on their side. In the future this perk will only be available to Pirates.
• Frigate Master/Lineship Master/Light ship Master: Basic implementation of class bonuses. Currently give +1 knot speed and +5% faster reload. These bonuses are temporary we have already found interesting ways to improve them to provide true class related improvements. 
• Mortar Officer – officer knows how to use mortars better and gives great bonuses to mortar usage. 
• Coward – Officer loves to run from battle and knows how to do it. Exit timer is 2x shorter

Perk prices in points and their characteristics are not final. They will constantly be improved. In the next couple of patches 20-25 more unique perks are coming. 

 

Fishing

 

sailor fishing on a Palas class frigate

• Basic fishing is added to the game, giving more options during travel and giving an income boost for new players who are just starting.
• We initially added 25 caribbean fishes with realistic fishing zones; reefs, shallows, deep water, coastal water all have unique fish distributions based on the real fishing maps 
• Fish is used to make provisions that are needed for crew recovery.

Depending on the popularity fishing will be improved in the future. 

 

Crew Management.

• Crew mechanics have been changed significantly for testing.
• Crew is no longer a free element and does not have auto-recovery from the air.
• Crew needs to be hired and recovered after losses
• Crew is lost on any ship loss
• Crew is not lost if you surrender in battle
• Every rank has its limit of free crew provided by the admiralty. For example a first ranked newbie has 40 free crew, so he does not have to pay for crew if he loses the ship. At higher levels the free limit will be enough to jump into a basic frigate. Lineships will be more expensive to maintain. 
• Crew can be recovered by medkits in the open sea after battle
• In the future doctor can be added to recover parts of casualties slowly in battle.
• Basic medkits will be available in all ports, more advanced options have to be crafted by players.

One of the purposes of the crew is to provide more options in fleet managements as fleets are back. This is a third attempt to bring player fleets back. 

Player can add any ship to their fleet provided he has enough crew to man those vessels. 

Fleets can now be repaired at sea by using consumable repair kits

 

Other changes 

• Npc Capture is back - players can capture ships from NPCs up to 4th rank. Captured ships will have to have crew assigned to them and they can be given a command to escape battle if you want to save that ship even if you have enemies present.
• New buildings added - Tobacco Plantation, Sugar Plantation, Farm
• New resources added - tobacco, sugar, salt
• New materials added - fish meat, food supplies
• New consumables added for crafting repair kits, medkits
• Chat security improved (problem was identified by the player qw569)
• Land added to minimap
• Coordinate grid has been added to open world map
• Home is disabled in Open world
• New sounds added 

Fixed bugs:

• Shadows bugs fixed
• Crew casualties caused by grapeshot were not counted - fixed
• Certain bugs with the single tracking shot from lower decks fixed
• Fixed bugs with boarding crew focus visualization after boarding
• Fixed bug of player teleport after port re-entry
• Fixed bug that was not dropping full loot on ship capture
• Fixed certain sound bugs

Tunings:

• Number of regional centers increased to allow more ship of the line port battles for several nations (list here)
• Flag purchase cooldown increased to 2 days (48 hours). Initially we wanted to make it 7 days but based on player feedback it could create problems for several nations. Port battle rework is now set as high priority and they will be changed drastically by August.
• Battle relog after disconnect time increased to 40 mins to allow player to return to battle during longer time if internet went nuts.
• Certain blueprints have been changed to reduce redundant clicks
• Port battle win conditions changed - small port battles 1 tower is required for large port battles 3 towers are required
• Building productions increased
• ​Prices of production in buildings reduced
• Knee requirements increased - it was too low for many ships (18 knees for santisima). It is based on cannon count now.
• Rum prices increased 5 times. Rum requirements for certain blueprints reduced accordingly. Prices were changed to provide for medkit pricing.
• Reload times for 4lb guns increased
• Crew requirements for 4lb and 6lb cannons and 12lb carronades reduced by 1 gunner.
• Spawns in missions are now closer to each other
• Grapeshot damage curves changed to allow for more consistent kills at low planking integrity
• Mast thickness increased for all vessels
• Speed slightly reduced for Trincomalee and Rattlesnake
• Belle poule speed increased
• AI command fulfillment behavior improved
• Bots lost hammock bonuses to avoid certain bugs in crew transfers
• Boarding tuned slightly. 

Due to significant changes in crew - we expect that there might be some bugs we missed.

[Skully]

Hehe, I see you didn't dare to remove "send to outpost" ship-TP.

[Anne Wildcat]

Sounds sweet. Good job!

[Lokyi]

Why not call "coward" "smuggler" or some such. Sounds more purposeful. 

[admin]

Hehe, I see you didn't dare to remove "send to outpost" ship-TP.

 

its coming

it was not switched off for other reasons (bug related)

[Hethwill, the Red Duke]

 

 

Umm this is not a good idea... This officer will prevent nearly all trader hunting.

 

 

 

 

 

If Traders, LGV and Indiaman and all trader like classed ships are exempt it is okay.

 

If not it will pile in with Hammocks and all the rest and any trader ship will become a nightmare and abused as a prime boarder.

[Quineloe]

I hope the bug that surrendering in PVP denies the enemy kill / assist has been fixed now.

 

Or that you can surrender in a sinking ship to begin with?

BTW, it might be a good idea to rename "Regional capital" to something else now, maybe Major Port? There are a bit many capitals around now, right next to each other too.

[ajffighter86]

Determined defender sounds hella overpowered indeed.

 

But, I don't want to leave with just a sour comment.

 

THANK YOU for putting proper latitude and longitude coordinates on the map. (zoom in and you will see the grid labels)

Edited June 29, 2016 by ajffighter86

[Quineloe]

Determined defender sounds hella overpowered indeed.

So does +1 kn speed, 1 minute exit timer, +20% reload and the ship type Master perks.

They're really good. I'd rather have really good perks instead of "+2% reload".

[Jonnydread]

So how do you add the officer to your ship? The slot under "Equipment ->Officers" is still grey. 

[Hethwill, the Red Duke]

I hope the bug that surrendering in PVP denies the enemy kill / assist has been fixed now.

 

Or that you can surrender in a sinking ship to begin with?

BTW, it might be a good idea to rename "Regional capital" to something else now, maybe Major Port? There are a bit many capitals around now, right next to each other too.

 

Graphically they could have a larger dot in the map also.

[Jeheil]

Is the last perk only French ?

[Twig]

Can you tell me where we were able to present perks? I didn't seen it yet.

[Anne Wildcat]

I think determined defender makes grape shot more valuable. If I read correctly, with it a player can only be boarded if the enemy has 40% more crew.

[Grunf]

Wow, that is a lot of changes.

Any ETA (even a preliminary one) ?

[delaine]

Tunings:

 

• Crew requirements for 4lb 6lb and 12lb carronades reduced by 1 gunner.

dont think there are 4lb carros haha

 

Edit: Removed the unnecessary part of the quote due to size. - Moderator Team

[VonBarb]

its coming

 

How to ruin otherwise very positive patchnotes. If you're doing this, at least give us the ability to make ship deliveries to outposts.

[Eye_of_the_Storm]

I think the officer Bonus is a bit too overpowered. We are trimming our Ships like crazy just to get it 0.25 Knots faster and +1Knots is just too much. Also the Defender bonus is bit too strong too. The Officers should give you slight advantages but not make it too unbalanced

[Vortas]

You need to go fishing for getting crew? 

[Ned Loe]

Are Officers switchable? Can I train one and then put him on stand by and train another one?

[admin]

Are Officers switchable? Can I train one and then put him on stand by and train another one?

 

 

Currently you can have only one first officer under your command.

[Twig]

Would like to present the perk:

- Attention:
Officer knows how to scout: Detects other ships more far away on the open sea than regulary by scouting from the crows nest. (For the trader/smugler)

 

EDIT: I did not find the threat to post this.

Edited June 29, 2016 by Twig

[Ned Loe]

You need to go fishing for getting crew? Too much vodka...

Please Read it again slowly and don't embarrass yourself. 

[Sharden]

I think the officer Bonus is a bit too overpowered. We are trimming our Ships like crazy just to get it 0.25 Knots faster and +1Knots is just too much. Also the Defender bonus is bit too strong too. The Officers should give you slight advantages but not make it too unbalanced

20% reload bonus against pirates sounds pretty much over the top as well. It renders pirates kinda unable to play 1v1 or any kind of even-numbered fights, if the players know what they are doing. Basically promoting the ganking instead of real fighting

 

I really like the idea of officers, but i think the perks all need a lot of tweaking

 

 

oh one more: please do not remove the ability to send ships to outposts. or replace the current system with a different one. Not being able to conveniently bring ships to far away outposts without spending hours sailing there will seriously hurt the game.

Edited June 29, 2016 by Sharden

[Nalyd]

Currently you can have only one first officer under your command.

 

By that, do you mean only 1 officier per ship (since we could see 3 officers slots per vessel) but you can have 24 officers if you have 24 ships. Or only 1 officer that you'll have to switch from one ship to another ?

Edited June 29, 2016 by Nalyd