Patch 9.96 - New conquest, New trading, New ships and other things

[elite92]

today's patch notes? (2mb)

[Edward Canaday]

1) That's because they're no longer PvE battles, but an element of PvP. If they were closed as before that would allow almost utterly undisturbed building of hostility which would make a mockery of the whole PB system. Or more of a mockery, depending on your position.

The issue is that there is no PvE content, not that the current missions are open.

 

3) PvP will always be "unbalanced" for traders, because they're traders 

Besides, large circles and the sheer amount of fortifications mean that with even with the tiniest bit of care it's exceedingly hard to take out traders. Don't go AFK sailing in the open sea, there needs to be a risk.

If you don't believe me, just go and try be the pirate. Stacking it even more against privateers/pirates would make it impossible and the death of that bit of the game. If you want undisturbed and risk free delivery of good, then the PvP server is not for you. That should be blindingly obvious.

 

4) I've yet to see any evidence of the after battle screen being used to hide for ganking purposes nor do I see how it would work. There would be a scout outside, which should scare you away if you're in a trade ship; it would need to be close to shore to work for the ganking party, which would mean AI ships and towers (see my points about 3) ); it would somehow need to be placed in such a way that despite the necessary scout and the engagement time and worthwhile placement you can't get away within the timer. In short, there's no viable way to use this for proper ganking.

Which is either done with overwhelming force or speed or a combination of the two. Not with sitting somewhere in a screen 

Now, hiding from the "revenge" though is a different story. And an automatic timer here of say for example 15 minutes (long enough for a break,not so long that any "revenge" has to waste hours of their time) that throws you back into the world is a totally different suggestion and one that I personally think should be discussed and considered.

 

5) Fully agreed. It's a good system but the drop chance or the recipe requirements for the rare resources need to be tweaked.

 

 

When you enter battle with AI (non-mission) is that also open to anyone?  I didn't think it was, but I could very well be wrong.  That is your PVE right there, though.  It's what I do because I hate missions.

[Hagen v Martius]

No, battles with just AI do not stay open at all, they are treated just like any other battle started from the OW (i.e. PvP).

I guess you could see that as PvE but once that view catches on a lot of the folks whining about the open missions will whine about the circles instead. 

[CeltiberoCaesar]

We are back to 500-600 players at this hours 

[Guest]

We are back to 500-600 players at this hours 

 

 

Having all missions be "hostility" missions we're not gonna attract much new blood.. Missions for low level players are being ganked by higher lvl players i.e. making lvl'ing up a grueling grind with little to no rewards in terms of a sense of accomplishment. And lets face it - the patch got very good elements, but devs simply doesn't know what direction they want to take the game in.

[Hagen v Martius]

The game needs a tutorial that explains these things, so the smarter of them realise they should go away from the more populated areas to do their missions.

[KrakkenSmacken]

The game needs a tutorial that explains these things, so the smarter of them realise they should go away from the more populated areas to do their missions.

 

Yes on the tutorial and better training of new players in general, but how do you go away from the more populated areas to do missions, if successful missions trigger hostility, and hostility triggers other players to investigate the area?

[Hethwill, the Red Duke]

Yes on the tutorial and better training of new players in general, but how do you go away from the more populated areas to do missions, if successful missions trigger hostility, and hostility triggers other players to investigate the area?

 

Damn, that's the beauty of it  

[GrapeShot]

We are back to 500-600 players at this hours

Of course the player base is dwindling - they emptied the ocean of ships for regular players to engage.

And why did they do that? Because the Rube Goldbergesque set of rules governing Port Battles required the ships gone so they are not used to exploit the hostility mechanic.

At some point it might dawn on them that, in light of time zones, Port Battles are the problem. That is the circle that cannot be squared.

Trade and raids, in a vibrant Carib that can be sailed, would be a decent game for most. Alas, the clan-wars mindset forbids that.

Edited October 27, 2016 by GrapeShot

[Hagen v Martius]

Yes on the tutorial and better training of new players in general, but how do you go away from the more populated areas to do missions, if successful missions trigger hostility, and hostility triggers other players to investigate the area?

 

You can do missions in areas captured by your nation, which only reduces hostility and won't show up. So, as a bad example because it's right next to a Freeport, Danish newbies could do missions in the Virgin islands, which wouldn't show hostility generation for gankers.

Or English players could go down to the South American coast, I doubt there's many gankers there. 

Edited October 27, 2016 by Hagen v Martius

[Mrdoomed]

PvP players moaning about too many AI ships and towers.Lol.

How would you like it then?

Let me guess......Far more less towers and AI ships,so you can easily capture traders?

Ha. This statement makes as much sense as a pve player joining a pvp server then being mad when players attack him.

Of course players who joined a pvp server want to pvp. Just like pve players joined a safe server to solo play.

Why is it wrong for them to want to pvp on a pvp server without 25 ai pve ships being drawn in?

Your statement is asinine.

[hiclipucli]

any clue about today tiny fixes ???

[Mrdoomed]

For the developers and the admin. This is a huge content patch and should be tweaked into shape for the next months what you actual do. I have to congratulate you for this big amount of work! But - always a "but" as software tester.

• I also see the actual PvE system still as a unsatisfactory situation. To jump into PvE battles is fun for stronger players but for beginners and weak players it is frustrating that they get ganked in a PvE mission.
• Also happens that players from the same nation jump into your mission and tries to board a ship so that they can send their main ship to a port far away. I dont know if this is working as intended for you.
• PvP missions are also unbalanced, the idea with the two circle is a great idea, but noone can later join the PvP-battle. For traders it stills a bad situation, so maybe you reinstall the social skill that these pvp-battles are open for a value between 5 to 15 minutes, this should be tested whats a good compromise of time, so that gankers and traders dont feel betrayed alone. Maybe you design the skill in such a way that is only active if you sail a trader ship.
• After action screen of a battle is still used as ganker hiding place, maybe invite a timer of 15 minutes - enough time for a toilette or smoke break - and than you drop out of the screen. Even if you pressed Alt+F4 and for disconnected players the 2 minutes existing on the open world is active before logging off. This enforces the gankers to drop out of the screen and didnt have all the favours on his side. Maybe a random reset of 0,1 Lat/long positioning can also be implemented that it isnt so easy to be get catched by the fleet outside.
• Ship crafting, a new and so an uncomfortable situation, I find the idea great to make the ships more valueable, but up to Suprise you need fine fir and fine other wood type after that you only need the fine wood type, that is a little unfair for the new players/crafters. Also I see only basic and common ships sailing around because every one saves his fine and better crafted ships what is actual really an intersting situation and I appreciate it. But my opinion would be to make the common level without fine wood logs but cost 1.5 more materials and with fine craft level you add the fine wood logs and maybe exceptional ships costs twice the materials because you only want the best of the best materials and the other materials are lost. So you have your fine logs and these exceptional ships are really expensive, if go insane double the labor hours for crafting such a exceptional ship.
• Pirate skill, 1 knot was to fast, 0.5 knot is to slow. Redesign this skill make it cheaper and change it into more crew percentage maybe in this way: "Pirate skill 3 Points, if you fight as pirate against a nation flag you get + X % percantage crew for free." The ammount should be significant because privateers and pirates overcrewed their ships, e.g. between 25-75% or depending on the ship class, e.g. 7&6 rate 100% 5-4 rates 50% and 3-1 rates 25%. With a 60 men privateer 7th rate ship you dont really threaten a trader but maybe same ship with 120 men maybe impresive for a trader, but putting 1600 men on a 2nd rate is obviously too much.

Way back when missions stayed open to both sides and players from thier own faction would jump in ignore the enemy and acually do what you just described and steal thier own players ai enemy to teleport thier ships.

How utterly pathetic are today's gamers that this happens. I would suggest naming and shamming them in chat but i think they would be hailed a hero by most .

This kind of pathetic parasitic behavior is what started the entire roe, battle timers , who cant and cant enter, how much br can enter etc.

I think that no matter what they do parasites will feed on thier own. ITs the pathetic nature of todays gamers.

[KrakkenSmacken]

You can do missions in areas captured by your nation, which only reduces hostility and won't show up. So, as a bad example because it's right next to a Freeport, Danish newbies could do missions in the Virgin islands, which wouldn't show hostility generation for gankers.

Or English players could go down to the South American coast, I doubt there's many gankers there. 

 

Captured areas "should" be teeming with activity, as ejected players attempt to pull assets out of the area while it is under dispute.

 

Ironically, probably the quietest areas are going to be calm before the storm areas, where a port battle is scheduled a day or two out. I always thought there was a problem with a two day lull.  There should be something going on in the regions about to face a port battle during the count down timer.

 

[EL LOCO]

Simple.  Keep Free Ports but only trader ships can be docked and undocked there  (historically accurate) .  This would prevent many things.   1. More pvp and more map strategic in steps. 2. no more dock ganking at free ports when traders come and go.  Gankers now have to travel to a free port.

 

Then I can live with Las Tortugas as a free port for trading.   However...ganking traders near capitals will be more time consuming for travel but....historically accurate.    (I personally feel Pirates should be able to dock anything at freeports but not be able to conquer territories..only ports 1 at a time). 

[Challenge]

I think you mistake free ports with neutral ports. Most were free because they didn't have anything a European power wanted. Any port not associated with a country during this time in history did so at the discretion of the big powers. Most were scared to death if a frigate full of marines showed up -- forget about a SOL. Military ships pulled into them periodically just to be neighborly.

 

Edit...

 

Or they were useful.

Edited October 27, 2016 by Challenge

[KrakkenSmacken]

Simple.  Keep Free Ports but only trader ships can be docked and undocked there  (historically accurate) .  This would prevent many things.   1. More pvp and more map strategic in steps. 2. no more dock ganking at free ports when traders come and go.  Gankers now have to travel to a free port.

 

Then I can live with Las Tortugas as a free port for trading.   However...ganking traders near capitals will be more time consuming for travel but....historically accurate.    (I personally feel Pirates should be able to dock anything at freeports but not be able to conquer territories..only ports 1 at a time). 

 

As a pirate I really like this idea. We should be a mobile scourge of everyone, so...

 

Players flying national flags are not permitted into free ports in combat ships.

Pirates are as they have no nationality and fly no national flag.

Pirates do not conquer towns. 

Pirates have no access to pulling resources for ship building, but can build ships at free ports if they have the resources.

 

To compensate for this.

 

Pirates can TP to any free town without ship, outpost or not.

Pirates access to all resources is limited to a new model based on "European traders", available at Free Towns, where a pirate can order 1000 tons/holds of anything from a "European trader" at 5 X the going rate and 500 labor hours. (Very similar to "deliveries" model.)

 

Couple the above with smuggling, and ship capture, and I think that's pretty solid.

 

Sorry for derailing the thread into pirate mechanics land, it's just the first time I've heard the idea that Pirates get a special ability (dock anything at free town), rather than the usual screams for a nerf bat, even though we basically have the same mechanics everyone else does now.

Edited October 27, 2016 by KrakkenSmacken

[Cmdr RideZ]

Bermuda has the Bermuda Wood, but it should not have a regional bonus.

[Bach]

Bermuda has the Bermuda Wood, but it should not have a regional bonus.

It may not be so bad if the resources on the three ports on the islands do not have the bulk items needed to build ships. If these had to be shipped in, it's a long sail, it should make things relatively fair. However if Bermuda has Bermuda Cedar, Iron, Coal and Hemp then only tiny amounts of other mats would need to be shipped in to complete whole ships. So that would be bad.

Edited October 27, 2016 by Bach

[Kloothommel]

Where in these patchnotes does it say Agamemnon is now allowed in the 4th rate pb, where it used to be impossible?

[Celtiberofrog]

Hi all,

 

This game is a beauty, but if Devs are looking for successful release they must take into account that tens of thousands potential players have only a few hours per day to dedicate for gaming. 

Despite of the gorgeous historical context & owesome graphism, if the mechanics require long sailing, long crafting and long waiting for large PvP battles, then the game will be only dedicated to the bunch of fanatics like us !

 

All these testing and adjusting are fine with me, but the real mechanism of that game is not yet settled, my hope is to see NA with thousands of players, it's a very complex compromize to find but the game life will depend on player numbers.

[Wesreidau]

So we now have whale oil, 'labor contracts' and opiates, but God forbid we kill a whale instead of slaughtering men by the hundreds in a rake.

 

I just laugh at it all.

[Kair]

A lot of good things in this patch.

 

 

Regional system & new conquest mechanics :

I love it. Conquest is not that fast anymore (since the small patch) and you have time to "prepare". It also just "feels" better the way the regions ownership is handled. Also, open sea pvp is now something that actively helps the conquests (would underline it 3 times if I could), and this is the main improvement imho. It may not seem like that much of a deal, some would say that it already did have in impact by sinkings ships and making trade difficult, or maybe hitting on the enemis moral... All that is true, but this patch "legitimates" it.

 

 

Ship specs/upgrades & crafting :

I love the new upgrades on the ships, and the fact that the RNG is getting less and less important (even more in next hotfix). Also, the new upgrades on ships are verry well thought ! It's difficult to decide wich one to take, and if it's difficult to decide, it means it well engineered and ballanced !

 

However, I am a bit uneasy and confused with one or two of theses regional bonus. If my understanding is correct, there is 2 "kind" of bonus :

1. the more comon ones : you can find them in more regions, they have weaker overall bonus (single bonus).
2. the rarer ones : you can find them in less/more restrictive regions, but they have a better bonus (combined bonus).

But being both "comon bonus" why would anyone pick Regional eplorer refit over Regional speed bonus (3% vs 5%) ? I mean, most other bonus are different, not just flat better or worst. Also, in the "rare bonus" cathegory why would anyone pick French refit over British Refit ? This also feels a bit "meh ?" dont you think ? Are French supposed to be that bad that British ships should be the same but better ? I know "national pride" should not be concidered, but if this bonus is for historical reasons (Brits did in fact relaod way faster), wherent the french supposed to build better ships overall ? Anyway, this may be a bit off topic.

 

Regarding crafting itself, and the fact you now need to "move" a lot of your stuff around is making me still unsure about what I think... It's a good thing caus we see more traders moving around sure, but it also gives more power to major clans over small groups. Of cours, teaming with others should give you advantages, it's the entire point, but this is a game and creating to much of a gap between solo players and huge clans is not always the best way to go (for the game and to make people to play it I mean).

Regarding wood types : addings theses was a great idea ! Though I am not a 100% with you guys when you want to get less "good ships" on the water. Why make good ship "reserved to an elite class" ? (Edit : It seems overall ship quality is just getting dumped in the future. Great news !). But I still need testing on that part to have a real opinion so wait and see.

 

 

ROE :

I like it and I dont like it. The double circle system is nice, very nice, but I still think people should be able to enter the combat after it has launched. Even if you make it 1 minutes, atm if you have 3 factions that encounter eachother, one will stay out, and cant decide to help one team or another. That's not a good thing for the pirates or for a nation in the "3 day pending for the alliance".

I still did not test it intensively though.

 

 

Carronade rebalance : (Copy-past of what I said in the tournament feedback thread)

To me, even though carronades may have been a bit overpowered (or longs a bit underpowered?) they were no way as overpowered as people tend to think/say.

The carronades were indeed favoured in the tournament, but this is the consequence of the tournament mechanics itself. The fact that you are supposed to fight it out, and can’t win by just “going away” just makes the entire “meta-game” favour more firepower/resilience. Long guns would not penetrate the hulls in the tournament? Of course, almost all ships were full liveoak with extra planking – stiffness etc. They were resilient beasts made to force everyone up against them to get closer. But if you transfer theses ships in open world battle, well they better be well escorted and never have to flee the combat because they will not get far.

In OW at the moment, things are kind of balanced regarding carronade/longs. If you have longs, and say get up against a same ship with carronades, you would be mad to get up close with it, especially if he is built around resilience! Maybe you won’t penetrate him, but he’ll never catch you anyway… He has the firepower sure, but you have the initiative of doing whatever you want. And in open world, initiative is worth A LOT.

You will never destroy something you can’t catch, and people at some point will group up and outnumber you. If you give longs the firepower and penetration to compete, in a “head to head” confrontation, against carronades, you completely destroy the carronades usefulness.

 

I’m not sure aiming at getting all guns balanced by saying “in a precise situation, they should all have equal chances of sinking the other ship” is neither good, neither possible. Both guns used to have their advantages in specific situations, and this was good thing. You will have to sacrifice a lot, to get a lot. Also I’m sure not seeing that much full carronade ships in open world small groups which tends to indicate (imho) that they are not that overpowered.

[Capt. Rice]

been awhile but how are things these day....

[Speedy1]

Did you nerf some ships today ? 

And some boosted?