Make upgrades have durability (even if it will have only 1 durability)

[Vaan De Vries]

Hello, captains and devs!

I would like to discuss an issue with capped ships and upgrades.

Yesterday together with a friend we capped nice exceptional Bermuda Cedar Pirate refit Frigate. Last week before Bridgetown PB I also was able to cap nice LiveOak strong hull Agamemnon. Both are very good ships (though for different purposes) and I will be happy to sail them.

Except that I won't. Cause to outfit such a good ship to be competitive I require 8 yellow upgrades which boils down to 32 mid grade notes. And this is too much risk for guy like me to sail one dura ship and risking to lose 32 mid grade notes. And the first rule of sandbox PVP game - don't sail what you can't afford to lose.

So from my point of view capped ships are almost useless now. Just because on one side you can quite easily aquire 5-6 yellow regular upgrades and just trade them from ship to ship without risk of loosing them if you don't like  living on the edge sailing 1 dura ships with upgrades installed. And spending 3 permanent upgrades for 5 dura frigates once in a while is not a big deal.

1st rates are quite another thing but outfitting 1st/2nd rates SHOULD BE expensive so I am ok with that.

What I am not ok with is to cap enemy ship and have all permanent and regular upgrades magically dissapearing from it rendering it useless. 

We have 2 kind of solutions for that: 

1. Make all ships one dura. This is pretty good solution - if devs will implement it I just assume we will cap ships with all upgrades installed. Nothing to be said more on this.

 

But I think 1 dura won't be accepted well by a "whining" part of the community. So maybe we can discuss another solution.

Introduce upgrades durability. Make all upgrades have like 5 duras (or any other agreed number) after crafting. When ship is capped or sunk all installed upgrades lose durability. Capped ships have 1 dura and all installed upgrades will have 1 dura. You can put 5-dura upgrade on a 1 dura ship and if you lost ship you will still have 4-dura upgrade with you.

The concept may be a little "magical" and "ahistorical" but it's no more magical than ships having more than 1 life.

So let's discuss pros:

1. Finally you can sail capped ships and be competitive. Even better - now for really good capped ships they will come with upgrades preinstalled.

2. It will create natural sink for upgrades. Currently I can just craft 5-6 yellow regular upgrades and use them between all my ships. I need to craft/aquire them only once and use them forever.

3. It may shift OW battling from 3-5 yellow upgrade meta. For PB most probably everyone still will use the best they have (like now with 1st rate PBs) but for daily OW hunting people MAYBE will tend to more casual upgrade quality.

Cons:

1. whining part of the community will probably tell it will make crafting more "unbearable" than it is even now (For god sake I had to spent around 5 hours of real time in a week to get myself a yellow Agamemnon!)

 

Discuss!

 

 

[Elouda]

When this was brought up before, I suggested the following;

Grey Upgrades - 5 'duras'

Green - 4

Blue - 3

Purple - 2

Yellow - 1

This would make low and mid grade upgrades more attractive.

In exchange, the crafting requirements could be changed as follows to make them a little easier to make;

Grey - same as before

Green - 1 low grade note

Blue - 2 low grade notes

Purple - 2 low grade notes + 1 mid grade note

Gold - 2 low grade notes + 2 mid grade notes

Edited November 25, 2016 by Elouda

[elite92]

i dont like magical "upgrades" at all...  imho there should be two type of improvements to our ships:

1- different types of crafting solutions when u build a ship (more customization of ships,ex: like id like to take bigger guns at the expense of weight and speed of my ship, or i want more cargo space and less guns, ecc)

2- crew and/or officers improvement (a well trained crew is more realistic then a yellow square that u put on ship and puff: more reload) at the moment seems that upgrades and officer perks are doing the same work and its a bit weird. we can simply remove upgrades and focus on perks, both of officers and crew. we could have the medic with his perks and his training required, the guns officer, the carpenter ecc.

in this way when u lose or cap a ship u wont lose any upgrades, and if u surrend u wont lose ur officers life. u can jump from ship to another in ur dock and keep ur officers trained and ready without the need to move ur upgrades, u finally can use capped 1 dura ship and have at the same time a very well trained crew and be able to fight other full dura ship.

suggestions?

[Elouda]

I can see room for a third type, sort of represented by what we have now - there are temporary 'modifications or additions' to a ship, which would be adjustable after building unlike your category 1 for example. These include things like extra staysails, lightweight carriages, stronger sails, possibly the rudder reinforcement, etc.

A lot of what we do have now though would definately fit better under your category 1 though.

Edited November 25, 2016 by Elouda

[Rychu Karas]

I prefer the other way, make it easy accessible and cheap as guns, ppl stop afraid to lose it. no one say "u won because u have better "magic" upgrades".  bla bla bla. BS.

First they are not "magical" because every one of them we can explain in easy way, as a better training, as a custom manufacture for the captain ect. Ther are not giving an extra fireball spell. only buff or penalize certain stats of ship or crew.

Make more types of them and give an easy access to ALL of them. They should be cheap few k per one. And after it you can make all ships one dura as well.

Edited November 25, 2016 by Rychu Karas

[Pada]

Why do you think you will not be competitive if you do not use gold upgrades? Just use Green upgrades, that's what they here for. And ships without upgrades are not useless at all.

[Vaan De Vries]

32 minutes ago, Pada said:

Why do you think you will not be competitive if you do not use gold upgrades? Just use Green upgrades, that's what they here for. And ships without upgrades are not useless at all.

Yep, they are good for suicide missions, but some upgrades, especially not craftable ones give quite an advantage. 

There is a difference between ship being useless and being not competitive. Some battles I won against excep ships fitted with gold upgrades as mine were won on en edge and would be definitely lost without it. But for some battles against not so skillfull or worse outfitted ships upgrades doesn't matter - I agree. But from my experience most people currently sail gold ships with 3-5 yellow upgrades.

 

2 hours ago, elite92 said:

i dont like magical "upgrades" at all...  imho there should be two type of improvements to our ships:

1- different types of crafting solutions when u build a ship (more customization of ships,ex: like id like to take bigger guns at the expense of weight and speed of my ship, or i want more cargo space and less guns, ecc)

2- crew and/or officers improvement (a well trained crew is more realistic then a yellow square that u put on ship and puff: more reload) at the moment seems that upgrades and officer perks are doing the same work and its a bit weird. we can simply remove upgrades and focus on perks, both of officers and crew. we could have the medic with his perks and his training required, the guns officer, the carpenter ecc.

in this way when u lose or cap a ship u wont lose any upgrades, and if u surrend u wont lose ur officers life. u can jump from ship to another in ur dock and keep ur officers trained and ready without the need to move ur upgrades, u finally can use capped 1 dura ship and have at the same time a very well trained crew and be able to fight other full dura ship.

suggestions?

good solution too, but requires a lot of rework from devs side.

I was proposing kind of a cheap and easier to implement solution above current system. 

Also, my proposition was based on a crafting changes thread started by Admin, where I saw no changes for upgrade system and it startled me a bit. Cause current ship crafting with fine wood is quite historical (After I read details about how difficult it was to obtain Live Oak logs specifically required for building of first 3 of American Frigates) and understandable, but upgrades mechanic is crying for rework :))

[z4ys]

Reduce upgrades to perks. Like already done with pump inventor for example.

Perma mods could be part of regional conquest. You could obtain them for cash in a specific port. Furthermore they could reduced them to one rate only. So no grey green blue.... just default.

Makes the game Less grindy and introduces sense in  sailing captured frigates.

[OneEyedSnake]

Just like to say i am not a fan of this. Upgrades could be harder to make, but in terms of giving them durability like ships, no.