What Are The Ship Trees.

[Crayon]

I am so confused on this subject. 

Can someone please explain what it is, and what that means?

Links to spreadsheets would be most appreciated.

[William Death]

Not official stuff, but I'd direct you to this spreadsheet clan BLACK (with, I believe, some help from a few other testers) on PvP2 put together during testbed trials. Some things *might* have changed, but this is the general idea of it: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1PHxx0WQIGShFK8z6dfGe0CsjoKg32YtpeS8GuvTFaDs/edit?usp=sharing

Now, what this ridiculous thing is, is basically a brand new grind to max rank...on EVERY ship. You see, ships have 3 perm slots open for you, and no regular slots open. To open the regular slots, you have to earn combat xp on that ship. On MOST ships, you can get 2 slots open with just grinding xp, but on the Santissima, and most likely a few others, you have to grind on a smaller ship just to open up the 2nd slot (read on and you'll see what I mean about grinding on a smaller ship).

Let us take Surprise, as an example: to unlock the 3rd slot on Surprise, you need the 4th slot open on Renommee, but you have to open the 3rd slot on it first, which requires the 4th slot on Mercury opened up, but to get the 3rd slot there, you gotta have the 5th slot on Privateer unlocked, but you have to unlock the Basic Cutter first, just to unlock the 3rd slot on that Privateer. Now, return to top of the list, starting with the Renommee and continue to grind to unlock the 4th slot on that ship (because, remember, all this grinding you just did was just for the 3rd slot on Renommee, but you need to get the 4th slot open on that ship, before you can grind open the 3rd slot on Surprise). Now, you can finally get back to the Surprise and keep grinding to get her unlocked with 5 slots. Only 30,900xp from my math, assuming the xp values on the spreadsheet are correct and I haven't misread anything. I did that grind on testbed, let me tell you, it is NOT FUN. Just wait till you see the xp values on the bigger frigates...

But the fun only continues from there...the next ship after Surprise that you can unlock in this "ship tree" is Trincomalee, then Endymion, then Constitution. It is then, to my knowledge, that this "ship tree" ends. You have a whole separate tree that goes through the BCutter, Pickle, Brig, Snow, Cerberus, Frigate and Indefatigable and leads all the way up to the first rates. 

Basically...if you want to be comptetive in PvP with an unlocked and decent ship, you've got to grind mate. You've got to grind a lot.

With the current xp values for this horrible system, you will be a Rear Admiral about the same time that you unlock a Constitution.

THE GRIND IS REAL. THE GRIND IS BAD. Players will not tolerate this, some are leaving already because of it, others are tiring quickly from it.

I urge all players to please, take a look at this thread, vote, and maybe Devs will notice how many players like or dislike this grind and do something about it: 

 

[jnovotny6]

this is insanity, lol, NOT doing this. I have a life.

[Sir Texas Sir]

5 hours ago, Willis PVP2 said:

 

With the current xp values for this horrible system, you will be a Rear Admiral about the same time that you unlock a Constitution.

THE GRIND IS REAL. THE GRIND IS BAD. Players will not tolerate this, some are leaving already because of it, others are tiring quickly from it.

 

And by our math that wasn't even the second slot of the Connie you will have gained enough XP to make RA in game.  Wasn't the 1st or secon slot of the Santi 20K just for one slot.  So it gets bigger and bigger for each slot as you go up the tree.  Effectivly to be good or master in a ship you must master every ship below that ship.

[jnovotny6]

Careful Devs, if you are aiming to have a game for a niche group of hardcore players thats fine, if not please re think some of the new changes you implemented, most people will burn out on the grind necessary to progress in this game. I love this game, played over 2000 hours, but I will not even attempt the ship tree stuff, just dont care enough.

[Snoggy]

As if there weren't enough grind as it were, I swear most of these new changes are so terrible that I wonder what goes on in the test server or how much the devs play this game.

[Thomas Messervy]

Just have the grind be within the ship you want to unlock....

 

 

Im with the basic cutter and got enough crew for the surprise... but now i'll be forced to play with some other 3 ships i dont want so i can get good enough on the only one that i want? (the surprise)