PvE Rewards: Traders vs Combat Ships

[5centmike]

Recently the ability to search sinking ships for loot was added to the game. Combat NPCs have a chance of dropping valuable repairs as well as otherwise unobtainable and very valuable skill books and permanent upgrades. More recently trader ships acquired more cannons making them comparable opponents to their dedicated combat peers and the loot table for combat NPCs was expanded to drop more rare upgrades.

The result of these changes is a severe imbalance of difficulty and rewards for a player sinking and looting a combat NPC vs a trader NPC. Currently on average a combat NPC will have more value in its hold in repairs, cannons, skill books, or permanent upgrades than a trader of equivalent strength will carry in resources or shipbuilding materials. Additionally combat NPCs give larger gold and xp bounties compared to their equivalent trader NPC. Since traders now have large armaments equivalent to their combat counterparts there is no longer any reason for a player to attack a trader instead of a combat NPC as the fight will be equally difficult and the rewards substantially less.

Two suggestions should repair this imbalance. First, trader NPCs should have repairs, cannons, skill books, and permanent upgrades added to their loot tables in addition to the trade goods they currently drop. Second, the gold and xp bounties of trader NPCs should be increased to reflect their new strength in combat.

Edited June 15, 2017 by 5centmike
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[Niels Terkildsen]

A while ago I decided that I won't take missions anymore; they simply drained all the fun out of the game for me. As a consequence I now only attack NPCs that sail in the OW, and preferably traders (with or without an escort). Doing so, I earn a lot less XP and gold than my colleagues who do partake in missions, since, firstly I don't get the mission reward, secondly I have to spend time finding a suitable target, and thirdly, the potential value of trader cargo is now lower than non-trader cargo. Add to that issue that you now can't take the traders back with you in order to get all the contents of the hold: you can only take what your warship's hold can manage.

Your suggestions are sound, except they won't help in regards to the hold-space issue. I think, in order to solve that, we should implement NPC capture again; but not full capture - rather a form of capture where you can add the NPC ship to your fleet, but upon reaching port you will have it taken from you and instead be given a suitable gold reward for the ship and cargo by the admiralty.

Ideally, I think, taking traders should be beneficial in terms of gold-gain while sinking non-traders should be advantageous in terms of XP-gain.

[Niels Terkildsen]

Oh, PvP is a whole other matter. I don't do that for profit, I do that for the thrill.

 

EDIT: Finding a plump player trader once in a while is just a nice bonus!

Edited June 15, 2017 by Niels Terkildsen

[Niels Terkildsen]

I've always had an ambivalent feeling about combat rewards. On the one hand, I can follow your logic if we're talking reward scaled in relation to risk (and I agree entirely if we're only talking XP gain), but on the other hand I find it peculiar that you should earn gold by firing cannon ball into a hull. To me it makes more sense that you earn the gold from captures and the XP from combat actions (damage calculation or kill/assist). Then again, combat rewards could be seen as representing a navy captain's pay or the like, but it still doesn't make entirely sense (that would have been a steady low pay rather than anything depending on performance) - though I admit it may make sense gameplay-wise.

But, I think we're moving away from the topic which was the imbalance in PvE rewards rather than combat rewards in general.

[5centmike]

18 minutes ago, Niels Terkildsen said:

Your suggestions are sound, except they won't help in regards to the hold-space issue.

There is currently a feature/bug that allows you to overload the hold of a ship. If there is space in your hold you can always add 1 more stack of goods to it, even if it overloads the ship. This means the order in which you move goods from one ship to the other will effect how much you can bring. Using this trick you can usually take all of the cargo from a trader.

[surfimp]

1 hour ago, Hodo said:

The problem is most of the time cargo isnt worth the time to get it... I think one of my favorites is 250 fish meat on a LGV escorted by a Mercury.

Captain Trololololo strikes again!

[surfimp]

4 hours ago, Niels Terkildsen said:

we should implement NPC capture again; but not full capture - rather a form of capture where you can add the NPC ship to your fleet, but upon reaching port you will have it taken from you and instead be given a suitable gold reward for the ship and cargo by the admiralty.

I like this suggestion quite a bit. It doesn't seem like it would require too much additional effort to support.

[Niels Terkildsen]

Yeah, except it concerns NPC ships rather than player ships (see also my post in your thread).