Please un-cripple the LGV!

[Nathan Poldark]

I made the mistake of crafting a Le Gros Ventre under the Mega-patch 10.x New Cruelty (150 PVE marks for the BP plus 15 PVE mark permit per build), only to discover that at some point the hold space had been nerfed - not the 3000-odd that I remembered from days gone by, but now 1900.

This makes the LGV useless.  You're better off with the vastly cheaper Trader's Brig with only marginally less hold capacity (1750).

To make things even worse, the LGV has received absolutely no love from the recent patch that added full gun fits to trader's vessels.  One would expect the LGV to now have a gun fit like that of a Renommee, but no - still 10-a-side broadsides only, no chasers, no weather deck guns.

Please increase the hold capacity of the LGV to a reasonable amount, and allow it to fit more cannons (perhaps at the expense of crew, the LGV always had a few too many in my opinion).  The Indiaman still has a capacity of 4000, what was the logic in reducing the LGV's capacity so drastically?

[CaptVonGunn]

Not useless if you want yo ignore smaller raiders. A properly sailed LGV  is not something a brig sized raider wants to tangle with. ..PS wait till you see the Indiaman

[Nathan Poldark]

Nonsense.  A couple of players in privateers would be quite capable of worrying an LGV to death - although it would take a long time.  They'd just stern camp it and grape/ball it mercilessly.

 

[Vernon Merrill]

A privateer (or even two) would never be able to take an LGV unless it was AFK sailing...    ANYTHING downwind and its getting away no problem....

[Nathan Poldark]

Fair point, perhaps.  But the "brig sized raiders" CptVonGunn was talking about would be able to inflict enough sail damage to slow the LGV significantly, and probably be able to tank damage for long enough to grape the LGV to the point where cannon reloads were unworkably slow.

Anyway, my complaint was about the cargo space, not the handling characteristics.  Sail a Trader's Brig alongside a Le Gros Ventre and note the size difference, then ask yourself why the Trader's Brig can carry 1750 and the LGV only 1900!

 

[CaptVonGunn]

Not before taking the same or more damage in return... I did say properly sailed. That also means properly armed.

Problem is the brig carries yo much not the LGV to little

Edited June 17, 2017 by CaptVonGunn

[Nathan Poldark]

I suppose reducing the Trader's Brig capacity would alleviate the problem somewhat.  Whether or not this is fair would depend on the LGV compared to the Indiaman.  Is it the case that the Indiaman still has 4000 capacity?  I have only wiki stats such as http://www.navalactionwiki.com/index.php?title=Ships to go on.

The very name of the LGV (I understand Le Gros Ventre means something like "The Big Belly") implies that it can carry a lot of cargo (not sailors - as I mentioned, I think it has too many of these!), and it can't.

[Bulwyf]

The cargo capacity should be brought back up, this new version of the game is very anti trader anyway, all the traders are slower, teleport totally useless now so twice the sailing, extra guns for some ships but no extra crew to man them, fleet ships now much harder to get unless you devote all your perks to them. And to top it off the economy is hopeless. There seems to be a plethora of stupid and short sighted changes.

 

[Nathan Poldark]

Here's a little fairness math.  Grossly oversimplified, of course, but only intended to give you a general idea.

Let us suppose that space that isn't used for crew is used for cargo (fairly safe assumption) and that crew numbers for all ships are realistic (fairly unsafe assumption, as it turns out).  Let us further suppose that the Indiaman's military equivalent is an Agamemnon, the Le Gros Ventre's military equivalent is a BellePoule, and the obvious military equivalents for the other Trader's vessels.

It follows that the amount of space corresponding to a crew member is the difference in cargo space between the military ship and the corresponding trader divided by the difference in crew size.  Let's compute the ratio for all Trader's vessels, and see if there is any consistency:

Indiaman: (4000 - 750) / (500 - 380) = 27.08

Le Gros Ventre: (1900 - 590) / (280 - 240) = 32.75

Trader's Brig: (1750 - 250) / (110 - 60) = 30

Trader's Snow: (900 - 350) / (120 - 65) = 10

Trader's Cutter: (500 - 150) / (40 - 20) = 17.5

Trader's Lynx: (500 - 150 ) / (50 - 20) = 11.66

Hmmm, not really.

Let's arbitrarily use the Indiaman for our baseline.  Now, looking at the difference in crew for the other vessels and the cargo space of the military vessel only, we can compute what the cargo capacity of the trader's equivalent ought to have been:

Le Gros Ventre: (280 - 240) x 27.08 + 590 = 1673.2

Trader's Brig: (110 - 60) x 27.08 + 250 = 1604

Trader's Snow: (120 - 65) x 27.08 + 350 = 1839.4

Trader's Cutter:(40 - 20) x 27.08 + 150 = 691.6

Trader's Lynx: (50 - 20) x 27.08 + 150 = 962.4

That bears a vague resemblance to the actual cargo space stats, but considering the actual relative size of the ships, it's apparent that most of the smaller vessels have way too many crew.

Let's now redo the computations using the mean of all of the above ratios, which is close enough to 21.50:

Indiaman: (500 - 380)) x 21.5 + 750 = 3330

Le Gros Ventre: (280 - 240) x 21.5 + 590 = 1450

Trader's Brig: (110 - 60) x 21.5 + 250 = 1325

Trader's Snow: (120 - 65) x 21.5 + 350 = 1532.5

Trader's Cutter:(40 - 20) x 21.5 + 150 = 580

Trader's Lynx: (50 - 20) x 21.5 + 150 = 795

That's possibly a little bit saner, but it once again highlights a serious discrepancy with the Trader's Snow.

 

[Nathan Poldark]

And one final set of stats: percentages of crew on trader's vessels compared with their military equivalents:

Indiaman: 380 / 500 x 100 = 76%

Le Gros Ventre: 240 /  280 x 100 = 85.71%

Trader's Brig: 60 / 110 x 100 = 54.54%

Trader's Snow: 65 / 120 x 100 = 54.17%

Trader's Cutter: 20 / 50 x 100 = 40%

This tends to support my argument that the LGV has way too many crew.  If it had less crew, it would have more cargo space.  It also suggests that the Indiaman ought to have less crew and more cargo space.

[Kanay]

I said the same stuff yesterday after discovered hat they done to this ship :

Any small class ship can take on a LGV and stay immune to it, just dancing behind his ass, shooting sails and then killing the crew easily , the LGV won't be even once able to get the small ship in his sights, for 5th rates it's a piece of cake...

Let's compare LGV to Trader Brig :

Speed in favor of the trader Brig, 11.95 vs 11.90, and i have yet to try in a battle session fully unloaded to see if i can even reach the speed indicated on the stat cards.

LGV have only 150 more cargo than the trader brig

Trader brig can enter both shallow and deep ports when the LGV need only deep water ports

Cost to build, permit for LGV + more materials cost than a simple trader Brig

Trader Brig have a lower Battle Rating.

The crew needed, 60 for the Trader brig, 240 for the LGV ... in case of loss the LGV that cost already much more to build also bring higher loss with the crew members on it.

Armament ... the Trader brig have now guns but little crew compared to the LGV, but in any case the Trader brig will have better chances to escape as it have chasers to hit the sails of the pursuers ( something the LGV also had as seen on link, something that is really missing in game to help this fat whale get a survival chance ), brig also have a bit better speed and will be able to maneuver more than a LGV facing most of the common opponents, even if it have less firepower and less crew to reload the guns it have more chances to hit the sails of the enemies than the LGV, like said before the LGV won't be able to point his guns at a ship if the captain knows what he does, he will just be racked and graped to death easily, or even funnier, just for the giggles : just destroy all canons while raking it first with ball and then double charge, a simple basic cutter with longs is enough to do this and i won't take that long... then have fun hitting an unarmed trader.

The cargo space of this ship, his speed nerfed to death ( it use to have a nice speed in game, but things like Surprises fitted for hunting had no issues catching it and staying out of his fireline tho ) all this combined with the requirements to build it is like i said in the link above the perfect definition of masquerade for me...

Traders were always hit by the bat nerf soon after the game started, and this continues patch after patch, it's like the dev's only want the traders to be meat and only easy meat for the first guy able to make 2 neurons work together ...  All excuses have been given to justify the trader's nerf, one of the first ones was that the AI traders were too fast ( they weren't, in fact players used to tag them from miles away and some newbies started to cry in steam forums ) but instead or nerfing AI navigation uberskills or teaching players how to properly tag AI, they nerfed the speed of AI traders ships... and players traders... and since it seems that each patch is a perfect occasion to nerf traders, often without any explanation at all for the speed loss for example ... you just notice that you lost speed on your ship...



 

Edited June 17, 2017 by Kanay

[maturin]

Pretty sure the the T-brig is still benefiting from one of the devs' frequent 'let's give ship X magic bags of holding as a stop-gap measure' patches.