Boarding and DD Adjustment

[Slim McSauce]

Let me make this short. I have a quick and easy solution to the current arcadey boarding meta that seems to throw of the rest of combat. To back up this claim I point to DD, a perk that aimed to provide the quickest possible fix to the silly rageboarding meta. The solution I provide is just a step beyond that in simpleness, but I think it will provide a substantial remedy that will hold well, much better than the current way, at least until boarding as a whole gets a revamp

 Here it is:

Make it so sails don't automatically drop when boarding is initiated. Allow sailing to continue after the ships are grappled together. That's pretty much it. Simple right? How does it affect gameplay?
For one it's unrealistic that you are forced to raise all your sails once someone boards you, that mechanic directly links to the biggest issue with boarding currently, that once you've been boarded, you're stuck there, frozen and unable to do anything besides play the boarding game.

My question, why is that limitation needed? A ship with perfectly good sails can still crawl away from the attacking ship, even dragging the ship behind it until the ropes give way. So why are we forced to raise our sails and take the boarding when realistically, there's no reason why you cant just keep sailing.

There lies the biggest issue with boardng, just as often it's used to halt the opponent to secure and easy kill from surrounding ships, or ram upwind and end any fight quickly with a boarding fitted ship. Now I'm not saying you shouldn't be able to use boarding effectively, I'm saying boarding is TOO effective, very unpractically so and it hurts combat. You can still board and halt a ship with less sailpower, this little change means you have to subdue your enemy before securing the board. Meaning you have to either chain their sails, drop their masts or physically surround them with other ships so they can't sail through.

That's it, tell me what you think or why you would/would not want this adjustment in boarding

Edited September 13, 2018 by Slim McSauce

[Angus MacDuff]

7 minutes ago, Slim McSauce said:

Let me make this short. I have a quick and easy solution to the current arcadey boarding meta that seems to throw of the rest of combat. To back up this claim I point to DD, a perk that aimed to provide the quickest possible fix to the silly rageboarding meta. The solution I provide is just a step beyond that in simpleness, but I think it will provide a substantial remedy that will hold well, much better than the current way, at least until boarding as a whole gets a revamp

 Here it is:

Make it so sails don't automatically drop when boarding is initiated. Allow sailing to continue after the ships are grappled together. That's pretty much it. Simple right? How does it affect gameplay?
For one it's unrealistic that you are forced to raise all your sails once someone boards you, that mechanic directly links to the biggest issue with boarding currently, that once you've been boarded, you're stuck there, frozen and unable to do anything besides play the boarding game.

My question, why is that limitation needed? A ship with perfectly good sails can still crawl away from the attacking ship, even dragging the ship behind it until the ropes give way. So why are we forced to raise our sails and take the boarding when realistically, there's no reason why you cant just keep sailing.

There lies the biggest issue with boardng, just as often it's used to halt the opponent to secure and easy kill from surrounding ships, or ram upwind and end any fight quickly with a boarding fitted ship. Now I'm not saying you shouldn't be able to use boarding effectively, I'm saying boarding is TOO effective, very unpractically so and it hurts combat. You can still board and halt a ship with less sailpower, this little change means you have to subdue your enemy before securing the board. Meaning you have to either chain their sails, drop their masts or physically surround them with other ships so they can't sail through.

That's it, tell me what you think or why you would/would not want this adjustment in boarding

Genius!

[Hethwill, the Red Duke]

How to simulate all the age of sail options used to affect the enemy ship rig trim so she would become slow enough ?

It was one of the most important phases for ships intent on boarding an enemy - yes, cargo was the valuable thing.

How to simulate rigging entanglement ? Simple ramming would entangle ships ? Hmmm... same as ramming and pushing...

Can't get my head around it.

Your option of the pulling in instant sails brace is nice though. Having them drift can be nice.

[Slim McSauce]

2 minutes ago, Hethwill the Harmless said:

How to simulate all the age of sail options used to affect the enemy ship rig trim so she would become slow enough ?

It was one of the most important phases for ships intent on boarding an enemy - yes, cargo was the valuable thing.

How to simulate rigging entanglement ? Simple ramming would entangle ships ? Hmmm... same as ramming and pushing...

Can't get my head around it.

Your option of the pulling in instant sails brace is nice though. Having them drift can be nice.

Not exactly drift, you should retain some control with rudder, maybe not yard control just to retain some balance. If you consider how much pulling force you get with grapples, it's pretty substantial. If you're already locked into boarding, breaking that force may be very difficult for even a large ship. We really don't know as there's no way to test it currently. Smaller ship it would be pretty easy to keep them locked down under 3 knts, even without chains. Larger ships may require some prep with chain.

[Hethwill, the Red Duke]

But that's not it was done.  

Grapples were the final step of an entire nice process of slowing down the victim.

ingame ... how to slow down someone ? chain ? what else ?

[Christendom]

In theory our current method of boarding is period accurate in a sense.  You need to get your opponent slow enough to grapple and then secure them to your ship.  You can disengage (cut the grapples) after X amount of turns.  The ramming bit is a little sketchy, I'll give you that.  Realistically if you were to fight as close to each other as ships in this game do, majority of the actions would of turned into boarding fests.

There's only so much realism you can interject into a game and have it still be playable.  

[Angus MacDuff]

I let my Herc get too close and slow to a fully crewed Indiaman the other day.  The pulling started but I had already started building speed in reverse.  So I got away and continued the fight.  Isn't that what Slim is asking for?

[Hethwill, the Red Duke]

Think suggestion is for an automated instead of requiring player actions of yards and whatnot... i might have misinterpreted.

[Slim McSauce]

2 hours ago, Christendom said:

In theory our current method of boarding is period accurate in a sense.  You need to get your opponent slow enough to grapple and then secure them to your ship.  You can disengage (cut the grapples) after X amount of turns.  The ramming bit is a little sketchy, I'll give you that.  Realistically if you were to fight as close to each other as ships in this game do, majority of the actions would of turned into boarding fests.

There's only so much realism you can interject into a game and have it still be playable.  

But practically it isn't right. Sails don't raise and ships don't come to a screeching hault because it's been grappled. If sails simply didn't raise automatically alone it'd be a whole different game , you could probably still get away before the 15 second timer because you have the sailforce to do so. To just be locked in and forced stuck is lame when practically speaking, you would've gotten away hadn't your sails magically been raised.

In  this case you would have to carefully subdue your opponent by reducing his sailforce, you wouldn't be able to easily ram up wind and secure the kill or hault  for others to come and shoot his sides. This is not realistic nor accurate, nor does it make sense that we have it this way.

Edited September 13, 2018 by Slim McSauce

[Licinio Chiavari]

3 minutes ago, Slim McSauce said:

But practically it isn't right. Sails don't raise and ships don't come to a screeching hault because it's been grappled. If sails simply didn't raise automatically alone it'd be a whole different game , you could probably still get away before the 15 second timer because you have the sailforce to do so. To just be locked in and forced stuck is lame when practically speaking, you would've gotten away hadn't your sails magically been raised.

In  this case you would have to carefully subdue your opponent by reducing his sailforce, you wouldn't be able to easily ram up wind and secure the kill or hault  for others to come and shoot his sides. This is not realistic nor accurate, nor does it make sense that we have it this way.

Let me grapple a slow running downwind ship at my same speed (pretty easy, in theory, having very close speeds) and I will not ram you to turn / push upwind.

Nothing to say about DD crappiness.

IMO DD (or anyhow antiboarding perk) should work making the pulling timer longer... giving more time to defender to get free before boarding start.
If you got pushed into the wind (especially by a Requin being on a far bigger ship) is usually your fault, not enemy OPness nor skill (aside opportunism).

[Slim McSauce]

4 minutes ago, Licinio Chiavari said:

Let me grapple a slow running downwind ship at my same speed (pretty easy, in theory, having very close speeds) and I will not ram you to turn / push upwind.

Nothing to say about DD crappiness.

IMO DD (or anyhow antiboarding perk) should work making the pulling timer longer... giving more time to defender to get free before boarding start.
If you got pushed into the wind (especially by a Requin being on a far bigger ship) is usually your fault, not enemy OPness nor skill (aside opportunism).

Ideally yes and ideally you wouldn't have to lock into boarding to shoot your deck guns or give a musket volley or grenades. But as we all realize this is not an ideal world but it doesn't mean we can't get closer to one.

[Cecil Selous]

I think it would be a start if pulling range and pulling power would be lower. Right now it sometimes happens that you are out of a tack and already gain forward speed and momentum but suddenly your enemy, who sits roughly 20 m away starts pulling and instantly reverses your ship  and pulls it towards him. There must be some very strong bastards on that ship, wouldn't want to fight them in a boarding. Maybe boarding axes (the disengage feature can be kept) and DD could be more useful for that instead of the artificial boarding deny.

DD atm works perfectly to prevent situations like I described above but unfortunately also prevents boarding when the conditions for it are perfect. A change is needed imho.

Longer pulling time? maybe worth a try.

Edited September 13, 2018 by Cecil Selous

[Sir Loorkon]

I think it would be better to leave it as it is and wait till the whole boarding system gets reworked completely. I like the DD because it secures me from the horrible rock—scissor—paper thing.

[HachiRoku]

Remove rum and DD works, don't and it is just funny. 

[Licinio Chiavari]

Just now, Sir Loorkon said:

I think it would be better to leave it as it is and wait till the whole boarding system gets reworked completely. I like the DD because it secures me from the horrible rock—scissor—paper thing.

if it's so easy like rock-scissor-paper game... how's possible so many people has NO clue about it and its management... aside being so scared of it?

Of two, only one: if it's noobishly easy, how no one handling it properly?
If it's not, why banning it and not other skilled stuff like mast sniping?

Putting aside that it's the most real stuff in this game: a better lead (more experienced player) better experienced (marine and other buffing books and a couple mods) better geared (other books like muskets) crew defeats an inferior one in the most usual outcome of an age of sail naval combat: a boarding. 

[Slim McSauce]

3 minutes ago, Licinio Chiavari said:

if it's so easy like rock-scissor-paper game... how's possible so many people has NO clue about it and its management... aside being so scared of it?

Of two, only one: if it's noobishly easy, how no one handling it properly?
If it's not, why banning it and not other skilled stuff like mast sniping?

Putting aside that it's the most real stuff in this game: a better lead (more experienced player) better experienced (marine and other buffing books and a couple mods) better geared (other books like muskets) crew defeats an inferior one in the most usual outcome of an age of sail naval combat: a boarding. 

Rock paper scissors ship combat, gee sounds like fun.

Boarding is hands down the worse part of combat, it should be vastly improved because it drags down the good stuff with cannons, which is all pretty much good just needs balance. Boarding on the otherhand needs some serious coding and until they some quick fixes and improvements would be great.

Longer pull range with less power is a great idea, same concept we tried with chain except in reverse, very simple to try and test.

Edited September 13, 2018 by Slim McSauce

[Licinio Chiavari]

Just now, Slim McSauce said:

R

?

[AeRoTR]

Why not put a timer ? Requires enemy ship speed to be less than 3.5 kts for minimum 4 seconds to succesfuly finishing the grappling phase and to maintain not more than set amount of distance ? So you can not instant grapple and get into boarding game in 0.3 seconds.

Also why not change DD as increasing grapple time %50 (6 seconds instead of 4 sec.) and option to cut the grapple ropes with a cooldown of x minutes ?

[Licinio Chiavari]

17 minutes ago, AeRoTR said:

Why not put a timer ? Requires enemy ship speed to be less than 3.5 kts for minimum 4 seconds to succesfuly finishing the grappling phase and to maintain not more than set amount of distance ? So you can not instant grapple and get into boarding game in 0.3 seconds.

Also why not change DD as increasing grapple time %50 (6 seconds instead of 4 sec.) and option to cut the grapple ropes with a cooldown of x minutes ?

Good one. The same proposal I wrote a couple months ago.

I added that timer should be in relation to attacker/defender crews. The more the attackers, the shorter the timer (aka: more hooks hitting than ropes cutted), the more the defender, the longer timer (the contrary) with DD perk adding a plain 50% extra time for example... So against a bigger crew with DD attacker will need really quite a lot time at low speed and at close range to start the boarding.

[Licinio Chiavari]

1 hour ago, Slim McSauce said:

Rock paper scissors ship combat, gee sounds like fun.

Boarding is hands down the worse part of combat, it should be vastly improved because it drags down the good stuff with cannons, which is all pretty much good just needs balance. Boarding on the otherhand needs some serious coding and until they some quick fixes and improvements would be great.

Longer pull range with less power is a great idea, same concept we tried with chain except in reverse, very simple to try and test.

Never said boarding mini game is good as it is now. Surely it needs a rework.

Still, being, as stated, the most realistic and historical part of NA combat, it has to be a big part naval combat.

Simply making order secret and not change-able will be a great step on (no more ping wars).

Replacing with a schematic of ships where the player with a simple interface commits fighters to different areas of enemy ship (attacking) and different sectors of his own (defending) being able tochoose different groups actions etc... Plainly dream-like

[Licinio Chiavari]

2 minutes ago, Sir John said:

I also feel like there should be some real value to ladders, and that ~100 crew on a first rate should be able to defend against 220 in a hercules (and a requin with 350 crew) easily...

Yes, the time period is way off, but this is a great example of what it might look like... one cannot expect the crew of such a small ship to scale the broadside of a ship of the line and carry the day

Height difference works in boarding, and quiet a lot.

Still I could agree less than It should.

Like we got some a bit (lol) too precise (aka laser guided) balls flying around, magically hitting from the rolling deck of a ship sailing full speed... Exactly the mast 200 mt away of another rolling ship cruising (and turning too!) at full speed. 

[Bluetooth]

This is not needed imo. The current mechanic is actually quite accurate.

These kind of comments are usually made by players who go full out shooting and ignore boarding mods and then get boarded and complain that its not a good part of the game.

The current game gives more than enough opportunities for a defending ship not to be grappled.

Ok, so to me DD is a crew and officers who are skilled at preventing a grappling event. Simple. As the crew numbers become overwheming no amount of technique or training will prevent a grapple and DD fails.

The grapple itself is easy to avoid. Keep your speed up. Turn when needed, manual sails, reversing etc etc.

Once joined you have the options of boarding axes, barricades, disengage etc. If you do not have boarding mods that's because you favour shooting and thats tough.

Just the same as if your a boarder and you meet a shooter who sinks a you.

Ship were always capped if at all possible.

Put boarding mods on your ships and the system is fine. 

Dont put them on and you will struggle.

[Slim McSauce]

2 hours ago, Crow said:

This is not needed imo. The current mechanic is actually quite accurate.

These kind of comments are usually made by players who go full out shooting and ignore boarding mods and then get boarded and complain that its not a good part of the game.

The current game gives more than enough opportunities for a defending ship not to be grappled.

Ok, so to me DD is a crew and officers who are skilled at preventing a grappling event. Simple. As the crew numbers become overwheming no amount of technique or training will prevent a grapple and DD fails.

The grapple itself is easy to avoid. Keep your speed up. Turn when needed, manual sails, reversing etc etc.

Once joined you have the options of boarding axes, barricades, disengage etc. If you do not have boarding mods that's because you favour shooting and thats tough.

Just the same as if your a boarder and you meet a shooter who sinks a you.

Ship were always capped if at all possible.

Put boarding mods on your ships and the system is fine. 

Dont put them on and you will struggle.

Boarding isn't on the same level as cannon combat, literally a completely different game. Cannon combat is sim-like, current boarding is a copy&paste from age of sail mobile games, seriously. How you can be content with that is beyond me

Edited September 13, 2018 by Slim McSauce

[StaleMemes]

24 minutes ago, Slim McSauce said:

Boarding isn't on the same level as cannon combat, literally a completely different game. Cannon combat is sim-like, current boarding is a copy&paste from age of sail mobile games, seriously. How you can be content with that is beyond me

Its like switching from watching "Master and Commander: Far Side of the World" to "Pirates of the Caribbean 3".

...in about 5 seconds.

[Bluetooth]

It is hard for shooters who have no boarding mods. I get that.

But that's your choice to not fit boarding mods.

You can't add anti boarding mechanics to the game because you don't want to be boarded lol.