Patch 30: Combat and boarding feedback

[Angus MacDuff]

1 minute ago, van der Decken said:

Here is a legit question. I just saw this happen outside El Toco not 5 minutes ago. One Dutch captain was chased and tagged by a fleet of Russians. The battle started as 2 v 1. Over the next 2 minutes, the Russians kept piling in the battle...it went up to 3 v 1, then 5 v 1, now after 10 minutes  it is 5 v 3...BR 3450 to 780.

The 1st 2 minutes is open for anyone joining

[DeRuyter]

3 hours ago, Sovereign said:

Everyone should have prepared, like sextant it's just a given in my opinion to keep it authentic. *Warships lumbering toward each other over the course of an hour after spotting on the horizon* Captains:"Remember lads, don't load the guns until we are at spitting distance, we are not prepared!"

This ^^

And spawns are too close. While I understand that part of the pre-battle maneuvering is done in the OW (tagging), increasing spawn distance in battle would help and allow more in battle maneuver to avoid the one broadside and it's over problem. (Given relatively equal ships of course). 

[van der Clam]

4 minutes ago, Angus MacDuff said:

The 1st 2 minutes is open for anyone joining

Oh, I thought the BR limiter started at battle instance to help prevent ganking. ohwell. ty.

[Neads O'Tune]

2 hours ago, Angus MacDuff said:

The 1st 2 minutes is open for anyone joining

Or if you if you all enter the circle and spam the join button at the same time, you can get as many as you like in because the game doesn't recognise in time that the battle has been balanced and close it quickly enough, for the full 20 minutes

[Angus MacDuff]

So on another note...I've won some battles in the last few days and im finding that I have to go to one of my outposts after every fight for reps.  If I carry enough to stay at sea, im overloaded and slow.  We need to fix this @admin

[Sea Archer]

I would like to have the ships hitpoints doubled, battles are much too short at the moment. And demasting is a bit too easy.

Carronades are overpowered now and too accurate. Especially the accuracy should be drastically reduced.

Edited March 9, 2019 by Sea Archer

[Teutonic]

12 hours ago, Angus MacDuff said:

So on another note...I've won some battles in the last few days and im finding that I have to go to one of my outposts after every fight for reps.  If I carry enough to stay at sea, im overloaded and slow.  We need to fix this @admin

Maybe a repair should be adjust to repair more HPs.

It is still 100 per repair from previous systems, while ship HPs have essentially doubled. I'd suggest that we increase HPs repaired per repair.

 

 

[Angus MacDuff]

16 minutes ago, Teutonic said:

Maybe a repair should be adjust to repair more HPs.

It is still 100 per repair from previous systems, while ship HPs have essentially doubled. I'd suggest that we increase HPs repaired per repair.

 

 

Also a good suggestion, but I'd like to see some mechanic to repair after battle instead of messing too much with in battle repair.  If you're hunting deep in enemy territory, and there are no open/free ports nearby, it's a very long sail back to a home port.  Something like a repair ability if you put yourself ashore on empty land.  Same as we have in a port.  

[Tom Farseer]

Seeing as it is technically on topic for combat feedback, I will now shamelessly plug my suggestion, which is aimed overall streamlining the combat model 🙃

 

[van der Clam]

IMO repairs were OP in that with mods and perks people could repair a nearly sunk ship to almost 100% health on the hull or the sails, whichever they used. It made no logical sense to me that a crew deep at sea in the middle of a battle would be completely replacing all sails and the rigging to make it 100% again. I felt it should ave been that on the first repair, the max it could do is get you back to 85% sails, then the second repir max would be say 75%, etc. Making each instance of repair doing slightly less than the previous. Same thing with hull. Before it just felt ridiculous and pointless taking on some captains who somehow had 100% ships every repair. At least now with the new dpm their repairs wouldn't be able to keep up...and I like that. I just still think 100% repaired ships should not happen.

[van Veen]

On 3/8/2019 at 5:10 PM, Sovereign said:

Everyone should have prepared, like sextant it's just a given in my opinion to keep it authentic. *Warships lumbering toward each other over the course of an hour after spotting on the horizon* Captains:"Remember lads, don't load the guns until we are at spitting distance, we are not prepared!"

Preparation is not so self-evident as one might think... 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chesapeake–Leopard_affair

Quote

The Chesapeake–Leopard affair was a naval engagement that occurred off the coast of Norfolk, Virginia, on June 22, 1807, between the British warship HMS Leopard and the American frigate USS Chesapeake. The crew of Leopard pursued, attacked, and boarded the American frigate, looking for deserters from the Royal Navy.^[1] Chesapeake was caught unprepared and after a short battle involving broadsides received from Leopard, the commander of Chesapeake, James Barron, surrendered his vessel to the British. Chesapeake had fired only one shot.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Chesapeake_(1799)

Quote

Leopard fired a shot across the bow, followed by a broadside, at Chesapeake. For fifteen minutes, while Chesapeakeattempted to arm herself, Leopard continued to fire broadside after broadside until Barron struck his colors. Chesapeake only managed to fire one retaliatory shot after hot coals from the galley were brought on deck to ignite the cannon.^[64]

^...

Chesapeake was completely unprepared to defend herself during the incident. None of her guns were primed for operation and the spar deck was filled with materials that were not properly stowed in the cargo hold.^[69] A court-martial was convened for Barron and Captain Gordon, as well as Lieutenant Hall of the Marines. Barron was found guilty of "neglecting on the probability of an engagement to clear his Ship for action" and suspended from the navy for five years. Gordon and Hall were privately reprimanded, and the ship's gunner was discharged from the navy.^[70][71]

 

[Sir Loorkon]

@admin will there be a change in the boarding game in future (before or after release)?  If the boarding game stays as it is, could we have at least a semi transparent boarding screen like we had before? 

Edited March 12, 2019 by Sir Loorkon

[Aerospace]

About new ROE rule of reinforcing weakside for 20 minutes, it is such an abusable feature. Of course being abused by guys who are mostly into pvp ! 

I give you a nice example. Hey let's do 3 vs 3 battle ? Okay let's do it  and battle starts your team with 3x1st rate and enemy joins with 2x1st rate plus a 2nd rate. When you beat them, they will say you were superior, you had 3x1st rate !, but why didn't they join with 3x1st rate as they could easly ???

REASON: cause if they fart up, they can call another mate during 20 minutes, so it becomes 3x1st against 3x1st and one 2nd, and do it when 20 minutes is about to end  I can also exploit it, how? Just call a friend from another nation to join their side, bumm who is clever now ? (of course after 20 minutes timer is done, friend will say "oh enjoy your battle, I don't wanna distrupt your duel, I exit, bye")

 

The new boading game is only difficult for guys who have little experience in boarding. It is the same game for veterans except the boarding has changed much with latest genious upgrades to boarding. (redoubtable muskets/sea muskets)

@admin introducing the musket mods already made it difficult to engage boarding with a boarding equipped good pvper.

I got boarded by a Santi in my L'Ocean, I had five rings and shooting, he had more than 500 muskets on his ships against my 250 muskets. I brace to his musket, lost 50 plus, second or third round I lost the boarding game ! I had like 900 crew + 100 prep against his 1000 crew and + 65 prep. So I could not follow what happened really but game over in few rounds.  So everyhing like gunnery ency. + book of five + master carpenter + elite french is useless against redoubtable muskets+some additonal musket mods. This is for Line Ship combat. What kind of technology is redoubtable muskets ? How can it be so decisive in boading? Why did admin nerf normal muskets ? Would be nice instead of nerfing normal muskets adding more musket crew, they should prevent stacking Shooting with other musket mods, but they nerf the Shooting Book which is available to all players. For me these little things are frustrating as hell, because these little things add up and spoils all the gameplay.

Seeing these poor decisions I try to convience myself, it is time to move on as I have spent lots hours full of fun, and game starts to become more frustrating with every great addition. We mostly play games to have fun. These little additions should be experimental in a BETA, but somehow it takes 1 million posts, lots of time to change developers ideas and implemented super features. I see  them rolling back  %50 percent of "their great ideas which broke" what was perfectly working, but takes a long time and some battle.

The problem is, there is nobody actively testing the game from them, or they are testing intensively but they are equal level to most elite players so their understanding of the game is much different from remaining %90 percent of players. 

On the other hand good see some real content (port upgrades/shipyard upgrades) is about to come or some hopefuly rebalanced (group kill missions). Let's see what this game is going to be on the vision of @admin. I am looking forward to release of NA.

 

Edited March 14, 2019 by Aerospace

[Teutonic]

I just want to point out that with repaurs now healing 300 hps per repair.

A unbonused repair (20% repair action) 6th rate, requin, and hercules only use 1-2 hull repairs per repair. A surprise with max 30% hp bonus uses 3.

Not sure if that is quite what we want buuut i guess we will see. 

[Zlatkowar]

Quite happy with the repair update. It was quite crazy to go out at sea and burn through 300 repairs in no time... Feels so much better now. Very appreciated change.

[LIONOFWALES]

I like how the repairs are working... felt a little odd to me to have to use so many repairs to fix so little. At first I didn't realise the change had been made and I thought something was wrong... he he, it was an update. And a good one I think.

[Mr. Doran]

21 hours ago, Aerospace said:

About new ROE rule of reinforcing weakside for 20 minutes, it is such an abusable feature. Of course being abused by guys who are mostly into pvp ! 

Yep.......

Vote to show your discontent and disgust for this obviously broken idea.

[Aerospace]

7 hours ago, Teutonic said:

I just want to point out that with repaurs now healing 300 hps per repair.

A unbonused repair (20% repair action) 6th rate, requin, and hercules only use 1-2 hull repairs per repair. A surprise with max 30% hp bonus uses 3.

Not sure if that is quite what we want buuut i guess we will see. 

I find it better but now tactical decisions on carrying what amount of repairs is gone !

I can put 18 repairs on Le Cancer and repair 9 times in a battle. So it became repair wars  hope they limit amount of repairs to be used in battle instance which I do not think so...

This very evident in SOL battles, I lost an L'Ocean cause we fought 1:30 hours, and I was attacked second time exiting the battle, I did not have repairs but enemy had. Still feel like 3 sets of repairs is the way to go or at least increase repair cooldown to 15 minutes or more. But who gives a ****

[Sea Archer]

This patch has been done to avoid smaller ships destroying the bigger ones in an unhistorical manner. 

I like that and the impact those big guns have now. I still don't like the overpowered hercules. When I fight one in a frigate, I have hardly the chance to hit the enemy, the herc is outturning the frigate in a way that it is hardly possible to return her broadsides. At least when an experienced player handles her.

[Sea Archer]

As an addendum to my previous comment.

Before the patch I had a similar battle with a prince. I could hardly turn the ship to bring the guns to bear, but due to the lower firepower of the prince and it's lower structure, it was a much closer battle. The herc carries too heavy guns for her turnrate and is for those who bought the DLC easy to replace, so they don't have to be afraid of loosing it.

In that battle with the herc I was nearly sunk by stern rakes. The side armour was at about 75%, while the structure was at 20%.

That is somehow strange, too. I suggest that structure cannot be lower than the lowest side armour.

[Zlatkowar]

15 hours ago, Sea Archer said:

In that battle with the herc I was nearly sunk by stern rakes. The side armour was at about 75%, while the structure was at 20%.

That is somehow strange, too. I suggest that structure cannot be lower than the lowest side armour.

Assuming that structure is protected by side armors first (front, back, left, right) it makes sense to get damage to structure when one of these sides falls to zero. So if stern is down and the person keeps shooting, I don't see why it should take side armor into account if your opponent keeps stern raking.

Is it possible that your visual understanding of HP bars is not entirely correct?

[Sea Archer]

56 minutes ago, Zlatkowar said:

Assuming that structure is protected by side armors first (front, back, left, right) it makes sense to get damage to structure when one of these sides falls to zero. So if stern is down and the person keeps shooting, I don't see why it should take side armor into account if your opponent keeps stern raking.

Is it possible that your visual understanding of HP bars is not entirely correct?

From the gaming point of view you are right. And I totally agree that bow or stern rake are very bad for crew and guns, maybe even for masts ( though I think demasting is too easy atm).

My understanding of sinking mechanics of a wooden ship is that either there are too many holes below the waterline or the seams between the planks open due to too many impacts on the planks.

When a ship is raked, the impacts are on the stern and the bow and everything in between, but not on parts vital for floating. The same should be considered for hits on the sides far above the waterline. 

If a ship recieves several deep hit at bow or stern it may sink, but not otherwise. Shots along the length of a ship might be more likely bouncing of the inner planking than destroying it  (because of the angle), so the structure won't be affected. 

 

[Dibbler (Retired)]

1 hour ago, Sea Archer said:

From the gaming point of view you are right. And I totally agree that bow or stern rake are very bad for crew and guns, maybe even for masts ( though I think demasting is too easy atm).

My understanding of sinking mechanics of a wooden ship is that either there are too many holes below the waterline or the seams between the planks open due to too many impacts on the planks.

When a ship is raked, the impacts are on the stern and the bow and everything in between, but not on parts vital for floating. The same should be considered for hits on the sides far above the waterline. 

If a ship recieves several deep hit at bow or stern it may sink, but not otherwise. Shots along the length of a ship might be more likely bouncing of the inner planking than destroying it  (because of the angle), so the structure won't be affected. 

 

 Enough fire from the stern or bow would take out internal support cross beams,  meaning that the support for sides/planking would be removed.  My best guess is that if enough of the  cross beam supports were destroyed it would cause sides to fold in on themselves or warp and split due to other pressures on hull from water pressure,  and the various weights/forces those cross beams aided in supporting.

  I can see what your saying but there would i think be valid reasons for catastrophic failure of the ships integrity if enough internal cross supports (17,14,19 in plan image) were taken out.

Edited March 18, 2019 by Dibbler

[Zlatkowar]

2 minutes ago, Sea Archer said:

When a ship is raked, the impacts are on the stern and the bow and everything in between, but not on parts vital for floating. The same should be considered for hits on the sides far above the waterline. 

If a ship recieves several deep hit at bow or stern it may sink, but not otherwise. Shots along the length of a ship might be more likely bouncing of the inner planking than destroying it  (because of the angle), so the structure won't be affected. 

OK I get the idea. I was about to say that I have a hard time visualizing how forces apply on a hull of this size and how damage would affect such structure, but I must say that the explanation above looks quite good. If the structure loses too much stability, then I can see how leaks could appear even without taking damage under the waterline.

[Angus MacDuff]

Forget the science.  You can't apply it to this game.  RL wooden ships wouldn't have sunk from all the "above the water line" damage we do.  They rarely sank from gunfire damage, ever.