Patch 30: Combat and boarding feedback

[z4ys]

5 hours ago, Mr. Doran said:

If raking fire is able to sink a target then there is no disabling...

That means when raking fire cant sink ships (what you are advertising) then raking must be a disabling feature. I said raking in its current state is not a disabling feature (when it only has a dmg hardcap) and no other changes.  Player couldnt care less and sterntank again. There is no shock feature for raking which would make it a true disabling feature.

Edited March 4, 2019 by z4ys

[Mr. Doran]

1 minute ago, z4ys said:

That means when raking fire cant sink ships (what you are advertising) then raking must be a disabling feature. I said raking in its current state is not a disabling feature (when it only has a dmg hardcap) and no other changes.  Player couldnt care less and sterntank again. There is no shock feature for raking which would make it a true disabling feature.

We are saying the same thing man.... 

[HachiRoku]

2 hours ago, staun said:

Think we have 5 with thickness. Guess Kristmati, there can only be few left in the game. Elite french is good, but since they need book, I doubt it is on every ship.

If you put french, Pino and the navy on the ship. Think ships of same class still can penetrade mast in range of 150 yard, and would need around 8-9 hits. Is my math wrong?

If you have 3 mast mods stacked it's unlikely anything will penitrate with ships of equal class. When it comes to hits it also depends. 1st rates are 15+ hits with no mast mods and 5th rates 5-9 depending on caliber and size of 5th rates. I'm only certain about 1st rates atm because I have not tested dismasting on smaller ships yet. I'm really only concerned about hull penitrations atm. 

[Mr. Doran]

1 minute ago, Borch said:

We already tested in the game situations where raking was doing huge crew damage and masts shooting was most effective way to finish the battle. General conclusion was that it is not fun to be able to disable opponent in a fast way like that leaving him completely useless in a still going battle. Masts were buffed and rake crew damage lowered. Currently I don't know where are the devs going with that new damage model.

 

Alas, the problem with mast then was that you could, on most frigates for example, do some incredibly accurate mast sniping even at ranges exceeding 200 meters. The only skilled involved was being a sniper with single shot. If we had something like this as I suggested down here we could have demasting without it being cancerous levels of over-powered. 

5 hours ago, Mr. Doran said:

 

Demasting

Demasting values are still heavily out of balance. Let’s take Endymion for as an example. By default, an Endymion has 117 mast thickness. This is enough for a 24-pound long to demast its lower sections at over 250 meters away and an 18-pound medium at over 100meters away. With these kinds of ranges available to demast with demasting is absurdly unbalanced. The problem with the different balancing approaches summed up in the past is this, when demasting ranges for similar vessels are too far away it becomes too easy to demast but simultaneously when HP is too high it just becomes impractical to ever attempt to demast.

My proposal is, as it has been, is to bring the demasting range for vessels that should be able to demast each other down to the 50-meter range. Ironically, with Heavy Rig and the French Rig Refit an Endymion will have a mast thickness of 146 which will allow a 24-pound long to penetrate at only 50 meters. A thickness of 146 does not allow an 18-pound long to penetrate at 50 meters but it still would be a better start compared to being able to demast at a range of over 150 meters with the default thickness. When demasting ranges are brought to close range it increases the skill ceiling for demasting because it reduces the time opportunity window for when demasting fire can be done. Players with better control and timing with sailing will be the ones who are able to demast effectively. Since the range is so limited HP does not need to be unreasonably high on masts as well. Even the current HP of mast might be suitable to an appropriate level of difficulty if the demasting range were to be changed to 50 meters. 

The current situation with mods is total insanity. Thickness stacking out-scales penetration stacking. If there is to be any semblance of demasting balance you cannot have the option to make your self immune to demasting fire with the only exception being raking. The raking damage to mast helps but does not solve the problem. For equal vessels or greater vessels by time you manage to fall a mast purely through raking it is extremely likely that the target structure is already or about to be in sinking range. The total removal of mast HP and thickness mods along with a logical approach to balance is the only way forward for balance.

 

*note- It should be clarified that I do not think the demasting range should be universally 50 meters in the situation where there is a difference in rate and gun caliber. Larger ships should still be able to demast their smaller counterparts at longer ranges that they can demast them. 

 

[angriff]

1 hour ago, Angus MacDuff said:

Carronades are too strong due to pure weigh/area model and need to be adjusted. 

That does seem to be the case.  Suddenly they are hugely more destructive.  One hit taking masts down and on broadside removing the entire armor on an Agamemnon are some of the examples.  At least there is a wipe that will remove all the false combat medals that were given by people who found this out early.   It will not help the lost purple and gold ships in finding this out by my squaddies.

 

[angriff]

47 minutes ago, huliotkd said:

as example...

What a bunch of kids..  half of them hiding far away.  Wonder what ear damage was done hearing a 50 of them going off every 3 minutes but then when the other guy is trying to kill you then it does not matter how your ears are ringing nor would you be laughing.

[Cmdr RideZ]

1 hour ago, Mr. Doran said:

My very point is that when you can sink the enemy through raking it is over-powered and utterly defeats what the point of disabling fire is supposed to be about. In the current damage-model if you only rake you DO win and its how you are winning in which the problem lay. 

Rake hull damage is high, I admit.

High Rigging/Mast damage will never help to improve ganks that we have now. The same applies to raking.

There has to be ways to diminish damage, other than gear and I suppose repair kits go in the same category. Thickness is ok for hull, aligning yards is some kind of way for rigging. Gear is currently for masts which is a joke.  If there is no way to diminish damage then damage should not be high.

PvP combat model should be able to handle unbalanced fights, else we have what we have.  Gank Action.

[angriff]

6 minutes ago, Wraith said:

Maybe if you all had actually tried the testbed and/or listened to those of us who’ve been railing against the changes in various intensities you’d have known that’s exactly what would happen. 🙄

Well there is a perfect example of the insulting nature of this game's player nature of lowlifes. 

I got my 25 kills all against AI in the test bed but did not notice anything against AI.  After that grind my testing was in the trade mission models.   Maybe this happened when they audited the armor hit of 3 lb'rs . 

Edited March 4, 2019 by angriff

[Angus MacDuff]

3 minutes ago, Cmdr RideZ said:

There has to be ways to diminish damage, other than gear

Nerf accuracy

[Baptiste Gallouédec]

Maybe structure healthbar should more be like a "morale" bar, meaning if it don't take dmgs over some times it start to slowly gain back some hp, but if a ship see his middle bar reach zero hp, and not regain some hp via repairs, the ship surrender and is considered as captured.

 

Also i'd like to see carronades aim indicators (lead) removed to just keep the red bar for direction and elevation : less sniping.

While stabilized broadsides (all guns shooting at the same point as the 1st gun) could be removed for long and medium guns : making guns elevation locked to the ship movements as soon as a broadside is launched, making waves and full sails a factor of innacuracy

 

Edited March 4, 2019 by Baptiste Gallouédec

[z4ys]

2 minutes ago, Wraith said:

You’re seriously telling me that after 25 battles you didn’t once see sides melting off a lower gun weight ship as you were sinking them? Sigh.

You’re either being ignorant or obtuse just for the sake of grinding some axe towards people who actually test and think deeply about how these game changes interact with the systems it uses.

new dmg model got added later on testbed. If he did the 25kills early he never noticed the testbed change

[Angus MacDuff]

2 minutes ago, Lieste said:

Still all ignore that Carronades have the *same* line of metal range as guns, all designed to hit the aimpoint (or at least a dispersion area around it) at 700m or so.

What Carronades do poorly in is remaining pointed in anything approximating the correct direction when levelled or pointed by line of metal at intermediate ranges (taking a 9lb frigate gun as representative of an 'acceptable' degree of (fall under/shoot over) from alternatively level or line of metal shooting (point blank and pointe-en-blanc), then Carronades drop excessively outside of 250/275m and shoot over excessively inside 600/625m all pass their shot through the approximate aimpoint of the line of metal at 700m, then Carronades fall excessively by 775m and the gun by 850m

Beyond 850m would then be random fires only, with increasingly inaccurate pointing and range estimation.

This *does* make Carronades less useful in the normal battle range (around twice the maximum error in pointing), and with a considerable or considerably larger 'gap' in accurate 'simple' pointing compared to a gun. It also reduces the size of a 'beaten zone' around the line of metal range, making correct range estimation to hit with the 'set' elevation considerably more important/harder.

This *isn't* however the same as a Carronade having a shorter effective range of less than 100m, or being unable to throw shot to 400 m as some sources (cough Aubrey/Maturin books /cough) would suggest.

In fact, a choice of 400m range is about the worst case for accuracy of both guns and carronades (Carronades a bit shorter for worst case at 375m, guns a little longer at 410-450m). Levelled ordnance drops excessively, and elevated ordnance with sighting on line of metal is firing too high.

Nobody, should be hitting anything at 700m and even long guns should be lucky to hit at 400m.  If we are going to have accurate damage (which I like) we should also have accurate accuracy.  You cannot equate cannon fire accuracy on land with the accuracy achievable from a platform moving in 3 dimensions to a target moving in 3 dimensions.

[Mr. Doran]

17 minutes ago, Cmdr RideZ said:

Rake hull damage is high, I admit.

High Rigging/Mast damage will never help to improve ganks that we have now. The same applies to raking.

There has to be ways to diminish damage, other than gear and I suppose repair kits go in the same category. Thickness is ok for hull, aligning yards is some kind of way for rigging. Gear is currently for masts which is a joke.  If there is no way to diminish damage then damage should not be high.

PvP combat model should be able to handle unbalanced fights, else we have what we have.  Gank Action.

Even a perfect combat-model can only do so much in making unbalanced fights winnable; that is going to come down to fair ROE at the end of the day. What makes raking special when it is balanced correctly is that it acts as a force multiplier. If significant amounts of damage to crew, guns, and masts is allowed to be achieved through raking fire and not replenished a tool for skilled players is then created. Currently raking does act a force multiplier but not in the way it should be. As it stands now, through raking you achieve sinking not disabling; this is the false dichotomy I speak of. No matter if you target hull or rake you end up achieving the same result of sinking the target. 

[Cmdr RideZ]

46 minutes ago, Angus MacDuff said:

Nerf accuracy

Increase horizontal dispersion

[AeRoTR]

@Lieste people are talking about single shot mast sniping with balls, which is in fact a fantasy. Rigging damage is totaly a different thing. 

Reduce single shot horizontal accuracy.

 

[Cmdr RideZ]

27 minutes ago, Mr. Doran said:

Even a perfect combat-model can only do so much in making unbalanced fights winnable; that is going to come down to fair ROE at the end of the day. What makes raking special when it is balanced correctly is that it acts as a force multiplier. If significant amounts of damage to crew, guns, and masts is allowed to be achieved through raking fire and not replenished a tool for skilled players is then created. Currently raking does act a force multiplier but not in the way it should be. As it stands now, through raking you achieve sinking not disabling; this is the false dichotomy I speak of. No matter if you target hull or rake you end up achieving the same result of sinking the target. 

ROE is not the only tool but definitely a nice one.

Skilled player and raking. This is the same thing as with mast raking and sniping. At some point mast damage was set so high that everyone started to do it. Also information was passed for all that it is the meta by far. Suddenly all magic was gone and everyone was taking down masts. It took next to 0 skill to do it.

It takes much more skill to win by side hull bashing only than raking. How can you win a bigger ship? Use your nice tool for skilled players? I think this is ok when a smaller ship is fighting vs bigger ship. That tool is there to make you able to take down bigger ships but I don't like the idea to take ships of your own size. When taking down bigger ship you have to proof your skills at raking as well. Taking care from all fights by raking, not fun.

If you hull bash only, you are exchanging broadsides. I would bet that it takes much more skill to be able to constantly outsmart your enemy so that he fires a bad broadside and you get a good one. Still, at least in history there were players who were able to do this. Maybe most players did not understand that as a skill to achieve, eventually wanted some critical points to aim and click.

Ability to diminish damage with skill but high damage. Sounds fair?

No ability to diminish damage with skill but high damage. Sounds unfair?

Naval Action has been using the "Sounds unfair" option in pretty many cases.

[HachiRoku]

On 3/3/2019 at 3:39 PM, Zlatkowar said:

Before patch you could engage a larger ship and still win if you play correctly.

You know that was the problem. It was easier to kill a Bellona with a trinco than a connie because you had a higher turn rate and could rake a Bellona all day long. A connie could not rake a Bellona so in certain situations a smaller ship was more of an advantage. Of course if the Bellona was manned by a good player this would be impossible. I like the fact that ship of the lines can defend themselves against good players now. There is nothing worse than game mechanics that favor the elite over the casuals. 

In real life an amateur captain would smash the most experienced captain if he had a far bigger ship. In real life an amateur captain was a good sailor to be fair but larger ships must be better than smaller ships. There is no comparison between a 2nd rate and a 1st rate. Otherwise they would not have built 1st rates. 

[Mr. Doran]

14 minutes ago, Cmdr RideZ said:

ROE is not the only tool but definitely a nice one.

Skilled player and raking. This is the same thing as with mast raking and sniping. At some point mast damage was set so high that everyone started to do it. Also information was passed for all that it is the meta by far. Suddenly all magic was gone and everyone was taking down masts. It took next to 0 skill to do it.

It takes much more skill to win by side hull bashing only than raking. How can you win a bigger ship? Use your nice tool for skilled players? I think this is ok when a smaller ship is fighting vs bigger ship. That tool is there to make you able to take down bigger ships but I don't like the idea to take ships of your own size. When taking down bigger ship you have to proof your skills at raking as well. Taking care from all fights by raking, not fun.

If you hull bash only, you are exchanging broadsides. I would bet that it takes much more skill to be able to constantly outsmart your enemy so that he fires a bad broadside and you get a good one. Still, at least in history there were players who were able to do this. Maybe most players did not understand that as a skill to achieve, eventually wanted some critical points to aim and click.

Ability to diminish damage with skill but high damage. Sounds fair?

No ability to diminish damage with skill but high damage. Sounds unfair?

Naval Action has been using the "Sounds unfair" option in pretty many cases.

There is not much out-smarting to do in a practice that can basically be distilled into an algorithm. There is almost always an objectively best turn to make or time to fire when it comes to dealing and mitigating hull damage; the nuance is minimal at best. What balances out the potency of raking fire when it is actually deadly is the relative difficulty of doing it compared to hull bashing. It is much harder to fight for the position necessary to  perform a rake than it is to force a pass on the enemy's broadside. What is currently wrong with the damage model is that sinking is the inevitability no matter if you pick raking fire or hull bashing; this applying to both a difference in ship size and ships of the same size. 

[HachiRoku]

2 hours ago, Angus MacDuff said:

Nobody, should be hitting anything at 700m and even long guns should be lucky to hit at 400m.  If we are going to have accurate damage (which I like) we should also have accurate accuracy.  You cannot equate cannon fire accuracy on land with the accuracy achievable from a platform moving in 3 dimensions to a target moving in 3 dimensions.

Do you guys know how far 400m are? Long range fighting is dead since multiple repairs because even now you cannot out DPS the repair because angeling works extremely well at those distances and you can always just turn away and kite. Pvp distance is actually dictated by the range of chain. If you cannot slow your enemy down he will escape the second he knows he will loose. In my oppinion chain damage still drops of a tiny bit to fast. I would prefer the devs buff chain range a tiny bit and not buff long gun damage. 

[HachiRoku]

14 minutes ago, Wraith said:

So instead we just reinforce a mechanic that rewards those elite players even more by keeping them in first rates, when those casuals won't even be able to afford losing one let alone a few line ships a week?  

It's the interactions in the game systems that people are losing sight of when they focus entirely on the outcomes of a single battle.

The price of ship of the lines has nothing to do with this topic. I am extremely vocal about keeping 1st rates accessible to all but an elite player will always and has always been unbeatable in 1st rates because they're elite and because 1st rates are 1st rates... The current damage model favors the casual more because angles and repair meta are not as bad as they were. The old model was to forgivable and that goes both ways. The only bad thing about this patch is ai missions are harder but as admin said the k/d ratio of player to ai is 800:1 and that is absurd for any game. 

One last thing. Just cause ram dinark goes out and kills 10 noobs in a battle does not mean anything is wrong with the combat system. I have fought him and he is good but he sinks like the rest of us. It is not the games fault 10 complete idiots attack him 1 by 1 and basically give him marks. 

[HachiRoku]

1 minute ago, Wraith said:

How can you write those sentences back to back and not see the logical dissonance?  The cost is directly related to accessibility. If even an "above average" player is killing average players at rates even close to 2:1, and it takes those average players a week to recoup the loss with absolutely zero chance of competing against that elite or above average player even with numbers and gear on their side, because they are forced into lower gunned ships...

By removing the incentive for those above average players to sail frigates instead of line ships (because line ships were inherently more vulnerable if not supported by numbers themselves) then you've inherently destroyed any balance in ship choice outside of RvR contexts.

It doesn't take any foresight at all to see that those average players will be quitting rather than getting ROFL-stomped over and over in ships they can't afford to replace.

What do you want? Free ships for casuals? Elites not being able to attack noobs? There is nothing you can do to stop good players from being good. There were no mods in sea trials and the elite still smashed the casuals. Its nature. You have any idea about the attitude those casuals have? They want to turn on the game and just win without putting any tactical effort into the game. The extreme seal clubbing screenshots are mostly since angles and repairs were added to the game. What part of the new patch has given the elite more advantage over the casual? 

 

[HachiRoku]

12 minutes ago, Wraith said:

If even an "above average" player is killing average players at rates even close to 2:1

Show me a screenshot of "above average" players killing average players 2:1 and let me judge their skill myself please. 

[William Death]

2 hours ago, AeRoTR said:

@Lieste people are talking about single shot mast sniping with balls, which is in fact a fantasy. Rigging damage is totaly a different thing. 

Reduce single shot horizontal accuracy.

 

Single shot demasting in game is there to simulate the captain of the gun aiming it toward the rigging of the enemy ship, in the hopes of making a mast fall.

We don't have rigging damage in Naval Action.

We don't have gun crews aiming each individual cannon to do what the skipper has asked them to do "Gun crews, take down his masts!"

 

What we do have is ability to aim the guns ourselves and make them hit the mast (or hull, or stern, or...). Yes, single shot sniping of the masts didn't necessarily happen IRL as it does in game. But we don't have IRL mechanics in game to accurately represent demasting.

 

"Sniping" masts is as much a gameplay feature as "stern camping." Yeah its gamey and yeah it didn't happen that way IRL, but some sacrifices have to be made for gameplay.

 

Further thoughts on demasting.

50m is too close as @Mr. Doran suggests. Many ships can barely even pitch the shot into masts at 50m, even being downwind (think first rate vs first rate....superstructure is too high for the 42pdrs to hit).

Demasting was best when the largest caliber gun the ship carried could demast that ship at 250m without pen mods. I.E. Constitution demasts Constitution at 250m with long 24s.

Masts should all be high-HP and low(ish) thickness. All mast HP mods should affect HP, and they should be large buffs because 20% of mast HP is nothing...not even one cannonball, in some cases.

 

In short, just roll back to the old damage model that worked reasonably well, fix the repair meta spam by limiting to 1/1 reps as myself and several others have suggested, and focus on more pressing issues in NA. 

If we continue with this damage model, its going to take so much balancing and tuning that we're just going to end up having something very much like the old damage model, but HP and thickness and cannon pen values are all going to be higher...I'm not really sure what will be accomplished by this besides making battles shorter when one side has a significant advantage in broadside weight.

[Mr. Doran]

5 minutes ago, William Death said:

Single shot demasting in game is there to simulate the captain of the gun aiming it toward the rigging of the enemy ship, in the hopes of making a mast fall.

We don't have rigging damage in Naval Action.

We don't have gun crews aiming each individual cannon to do what the skipper has asked them to do "Gun crews, take down his masts!"

 

What we do have is ability to aim the guns ourselves and make them hit the mast (or hull, or stern, or...). Yes, single shot sniping of the masts didn't necessarily happen IRL as it does in game. But we don't have IRL mechanics in game to accurately represent demasting.

 

"Sniping" masts is as much a gameplay feature as "stern camping." Yeah its gamey and yeah it didn't happen that way IRL, but some sacrifices have to be made for gameplay.

 

Further thoughts on demasting.

50m is too close as @Mr. Doran suggests. Many ships can barely even pitch the shot into masts at 50m, even being downwind (think first rate vs first rate....superstructure is too high for the 42pdrs to hit).

Demasting was best when the largest caliber gun the ship carried could demast that ship at 250m without pen mods. I.E. Constitution demasts Constitution at 250m with long 24s.

Masts should all be high-HP and low(ish) thickness. All mast HP mods should affect HP, and they should be large buffs because 20% of mast HP is nothing...not even one cannonball, in some cases.

 

In short, just roll back to the old damage model that worked reasonably well, fix the repair meta spam by limiting to 1/1 reps as myself and several others have suggested, and focus on more pressing issues in NA. 

If we continue with this damage model, its going to take so much balancing and tuning that we're just going to end up having something very much like the old damage model, but HP and thickness and cannon pen values are all going to be higher...I'm not really sure what will be accomplished by this besides making battles shorter when one side has a significant advantage in broadside weight.

The lower the required pen range is the more difficult it is to perform regular fire at lower sections because it almost begins to exponentially decrease your firing window. It is a good point that third rates and higher may have trouble pitching up against a lower section at 50 meters so the tables could be adjusted accordingly for that and it would not negatively effect the balance against smaller vessels as third rates and larger should be able to demast fourth rates and lower fire considerably longer ranges than the other way around. But 250 meters just pisses away so much of the skill and fun in demasting because the firing window is so long and in some cases constant. It is much more common for all of your gun-deck to be in range of an enemy lower section at 250 meters during a battle than it is to be at 50 meters. 

[Cmdr RideZ]

1 hour ago, Mr. Doran said:

There is not much out-smarting to do in a practice that can basically be distilled into an algorithm. There is almost always an objectively best turn to make or time to fire when it comes to dealing and mitigating hull damage; the nuance is minimal at best. What balances out the potency of raking fire when it is actually deadly is the relative difficulty of doing it compared to hull bashing. It is much harder to fight for the position necessary to  perform a rake than it is to force a pass on the enemy's broadside. What is currently wrong with the damage model is that sinking is the inevitability no matter if you pick raking fire or hull bashing; this applying to both a difference in ship size and ships of the same size. 

I admit that rake hull damage is high.

Your pdf file was nice. I read it years ago when I started to play. I think that many read it. Some parts were explained in slightly too complex way. It can be that I did not understand all. You could make a youtube video from it, I am sure it would be helpful for many.

Two players following the same algorithm but one is still always better. I don't think it is as simple as an algorithm. Much to out-smart.