Give Us Real Character Development

[Bull Hull]

We are way beyond the time for the game to keep treating our player character identity as someone who can magically move from port to port instantly while every "skipper" we have is functionally identical unless we change our perks for a specific ship or mission.  We are way beyond the time for the game to keep treating our skill development as purely dependent upon the magical whims of the RNG gods.  We have gone far too long without the game providing our alter-ego character with an actual staff officer corps to whom we can delegate operations.  We have gone far too long without the game providing a decent RPG style of character development with which we develop skills through experience and the CHOICES we make rather than the pure dumb luck of the skill books we acquire.  The perk system has been a great appetizer that permits us to simulate having staff officers we can delegate functions to when we need to briefly focus on doing something, but that system is woefully inadequate.  To be bluntly and frankly honest, making skill development purely a function of the whims of the RNG gods and the books they whimsically choose to bestow upon us, unless we get lucky enough to stumble upon a book we want and need for sale in some port that we just happen to have luckily chosen to visit, is grossly unrealistic.  Some might even say that is a little dumb considering what is possible by following the examples of many RPGs.

What we need and should have by now is a character development system that treats our main character as the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) for a fleet who then has a staff of ships' captains to command our vessels for us.  What we need and should have is the freedom to CHOOSE what skills our main character has and what each ship's captain has by earning experience.  The pure luck of the skill book drop should a nice reward to speed up our choices, but not a substitute for real skill and character development.  Far too often this game feels like the developers have never played an RPG and so they don't have a clue how to empower us to CHOOSE how we develop our characters or skippers who command our ships.  What we need is/are the following:

- NPC Officers we can assign to some specific ships to command those ships, but not necessarily one for every ship. Maybe 1 NPC skipper/player-rank-level +1.  Through experience we could earn the choice to assign skills from skill trees so we can have skippers who are a master of a particular class of ship and/or style of fighting or be a jack of all styles.  This way we could have skippers who are competent at all sailing and fighting skills (at least as competent as we are) but specialists/masters in a particular skill branch, such as branches for: Boarding; Sailing; Gunnery; Carronade Gunnery; Mortar Gunnery; Survival.  While each skipper could eventually learn/select all skills with enough experience, we could choose to focus different skippers on different skills sets to use different ships for different tasks/missions.

- NPC staff officers earn their own experience and promotions and have their own skill sets.  All could command any ship smaller than their rank, but not a ship larger than their rank.  Specializing in a particular class or rating is another possibility.

- Naturally, each staff officer could also die (small chance when losing a ship they command) and then be replaceable.  So, not only would we have to choose which ships we are willing to risk losing, we would need to choose whether we are willing to risk losing specific skippers.

- Skills we can choose from a skill tree after we earn enough experience. These skill choices would be for both our main character who is the CNO and whichever NPC staff officer we assign to command a given ship.  This way, if a staff officer dies when a ship gets sunk, we the player character is not losing the skills that skipper had.  But just like real admirals we would have to train and develop any replacement staff officers to fill those specialist gaps when we lose a ship's captain.

- Making skill development almost entirely a function of experience and player choice would naturally mean skill books should become a treat that is more rare, but a pleasant treat none-the-less.

Finally, I have never been able to figure out why the developers seem to LOVE pure dumb luck and the whimsical benevolence of the RNG gods so much.  Skill development and crafting, things that should be purely a function of experience and player choice, still depend way too much on pure dumb luck; dumb luck that is tedious and frustrating at best.

Okay now, begin the brain storming because I have no doubt that more than few players are smart enough and objective enough to improve upon my foundational suggestion.  So please, turn my acorns into whatever is your favorite species of giant tree.  And yeah, I know not all trees grow from acorns.

 

Edited April 14, 2019 by Bull Hull

[LIONOFWALES]

Are you familiar with Tempest? This Pirate action RPG has an interesting skill building model for your own personal character... but you have to make choices to unlock certain things, once having done so, certain other perks are locked, and can not be used. Skill points are earned by sinking or capturing enemy ships. Once a said amount of experience is earned another perk may be purchased for that specific character. This could be applied to the "Officers" or "Captains" controlling the ships in a players fleet or on a players ship. As the player runs his/her ship and fights combat, the "Officers" on board the ship would would gain experience for being their. Win or lose.. if the "Officers" were their they would accrue points to eventually put twards special perks... 

The "Gunnery Sergeant" may have a perk that buffs reload speed.

The "First Officer" boosts moral and boosts crew transfer speeds.

The "Officer of the Watch" could bolster the readiness speed at the onset of combat.

The "Captains" for in the fleet could have a skill set model similar to the players... but is upgraded according to experience points.

And one more thing... make it so that if a player choses to surrender his ship before losing all his crew and such from a failed boarding, or from sinking to a worthy opponent, that the player that surrendered would not lose their officers. Otherwise the officers would be wounded and you would have to wait to use those specific officers  for 24 hours. We would need to have several of each officer type available to us as players to use in combat and upgrade with experience points earned in game by the "Officer" NPC being used.

These were my thoughts, I hope they are helpful.

Three cheers to the frigates and their gallant Captains!

 

 

[Beeekonda]

I need devs to implement the US Senate mechanics first so I can show off in my clan how many Senators did I sank

[Socialism]

I’ll take a working crafting system first

[Ligatorswe]

"because I have no doubt that more than few players are smart enough"...

I would have answered your post if you had written it in a more polite way.

Have a nice day Sir!

Edited April 13, 2019 by Ligatorswe

[Bull Hull]

12 hours ago, Ligatorswe said:

"because I have no doubt that more than few players are smart enough"...

I would have answered your post if you had written it in a more polite way.

Have a nice day Sir!

And your RATIONAL explanation for exactly how my comment is supposedly impolite is? ? ?

You do recognize and can realize/understand that I am complementing most players, right?

[Farrago]

On 4/12/2019 at 10:29 PM, Ligatorswe said:

"because I have no doubt that more than few players are smart enough"...

I would have answered your post if you had written it in a more polite way.

Have a nice day Sir!

Umm. That’s not impolite. Just the opposite: he’s saying there are smart players that can help flesh out his idea.

@Bull Hull I really wish we had a system similar to what you describe but at this stage, that’s an entirely new game mechanic that I doubt will get any development time for Naval Action 1.0. 

[van der Clam]

We had trainable officers once before, but rather than tweaking them, they were removed. I liked them and wish we'd have them back. I'm sure the coding is somewhere lost in a folder but available for reactivation.