Rage Boarding in PVE Hostilities

[Nzaire]

@admin Wanted to highlight a trend we’re seeing in PVE where, rather than fighting/sinking ships, other nations will equip all boarding and rage-board enemies.  We’ve tested in extraneous hostilities and can usually finish a boarding battle in 4 min 30 sec of done correctly. 

Not sure if this is the meta/trend we want to set for the game. Is sailing straight toward the enemy and ramming/boarding better for the game than actually fighting a battle. I feel Naval Action is beautiful when fighting and exchanging broadsides, extremely more so than just clicking options in a static boarding table. 

My suggestion would be to either make enemies in hostility buffed to prevent rage boarding or reduce the efficiency of boarding attacks/books. 

[Nixolai]

Why dont you just leak them? then they sink in less than 1 min.

Boarding is a option, they choose to do that, and you choose to fight them broadside to broadside.

Edited August 18, 2020 by Nixolai

[MAD Fr34k]

I also play on PvE and i dont like this trend too.

Hostility missions were a nice way of fighting in a group, and thats what i really like about Naval Action.
But as now the spped of the battles matter (which is ok) the meta changed extremely.
Cause now to win the hostilities you have to 1. board the enemy, as its the fastest way to beat the enemy and 2. take solo missions.
This causes 2 problems:

1. Naval Action is (at least for me) about seafights, so about sailing and firing you cannons and using your skill to beat the enemy.
   Boarding is a game mechanic, but its pretty "plain" as it requires not much skill and isnt much fun (imo).
   Hostility missions are a core mechanic of the game and yet after this meta change you do not win by using the nice sailing mechanic, cannon penetration and woods  etc. but just using the side mechanic of boarding.
2. As Boarding is now the new meta, youve got to board the enemy ship to win. To do so its the easiest way to start a mission alone and just ram into the enemy. So everybody is taking solo missions.
   That misses the point in my opinion, cause you participate in hostilities to win a port for your clan/group/nation. So as it is a group effort to take a port, it should also encourage to participate those missions as a group. It also takes away a big chunk of group fights, cause now the group fights go down to trinc fleets, port raids and port attacks/defences (which you wont get to participate, as youve got to win hostilities first).
   And there is also a big problem with all those solo-missions, as they got the same OW place they spawn. The issue is, when sailing for the mission, you need to click on the crossed swords, but because everyone is going in solo missions, the crossed swords are mostly overlayed by battles. So you cant join your mission.

My suggestion is also to buff the enemy against boarding (so it at least takes longer), make group missions give more points to the hostility counter (so it gives more points to battle 5 enemies at once, than 5 single ones).

And if the new meta is "the way to go" (which i wouldnt like) we really need much more hostility missions in OW (spread the crossed swords a bit) so you can actually join it, as i needed in hostilies to sail for a few missions to get the chance to get into one.

 

[Sea Archer]

On pvp server you can easily win the single ship kill missions via boarding, too. I wouldn't give the ai a general buff in boarding, I would like to see it depending on the damage of the ship. As long as the structure is above 50%, ai should get some buff ( maybe doubling his ability with structure at 100%, with a linear decrease down to 0 at 50% structure), below 50% structure we can use todays mechanic.