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Kappinski

Offline protection for Ships. Make it a gameplay element. Docks and Bollard

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People are still worried about their ships so here is an idea.

What we need:
- 1x claimed island
- 2x new structures
- 1x ship

The claimed island could be the island of any company with a good amount of gold in their bank (or flag?)
They will build a new structure, which also solves the need for a requested feature.

The Dock
I imagine docks like they are done at DarksideRP they have a mod for that but thats about the cosmetic part
So you have a dock structure that you can build and snap onto each other so we don't have to use wood structures.

The Bollard

This snaps to a dock and you can attach a ship to it. They could look fancy.
You can set a gold price per hour that a ship has to pay to stay attached to this structure. As long as a ship is attached to a bollard it is invincible no matter what phase the island is in. The gold is payed from the ships resource box. And the gold doesn't vanish into nowhere. The gold goes directly into the bank of the land owner.

The ship could be any ship. If it is a ship of the same company as the bollard it costs nothing. Or you can make some settings in your claim flag what enemies, allies and company members have to pay.

But why?

This is an easy way to make gold. Every single player wants to have its ship protected. As solo player or just a group of new players you could anchor in the harbor of another company. The ships would be invincible as long as they have gold.

This would give players who build their harbor a meaningful decision about how to build it. You can protect it with automated NPC cannons but then nobody that isn't part of your alliance can anchor there. So less gold for you. Or you make it open to everyone entirely and provide a safe option for traders and player shops. This would also lead to more gold on ships because they don't have to pay only the crew. And that could lead to more piracy in open waters. If you know a famous port where many players park their ships you could patrol this area.

The big advantage I see here is that if that works and players open their ports to others. You don't need a base on your own to protect your stuff. You could just play with your ship as a base.

Other thoughts

The question is whether the bollard and the dock it is attached to becomes invincible as well or not. Because you could destroy it. Does the effect for the ship still stay as it was? Just details 😄

Edited by Kappinski

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So you basically want to remove the risk of losing an anchored ship in PvP environment? I don't think it's a good idea, it would be totally exploitable. Imagine your enemy is sailing 5 grids to you, you just dock your ships for gold and you are out of danger. 

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37 minutes ago, Willard said:

So you basically want to remove the risk of losing an anchored ship in PvP environment? I don't think it's a good idea, it would be totally exploitable. Imagine your enemy is sailing 5 grids to you, you just dock your ships for gold and you are out of danger. 

Im not saying i like the idea because i don't, but, they can now dock in a well defended harbour and the consequence in most situations would be pretty much the same.

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2 hours ago, Willard said:

So you basically want to remove the risk of losing an anchored ship in PvP environment? I don't think it's a good idea, it would be totally exploitable. Imagine your enemy is sailing 5 grids to you, you just dock your ships for gold and you are out of danger. 

So. You're one of those people who like to destroy helpless ships while they're unattended and their owners are asleep or at work?

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2 minutes ago, user1 said:

So. You're one of those people who like to destroy helpless ships while they're unattended and their owners are asleep or at work?

i don't think he's saying that. The problem is always the same, a mechanic like that could be useful for solos in lawless or small companies that only cover a fraction of the wartime period and can't build/maintain a safe harbour. But in the case of bigger company or alliance warfare that could be highly exploitable and very disruptive, it is as simple as that.

 

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3 hours ago, user1 said:

So. You're one of those people who like to destroy helpless ships while they're unattended and their owners are asleep or at work?

No, thats not the point. The point is to provoke PvP players to come out with their ships if you come with your fleet. If you come and they will have a choice to simply dock their boats and they are not in a mood to fight, you can pack your ships and sail away again. And that would be really annoying. Sailing in this game takes too long to have this kind of protection. You could end up sailing somewhere for 2 hours just to figure out your enemies are not in a mood to fight.

You need to have a risk factor in a PvP game, otherwise it will be boring. 

Edited by Willard

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PvP is PvP you cant make it PvE, but still there should be some major fixes and major new changes in gameplay cause now its failure, its still to easy to raid.

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41 minutes ago, Willard said:

No, thats not the point. The point is to provoke PvP players to come out with their ships if you come with your fleet. If you come and they will have a choice to simply dock their boats and they are not in a mood to fight, you can pack your ships and sail away again. And that would be really annoying. Sailing in this game takes too long to have this kind of protection. You could end up sailing somewhere for 2 hours just to figure out your enemies are not in a mood to fight.

You need to have a risk factor in a PvP game, otherwise it will be boring

Interesting in that you identify the point but only see the attacker side of it. PvP needs agency ( " act independently and to make their own free choices. " ) based risks on all sides of the equation.

In your example, the attacking force had agency in the choice of what they were willing to risk in the fleet they decided to sail and how far they were going to sail. The defenders should also have this agency in choosing to engage or to not engage. This is a key aspect that is missing from the game mechanics right now. If the defenders choose to not engage it should create a blockade like situation (not in-game mechanic) but basically make it hard to impossible for the defenders to use their land/resources because attackers are there.

In most PvP games I've played, the effort to get a fight to happen is quite large. There are always feints, maneuvering, and out playing the opposing force to even get the engagement started.

If you want guaranteed action then you either need PvE content or the game needs to have a much lower bar for risk of loss to engage as the defender.

An example of that would be that any death or loss within a friendly claim flag area of effect is greatly reduced as a defender bonus (and an incentive to defend). Tames killed go into a recovery pen, players that die only drop 1 random or no items and can respawn with their entire kit (there already is a respawn time penalty), ships lost go into a recovery dock or their resources get dumped into claim flag, etc.

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1 hour ago, Vurmis said:

Interesting in that you identify the point but only see the attacker side of it. PvP needs agency ( " act independently and to make their own free choices. " ) based risks on all sides of the equation.

In your example, the attacking force had agency in the choice of what they were willing to risk in the fleet they decided to sail and how far they were going to sail. The defenders should also have this agency in choosing to engage or to not engage. This is a key aspect that is missing from the game mechanics right now. If the defenders choose to not engage it should create a blockade like situation (not in-game mechanic) but basically make it hard to impossible for the defenders to use their land/resources because attackers are there.

In most PvP games I've played, the effort to get a fight to happen is quite large. There are always feints, maneuvering, and out playing the opposing force to even get the engagement started.

 If you want guaranteed action then you either need PvE content or the game needs to have a much lower bar for risk of loss to engage as the defender.

 An example of that would be that any death or loss within a friendly claim flag area of effect is greatly reduced as a defender bonus (and an incentive to defend). Tames killed go into a recovery pen, players that die only drop 1 random or no items and can respawn with their entire kit (there already is a respawn time penalty), ships lost go into a recovery dock or their resources get dumped into claim flag, etc.

Defender should not have a choice IF he wants to defend when there is enemy at his gates. It would always end like "hmm, they are stronger than us, lets dock our ships, wave and smile". It would lead to situation when noone attacks because they don´t want to waste time sailing somewhere just to figure out defender doesn´t want to fight = death of PvP. 

Edited by Willard

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7 hours ago, Willard said:

No, thats not the point. The point is to provoke PvP players to come out with their ships if you come with your fleet. If you come and they will have a choice to simply dock their boats and they are not in a mood to fight, you can pack your ships and sail away again. And that would be really annoying. Sailing in this game takes too long to have this kind of protection. You could end up sailing somewhere for 2 hours just to figure out your enemies are not in a mood to fight.

You need to have a risk factor in a PvP game, otherwise it will be boring. 

I see your point and it's a good one 😄
But if a company is willing to sail out and seek someone to do ship battles than we can assume that other companies would do so as well and the situation you described would just be the "worst case" for ship vs ship combat.
But if the attacking company is there to attack the island it would be really stupid to not use your ships aka your first line of defense. So how would you know what the attacker wants? Do you know that they are coming to play battleships(c)? Very unlikely.
The situation you described is a bad case! no question about that. But I think it is still questionable whether this would happen most of the time. If I would want to attack an island for whatever reason I would be happy to see that they don't want to use their ships. (Of course the cannons wouldn't work if the ship is docked)

I think what @Vurmis said about agency is also true.

But here is another thing and I just want to invite you all to think a few steps further. Because you think very critical which is a good thing imo.

If we can bring solo/small groups  and bigger companies together and let them enjoy the same gameplay this game will succeed as an MMO. With only big groups it is just ARK with ships as often stated.
I see a big picture here where it is possible to start player built towns. Sail there, anchor safely and go to the marketplace do some trade get what you need. The bigger company is holding the city. The small sailor is doing some trade.
This is a romantic fantasy. This is what the trailer sold us in the beginning 😄 And I think it is what got a lot uf us playing this game in the first place. 

This idea is meant as an incentive for bigger companies to build a safe harbor for other people (because gold). And it is just a tiny step in that direction. It is not perfect but it might fit into a puzzle of other mechanics.

So how can we make this basic idea safe? How can we make sure it is not exploited by the defender?

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Move the docking system to Freeport.  Same concept of gold, except that paying the docking service costs a significant amount. Each hour you dock is the same amount of time that you go on cool down with a minimum cooldown 24 hrs with a maximum allotted docking time of 48 hours.  While docking, the ship takes no damage.

Its just a thought.

Edited by Eotech

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