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SkyKevin

REMOVE NPC'S ON SWIVELS

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TLDR: Npc's on swivels are broken, disable them to be mounted onto swivels.

I've talked to a few people on this subject from different companies now and pretty much everyone agrees, please remove NPC's from being able to sit on swivels. Having a device that can be placed behind a doorway on a boat makes ship boarding difficult if not impossible. It's something that either needs to be policed as a bug (along with putting the captain's wheel inside a box) or taken out of the game.

The easiest way to fix this problem would simply be to not allow NPC's to man swivels. That way, you can still defend your ship but you need a player to jump on the swivel if someone boards your ship. I think it would at a much more interesting design to ships in consideration for where you might need a swivel placed to create a "kill box".

Additionally, it opens up a myriad of different ways in which you can attack a ship (especially with the new harpoon changes). I could get close to an enemy ship and have a few of my crewmates jump over to the other side to engage the enemy in swordplay on their deck, meanwhile its chaos as the captains are still fighting on the wheel to shoot cannonballs at eachother while the melee breaks out on either or both of the ships.

This would lead to a new meta when it comes to NPC's making them more useful for fighting. Now the CODE RED button actually would mean something as if someone jumps on your ship you may decide its time to get your cannoneers to focus on the problems on your deck. This also creates a new meta of actually arming your NPC's with gear and swords. Currently, people just put ncp's on stations without any kind of gear on to save weight. Instead people might keep an extra reserve of npc's with gear on board just in case someone manages to glide on to their ship. Even when it comes to giving your NPC's new stat upgrades it would make a huge difference between fighting a level 100 with a bunch of additional melee damage and an upgraded sword vs the current meta which is simply all npc's are leveled into health as they will never leave their station.

At the very least, npc's on swivels should be taken off of ships. I understand the intent especially for using them on another boat, but I think that it would make the game far more interesting and pirate-like to have people grappling over to your side to get in a scrum.

Lastly, I wanted to touch on swivels on the ground. This is more of an optional change as I don't want to take away from the main issue which is swivels on ships. In that same right, however, I think that swivels have no place on the ground being manned by NPC's either. When it comes to base defense you can use puckles, catapults, and harpoons for defenses. The reason I find this so irritating is that people are building large bases on top of pillars that even if you manage to climbing pick your way to the top, they have full swivel coverage that stops you from being able to actually do anything. At least with puckles you can tank a few hits and find a position to use your grenades. With swivels, it's 1 shot and you're done.

I''m open to any other input people may have regarding this, but I think it would make this game quite a lot better if we were to take NPC's off swivels and let players actually have some pirating fun. I hope the dev's see this as they don't often seem to care about posts on this forum. But hopefully someone will be able to catch their ear!

 

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I used to play PVP but got tired of the offline raiding, but want to know the npcs weakness while on swivels? a nice carbine head shot from afar outside their range :), I cant see them changing them at all and swivels that's what they are for is defense's think outside the box sit up high, like on a ships mast, or on a cliff edge and snipe them, that's what I did on pvp, when we used to attack, but like I said once offline protection comes into play I will be both playing PVP and PVE, not much fun in being offline raided. but I did defend a raid of 150 people with 6 others so 7vs150 and we won 🙂 cause we picked them off with sniping and mortars.

edit: also you need players to run mortars, and base defenses as well, so the npcs are stupid cheap to run in a big company. like I said above, think outside the box for dealing with the npcs.

Edited by Coldpaws

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Carbine's don't work on swivel NPC's anymore, they have to be melee'd or use grenades/canister shot. Additionally, people are able to hide NPC's in doorways that allow them to shoot out but not be shot or grenaded themselves.

Npc's already can sit on puckles/balista's/catapults for base defense.

There are ways to build a ship that is completely impervious to this sort of thing, you can't get up to someone's top mast with a grappling hook because you will simply be shot by a swivel on the way up. You can try to glide but it's very glitchy and unreliable.

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Removing npc swivels from ships would break ship combat. I spend a lot of time ship fighting and love most of all trying to board ships. Once we get a guy on their deck it is game over.  Sank 4 briggs vs 1 brigg at sea combat using only swords gliders and  1 cannon.     There are many ppl out there who dont have swivel defence or have a bad setup. And there are ways to remove npc from swivels, crossbow work against them. Grenades and flame ammo also.   It's part of the fun of ship combat.     If you want something that it broken try fighting a full mythical ship that strips all planks with 1 volley 😋

 

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22 hours ago, Daveroe said:

Removing npc swivels from ships would break ship combat. I spend a lot of time ship fighting and love most of all trying to board ships. Once we get a guy on their deck it is game over.  Sank 4 briggs vs 1 brigg at sea combat using only swords gliders and  1 cannon.     There are many ppl out there who dont have swivel defence or have a bad setup. And there are ways to remove npc from swivels, crossbow work against them. Grenades and flame ammo also.   It's part of the fun of ship combat.     If you want something that it broken try fighting a full mythical ship that strips all planks with 1 volley 😋

 

I don't think it's necessarily broken to be fighting someone on a ship with swords. Good job sinking 4 brigs with a sword and glider because that wouldn't happen if a ship had real swivels.
As to your other point, I haven't tried crossbows on NPC's which is interesting, but they make ships with swivels hidden behind doorways so you wouldn't be able to shoot them anyway (same as grenades). So how do you go about any kind of boarding meta when the only way to truly "board" a ship is to erase their entire deck with a boat?

I think your last statement is the perfect reason why boarding is necessary, If you're against a mythical gally, the best thing to do may be to board it and kill the captain/crew. Right now it's nearly impossible to do because the swivels can be hidden and cover every inch of the ship.

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Yeah if they are good ship builders and place swivels well it is difficult to board. Your right in the guys we sunk had rubbish swivel placement or missing NPCs on them.     The crossbow can be useful as if you find yourself on a deck looking at a swivel facing you, but out of range to nit shoot at you. You can take them out. A lot cheaper than grenades also.  And as long as you can see the npc, you can shoot him.  Also if you are a high lvl with lots of hp and good armor, maybe can tank 1 shot?   I just wish they would improve tha ability to capture ships.     

Wit regards to the mythical gally. They take a LONG time to gather all BPs and mats to build. So would be sad if a bunch of dudes could just take over it by boarding. And tbh gallis are quite easy to remove swivels because of the way you can stand on the sides if it and throw grenades over the top.  

 

I use the term "easy" quite loosely  😁

Edited by Daveroe

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Well they can make it difficult with walls/doors for now but devs have acknowledged that as an exploit, theyve already removed other forms of it, and also tell you dont place grills on your npcs either.  

But even if they do exploit have some grapple onto the side of the ship, crouch and throw several grenades at one of the deck swivels. If anyone goes up to try to replace pieces they'll die to grenades. Just have to keep blowing it up until it works. Or just like you said bust their deck with cannons, or sink em the old fashoned way. 

I think they should and will fix the exploit swivels, they shouldn't remove placing npcs on them though. Would be a boring job just manning a deck swivel the whole ship fight. 

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Yea losing a mythic galleon because a bunch of guys boarded you would suck, but at the same time, there's no reason you should ever have 1 guy manning an entire mythic galleon by himself. I stated in the original post, once this meta becomes a thing it actually means having player crew members ready to defend would become important and you can always lean on gearing up your ship npc's as well to fight on your behalf (thats the N key when your on the captains wheel).

I don't think you would have to man a swivel for someone your entire ship battle, just whenever you get boarded you might jump on one. I think it would also affect the way ships are built, you might make more straight hallways as a choke point for people to be easier to shoot.

I know that sinking ships using ships is obviously the main meta of the game and they're trying to fix the exploitable way, but they could just simply disable npc's on swivels (the same way they did in season 1 for horse and bear swivel carts) and it would fix everything and make the pvp once again more player-driven.

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Mostly it's just that if you cant have npcs on swivels anywhere that can be over run with zerg, would be. That includes harbors and parked ships. 

That's the biggest problem I see with it, could always change the idea to npcs wont shoot swivels on moving ships. 

With how the game is now though, anywhere theres ships could be easily taken by prepared players, and the meta will become, using glider suits off of schooners ,and there would be no point to blueprinted ships or anything bigger than schooners. 

One person boarding a ship can quickly disable it. I'm not saying boarding should be impossible, but it's a big big deal, and if you press n with fully geared npcs unfortunately all your going to see is a lot of npc death messages when they circular strike with sword, or crushing blow with the mace. 

Youd have to change more than just no npcs on swivels. 

Edited by Mike L

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Okay, I don't get the point of this post at all.  I'll admit that I am not a PvP player at all and have no interest in playing PvP, mostly because I find it heart-breaking to log in and see that my entire base was wiped out while I was offline or having to deal with aim-bots and meshers that have no interest in playing fair.

But this entire post isn't about someone cheating or fighting unfairly, it's about someone using a proper, viable, and even Lore friendly mechanic in a way to defend their stuff from you and you are calling Bull-shit?  Honestly, if anything you should HAVE to fight through the decks littered with armed crew-members and swivel gun placements to "take" a ship!  Not just blow the deck up and cause everything to demo that's attached to it.  A proper ship design should have the beds on the bottom deck and a labyrinth of defenses to get to them, because you are trying to take their stuff and they are trying to fight you off!  It should be MORE difficult to board and take a ship then it is to just cannon it and sink it, but the rewards are that you get a free ship if you manage it.

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2 hours ago, CoopedUp said:

Okay, I don't get the point of this post at all.  I'll admit that I am not a PvP player at all and have no interest in playing PvP, mostly because I find it heart-breaking to log in and see that my entire base was wiped out while I was offline or having to deal with aim-bots and meshers that have no interest in playing fair.

But this entire post isn't about someone cheating or fighting unfairly, it's about someone using a proper, viable, and even Lore friendly mechanic in a way to defend their stuff from you and you are calling Bull-shit?  Honestly, if anything you should HAVE to fight through the decks littered with armed crew-members and swivel gun placements to "take" a ship!  Not just blow the deck up and cause everything to demo that's attached to it.  A proper ship design should have the beds on the bottom deck and a labyrinth of defenses to get to them, because you are trying to take their stuff and they are trying to fight you off!  It should be MORE difficult to board and take a ship then it is to just cannon it and sink it, but the rewards are that you get a free ship if you manage it.

I'm sorry but the only "armed crew members" are a few swivels on the ship deck that insta 1 shot you when you jump on board. If you think it should be impossible to board a ship then you wouldn't want this changed. You also don't get a free ship if you board them, you actually have to have some way to sink it once you've boarded and the only way to do that is with another ship or cannon bear nearby. The claiming mechanic is a joke (8 hours for sloop - 3 days for galleon) so there's no way you would be able to actually capture the ship.

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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20 hours ago, Mike L said:

Mostly it's just that if you cant have npcs on swivels anywhere that can be over run with zerg, would be. That includes harbors and parked ships. 

That's the biggest problem I see with it, could always change the idea to npcs wont shoot swivels on moving ships. 

With how the game is now though, anywhere theres ships could be easily taken by prepared players, and the meta will become, using glider suits off of schooners ,and there would be no point to blueprinted ships or anything bigger than schooners. 

One person boarding a ship can quickly disable it. I'm not saying boarding should be impossible, but it's a big big deal, and if you press n with fully geared npcs unfortunately all your going to see is a lot of npc death messages when they circular strike with sword, or crushing blow with the mace. 

Youd have to change more than just no npcs on swivels. 

I agree you could change it so swivels won't work on moving ships, I just know that requires more coding and changes than simply hitting a "disable" button. I disagree about boarding though, Armored NPC's actually take a lot of sword strikes to kill, if you have 10 of them surrounding you in plate armor with swords in their hands in the small confines of a ship deck you will find they can last quite a while. I just think the meta hasn't really realized it because there's no need to put plate armor and weapons on all your npc's when you just have 1 naked npc on a swivel which 1 shots anything it sees.

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When they climb your ship and abuse you, is that good? Swiwels help they problem.

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I think what you guys are saying is that if you didn't have swivels to insta kill people on your ship, you would end up losing in a swordfight to higher skilled players. I don't see anything wrong with that.

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i dont know what was funnier, if the armored and armed npc thing, or  the i'm so fucking good with the sword that the only thing stopping me from taking over your unskilled pricks boats is your op swivels 🤣

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I think you're missing the point entirely, swivels need to be nerfed/taken off of boats. The fact that people rely so heavily on them to defend their boat when there are many other avenues is a clear example of that.

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13 hours ago, SkyKevin said:

I think you're missing the point entirely, swivels need to be nerfed/taken off of boats. The fact that people rely so heavily on them to defend their boat when there are many other avenues is a clear example of that.

ilustrate me, how can you defend an isolated place, with just 1-2 beds, with very limited gear, with limited crew, against a swarm of attackers if it's not with swivels? Because if you dont have other ships to help you, once you lost your main deck is game over, the chances of saving your ship are very slim. 

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Skykevin, you sound like you've not had to defend a harbor vs geared players yet. 

It's pretty difficult even with deck swivels and one person not putting deck swivels on their ship, will cause the sinking of everyone's ship in the harbor likely. 

They'll glider suit into the sails of ships and start killing all the npcs on the ships first. Then they'll grenade the puckles. Then they'll either bring out a few cannon tames, tame a cannon tame and use alloy from your ships, or just make tons of flame arrows and start sinking everything.

Ohh and I know your going to ask why they cant be killed and stopped, well that lies in gurilla warfare tactics, they can see where the stuff you care about is, you probably wont always know their position however, so it's not as simple as just shoot them. 

I've done both attacking and defending, attacking is usually as easy as, destroy something watch them all scramble for ya, and in the process they'll usually mess up so bad that they'll even destroy their own stuff trying to kill ya. Eg. They'll drive their ship into a harbor wall because they dont have sail npcs. 

It's a much better solution for players to learn to use bows, crossbows, throwing knives, and grenades as opposed to removing npcs on deck swivels. 

And on the topic of boarding ships with deck swivels on open waters, get up in your ships crows nest, spin up your grapple and have your captain ram their ship, get in their sails and you can board without getting touched by swivels. 

Edited by Mike L

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On 11/27/2019 at 2:26 PM, SkyKevin said:

 I disagree about boarding though, Armored NPC's actually take a lot of sword strikes to kill, if you have 10 of them surrounding you in plate armor with swords in their hands in the small confines of a ship deck you will find they can last quite a while. I just think the meta hasn't really realized it because there's no need to put plate armor and 

Also on that note, I'm an experienced player, and yep all 10 armored npcs would die in less than 10 seconds but if they managed to actually melee me once(they wont) I would grapple to the side of your ship jump off, ohh no there goes all your npcs after me into the water. Then I'd be back on the ship and youd have no npcs to defend with.  Also it's not that unlikely that they all jump ship for a fish or a dolphin as well, because pressing "N" changes them all to aggressive. 

Edited by Mike L

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On 11/28/2019 at 1:04 PM, znasser said:

i dont know what was funnier, if the armored and armed npc thing, or  the i'm so fucking good with the sword that the only thing stopping me from taking over your unskilled pricks boats is your op swivels 🤣

Thats exactly what this thread is about.
"im teh skilled one in here! the only thing that staahps me from being super1337 is swivooools!"

Imagine ship fight and boarding meta, if every player has to steer AND defend his ship on his own, without any help. He didnt even waste a single thought about that. Of course, the guy on the ship could bring other players to help him. But so does the attacker. Bring more players, kill swivels, profit.

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There is a fix for this and its very simple! You dont Belong here!!

theres this cirtine kind of server called a Player Vs Enviroment Server or as we say PVE. you can live happy here im told theirs Unicorns!

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