i love this game and pvp, but the offline raiding broke me finally after 740hours.

[hartsia 39]

just wanted to say bye and i hope everyone that enjoys the game keeps playing, i just cant rebuild and find materials and blue prints for the 10th time beeing offline wiped.+the crashes when ebteribg grids,spawning tresure maps, loosin ships and tames.

 

dont get me wrong im not whining, im an hardcore player 4 life.

 

Peace out. 

Edited January 30, 2020 by hartsia

[lordkhan4444 113]

lawless? yea tell me about it man I have lived on lawless since dec 2018 it can be tough but it is still the only fun way to play imo. tips on how to keep your stuff forever, underwater bases work pretty well, if that does not work build a raft in freeport lots of people are doing that now.

[Sheepshooter 120]

A raft?

You can solo a full base on a sloop, have running water and crops, and maintain three or four brigs if you like to with 15 min of work per day... but every day ( and a halve)... tames are pretty save too with a swivel for aggroed birds (ppl are that toxic)... breeding on a ship...

cheap in gold = no useless npc defense...

keep a shipyard in the next lawless with open boxes (it gets stolen anyway)...

in case you loose a ship... which you do only in combat or on holidays... so not very often...

also fun to read the lawless chat where everyone is complaining that everyone else is shooting up their stuff... 

[PeglegTheAngry 99]

1 hour ago, Sheepshooter said:

also fun to read the lawless chat where everyone is complaining that everyone else is shooting up their stuff... 

Its funny because islands are cheap AF and you can set up your timer so that you are always out on your ONE ship during war time so that nothing is at risk..

Go raid during war time Izi

[Sheepshooter 120]

Only if you play atleast 9hr/d and on time...

If not you swing the hatchet for some time... again... because your farming tames a dead also... again... to replace your ships and bases... again...

 

[Acemac 22]

740 hours is a good run you got a lot out of this game and it might be a good time to find another place to click buttons. 

[hartsia 39]

well after takibg 8 days break from the game. my clan members and me decided to give it another go. we merged with norsmen and will continue playing the game.  so it wasent a quit afterall,  Happy hunting!

 

[Polar Express 74]

8 hours ago, hartsia said:

well after takibg 8 days break from the game. my clan members and me decided to give it another go. we merged with norsmen and will continue playing the game.  so it wasent a quit afterall,  Happy hunting!

 

Good to hear. This game can be brutal.

Hopefully the devs look at ways to make it so we don’t have to live in atlas for a full working day, every fucking day to be able to progress and enjoy it. 

[HarrisJrld 0]

I mean, almost every game is made that way - if you want to stay competitive you have to play a lot...like, really a LOT. 

[Mike L 71]

Freeporting is the answer! I understand the game can take alot of time, honestly though, through Freeport breeding and gathering cargo tames at the Freeport, you can never lose your stuff, and you'll only have to log on to feed them once per week. 

Think about it!! You dont even need a ship, and you can make mythical equipment also breed really good horses, and you can pvp vs anyone without risking your stuff. (Other than what your using against them of coarse)

Edited February 11, 2020 by Mike L

[Dingiva 16]

On 2/11/2020 at 2:41 AM, Mike L said:

Freeporting is the answer! I understand the game can take alot of time, honestly though, through Freeport breeding and gathering cargo tames at the Freeport, you can never lose your stuff, and you'll only have to log on to feed them once per week. 

Think about it!! You dont even need a ship, and you can make mythical equipment also breed really good horses, and you can pvp vs anyone without risking your stuff. (Other than what your using against them of coarse)

If everybody did that, there wouldnt be any more PVP at all. Just because nobody wants to lose stuff. Do you really want a PVP game that way? Seriously.

[Sheepshooter 120]

There would be PVP... ship PVP... as in pirate game PVP...
You see the problem in ATLAS is not that you are reasonable safe in Freeport (you loose your ships ~36hr max and than your a stuck or have to go out again)...
The problem in ATLAS is that everywhere else your are unreasonable unsafe...

There is no way (and they are working on doing away of the very very few ways that somewhat work) to secure your stuff, not because you should not be able to, but because the game was broken more and more that you are unable to... game mechanic flaw is that you have NPC defenses that are useless (thank you Streamers and your Fanboy Devs that broke the game by "promoting" it with ever easier ways to raid the "extras")...
That problem is reinforced with the fact that thousand of hours of defensive building are useless against 30 mins of offensive BearCannon taming...

The cost to defend is so much higher than the cost to attack, especially while the defender is offline - which by the way is most of the time for most of the people playing games, which are not total NoLifes, but incidentally the people a game has to count on to be viable, because if no one but the few NoLifers play your game, you stop wasting time and money on it, which you will not make back anyway... so you don't service your game as much, you work less on updates and only drop the players a bone here and there, but there is no effort for progress of your RoadMap...

If this game would be viable from the start (which it basically was at least in PVP) more people would play it and therefore more would be worked on the game...
Right now the Season 3 is in the same death spiral as the last two... apart from the occasional player that just bought the game, people are only leaving (you will hear of wipes and rumors of wipes, again)... when they come to the point of realization that nothing is meaningful save (not even if they work hard for it)...

I find it sad that people are leaving/not coming into the game...
And it is always the sad same story why the leave...
They come into the game thinking it will be like any other game of the type, where you can only be safe if you work hard for it... sorry, that is not implemented in the game (yet?)...
So they leave, or they do the next human thing in such a case, they become the griefer themself that ruined their initial game play... only taming a cannon bear and destroying other people worthless stuff for no gain, but grieving... and that repeats itself all the way up to the Megas...

You know why in the real world not everyone gets robbed by their neighbors every day? Because we have defensive structures (lock at the door and safes) and we got people that protect our stuff while we are "offline" physically not protecting our stuff... that is how we progress as a community, having time to do other things in reasonable safety, because we have not sit on our eggs all day to protect them... because stealing from us is more difficult than not stealing from us... and even if you steal from us, we come back at you... only few will survive this, so only few even try it...

And by the way, if fortresses would not work when the general would go "offline" for the night... the WW1 would have been over in one day... just like in ATLAS... not...

So how to play this game - "as is" - form solo to Mega, from not so safe to almost safe:
- Pillar Base
- Underwater Base (only for stuff, not ships or tames)
- Freeport Warehouse/Tame Storage
- Freeport living

anything else is grieve waiting to happen...

[Gemini Five 41]

Watching twicth the other day... this guy just circles around an island sinking ships. No pvp, no other players, just sinking anchored ships. A bit later, taking out a gate or two, then back to sinking anchored ships. 

Just kept thinking... how is this PvP? The off-lining thing looks like a joke to me. Farm and build just to log on tomorrow and its gone... to do it again.

Now on the other hand, the ship vs ship fights look great.

[DocHolliday 366]

This is why I joined a company that can actually defend itself. 

[Mike L 71]

On 2/15/2020 at 8:45 PM, Dingiva said:

If everybody did that, there wouldnt be any more PVP at all. Just because nobody wants to lose stuff. Do you really want a PVP game that way? Seriously.

Actually due to the nature of the game if players werent constantly losing everything, including tames and the ability to farm resources quickly, youd see alot more online action and loot out there. 

Youd end up stockpiling enough extra stuff, that it wouldn't be a big deal someone stole your mythical equipment set, or sank your ship. With the games current design, you should have farming tames, and at least a little storage in the Freeport. No claim is completely safe, and if you can have the advantage of being able to get back on your feet at your nearest Freeport why wouldn't you use it? Think about it though, after you have so much prim gear that your Freeport tames cant even hold it, and several boosted sets, and extra boosted stuff, why wouldn't you use it??  Or you can have a claim where anytime a zerg company like SDC, or Blackhole hits you your completely wiped, or just any ole noob comming to raid on a day your company couldn't be online, it's all wiped. Hmm. Tough choice there huh? 

Btw even companies like SDC and blackhole, and all the big companies, store stuff in the Freeport.  Why would they do that? Gosh they know they can defend their claim perfectly with no one in the game being able to challenge it?? Obviously they know there stuff isn't completely safe either. 

Edited February 19, 2020 by Mike L

[Mike L 71]

8 hours ago, DocHolliday said:

This is why I joined a company that can actually defend itself. 

No such thing

[Chucksteak 279]

That's why I continue to say and advocate for 1 simple change. All ships should be safe while anchored anywhere, just like the claimed islands in peace time. Boom, all problems solved.

They obviously don't get how defending is mathematically completely lopsided compared to attacking.

So give us a god damn boat, that has a weight limit, to store SOME things that will still be there when we log back in. Most importantly, the damn boat itself.

[Sheepshooter 120]

@Chucksteak move to a Freeport, and get (almost) what you want...

[Chucksteak 279]

1 hour ago, Sheepshooter said:

@Chucksteak move to a Freeport, and get (almost) what you want...

With a reasonable amount of time for boat life I would consider it. However, if I had the ability to log in every 8 hours to service a free port boat, I would probably have the time to defend an island. I certainly wouldn't be working, sleeping and playing dad very well at that point.

No, I find my idea the best answer. I'd even disable porting to beds on anchored boats too. However, I try to keep in mind the dev's skill set and only suggest things they have already figured out how to do and are in the game.

[Sheepshooter 120]

It is 9hr * ship resistance

for a max of 35hr, 38min, 24sec...

[Chucksteak 279]

On 2/24/2020 at 1:13 PM, Sheepshooter said:

It is 9hr * ship resistance

for a max of 35hr, 38min, 24sec...

Is this your play style?

Every day, without fail, you log in and repair every plank. I have to assume you have a gally to even begin to justify the effort. That is a lot of planks, a lot of time, a lot of resources, every day. Even if you have your ship max leveled in resistance, witch you would have to do, you are only able to stay away for a few more hours. 

However you do get to keep a boat, no small feat. You also get to ignore the majority of the construction tree, freeing up points.

Everything has a cost associated with it that you have to accept though. 

After 2 weeks, I'm guessing, you will have used enough resources in repairs to have built another boat. Making it a lopsided math problem the longer you keep it. Basically, you could build a boat every so many days with the same effort.

Your boat is only ever going to be good at 1 thing, not breaking as fast in a free port, due to the forced resistance lvls.

The only thing you can do on your entire grid, is harvest basic mats. Or I suppose working on becoming a cat lady is also viable. With no base building, this would become dull real fast.

To do anything else, you must have the time set aside to sail to a destination and then back to the closest free port before you log out. Or worse, if you house your tames at a certain free port, back to that exact free port. All of this after you repair your boat of course. (I call this the "Can't Sail the Atlas" problem. Completely solved by making anchored boats safe everywhere like they are in peacetime on a claimed island. This allows you to always have a boat and....you know...sail the atlas.)

Although you can survive offline raiding, you cant survive a vacation or power outage or internet outage.

Personally, I cant maintain this play style. Too often am I got for more than a day. 

[Sheepshooter 120]

16 hours ago, Chucksteak said:

Is this your play style?

Currently, after 3 seasons very successfully building large-company un-raidable bases and harbors, yes... because at some point I would like to sail and not be land locked hiding in my bunker...

Quote

Every day, without fail, you log in and repair every plank. I have to assume you have a gally to even begin to justify the effort. That is a lot of planks, a lot of time, a lot of resources, every day. Even if you have your ship max leveled in resistance, witch you would have to do, you are only able to stay away for a few more hours. 

Every day without fail, one person will get online to do the 5 min repair, yes...
It is good to not be alone and/or have a notebook just barely running the game while traveling...
But if I fail to repair in time, well I lost all ships... at least I did not loose them on daily basis, and they are easy to replace and level...

Actually not yet use gallies...They require ~6,5x the resources to repair to repair than a brig.
A brig needs ~2600 wood before it starts sinking - that is like farming for a minute.
Actually brigs are better than schooner, as the are easier to repair, because the lower planks are not under the lowest deck, which makes it extra effort to make sure you hit every plank (you miss one plank it sinks...)

But I consider a gally, as it is so easy to get enough material and do the repair, and it would allow to park more tames safely (because tames on Freeport a subject to griefers).

And just to clarify "every day / a few more hours" is ~12 hours (at max resistance) after one day has passed.
If you want to level the ship differently (i.e. more damage, as anything else makes no sense for PVP) you can go 268% resistance for 24hrs.
Could even go lower, if you have enough people available (allies count) to repair say when the come first online for the day and again when you log out.
But as in PVP speed is everything and repair material are heavier than ammo for same amount of damage, the resistance gives better speed for the damage you give and take...

Quote

After 2 weeks, I'm guessing, you will have used enough resources in repairs to have built another boat. Making it a lopsided math problem the longer you keep it. Basically, you could build a boat every so many days with the same effort.

It is actually ~10 days at full resistance.
But consider this from your own mouth:

Quote

Ships are one time use. I usually keep mine un-assembled, and build one per use. Ill try to give it away before I log off. Someone will come by and sink it while I'm at work anyways, 100% of the time. Even though there's nothing on it and its not locked.

So while I "replace" a ship every 10days, you replace it daily, making your cost of having a ship 10x higher than mine...
Also my ships have high level (apart from resistance) and I can afford to use BP items.
And I can use my ship 5 mins after going online, while you have to first bash a tree with your bare hands, farm a full ship in resources, maybe tame new tames (which also always gets killed), then build the thing... and then - if you still have time - maybe go around with your ship until you loose it = going offline.

Quote

Your boat is only ever going to be good at 1 thing, not breaking as fast in a free port, due to the forced resistance lvls.

Is there a other thing for a PVP ship? Again Resistance is better than Damage in the Speed game.
I can see that an offline griefer could make more use of damage over resistance, but for me that would be a ship like you play it: build it for one day and forget about it.
But again consider that I can afford BP cannons with higher damage, so need less level in damage, but have higher level in resistance.

Quote

The only thing you can do on your entire grid, is harvest basic mats. Or I suppose working on becoming a cat lady is also viable. With no base building, this would become dull real fast.

You seem to have a misconception about material use...
First the shipyard cannot be in Freeport, so I build my ships in sectors with special resources.
Second common BP can be made with basic resources, so even if I make the planks in Freeport, I loose nothing over your common BP planks.
Third to get anything better than common BP stuff you have to go to other sectors to get the different types of special material you need. So you and I have to go out sailing to do that anyway.

And on the upside, after playing the base building game for so long and to the max, I find it dull to build for weeks and months for a perfected base with many people for thousands of player-hours and knowing that it will not work in the end, wasting all that time spend...

Quote

To do anything else, you must have the time set aside to sail to a destination and then back to the closest free port before you log out. Or worse, if you house your tames at a certain free port, back to that exact free port. All of this after you repair your boat of course. (I call this the "Can't Sail the Atlas" problem...

Lets see,
when I log in I do the less than 5 min repair and restock of the ship I want to use go out and do the sailing thing...

When you log in - in best case scenario with planks, etc. ready (which you still had to build before-hand taking time anyway) - you build a new ship for 30-60mins before you can go out and get the NPCs you need from a Freeport or slowly grind new ones by working the wheel, sails and one cannon (because obviously the old ones got killed with you ship and base again), so another 30-60mins for that...

So I can do my sailing thing for the better of 2 hours before you even get going...

Next: "have to go to Freeports"...
Well first of all I own 16 fully protected "islands" all over the map...
I also can use the same islands you could use for parking your ships, but with the same risk you have - as you say 100% you loose your ship...
Having allies that are at peace is helpful obviously, but highly risky still. Parking at unknown claimed islands at least risks loosing them to the owner...
And while your wasted your time building up a new ship in the beginning, I can "waste" a few minutes at the end of the day to get in Freeport, and have my ship ready to go and continue (not start again) my travels.

Obviously most of my stuff and tames is in one Freeport, preferable where I can breed my main tames and I have to return there, but that is what beds are for.
Also what is the difference in returning to my Freeport and you returning to your base island? Other than my stuff is still there while yours is griefed again...?!?!

So by your own description you "can't sail the Atlas" all the time, while I practically live on my ship and basically only sail all the time...

Quote

Although you can survive offline raiding, you cant survive a vacation or power outage or internet outage.

Some famous quotes for that:
"On a long enough timeline the survival rate for everyone drops to zero"
"There are levels of survival we are prepared to accept."

And what would happen to me really?
If I loose my ships in Freeport I would have to do the thing you do EVERY FREAKING DAY... make a new ship...
If I cannot get on for 10days my Tames can be claimed... 20days my shops despawn...
Put if I plan a long time of offline, I could park the ships at an ally island and hope for the best or recycle them right away. I could put my tames with allies or just hide them somewhere on an island, hopefully no one is looking. Could put stuff in a underwater FOB as everyone else giving me 30days (?) on the storage containers.

You see when I cannot maintain Freeport life, I can go back to your form of existence with the higher risks and take my chances...

Quote

Personally, I cant maintain this play style. Too often am I got for more than a day. 

Well, your problem, does not make my proposition invalid and still it would help you to "sail the atlas" in the times you can go online regularly... at least not waste your time every day not sailing the Atlas again...

Also this being an MMO, if you can find allies, maybe other people living in your Freeport, they can maintain your ships, so you can be offline for 10days before your tames get claimable. Your do the same thing for them...
Or find just one company member that is there when you are not and possibly maintain everything "for ever".

You are somewhat right that they have to do something to make ships fully save while offline, because it is killing the player-base otherwise...
But there are risk to that, like parking your FOB at your enemy island and he cannot do anything about it...
In the meantime - as the devs have abandoned the game -  there is this option to have your stuff offline protected if you play regularly...

[Chucksteak 279]

5 hours ago, Sheepshooter said:

 

A day and 12 hours, is day plus a few hours. It is not a substantial amount of time.

I do not need a boat every single play session. So I would not need to build a boat every day. Its part of what makes the single use boat efficient, I can forget about the boats when I don't need them. Also, I rarely gather mats. It is far to efficient to raid the island I'm on and take the planks, or at least convert the sunk ship parts into more planks on the spot. A box with hundreds of medium planks (ect.) is sooo much easier to steal than to farm. I can throw a schooner together in 10 min.

Even if we assume I start from scratch for some reason, I have a ramshackle sloop in 10 mins zooming away from a free port of my choice.

Ill let you know though, my tames and shitty decoy bases have survived just fine in lawless. In season 3 so far, I have lost no tames to griefers.

When I sail out, I can leave my boat where ever. There is no return trip necessary to save my investment. I assure you, that even IF you only spend 5 min a day maintaining (I'm sure its more than that on average), you are still spending a great deal of time getting back to a free port.

When I don't sail out, I can do things on my island without having to sail to it. Saving time.

Look, I like your concept, I just think its far too much effort for what you get in return. I am in the camp that we should all have our boats still there the next day. 

 

6 hours ago, Sheepshooter said:

You are somewhat right that they have to do something to make ships fully save while offline, because it is killing the player-base otherwise...
But there are risk to that, like parking your FOB at your enemy island and he cannot do anything about it...

I reject that as a real problem. There is a timer before you are fully anchored, once anchored it wouldn't be able to take or deal dmg. A boat can only hold "x" amount of weight. These alone make it a shit option for an FOB. However, it would be prudent to also disable beds on anchored boats in war time. It would also be prudent to reduce the number of boats per company. I cannot fathom why this has not been implemented, there is no real downside.

[Sheepshooter 120]

15 hours ago, Chucksteak said:

I am in the camp that we should all have our boats still there the next day. 

Well, I am in that camp for real, as I have my boats (as in plural, with BP items and leveled up ready to go) the next day already...

Also what do you think how long it takes to E hit 40 planks on a brig? A minute... while we have all the resources that we did not loose making new ships all the time...
Your time-game does not nearly count up to what we do...
Also yeah, I guess you will not build a new ship every day - I would be a little down too if my ship was gone again, not wanting to do it again right away... also you need to farm and or steal a new ship first, takes time... so no new ship today, but maybe tomorrow...
Lucky for you you still find prey with hundreds of planks lying around unprotected... cannot compare that to the BobAverage that mostly have halve a ship in a box normally...
Anyway, if you make just one ship once every 10 days your cost are the same as ours... But we have our ship usable for 10 days, you only for ONE online session...

And yeah, if I need to just go places without beds a Ramshackle from the nearest Freeport is the way to go... But if I need something bigger, I can go with a real ship and just park it in the SAME closest Freeport... and apart from jumping there once a day it can stay there until I need it somewhere else... because we can have more than one ship...

Quote

A boat can only hold "x" amount of weight. These alone make it a shit option for an FOB. However, it would be prudent to also disable beds on anchored boats in war time.

A boat can hold x amount of weight and y crew while under way (although a gally can hold 300 NPC easy with just one guy and his bucket - that is how we bought Puckel Crews in the 'good old days'...)
When it is fully anchored it can hold UNLIMITED crew and weight... just don't un-anchor it without your bucket...
If that thing is untouchable while anchored it can spawn and supply a raid indefinitely having lots of beds and unlimited (ninja farmed) resources = gear...

If you disable beds during war time, I hope you get back to your safely parked ship before your friends island goes into war time... otherwise you have to get to your ship by other means or have to wait till it gets into peace again... but you can use those Ramshackles from the nearest Freeport to get back to your ship and back going...
 

The best option would be that they make Freeports real ship safe zones (no decay timer, or maybe gold cost), just so that the average Bob finally understands how he should play the game as is (no save base for you, Bob! - but you can live on your ship for real)... and you stop complaining about having to go online every day, otherwise you would be back to you building a ship again every damn day...

Reducing ship number does not work, because every player can have one company each. And there is already a one ship per player limit enforced, as ships do not sail without at least one player on it..

Obviously, if the medium to mega companies would start living in Freeport like we do (which for them is even easier and gives more options) no one but you would be living anywhere else, getting raided by us Freeporters...
Would it break the game? maybe... like it broke EVE... not...
We would see alot more ship combat... because every ship out there has online players shooting back or running away... so no more offline raiding for ship planks for you...
Could it be crowded in Freeports... maybe... but as ships sink without repair and more ships need more repair, there will be a limit for each company on how many they want to repair... also if large company ships not get offlined, guess what, they will not have many spare ships floating around anyway...

And because of the shit show the game is, having fewer ship over all and no giant useless bases that already got raided anyway, the poor XBobs could finally get close to an island without lagging out...
 

A song for just for you and anyone else still playing in lawless:

 

[Polar Express 74]

I’ve been playing ark again recently. I will say one thing, atlas community can be bad. But ark kids are cooked AF.