Ship of the Damed spawwn and Targeting routines

[myrddinstarhawk 0]

it seems the SOD's are specifically targeted on Custom Ships that either have a lot of items on board or are customized to appear beyond the default, IE how many pieces are used in the design of the ship.  every time i have a lot of tems on board or are carrying cargo beyond 50% of the ships carrying capacity i am forced to run a gauntlet of SOD's up to 9 different ships continuously spawning one after the other. or i cross through a server wall to find myself sailing directly into the side of a ship in the middle of  a hurricane where its impossible to run or maneuver away. having the bad weather is bad enough but having 9 tornadoes all trying to sink me and the weather system following me across the map with 3 SOD's all shooting at me. the SOD's follow me across the server line and when crossing at a border having all 4 servers throwing up storms and SOD's on me at the same time.  

there needs to be some way for a single player in a sloop to travel the map without losing his ship and everything on board 70% of the time he sets sail.  i spend 3 days building a soow and equipping it to loos it the first time o cross a server line. or running a continuous gauntlet of ships that makes it impossible to get near land. how am i supposed to explore if i cant travel. 

The game need to make it so SOD's dont spawn new close to a server wall or within a minute of a border crossing unless its dragged there bye another player already in that zone. storm at sea need a cycle up time when crossing a server rather than instantly spawning on server crossing  or give some kind of indicator that a storm is on the other side of the server wall. ssomething like the red wall if the server is full but make it a dark grey. and show SOD's across server boundries  as a glow in the haze so players know when its semi safe to cross. 

i have fallen overboard during a storm while others on the ship sail away and seen the storm chasing the ship. storms should be an area event no a MOB that chases the ships so its possible to sail through a storm not have it chase you across the server. 

[Ged Bootstrap 0]

Yes the number of cyclones in one storm is not very realistic, but SOD after crossing the server are not that a problem, i take my sails to 50% and my cannons

are ready to fire if i sail thru the wall. After two times server timeout at crossing as i'm at the steeringweel and ones running into an island, i now cross without

anyone at the steeringweel. changing weather and daytime going to the next server is ugly but the game is still EA..

[uli 59]

not had anything sunk for a while but i do agree having to run a gauntlet of 6-10 sotd which all seem to spawn directly in my path is getting a bit tedious 

 

i understand we need some risk but i could live with less sotd spawning in front with the lower numbers maybe doing more damage to make up for the lower amounts of them ,then at least  if we do run too close to them and get sunk / take too much damage  it will our fault and. not just rng 

[George Catcher 367]

You know what's weird?

There were a lot of messages in forum, ppl were saying: "you go clear the area and there wont be that much of SotD's around".

Yesterday I was on my hunting raid, I devastated for like 15-20 SotD's near northern border of my island. And guess what? Today I sail there and immediately saw 7 more SotD's doing their purposeless circles. So I guess an idea of "clearing the area" don't work, right? Or I did something wrong? Or it's a 24/7 job? Or maybe they spawn in one day per week (the night from Tuesday to Wednesday for example?)

And one more thing. The first I started hunt them, it was fun. I started to gather blueprints. I got all green and then blue ones... so now, I just don't understand why I wanna fight low lvl SotD? They will give me some BP's I'll throw away right at the moment I've got them. Tiny amount of gold (I have like 5k in my ship and 10k on the ground). Some ammunition to a guns no one can even build in my company... So right now It's just totally waste of time and cannonballs... (and time it took me to create those cannonballs).

And yet - most of them are those low lvl around. For me it's like I kill 20-30 green ones, 5-6 yellow and 1 red... So there is just 3-4 high lvl blueprints per 30 SotD's and not necessary those BPs will be useful (Like I've got yesterday purple Swivel with 117% of damage (from red SotD 28 lvl). Yet I already have blue Swivel with 137% damage... and I've got like 3-4 purple Puckles - the gun no one can even build...)

Edited February 27, 2019 by George Catcher

[boomervoncannon 1,541]

Came to pretty much the same conclusion. Low levels not worth the ammo expense.

[bluelance 22]

14 hours ago, boomervoncannon said:

Came to pretty much the same conclusion. Low levels not worth the ammo expense.

Actually low level ones are usually the best for smaller groups, wifh the possibility of getting fines that seem to go up to 130% versus the horrifying masterworks makes the fines seem very good.

In all honesty I shoot all ships of the dammed, and there is never enough, recently even the power stone areas have none or almost none making it quite frustrating as I would ideally love a mastercraft or legendary blueprint which is actually good. I think my best was a journeyman medium cannon with just under 160% damage.

[gadefence 148]

Sloops are super slow.

Don't use them to travel.

[strawman 114]

they should remove ships of the damned entirely and come up with better NPC enemies. they make sailing expensive and frustrating... it was so much more fun the first few days when you could sail freely.

sloop speed should be buffed too, honestly. still the slowest ship, but not by a factor of 33% or 50%, whatever it is now. just a little slower than a brig

[gadefence 148]

Just now, strawman said:

they should remove ships of the damned entirely and come up with better NPC enemies. they make sailing expensive and frustrating... it was so much more fun the first few days when you could sail freely.

sloop speed should be buffed too, honestly. still the slowest ship, but not by a factor of 33% or 50%, whatever it is now. just a little slower than a brig

Sloop has no keel (depth when sailing) - you can nearly park it on the beach.

I'd rather they add the sloop as an alternative to the dingy in the dingy dock. Then it'd be big ships to sail there sloops to sail around the island.

[Bowtie 34]

19 hours ago, George Catcher said:

You know what's weird?

There were a lot of messages in forum, ppl were saying: "you go clear the area and there wont be that much of SotD's around".

Yesterday I was on my hunting raid, I devastated for like 15-20 SotD's near northern border of my island. And guess what? Today I sail there and immediately saw 7 more SotD's doing their purposeless circles. So I guess an idea of "clearing the area" don't work, right? Or I did something wrong? Or it's a 24/7 job? Or maybe they spawn in one day per week (the night from Tuesday to Wednesday for example?)

And one more thing. The first I started hunt them, it was fun. I started to gather blueprints. I got all green and then blue ones... so now, I just don't understand why I wanna fight low lvl SotD? They will give me some BP's I'll throw away right at the moment I've got them. Tiny amount of gold (I have like 5k in my ship and 10k on the ground). Some ammunition to a guns no one can even build in my company... So right now It's just totally waste of time and cannonballs... (and time it took me to create those cannonballs).

And yet - most of them are those low lvl around. For me it's like I kill 20-30 green ones, 5-6 yellow and 1 red... So there is just 3-4 high lvl blueprints per 30 SotD's and not necessary those BPs will be useful (Like I've got yesterday purple Swivel with 117% of damage (from red SotD 28 lvl). Yet I already have blue Swivel with 137% damage... and I've got like 3-4 purple Puckles - the gun no one can even build...)

Yup.

When ship level cap was raised, I made it my mission to clear my home sector of SODs. 37 SODs sunk and I called it quits. Circled the map a half hour later and the map was full again. Dozens of SODs. I couldn't quell the infestation.

[Buck Rider 63]

I'm guessing the SotD render so close because they don't yet have lowed LOD models to render farther out. If that is the case, they should have their glow render at a greater distance. I also think they need to pull them all away from the grid borders. Loading in on top of something that will sink you is just not good game play. Players should be able to see and react prior to aggro range.

[George Catcher 367]

Ok. So today was my first BIG RAID to hunt 30-35 sotds (I have just a default Brig so no extreme high lvl for me).

I remember ppl said here that there are tons of high lvl on GOLDEN AGEs. So I went there on G3. Here was my route in this region (orange line):

And guess how many SotD's I met there?

8!!!

There were 2 of them lvl-8, 6 of them lvl-10, and 2 of them lvl-22 There were peaceful and calm waters around. I never felt that safe and lonely (except freeports of course). So there was no point of searching SotD's around 30lvl there and I headed to Polar.

In next 20 minutes after I arrived at H1 - I easily found and (not so easily) killed 5 SotD's lvl 32-33-35-35-36... The last fight was against lvl-36 and lvl-22 together... and, yeah. This is my experience - BRIG CAN SURVIVE THIS! (Brig with 170% sturdiness and -40% sinking in captaining). I was heavy damaged, I lost my sail couple of planks and almost all ceilings in center. My raid was over and I carefully sailed back to base at I2:

And guess what? I had to avoid 3 whales and over 40 SotD from northern border at I2 to southern island... Don't forget I mentioned earlier - I was trying to clear my grid for 2 days in a row before... and yet, there were insane amount of SotDs. My gr8 neighbors was on help mission, they kited alot of SotD's from my route and they chat - they met 4 more whales... so it's just at least 7 whales and more then 40 SotD's around... just one part of a map. And yet - I met just 8 SotD's in extreme dangerous Golden Age.

I DONT UNDERSTAND ANYMORE how SotD's and Whales spawn works...

(I made it to my base safe).

p.s. - Didn't get any useful blueprints at all : )) It's like a mockery - masterworks ballista with 100% damage : ))

Edited February 28, 2019 by George Catcher