Would anyone else like them to stop working on SoD and make NPC Cargo ships instead?

[Warspectre 141]

I'd much rather be fighting "normal" ships, engaging a cargo ship and maybe some escort sailing ships, looting and/or claiming them. I have to admit it saddened me to see they're developing even more SoD instead of giving us real ships to fight. Maybe it's just me.

I know they don't have a full time AI programmer but even a janky normal ship would be preferable to me.  

[awakatanka 73]

They need to change sod to royal navy ships. Now they look out of place. They look like modern yacht, 500 years to early

[Viatical 1]

Especially if the escort ships broke off to fight you and the merchant tries to flee. I would enjoy something akin to what Archeage had with sunken ships you could loot cargo from and take to a vendor (a freeport in this case perhaps) for a decent amount of money. Of course if you had a larger ship you could hold more cargo since it was a slot based system instead of weight like Atlas. 

[Archsenex 309]

I see this more as them getting one type of enemy right, then they can make more.  The sotd are way too exploitable right now.  They need to fix them and then they can eventually add more types, or the only difference will be "when you attack a merchant the guns go on the front of your ship" rather than the current design of putting them on the back for sotd.

[Warspectre 141]

39 minutes ago, Archsenex said:

I see this more as them getting one type of enemy right, then they can make more.  The sotd are way too exploitable right now.  They need to fix them and then they can eventually add more types, or the only difference will be "when you attack a merchant the guns go on the front of your ship" rather than the current design of putting them on the back for sotd.

I don't really fault them for that, because it's tricky to balance. The lighter player ships aren't maneuverable enough to dodge and deliver broadsides and not tough enough to tank damage, unless you build an 'armored' version, which introduces its own trade-offs. So kiting is really the only strategy they can use effectively. Make the SoD faster and playing anything lighter than a galleon becomes potentially suicidal, and I feel like every ship type above a raft should have a viable role instead of merely being a stepping stone until you can build the next biggest ship. Maybe I'm alone in that thinking. 

They did say they were looking into making different plank types, like armored planks, and if they combined that with making gun ports more rewarding to use than the aft cannon doom stacks, they might lead players away from that. That said, they need fore and aft gun ports for ships, period. They had them IRL for a reason, which I think most players figured out pretty quick even if they weren't familiar with the idea. 

 

 

 

[Archsenex 309]

Just now, Warspectre said:

I don't really fault them for that, because it's tricky to balance. The lighter player ships aren't maneuverable enough to dodge and deliver broadsides and not tough enough to tank damage, unless you build an 'armored' version, which introduces its own trade-offs. So kiting is really the only strategy they can use effectively. Make the SoD faster and playing anything lighter than a galleon becomes potentially suicidal, and I feel like every ship type above a raft should have a viable role instead of merely being a stepping stone until you can build the next biggest ship. Maybe I'm alone in that thinking. 

They did say they were looking into making different plank types, like armored planks, and if they combined that with making gun ports more rewarding to use than the aft cannon doom stacks, they might lead players away from that. That said, they need fore and aft gun ports for ships, period. They had them IRL for a reason, which I think most players figured out pretty quick even if they weren't familiar with the idea. 

 

 

 

I'm hoping the squads will actually address this, in that a "squad" of 1-2 schooners of the damned are what schooners can fight.  If the "squad" has a brigantine and 3 schooners, your schooner should pass by, and leave that to a brig or gally.  

And I assume we can all aggree that it's ok if they never make Sloops able to keep taking them out, because that was silly and fun but should go.

 

My hope is that the squads will make it so that if your schooner with only rear cannons tries to kill a brigantine SOTD, the schooner SOTD will kill you before you finish it because they're as fast as you.

[Samstag Freitagsson 49]

2 hours ago, Warspectre said:

I'd much rather be fighting "normal" ships, engaging a cargo ship and maybe some escort sailing ships, looting and/or claiming them. I have to admit it saddened me to see they're developing even more SoD instead of giving us real ships to fight. Maybe it's just me.

I know they don't have a full time AI programmer but even a janky normal ship would be preferable to me.  

signed