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RavenRetired

Front/Rear cannon meta

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There is a fundamental problem with the rear/front stacked cannons on ships. A real ship outfitted this way would sink/flounder/hog(look it up if you dont know what hogging of a wooden ship is). Basically putting all the weight on a ships front/rear, made it unsailable, and or sink very fast. I understand this is a video game, and if they want to deny real life physics, they are more than welcome to. But the front/rear loaded meta has suppressed the naval combat, and made it frequently a game of who can kite who. By no means am i suggesting that war ships had NO front or rear cannons, typically the captains cabin was put in storage and a cannon was run out in its place. But this one was or maybe 3, with the other cannons being in the broadside. Similar with chase cannons. It was not for lack of desire to have more front cannons, it was the effect the weight had on the ship that prevented designs like we have seen in atlas. I have 2 solutions to radically change the naval meta.

1:Weight on the front/rear of ships has an effect, IE if not balanced the ship is 25%slower, or some type of system that addresses the unrealistic stacking of cannons on the front/rear of ships. To this end, side loaded ships with only cannon on one side should also be penalized, as this is also a ship that would not sail, or at least would not sail well. I am honestly open on this one, but SOMETHING needs to be done to address how the weight is balanced on a ship. 

2: Heavy cannons can only snap to LARGE gun ports, period. NO heavies on decks, and a galleons broadside would be what it should be, longer ranged, and harder hitting than the other classes of ships. 

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Not to be dismissive of your concern, but we've had several threads about this already.

I, too, want something done about this meta.  Not because of the logic/physics of it, but because this particular meta shits all over the point of gunports and fun naval battles.

 

But presenting your case (which is a worthy case to present) with physics kinda falls apart when you can build things in a way that would never work in real life.   Building a ceiling two placements out from the wall that doesn't even have a support structure to stop it from falling over?  Physics be damned!  But I do understand where you're coming from.

Edited by CazzT

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If physics is adressed please also have a look at the 1000 tile high sky ladders with 1 cannon on the top ceiling to shoot bases on a rock.

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12 hours ago, RavenRetired said:

There is a fundamental problem with the rear/front stacked cannons on ships. A real ship outfitted this way would sink/flounder/hog(look it up if you dont know what hogging of a wooden ship is). Basically putting all the weight on a ships front/rear, made it unsailable, and or sink very fast. I understand this is a video game, and if they want to deny real life physics, they are more than welcome to. But the front/rear loaded meta has suppressed the naval combat, and made it frequently a game of who can kite who. By no means am i suggesting that war ships had NO front or rear cannons, typically the captains cabin was put in storage and a cannon was run out in its place. But this one was or maybe 3, with the other cannons being in the broadside. Similar with chase cannons. It was not for lack of desire to have more front cannons, it was the effect the weight had on the ship that prevented designs like we have seen in atlas. I have 2 solutions to radically change the naval meta.

1:Weight on the front/rear of ships has an effect, IE if not balanced the ship is 25%slower, or some type of system that addresses the unrealistic stacking of cannons on the front/rear of ships. To this end, side loaded ships with only cannon on one side should also be penalized, as this is also a ship that would not sail, or at least would not sail well. I am honestly open on this one, but SOMETHING needs to be done to address how the weight is balanced on a ship. 

2: Heavy cannons can only snap to LARGE gun ports, period. NO heavies on decks, and a galleons broadside would be what it should be, longer ranged, and harder hitting than the other classes of ships. 

I mentioned this before in another thread, but I think the best approach is to incentivize using the gun ports more. Which, to their credit, Grapeshot has started to do by making gun port mounted cannons weigh less. I think they need to take some steps further though and add bonuses to things like RoF, range, and damage. 

I don't really like the idea of placing hard limits on players, and I'd prefer they didn't do that whenever it can be avoided. I would like to see the large cannons gun port mountable, too. I also would like to see fore and aft gun ports on ships. Just throwing that out there. 

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One problem is that they need to change the way large cannons have all the advantages, especially on a ship.  For instance, if you put large cannons on a ship, they have an advantage over cannons used in towers to defend anchored ships.  See, the captain of the ship can aim the large cannons, while the large cannons on a shore defense, will not aim side to side.  So the solution is to make medium cannons shoot further, while the large cannons would have more power at closer ranges.  As it is right now, the large cannons have too much advantage over shore based cannons, and an advantage over medium cannons.

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19 hours ago, RavenRetired said:

There is a fundamental problem with the rear/front stacked cannons on ships. A real ship outfitted this way would sink/flounder/hog(look it up if you dont know what hogging of a wooden ship is). Basically putting all the weight on a ships front/rear, made it unsailable, and or sink very fast. I understand this is a video game, and if they want to deny real life physics, they are more than welcome to. But the front/rear loaded meta has suppressed the naval combat, and made it frequently a game of who can kite who. By no means am i suggesting that war ships had NO front or rear cannons, typically the captains cabin was put in storage and a cannon was run out in its place. But this one was or maybe 3, with the other cannons being in the broadside. Similar with chase cannons. It was not for lack of desire to have more front cannons, it was the effect the weight had on the ship that prevented designs like we have seen in atlas. I have 2 solutions to radically change the naval meta.

1:Weight on the front/rear of ships has an effect, IE if not balanced the ship is 25%slower, or some type of system that addresses the unrealistic stacking of cannons on the front/rear of ships. To this end, side loaded ships with only cannon on one side should also be penalized, as this is also a ship that would not sail, or at least would not sail well. I am honestly open on this one, but SOMETHING needs to be done to address how the weight is balanced on a ship. 

2: Heavy cannons can only snap to LARGE gun ports, period. NO heavies on decks, and a galleons broadside would be what it should be, longer ranged, and harder hitting than the other classes of ships. 

There are other already-in-game mechanics that can and should be used to balance the use of heavy cannons.

1.  Give heavy cannons a wider foot print.  Right now you can set them right next to each other.  They are one ceiling wide.  Make them two ceilings wide so instead of one cannon per doorway you would have to alternate doorway-wall-doorway-wall.  Also restrict their placement above the deck.  You can place wheels only so far above the deck, same should go with cannons.

2.  Balance cannons.  Heavy should have a range and alpha damage advantage.  Though not as much of a range advantage as they have.  Cannons should have higher damage per minute.  Also see #3.

3.  Rework ship's weight.  Right now ship structures, planks, cannons, masts, decks, etc are too light.  They are their carry weight.  They should have two weights.  One weight for crafted items waiting to be placed and a placed weight.  Planks on a galleon shouldn't weigh less than 500 weight.  Decks probably should way 2-3k.  Heavy cannons should weight at least 1k, regular cannons should weight about 400.  That way you would be able to carry 5 regular cannons for the weight of 2 heavies.

4.  Sails.  There isn't currently a reason to run with anything but Speed Sails.  They need a little bit of a nerf when sailing into the wind and have poorer handling (turning).  (Mabye even require two crew for large speed sails). Weight sails need to be given the same ability to sail into the wind as Handling Sails.  Handling and Weight sails also need to do better in light wind.  This way a Speed Sail build would have an advantage with wind at it's back and Handling or a combo of handling and Weight would have very noticeable advantage sailing into the wind.

 

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11 hours ago, Slash78 said:

3.  Rework ship's weight.  Right now ship structures, planks, cannons, masts, decks, etc are too light.  They are their carry weight.  They should have two weights.  One weight for crafted items waiting to be placed and a placed weight.  Planks on a galleon shouldn't weigh less than 500 weight.  Decks probably should way 2-3k.  Heavy cannons should weight at least 1k, regular cannons should weight about 400.  That way you would be able to carry 5 regular cannons for the weight of 2 heavies.

A galleon would instantly sink, i mean 35k for the planks alone would sink the boat, you would never be able to carry spare planks either if that were the case.

Add the 52 regular cannons at 400 and your an additional 20.8k weight?

They shouldnt limit the creativity of the boats too much but they should change the mechanics involved in them, for instance the further an NPC is from an ammo box, the longer the reload time and increased stamina cost, i mean cmon an ammo box at the front shouldnt allow a cannon at the back to reload as quickly.

Large cannons shouldnt be able to be built on ceilings, either on a deck or a new type of structure which they can snap to.

Exposed structures on a boat should maybe have an additional durability penalty to help minimise the use of walls as shielding. I.e half the health fkr each additional structure added. So the first has 5k the second has 2.5k and the third has 1.25k and this would apply to cannons too. So if you have a half wall, and then a ceiling and then a large cannon. The half wall would be 5k the ceiling would be 2.5k and the large cannon would be 1.25k (i think they have 10k usually). This would make people come up with creative new designs but it would also limit turtle brigs effectiveness. We have a design which can easily soak up 4 broadsides from a galleon and take 0 damage on planks etc. Not entirely sure how but for some reason the damage is negligable.

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It's a game, not a simulation.  gamers will always find non conventional ways to do things.  they will game the game.

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4 hours ago, bluelance said:

A galleon would instantly sink, i mean 35k for the planks alone would sink the boat, you would never be able to carry spare planks either if that were the case.

Add the 52 regular cannons at 400 and your an additional 20.8k weight?

They shouldnt limit the creativity of the boats too much but they should change the mechanics involved in them, for instance the further an NPC is from an ammo box, the longer the reload time and increased stamina cost, i mean cmon an ammo box at the front shouldnt allow a cannon at the back to reload as quickly.

Large cannons shouldnt be able to be built on ceilings, either on a deck or a new type of structure which they can snap to.

Exposed structures on a boat should maybe have an additional durability penalty to help minimise the use of walls as shielding. I.e half the health fkr each additional structure added. So the first has 5k the second has 2.5k and the third has 1.25k and this would apply to cannons too. So if you have a half wall, and then a ceiling and then a large cannon. The half wall would be 5k the ceiling would be 2.5k and the large cannon would be 1.25k (i think they have 10k usually). This would make people come up with creative new designs but it would also limit turtle brigs effectiveness. We have a design which can easily soak up 4 broadsides from a galleon and take 0 damage on planks etc. Not entirely sure how but for some reason the damage is negligable.

They would have to rebalance the weight of ships.  They need to do this anyway.  Funny that you talk about not wanting to limit creativity, but then talk about not allowing people to place one item on another.  If a large cannon can't be placed on a ceiling, then how would a schooner ever have any?

2 minutes ago, TyGeR_STD said:

It's a game, not a simulation.  gamers will always find non conventional ways to do things.  they will game the game.

And game devs should change rules and modify the game to limit the worst excesses.  Which the devs haven't done yet.

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On 3/5/2019 at 12:57 AM, RavenRetired said:

There is a fundamental problem with the rear/front stacked cannons on ships. A real ship outfitted this way would sink/flounder/hog(look it up if you dont know what hogging of a wooden ship is). Basically putting all the weight on a ships front/rear, made it unsailable, and or sink very fast. I understand this is a video game, and if they want to deny real life physics, they are more than welcome to. But the front/rear loaded meta has suppressed the naval combat, and made it frequently a game of who can kite who. By no means am i suggesting that war ships had NO front or rear cannons, typically the captains cabin was put in storage and a cannon was run out in its place. But this one was or maybe 3, with the other cannons being in the broadside. Similar with chase cannons. It was not for lack of desire to have more front cannons, it was the effect the weight had on the ship that prevented designs like we have seen in atlas. I have 2 solutions to radically change the naval meta.

1:Weight on the front/rear of ships has an effect, IE if not balanced the ship is 25%slower, or some type of system that addresses the unrealistic stacking of cannons on the front/rear of ships. To this end, side loaded ships with only cannon on one side should also be penalized, as this is also a ship that would not sail, or at least would not sail well. I am honestly open on this one, but SOMETHING needs to be done to address how the weight is balanced on a ship. 

2: Heavy cannons can only snap to LARGE gun ports, period. NO heavies on decks, and a galleons broadside would be what it should be, longer ranged, and harder hitting than the other classes of ships. 

there are dragons and undeads in this game its fantasy so forward/rear canons work.

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I don't see the problem with this. We fought quite a few of them with our broadside large cannon designs and i don't feel like they are better. I see more problematic the range issue of ship cannons which basically make them useless for other ship than a galleon, or those multilayered wood roof designs. We'll see what happens with the new skills for ships anyway, that could singlehandedly change  the meta.

Edited by znasser

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23 hours ago, Slash78 said:

There are other already-in-game mechanics that can and should be used to balance the use of heavy cannons.

1.  Give heavy cannons a wider foot print.  Right now you can set them right next to each other.  They are one ceiling wide.  Make them two ceilings wide so instead of one cannon per doorway you would have to alternate doorway-wall-doorway-wall.  Also restrict their placement above the deck.  You can place wheels only so far above the deck, same should go with cannons.

2.  Balance cannons.  Heavy should have a range and alpha damage advantage.  Though not as much of a range advantage as they have.  Cannons should have higher damage per minute.  Also see #3.

3.  Rework ship's weight.  Right now ship structures, planks, cannons, masts, decks, etc are too light.  They are their carry weight.  They should have two weights.  One weight for crafted items waiting to be placed and a placed weight.  Planks on a galleon shouldn't weigh less than 500 weight.  Decks probably should way 2-3k.  Heavy cannons should weight at least 1k, regular cannons should weight about 400.  That way you would be able to carry 5 regular cannons for the weight of 2 heavies.

4.  Sails.  There isn't currently a reason to run with anything but Speed Sails.  They need a little bit of a nerf when sailing into the wind and have poorer handling (turning).  (Mabye even require two crew for large speed sails). Weight sails need to be given the same ability to sail into the wind as Handling Sails.  Handling and Weight sails also need to do better in light wind.  This way a Speed Sail build would have an advantage with wind at it's back and Handling or a combo of handling and Weight would have very noticeable advantage sailing into the wind.

 

I know your just spouting off numbers but your gally cant even move, 

500 x 72= 36000, just weight in planks.

Gally starts out 30k weight. 

I think they might need to double the weight of cannons, also double ship sinking speed(different issue), that's probably about it. 

The balance between large cannons and ship cannons isn't all that far off right now. The large builds can be pretty op, but at max distance unless the captain or a player aims it, it's almost always going to miss, usually allowing a gunport ship to get in range, especially if large cannon ship is heavier.

Edited by Mike L

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I think they should go something simpler, 

Ship cannons can only be placed on decks on stone structures or the damage the structure they are, so if your running  elevated cannons, you better be repairing what its on or it could to fall apart.   This would highly encourage placing in gun ports, it would not force it.

Large Cannon only can be placed on stone structures, while they can be placed on deck they will cause damage to the deck every shot, if placed on wood ceilings the damage wouid be significant every time you fire.   Like only get 5 or so shot on a large cannon before a common the wood structure collapses. where on a deck it make get a 100 or so shots.  These limitations should be on land as well, possibly allowing cannons to be placed on stone floors without damaging them (IMHO wood floors should be treated a stone)

Swivel cannons could be placed anywhere and balistas shoul get there own platform like a dinghy or diving platform.   where you can mount multiple on one side, but they should have a back and front version of the mount

 

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how about a gun carriage, snaps on stone ceilings and floors only. all kinds of weapons snap on it. it allows weapons to rotate 360 degrees and increases range by a few pecent, lets say 15 or 20.

and another one, a light gun carriage, snaps on gunports (where light cannons sanp now) allows rotation of around 100 degrees for all cannon types.

also, we allready have a front, left, right and back area of a ship defined. check your quickslots when mounting a helm. do the following: calc the mass of each part of the ship. then calc the difference of the lightest and heavyest part of the ship. reduce ship speed by this percentage.

im not sure reworking ships weight will do the game any good... if you increase ships weight to be realistic, you can transport HUGE amounts of cargo when the ship is unarmed. in fact the only thing that makes resources valuable is that you can transport only a very limited amount of each resource. if you can transport 100k metall in one trip, trading and logistics becomes a lot less important.

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Awesome, A healthy debate that has not devolved into rudness. I couldnt have asked for more, as im sure my suggestions are far from the best. Now lets hope the devs listen 🙂

 

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5 minutes ago, RavenRetired said:

Awesome, A healthy debate that has not devolved into rudness. I couldnt have asked for more, as im sure my suggestions are far from the best. Now lets hope the devs listen 🙂

 

Hope dies last

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On 3/6/2019 at 12:41 PM, Megalithic said:

there are dragons and undeads in this game its fantasy so forward/rear canons work.

+1 its a sandbox game, not everything has to be predefined.

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On 3/5/2019 at 1:57 PM, RavenRetired said:

There is a fundamental problem with the rear/front stacked cannons on ships. A real ship outfitted this way would sink/flounder/hog(look it up if you dont know what hogging of a wooden ship is). Basically putting all the weight on a ships front/rear, made it unsailable, and or sink very fast.

I'm not convinced. Are you a wooden ship builder? I'm not. Anyone here?
On https://www.historynet.com/early-naval-innovation-american-44-gun-frigates.htm
They are talking about 44 and 64 gun frigates. Yes These aren't Schooners but still. Extra thick wood beams? I mean very large wooden ships are possible. How did they handle the forces caused by such massive ships. Metal reinforcement?

And from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chase_gun

"From 1799 Royal Navy frigates were universally supplied with two bow and two stern chasers "

A ship designed for 4 front and back facing heavy cannons doesn't seem that implausible to me.
Maybe the sails could be moved more towards the center of the ship with the cannons located on the main desk facing forward and aft.

All that weight probably doesn't make them very fast.
Do atlas ships site lower in the water with the extra weight? do they go much slower when weighted down? Perhaps those mechanics need to be improved.

 

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6 hours ago, moozoo said:

I'm not convinced. Are you a wooden ship builder? I'm not. Anyone here?
On https://www.historynet.com/early-naval-innovation-american-44-gun-frigates.htm
They are talking about 44 and 64 gun frigates. Yes These aren't Schooners but still. Extra thick wood beams? I mean very large wooden ships are possible. How did they handle the forces caused by such massive ships. Metal reinforcement?

And from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chase_gun

"From 1799 Royal Navy frigates were universally supplied with two bow and two stern chasers "

A ship designed for 4 front and back facing heavy cannons doesn't seem that implausible to me.
Maybe the sails could be moved more towards the center of the ship with the cannons located on the main desk facing forward and aft.

All that weight probably doesn't make them very fast.
Do atlas ships site lower in the water with the extra weight? do they go much slower when weighted down? Perhaps those mechanics need to be improved.

 

You are dismissing his point by saying he lacks expertise when hogging is a well documented and not especially complex fact of wooden ship design. This is somewhat akin to asserting that only a trained electrician can tell you that sticking a fork in an electrical outlet will not go well. Yes two chaser cannons  might have been universally used in the Royal Navy but this fact can just as easily be used to support his point. Obviously if more firepower is better, why did these ships only have two chasers each?  The obvious answer given that ships routinely carried numerous cannons is that hogging was a major consideration and mounting more than two chasers increased this risk.

Atlas ships do go slower when weighted down but the degree to which weight affects speed is slight until the ship crosses around 60% of its maximum weight load and then the weight speed curve changes from linear progression to an exponential curve. I don’t think how they sit in the water changes but I wouldn’t bet the farm on it.

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Actually having read more about it. The reason ships broadsided each other was that the cannons of the day where really inaccurate.
You had to be right along side them in order to hit them.

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