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Captain Jack Shadow

Cannon balancing.

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Games are better when a meta does not take over the play style.  I've seen this for decades.  Sometimes it was because a cheat what developed that undid the balancing the Devs had so perfectly developed.  Sometimes, it's simply that the opportunity for a Meta build exists due to lack of balance.  This is what he have currently, which is not surprising due to this being EA.  This is where the balancing happens.

Presently, you see people using pretty much nothing but large cannons, and stacking them ridiculously on one end, or one side.  A few easy changes might end that.

On ships

Large cannons should have more total destructive force, and be the only cannon that can fire explosive barrels.  But, they should have a shorter range.  This is not against the laws of physics.  Larger cannon does not necessarily equal longer range, or more accuracy.  So for balance, the large cannons should have less range, and less accuracy.  One odd thing about their present balancing is that they do not require enough gun powder.  Hurling a larger cannon ball further, should cost exponentially more gun powder.  So keep it at present, would justify a shorter range.  Heavier cannon ball, not enough gun powder to hurl it as far as the medium cannon.  Create a Chain-shot round that works like bar shot, but also does a lot of damage to masts if you get a direct hit....very short range, and only shot out of the large cannons.

Medium cannon.  Should be the cannon to shoot bar shot.  Increase the range of bar shot, and cannon balls.  Increasing the range of bar shot in the medium cannon such that it is very long range, would make it, and the medium cannon, much more useful, and add depth to the game play.  The cannon balls should be longer ranged, but more importantly, more accurate, than the large cannon balls.  Can anyone tell me the advantage to spiked shot?  It has lower damage than a cannon ball, so what benefit is there to it's use?

Swivel Cannons...no change, though maybe allow more left-right range to their swivel so we can use less of them...equals one more way to improve server performance.

 

On land

Allow Large cannons to swivel like medium cannons, since you cannot steer the island left or right to aim them at enemy ships.  Would make defenses more viable.  Allow for longer range when place on stone...equal to medium cannons, but make this a special land shot that requires more gun powder to justify the longer range.  In effect, you are  buffing the ability to defend, which is important, since a weakness of this game, like ARK, is that defending is harder than attacking, and the defenders are normally undermanned, either due to not being able to choose the time of the attack, or the attacker being a larger company singling out a weaker company to attack.

Medium cannons would need no change over their shipboard counterpart.

Swivels, and Puckles...increase the swivel left to right to increase their effectiveness.  Decrease the cost of ammo.  Allow larger ammo stacks.  Takes a lot less room for their ammo, than cannonballs.

 

Side note.

Give us a shipping container that does not allow it to be opened on a ship.  This container would cut the weight of resources and items by 75%.  I understand that for balancing reasons, resources weigh too much, and cannons and cannon balls weigh too little.  The balance is required so that repair doesn't always win the war of attrition in a ship battle.  By having these shipping containers, the gathering and transport of cargo can be more viable, and I believe people would feel more encouraged to do more cargo carrying.  These would also make for better loot when sinking an enemy ship.  You can't open them and toss the resources on the ground, to avoid their capture.  Similar mechanics could be used for gold storage, treasure map storage, and BP storage, though these would need to allow some things to be removed with a cool down timer before more can be removed.

 

 

Edited by Captain Jack Shadow
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Good notes there, the cannons need something done for sure! 

Also I think it would help the large cannon meta end if boats were steal-able as well. 

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I do think that a ship at sea, unanchored, the crew killed, should be able to be stolen very quickly.  The piracy feat should make a huge...HUGE difference.  Steal in 15 minutes.  You board their ship, kill the crew, smash the beds...you should be able to steal the boat, very very quickly.

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On 3/8/2019 at 8:14 PM, Captain Jack Shadow said:


Large cannons should have more total destructive force, and be the only cannon that can fire explosive barrels.  But, they should have a shorter range.  This is not against the laws of physics. 

 

I see you are totally unhindered by the laws of physics in that case.  KE = (0.5 • m) • v²

Read http://www.rathcoombe.net/sci-tech/ballistics/myths.html and try again.

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On 3/9/2019 at 3:44 PM, MajorAvatar said:

I see you are totally unhindered by the laws of physics in that case.  KE = (0.5 • m) • v²

Read http://www.rathcoombe.net/sci-tech/ballistics/myths.html and try again.

Ya so large cannon ball with the same amount of gunpowder as a lighter ball, 

Would fire the heavier ball slower and not as far but would have close to the same kenetic energy. 

That equation doesnt prove OP is wrong. 

Larger ball would have slower velocity. 

Besides even if you reduced range on large cannons players would still stack them on one side of ship and sail closer for one shot planking on enemy ship, but reducing range and making them more suited for high wall defences would be a step in the right direction in my opinion. 

It would even be pretty cool to add in a new cannon, call it a long 9, and make it double the weight of a ship cannon, but it fires twice as far and is about 7-9 ft long, it could use ship cannon balls, or could make a new ammo that uses more gunpowder for it, takes twice as long to reload as well. 

Edited by Mike L
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On 3/9/2019 at 4:44 PM, MajorAvatar said:

I see you are totally unhindered by the laws of physics in that case.  KE = (0.5 • m) • v²

Read http://www.rathcoombe.net/sci-tech/ballistics/myths.html and try again.

You seem to be unaware that with many artillery pieces, size does not equal longer range, or flatter trajectory, i.e. muzzle velocity.  I think you need to take more physics classes.

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9 hours ago, Bullet Force said:

I bet he also doesn't realize a longer barrel will give more velocity. :classic_laugh:

You obviously didn't read my posts.  Dumb dumb.

Oh, and I bet you don't know that this is only one thing that CAN give more velocity.

I spent 20 years in the Navy working with weapons, but feel free to educate me, Sport.

Edited by Captain Jack Shadow

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22 hours ago, Captain Jack Shadow said:

 

I spent 20 years in the Navy working with weapons, but feel free to educate me, Sport.

 

I work since 1995 as a military weapon designer,  so I  design weapons for 24 years while you merely used them, now you again, Sport. I bet you never worked with old style muzzleloader cannons during your ' navy career ' did you?

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On 3/17/2019 at 7:32 AM, Bullet Force said:

I bet he also doesn't realize a longer barrel will give more velocity. :classic_laugh:

Who are you talking to? OP,  Majoravatar, or I? 

If it was me, I do realize that which is why I think a long barreled cannon is a good idea?

Anyways the game is far far from real physics anyways. 

I looked at how cannons used to be fired historically, apparently the best crew of the royal navy could fire 2 cannons in 5 minutes. 

We dont want realistic lol

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1 hour ago, MajorAvatar said:

I work since 1995 as a military weapon designer,  so I  design weapons for 24 years while you merely used them, now you again, Sport. I bet you never worked with old style muzzleloader cannons during your ' navy career ' did you?

Then you would know what I said was true.  Muzzle size, nor muzzle length, mean that muzzle velocity are higher.  The velocity CAN be higher, but this is not necessarily true. True or false?

Edited by Captain Jack Shadow

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2 hours ago, Mike L said:

Who are you talking to? OP,  Majoravatar, or I? 

If it was me, I do realize that which is why I think a long barreled cannon is a good idea?

Anyways the game is far far from real physics anyways. 

I looked at how cannons used to be fired historically, apparently the best crew of the royal navy could fire 2 cannons in 5 minutes. 

We dont want realistic lol

I was referring to the OP's abuse of the laws of physics.

Edited by Bullet Force

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1 hour ago, Captain Jack Shadow said:

Then you would know what I said was true.  Muzzle size, nor muzzle length, mean that muzzle velocity are higher.  The velocity CAN be higher, but this is not necessarily true. True or false?

really depends on amount and grain of powder and the mass of the round too but really... we are going there?

Edited by Enki Anunnaki

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1 minute ago, Enki Anunnaki said:

really depends on amount of powder too but really... we are going there?

The point was that a balancing suggestion was made, to have the large cannons do more damage, but be less accurate and or less range.  I was told that this was against the laws of physics.  No, it is not.

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For what it's worth Captain, the laws of physics mean nothing here anyways, I like your suggestion of balancing large cannons though, because after fighting lots of test brigs due to the 6x rates atm, I think the one that is best is a brig that only has about 18-24 large cannons on one side and that's it. With that you can do serious damage and possibly cripple any other ship you hit them with. 

That meta still needs some more rebalance, decks and sails dont need to be "one shot". 

Also the weapon that's best shouldn't also have the best range, that's just overkill. 

 

You could do the same setup with ship cannons but if your hit first coming into large cannon range, bye bye most of your cannons , and possibly a sail and your upper deck. 

They need to rebalance larges and do something about "ship armour".  Probably just need to make it so you cant build outside the ship deck. 

In any case, the meta, and the game just needs to be fun, I certainly dont want them to go with "physics" and limit ships to having two to three cannons that take minutes to fire each time, and almost the whole ship crew manning it. 

Cannons had to be counterbalanced on the ship with crew or sandbags and stuff and took extra crew to hold the rope or chain that kept the cannon in place, yeah that's just the beginning, screw physics lol, in no way do I think all that would be fun.

 

Edited by Mike L
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24 pound cannons on ships and 32&36 pounders on shore. Large cannons used a pulley type system to hoist them to the gun ports, they did not swivel.

Large cannons where too heavy and required more then a couple people to arm, fire them.

So without reading all the swivel gun cannon meta we have what and why would someone want swivel on large cannons for? to even more kill everything around them solo?

 

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Requiring two crew to operate a heavy cannon would go a long way towards balancing them. Especially as the options to increase ship resilience and damage come into play. Having to pump a lot of levels into crew means levels not going into other useful aspects.

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9 hours ago, Lifedragn said:

Requiring two crew to operate a heavy cannon would go a long way towards balancing them. Especially as the options to increase ship resilience and damage come into play. Having to pump a lot of levels into crew means levels not going into other useful aspects.

Then we should play Blackwake..

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16 hours ago, Sneakydude said:

Then we should play Blackwake..

If one vs. two people on a heavy cannon makes the difference between ATLAS and Blackwake, then maybe we should. But I suspect there is more to it than that. Please be more constructive when shooting things down so that actual discussion can happen. Do you feel that heavy cannons do not need further balancing? Do you believe that they do but that two crew per heavy cannon is the wrong solution?

 

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43 minutes ago, Lifedragn said:

If one vs. two people on a heavy cannon makes the difference between ATLAS and Blackwake, then maybe we should. But I suspect there is more to it than that. Please be more constructive when shooting things down so that actual discussion can happen. Do you feel that heavy cannons do not need further balancing? Do you believe that they do but that two crew per heavy cannon is the wrong solution?

 

I already posted the constructive things, above. Your asking for swivel large cannons and its a no. If your asking for 2 ppl to run cannons, its a no. We have not enough players willing to do the ship battles as it is. Spread thin to do their own things. Blackwake is a better example of a ship game, more organized, more involved with that whole cannon, repair, and it is pretty low on numbers. Its not based on your "own" crew its based on scrubs joining and that's why it failed.

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On 3/8/2019 at 2:14 PM, Captain Jack Shadow said:

Games are better when a meta does not take over the play style.  I've seen this for decades.  Sometimes it was because a cheat what developed that undid the balancing the Devs had so perfectly developed.  Sometimes, it's simply that the opportunity for a Meta build exists due to lack of balance.  This is what he have currently, which is not surprising due to this being EA.  This is where the balancing happens.

Presently, you see people using pretty much nothing but large cannons, and stacking them ridiculously on one end, or one side.  A few easy changes might end that. 

On ships

Large cannons should have more total destructive force, and be the only cannon that can fire explosive barrels.  But, they should have a shorter range.  This is not against the laws of physics.  Larger cannon does not necessarily equal longer range, or more accuracy.  So for balance, the large cannons should have less range, and less accuracy.  One odd thing about their present balancing is that they do not require enough gun powder.  Hurling a larger cannon ball further, should cost exponentially more gun powder.  So keep it at present, would justify a shorter range.  Heavier cannon ball, not enough gun powder to hurl it as far as the medium cannon.  Create a Chain-shot round that works like bar shot, but also does a lot of damage to masts if you get a direct hit....very short range, and only shot out of the large cannons.

Medium cannon.  Should be the cannon to shoot bar shot.  Increase the range of bar shot, and cannon balls.  Increasing the range of bar shot in the medium cannon such that it is very long range, would make it, and the medium cannon, much more useful, and add depth to the game play.  The cannon balls should be longer ranged, but more importantly, more accurate, than the large cannon balls.  Can anyone tell me the advantage to spiked shot?  It has lower damage than a cannon ball, so what benefit is there to it's use?

Swivel Cannons...no change, though maybe allow more left-right range to their swivel so we can use less of them...equals one more way to improve server performance. 

 

On land

Allow Large cannons to swivel like medium cannons, since you cannot steer the island left or right to aim them at enemy ships.  Would make defenses more viable.  Allow for longer range when place on stone...equal to medium cannons, but make this a special land shot that requires more gun powder to justify the longer range.  In effect, you are  buffing the ability to defend, which is important, since a weakness of this game, like ARK, is that defending is harder than attacking, and the defenders are normally undermanned, either due to not being able to choose the time of the attack, or the attacker being a larger company singling out a weaker company to attack.

Medium cannons would need no change over their shipboard counterpart.

Swivels, and Puckles...increase the swivel left to right to increase their effectiveness.  Decrease the cost of ammo.  Allow larger ammo stacks.  Takes a lot less room for their ammo, than cannonballs.

 

Side note.

Give us a shipping container that does not allow it to be opened on a ship.  This container would cut the weight of resources and items by 75%.  I understand that for balancing reasons, resources weigh too much, and cannons and cannon balls weigh too little.  The balance is required so that repair doesn't always win the war of attrition in a ship battle.  By having these shipping containers, the gathering and transport of cargo can be more viable, and I believe people would feel more encouraged to do more cargo carrying.  These would also make for better loot when sinking an enemy ship.  You can't open them and toss the resources on the ground, to avoid their capture.  Similar mechanics could be used for gold storage, treasure map storage, and BP storage, though these would need to allow some things to be removed with a cool down timer before more can be removed.

 

 

Can the devs hire this guy^^^^^^^^

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5 minutes ago, Congo said:

Can the devs hire this guy^^^^^^^^

Nope, large cannons do not swivel and for that we should fire him.

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