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MagpieOAO

Practical Offline raid solutions: Buried booty and free ports!

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Apologies if some things are already planned or ingame.

Buried Treasure:

Players should be able to craft storage that can be buried to hide and protect it. The containers may also spawn randomly in the world as part of quests or random spawns. They all share a limited storage space and finite life-time (After which they will be destroyed and then the items despawn as normal) but the different levels have different features. Whenever you bury treasure, you will get a map marking its location and if you have a ship, it will log in a rough area where treasure was buried. Other players can check these logs and obtain these maps!

* The Stash

The humble stash is crafted with fiber and wood, has very limited space and can be buried, dug up by hand. It only "lives" for 72 hours (3 days) and once uncovered and looted it is destroyed. It looks like a wicker basket and is slightly exposed in the ground but blends in with the color of the sand. It cannot be locked and cannot be moved after having been buried. 

Randomly generated Stashes might have useful, basic materials.

* The Chest

A chest is crafted with fiber, wood and crude metal. It requires shoves to bury, and to dig up and can be locked. On crafting a chest, you also get a key along with the map (which others can loot!). A chest's "lifetime" is restored on unburying and moving it, meaning it can be used like normal storage and/or buried. But if it remains buried for a week it will break. Chests can be locked and unlocked with the key, but they can also be picked (with an item that has a chance to fail) or bash open, which has a % chance to destroy loot in the chest. If you fail the lockpick, your only chance is to bash or take it to a locksmith NPC who can open it. 

Randomly generated chests may contain weapons, gear, gold, gems and occasionally very high quality or magical gear.

The Trove

An ark of fiber, wood, refined metal and precious gems that requires multiple people with shovels to bury or to dig up. It cannot be picked or bashed open. A locksmith cannot open it, but on crafting it instead of getting one key, you get three keys all of which are required to open it. A locksmith can copy the keys, with time and resources if you bring them the Ark, but this is the only other way to open it aside from bringing the original keys. It has the best storage and will last for a month. If this chest sinks on a ship, it will glow from the ruins. 

Randomly generated Troves will often be guarded by great beasts or lead you on perilous quests to recover the keys. But if you can open them you will be awash in gold, gems and enchanted equipment. 

Freeports: 

Initially the world should have a few massive port cities scattered across the Isles where anyone can travel to for relative safety. Tortuga, Singapore, Port Royal should be hand-crafted NPC Cities that are patrolled by guards in the best equipment who will spawn at regular intervals if attacked. 

They will have various shops in which you can buy and sell goods and obtain services. Buy bundles of fiber so you don't have to spend time picking grass, or sell that excess amount of wood you picked up scouring the last few islands. Hire on NPC crew and buy weapons, ammunition and other supplies for your next adventure! Eventually, there may be more features, but for now it should function as a safe place and gathering hub. 

The main purpose of these ports aside from trade and services is that you can safely dock or store your ship here.

* Tying up in port

Tying up your ship in port will have it remain in that space, accessible by your crew and is intended for relatively short stays, charged by the hour. Anyone unauthorized who attempts to board, loot or damage your ship will be attacked by port security. If you commit a crime in town, your ship/org will be fined. If you can't pay the fine, your ship will be "ejected" from port and possibly attacked based on the severity of the crime (to prevent exploitation of the town defenses). 

As there will be a finite amount of spaces to tie up in port, it is intended to be very expensive to prevent people from taking up all spaces in port. Rafts cannot use the docking services. Only people with permissions can approve docking.

* Laying up your ship

Your ship will disappear from the dock for a modest fee and be stored with the dock-master, who charges a daily fee (As opposed to hourly) and can return your ship to the seas after a period of time. Both laying up and returning the ship is not instant, but takes maybe 5 to 10 minutes and has a cooldown to prevent exploitation. But if you and/or your crew are done adventuring for the day, you can lay up your ship in a free port to make it absolutely safe from plunder...after the 5 or 10 minutes of it being lain up after which it disappears into the inventory of the dock-master. 

Rafts can be lain up. Only people with proper permissions can approve this and again, it is not instantaneous. You cannot sail into port, talk to an NPC and your ship disappears in a matter of seconds. 

 

Few other bits:

For people who don't want to use ports, you should have an option with your NPC crewmen to "Chum the waters" which requires any form of meat or fish and "ticks" every few hours, taking another meat or fish. But this will constantly summon sea-predators that will circle your ship for fun with making people walk the plank but more importantly, to prevent saboteurs from avoiding any NPC's you have protecting your ship on top and within by trying to hack away at it from outside. 

Port city docks are always "Chummed" meaning there are always sharks among the docks to discourage people from trying to get clever.

 

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As there doesn't seem to be an "edit" button..

Another idea is to be able to "Chum" the area around a land-base as well. You can create a trough or give an NPC the command to leave out meat to lure predators. The predators around your base make it a less entertaining prospect for griefers...but also might give you a bit of hassle once you log back on and feel like leaving!

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Another bit that comes to mind: 

* Taverns 

If they don't exist already, players should be able to safely log out in a port city Tavern for a fee. They will despawn from the world on entering their room and logging out after a brief period. 

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I was preparing to post something very similar. I figured I'd post it here to further the discussion in a single thread.
I like your ideas for the chests and freeports.

I had the following thoughts that I think would play nicely with and extend these changes:

I'd like to be able to 'stash' my boat in the world (hide it using thatch and fiber netting).
This would require quite a bit of resources and would take some time (between 1 and 30 minutes depending on the size of the ship) to apply to and remove from the ship.
Larger ships would require larger netting and more time.

I'd like to be able to draw on my map in various colors and "Finalize" my map.
Finalize would craft a paper map that can be held to show what was drawn.

I'd like to be able to "Study" treasure maps and player maps.
Study would apply the drawings on a held map to my in-game map. I also like the idea of being able to redraw my own maps from memory within a week.
Perhaps treasure maps require the player to check several locations nearby with strange symbols known only to the map maker.

I'd like to be able to "Discover" hidden loot.
A new skill in the piracy would reveal hidden player loot and ships when observed with a spyglass.

I think these changes would give solo players & small groups without land a way to survive in very pirate-like fashion. It might also improve server performance by de-instancing hidden boats.

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I don't really care for the whole base building side of the game. I would love to see NPC ports and the docking features outlined here. If I could manage to go full pirate and exclusively use ships instead of bases I definitely would.

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