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So the intensely problematic land claim system which forced a wipe to overhaul, the massive lag during launch month from official servers, the epidemic of player griefing and imbalanced combat systems which lead to weeks worth of effort and resources lost in minutes or while offline, the poorly designed economic mechanics in a game striving to emulate Eve, the lack of actual content, especially any content having any semblance of depth or lack of mind numbing repetition, none of these things or a dozen others mentioned more times than I can count...none of these things are Atlas’s downfall in your view? Instead it is something mundane that I’ve seen in every game I’ve played since 2004, hit and failure alike...players bickering? Interesting. Hi. My name is Boomer. Welcome to the internet. Things can get salty here.

Constructive Feedback is a tool that is used to build things up, not break things down. 1. If you can't think of a constructive purpose for giving feedback, don't give it at all. I commend the development team and management for their perseverance and dedication to getting it done right. It's a small team, they don't occupy a large warehouse floor and the project is exceptionally complex. Hats Off

i felt like it was pointless playing and farming resources outside these bonus periods i felt forced to play within these small windows of time and it made the game un-enjoyable last thing im going to say unless you improve the quality of life for brand new players in PvP servers the game will never grow without growth everyone suffers and the game dies i constantly see new players try out the game who end up quitting within the first 1-2 hours

Hello everyone, we recently did some test on the new Multi non-dedi and we were surprise how it is after some config change. First try : We kept every parameter as original, and see how far could everyone goes. The result is 450m Which is, to be fair, very low.. Here is some image to see how far it is : Here on a full grid : Second try : There is a parameter when you create a solo/non-dedi session, in general, named : Non-Dedicated Host Tether Distance. The value is set to 1, and the value is used to set how far you can go from host. On our second try we set it to 5.0 I have no image to describe, but it was better, 5x better, but.. meh... you'll be able to across an entire island, but not an entire grid. Third try : Let's go Boys and Girls, let's set that value to x25. And well.. that's awesome x) Even if as host I lost some performance (still better than official though), we could go almost everywhere. Here is first image to see how far you can go without being TP After that distance you will be TP to the host. But the real question is : Can I go to the farthest island ? We did some test on caculation, on H3, as it looks like on our very quick look, they have the farthest islands on eachothers. Here is the result on paper, we should be able to go everywhere we want : Real test : I am the little cross, my friend is on the bed. And no TP at all, or unespected move. Result : x25 seems enough, but you can possibly do more if you want. Though, the host active the grid where he's. Others members can't go on another grid if host isn't on this grid. If host change grid, other members and their boat will be TP near to host. Pretty happy how the non-dedi work. Their still is all the bug solo has Hope they get patch soon The non-dedi allow small groups (2 to 8 players) to play on the full map, as rent it cost really too much. Still waiting for ISO: Blackwood Hope this thread will help some people

You want Atlas Server Controller - it does the opening and closing of the servers independent of the client. If you have enough GB you should be able to keep a few grids open it is configurable for 1-9 grids and he has beta of newer version with multiplayer tracking with unlimited grids. Of course if you do not have a dedicated machine that means it is running on your gaming computer. Although it is not documented yet what the single player option is changing, so you will have to make your own fine tuning yourself using ini. It is not as resource efficient as single player though as it has no vector information where you are headed it by default has your current steam tracked server, its four neighbors and your home server open. You can manually track yourself though.

Single Player pauses because the server for your single player session also closes when you close the game. If you want to have a continuous SP session host a dedicated mode game on another computer that you can leave running to act as a private server.

I completely agree with you in regard to the wiping of bases. It's something entirely unnecessary that provides absolutely no benefit and has cost and continues to cost players and the game at large dearly. Edit: I should rephrase that. Wiping bases by itself isn't the issue, but being able to completely wipe out everything a player/company owns and resetting their progress essentially back to zero is absolutely an issue.

There is a lot of truth to this. The gaming industry has in the past few years seems to have come to the collective conclusion that it can have it's cake and eat it too by substituting Early Access, which people pay for, for the previous traditional system of open or closed beta, utilizing a combination of paid testers and volunteer players in a controlled environment. The wonders of turning a cost center into a profit center seemed to good to be true, but this post goes to the heart of the other side of the coin. If you are going to charge people for a product, their expectations are going to be higher than if you just let them play your in development game for free and give feedback. Games are largely a prisoner of their reputations, and in an age where player reviews, youtube reviews, and steam reviews have all become significant parts of that reputation, the developer that releases an early alpha stage game to EA and charges money for it is playing with fire to make a quick buck. If Atlas ultimately fails or does poorly, surely people will look back and say that one of the main reasons was the negative reputation it developed because of it's launch and first few months of chaos. If that turns out to be the case GrapeCard will end up looking penny wise and pound foolish for not having waited until later in development to release. The lesson on display to gamers atm is NOT ALL EARLY ACCESS GAMES ARE CREATED EQUAL. If you doubt this, go have a look at Satisfactory. It's EA, but you'd just about never know it. Feels like a finished game. And it's only half as old as Atlas.

EU PVE - The Whales Solitude... Grid B5 - Asgaards Bay at the flag. 14x Bears nonbred - 400g each. (2x 600g) (4x1000g) 10x Bears bred low - 30g a lvl 2x Elephants nonbred - 500g each 2x Giraf nonbred - 500g each 2x Rhino nonbred - 500g each 1x Wolf nonbred - 350g each 2x Horse nonbred - 350g each 1x Crab - 2000g each 5x Razortooth eggs 10k each (25-40) 200+ stam 10x Lions nonbred 500g each 10x Tigers nonbred 500g each Shops: Myth shipyard bp's. Armor bp's. Ironwood and Twigs DiscorD: https://discord.gg/WT7pEec

I sincerely hope the devs read this and take this to heart. I'm sure some will disagree but after talking to countless people and being in streams asking streamers and viewers alike why they stopped playing the same few answers keep coming up. The main answer being the devs went too “Ark” with Atlas. I think describing that would be an insult to peoples intelligence as there is a reason the recent 24 hour peak of Ark was 55,518 people and Atlas was 3,430 people. The reason people were so excited for Atlas originally was the idea of a survival based piracy game. Somehow that concept got morphed into a game with a fictional AI enemy (ghost ships), animals that are far too important when it comes to raiding and hostile animals such as crocodiles that are massive and pull from the experience. It seems much easier to just add the ships from Atlas to Ark to get that same affect. What people actually wanted from Atlas was a survival based piracy game without the Ark style creatures in it. Which is why Ark has more daily active users than Atlas by a long shot. What people want to see changed that will draw large numbers back: A game that doesn't feel like a job in terms of gold/food upkeep for AI. More AI enemies and different factions that are realistic to the lore of it i.e. AI pirates and a Royal Navy that is out trying to catch pirates (even the AI pirates) and if you are able to sink them they have loot on them such as weapons, armor, gold, supplies, etc. Add the possibility of the Royal Navy landing on your shores to kill/capture pirates. Maybe even a "reputation" with them that provokes more aggressive attacks the higher your reputation is. Essentially like a wanted system. Help relieve the pvp griefing when AI is also attacking people that are killing the AI navy. Have animals that are relevant and realistic i.e. cows, horses, parrots, monkeys etc. Limit the number of AI members for a company instead of the insane gold upkeep (which mostly only Megas can keep up with). Make it so it's expensive to recruit them and only takes food to upkeep them and limit it to 10-15 AI per person with a cap of 200 AI in a company or something to that affect. Anti griefing measures which most agree have been resolved already. Thank you for that btw!!! These are just a few of the major recommendations people had to help bring life back to the game and make it something they would enjoy again. For the life of me I can't wrap my mind around why the devs keep pushing Atlas closer and closer to Ark while watching the player base drop constantly to the point where I can hardly see it being profitable to keep trying to develop this game which means the game is literally dying. I would love to hear the devs reasoning for constantly taking this game down a road that clearly pushed over 55,000 people away from their game (all-time peak of 58,788 per steam). At a certain point there needs to be a realization that the current model/path for this game is not one that is conducive to a large player base. I agree with most people that “you might as well play Ark instead” at this point. Minus the stability issues this game is a goldmine if it just goes away from the Ark mentality. It's clear the devs did a great job at Ark because the daily peak is literally 16x higher than Atlas. The issue is people don't want Atlas to be Ark with ships and that is how the vast majority describe it. I beg the devs to take a serious look at what they are doing with the game and to take a serious look at what the community actually wants out of this game. Of course it is absolutely their decision how to develop the game and where to take it but it's those same decisions that are killing Atlas. I understand that this will most likely fall on deaf ears and will mostly get responses from trolls but at least I can say that I tried to help push the game in the right direction before watching it die.

The Building System in this game is terrible .. Floors do not stack as they should .. Should be whole floor block stacking on another .. not a half block Walls do Not turn the same direction .. even using the " Q " to rotate .. Just tried that .. one side of base walls are facing one direction and they Will Not turn the same direction on the other side .. even using the " Q " or going into fly mode to look from different . Roofs are about the only thing that is about right and workable. BUT >> Floors and Walls really need alot of work .. ( Have tried it Vanilla and Modded ) NOT Something to write home about. Also .. with the collision turned OFF .. it isn't great. ( seen better in game that just out and building is a main topic in the game for Many players .. especially in SP ) Just a few thoughts

Other than a single meme almost every top post there is player drama. If a post is not player drama it turns into player drama. There is a video post from someone who discovered bears wont whistle off of a Cyclops; the comments turned it into player drama about the player taking a bear into a powerstone; or flat out wrong comments about the game in general. Let's also not mention the bigotry, and the fact the sub is mostly used to shit on the game. Honestly, if I were to blame anything for the lack of players recently, its that shit.

More ships. Like you would expect, you know, for a Pirate game. Actual use for Crew instead of adding a Zoo of tames. Fixing the claim system. Fixing the "endgame" content.

The choice is yours, The one important factor to keep in mind is "Ammo" Arrows are cheap and work well early game. Fire arrow's "nerfed" dont bother imo. However they have the usage of igniting Oil Jars which are critical for Ice Cave. Blunderbuss is Point Blank Raw Powa - Shotgun style... again ammo requires gunpowder, then you have the well rounded Xbow good for underwater, above water, 6 round clip, Mid Range and decent damage - Ammo needing a good amount of metal. Next update we are expecting a 6 round clip pistol. So skill up, to your play style. However I can say for certain, once you acquire a decent Tame, odds are you wont be wielding any weapon.

I think the game is missing a real reason to play it....

Thx for the kind words. We hope to see you again.

I think having it as a very rare chance-spawn when you have lots of people/npcs in the water is a smart way to go. Have it be like the blue whale, where it runs from you but it's "injured" so it's swim bladder wont let it go down very far or something.

The forums have a lot of issues with spam advertisements in Chinese and Korean. This is an anti spam measure, hence it isn’t openly advertised. Thankfully one doesn’t need to cope with it long, as you’ve discovered.

Atlas isn't dead, It has issue's and the Dev's are clearly working on them the best they can. They read our posts, take our input and move forward the best they can. Tweaks are coming the game is EA - The potential is still huge, once everything gets locked down, worked out, and re-mastered. Then they can market the Re-Launch of Atlas 2.0. Till then those of us who remain loyal, will continue to provide support, our input, and the game will get better. All good things take time. Now if they could fix the darn problem with "enemy foundation" to close I'd be a happy camper.. It kills my OCD when i cannot complete a project. lol

Fire arrow are good against packs, and alpha. But not to good against 1 or 2 basic. Though, all weapons are good. While with a bow you will be able to kill many creatures, even with miss. A pistol will allow you to one shot a lion/tiger/wolf easy (aim the head). So with a double pistol you will be able to kill 2 lvl 30 lion without being touch. A carbine will allow you to shoot very far and kill cobra. Crossbow is fun though, like a winchester but with arrow. But range is very low

If you're on the same boat, it will do as on basic server

Look at my post count. It goes away. (Honestly didn’t know it existed.)

Thanks!! ok that's what I thought.. and funny enough, just as I posted this thread, my limit has been removed lol

Yup, you need to be more active/old to post more That is to prevent spam

Yup, on our first test yesturday we didn't know either. And we were kinda disapointed ^^ Then I saw someone on the Steam forum saying we are able to modify the tether. So we did further test, and this is so better. Only few people know that we can actually change the value, that's why I made this post This simple value change everything imo

I just wanted to say I really appreciate you testing this out and posting about it. I just assumed the tether distance was a hard limit and thought I was stuck with going online for our small group. It's great to know the tether distance can be altered.

Are you sure this crashstacks are for this bug, you might have old crashes in the folder you are sending. Clean out the folder and this crash saves nothing there.

You mean the 50,000 people that left? A TON of people bought the game for pirates. I'd say a majority of the players who never played Ark or even realized it was the same studio did so for that reason. The Ark fanboys keep thinking Ark is the reason people bought the game, while a great many of the people I personally played with bought it because they saw "Pirates" "Survival sandbox". The game was marketed as a naval-based survival game full of pirates. Tames and such were hardly covered in the initial press releases that were shown literally days before the initial EA release when the vast majority of copies were purchased. Naivety to the fact that people wanted a pirate game does not change the fact that people wanted a pirate game.

Fire arrows were nerfed a while back, still ok in pvp but not great againts wilds. I highly recommend the crossbow for killing animals like lions, tigers etc.

This... It is not like you leave the game because you got wiped once or many times. People leave when they realize that what ever they re-build, it will not be save enough to continue and build up again. Build a huge base and keep lots of defends working, still got wiped by some cannon bear, people leave... Solo or small company build a ship for few days to finally get out to explore 99% of the game the next day, got sunk again while anchored over night, why start a new ship...? And yeah, most of the people came to Atlas, because it should have been less ARK, as in dominance of the tames. But it is not like the tames are the problem, the problem is, that the tames are so overpowered in PVP. PVP is the problem not the tames used in it. It is not the bear that wipes you. It is the cannon cart behind it that out-ranges your defenses, makes them useless, sinks your anchored ships. If your defenses would hold against a lonely cannon bear and a bob, you could come back online to CONTINUE your personal quest. The PVE bobs, well they cannot be help. The game mechanic is made for PVP resolution of their problems. As said before they leave of boredom or of PVE-griefing. And please forget about the idea you could limit any form of interaction and cooperation in a MMO game, both are mutually exclusive. No 'hard' limit on company size or alliance numbers will get you an upper limit. If a bunch of people want to work together they will get that organised in-game or through third party tools. Live with it and design the game to mitigate the effect of larger groups. Or are you really thinking their should be a game-master that bans and wipes people for voluntary cooperation? In a MMO? Also, something some people say for why they leave the game "I could not get my own claim/could not hold my own claim, meh..." How about finally realizing that the claim system is not for you to get, own and hold a claim? How about finally realizing that the claim system makes you a target if you are small and keeps you away from doing the stuff everyone can do in the game, like 90% of the rest of the game? Same goes for the lawless people. "If I cannot get a claim, I stay lawless" and get raided and wiped. Currently the only solution for the small guys is to get on a claimed island and enjoy the safety from it to play the game. But if you are leaving because of the claim system, please go back to real life and try to open up you own country and come back here to tell us how that worked out. And please don't come running back crying, because all the other countries already claimed the whole "map"... I heard there is still free claims on Mars available... How about you live with a community on a claim like you do in real life...? With the added bonus, if you don't like it, you can just leave to another claimed island no problem...

Sounds like that bear was low level muscle for a poppy dealer. Watch your six for a while, some irate Christopher Walken knock off might come looking for his coin on a dragon.

Most people that play solo / in tiny groups are the ones that lose out in big open persistent worlds. Everyone's enjoying Atlas against their own wish and rule sets, but in big open play, it's easy to get sucked into a vortex of persistently changing rules and goalposts. By bringing in solo / personal server based game options, more and more people will be able to play atlas they way they want to. If you have no time to play, but find 2x weekends the only viable time to play, then the new mode will be ideal. Some people want 0.5x some people feel that farming shouldn't be the aim of the game, but have 10x so that building a boat is trivial, but perhaps prefer PvE fun with no overhead.. ofc single and solo eliminates the spam, player mess and griefing as well. For me, being a sailor / survivor with and entire grid to myself is an adventure of a lifetime. Me vs a world to call home. Sea is a lonely place, i can finally have my house boat and play rules that suit me. I'm very luckly, the dev team just made Atlas exactly what I want it to be. I emphase the I. I now have my very own Atlas world, and a fantastic place it is. I have to exercise discipline with the settings now, so that I don't make things too easy, or, I get frustrated with the difficulty. If I don't enjoy Atlas now, then I don't deserve Atlas. I love it, settings and mods bring new life, and I'm grateful to the dev team for bringing this to me. @Jatheish @Dollie and team, you're awesome.

"focused/channeled pvp" Applause! While watching countless "survival game devs" for years over years Im astonished that the core pvp mechanics are copypasted over and over again without a signifiant rethought. Base-raping mostly appeals only to a small, rather hard-core-ish, fraction of the playerbase. Might be ok, but if you want to grow your playerbase you have to cater for it to a certain degree. The whole base-raping pvp mechanic works well in a RTS-game environment - build up, fight enemy, kill base, next round. All done in 30-60mins usually. In a survival game where you have to slave days to build up to be prepared for PVP? Its not working. The result is e.g. (among lots of other examples) Arks alpha tribes that usually stall all meaningful pvp on most servers. It doesnt work and it never will. Solution: Leave player bases intact, install "pvp hotspots" over for example rare/strategical resources. Voila, you no longer throw players out of the pvp loop because their foundation for pvp (base and resources) got destroyed (often over night). Then: Install a "domination system". Declare a war, fight other groups, define winner/loser and the loser becomes the vasal of the winning group. (You can fiddle out the fine-detailed mechanics on your own. I coded it before and it works.) So there are so many possebilities, but not when you have narrow-minded developers who are hamstrung in the "survival game business." Because thats where the copypasta comes from. The survival genre needs fresh blood. Anybody up for the graps?

I haven't used them in a long long long time. When I did it was more as a fun gimmick for setting creatures on fire just because I could.

If you are killing a hydra or the dragon for your powerstone I would recommend a carbine. In all other situations screw firearms and use bows. A couple of headshots with a bow will do any lion in and wolves were nerfed into the ground and are no longer good at anything. If you have riding T3 I recommend to get a tiger, you'll kill anything with it on regular islands without too much trouble. Bears are pretty decent to, especially for treasure maps since they are tanky.

@DollieBiggest issues with the new nondedicated multiplayer. You cannot go out of view of the host as it ports you back to them. How are you supposed to go out resource hunting if you cannot even go to the other side of an island without being ported back? Never mind going to a different island in same grid or heaven forbid a different grid. Oh and can you separate the map from the single player please? If I want to play single player I want single player. If I want the new small multi player then I want that. What I do not want is having something done on the small multiplayer game that affects my single player game. Adding to this. If I delete my character in nondedicated multi - I loose my character in single player too

Now that you're done patting yourself on the back, a major issue you can do all that, then log in the next time it's all gone. Ships sunk, holes in your walls, resources gone, tames dead. 37 hours of gameplay after coming back and I have to force myself to even log in. I don't want to build another ship. I patched the holes in my walls and then logged off. Don't know when the next time I'm going to log in. Maybe tomorrow, maybe never.

Boomer you always have some great points in the forums. Always a good read.

Instead of "focused" think "channeled". PvP should be channeled into something other than wipes. This is a problem Ark didn't fix. It's a problem carried over into Atlas. But before we say what PvP shouldn't be, we really need to figure out what it should be, how it should be conducted. How it should be rewarded. Then figure out how to discourage and prevent everything else. And figure out a way that everyone that wants to be involved can be and that there is always some kind of conflict in the world. Yes, they need an auction house, market or something. As much as I do like RP and do a lot of trading, it's really hard to be a trader in this game because of the distances (even on a unofficial server) and players being from different time zones.

Bought an Elephant yesterday from you guys, fast, clean trade and fair prices. See you next week when i purchase my giraffe.

INTRODUCTION: The sextant buff is one of the most useful buffs in the game, so I figured a guide explaining how to get it, what it does, and what aspects of it you should not take for granted, would be quite worth it. I'll start by listing the questions I am going to answer, and then we'll get into the thick of the content. The Big Questions: What is the sextant buff, and how does it help? How do I get the sextant buff, and how long does it last? How large are the grids (and the whole ATLAS map), in terms of lat/long points or meters? When would crossing the edges of the map to get to another grid make my trip faster? How accurate are the speed, lat/long, and direction that the sextant tells you? What is an ATLAS knot? Related questions other posts have answered, that I will skip here: Which type of ship is the fastest? Read on for more detailed info on each of these topics! What is the sextant buff, and how does it help? The sextant buff is a buff that helps you navigate the seas. When you apply the buff, you will be given the following information as a HUD at the top of your screen: A compass showing the direction you are looking in A minimap of your surrounding area (able to be toggled on/off via the settings menu) What region you are currently in, including any special qualities of that grid (lawless, golden age ruins, etc) latitude and longitude coordinates of your current position When sailing a ship: The direction you are headed and your current speed in knots In-game map marker overlay and guidance. Left-click on an ATLAS map marker to activate an in-world guidance marker. minimap and ATLAS map player markers show the direction you are facing Although the buff is indispensable in helping you navigate the seas, it is also very useful on land. I have used the sextant buff to help navigate an island due to the minimap that comes with it, as well as to line up my camera to the cardinal directions for building. Feel free to share in the comments if you have any creative ways you have used the sextant buff! How do you get the sextant buff? To get the sextant buff, you first have to unlock and get the sextant. The sextant is unlocked by the "Navigator's Tools" skill, which is the first skill in the Seamanship skill tree. It takes 11 skill points after a respec to get to this skill. Once you have it unlocked, you have to craft it with the materials shown in the wiki page. The sextant is a tool that you can use to get the buff. To use it, you will first need to get to a high location, typically the crow's nest of your tallest sail if you are on a ship. Hold right-click to bring the sextant up to your eyes, and start looking around for stars in the sky. They will still be visible in the day, and they will have a green diamond show up around them if you get close. Once the diamond shows up, left-click while continuing to hold down right click. This will add a star to your total, and 4 stars are needed to get the buff. Once you add a star to your total, a trail will lead from it to the next star. However, you have to try to be fast, since you only have a few seconds to find all of your stars. Here are a few tips: During the day, the first star tends to be near the sun (not rigorously tested) The trails that lead from one star to the next will curve if they travel a long distance, since they move on a sphere, which distorts their motion. Try to follow the curve around, or you will end up quite far from where the star actually is. Once you click on the first star, you will have 50 seconds to find your stars (+5 seconds for each cosmology level, then x1.10 for each level in able navigator skills) If you find 4 stars, you will get 1500 seconds (25 minutes) of sextant buff. Each star above that will give you +1180.6 seconds (almost 20 minutes) of buff, up to the 9th star and above, which give you a total of 7200 seconds (2 hours) of buff. NOTE: The able navigator skill currently has no effect on sextant buff duration, although it says it does. Be aware. How large are the grids? How large is the whole ATLAS map? Using the sextant buff's guidance marker feature and GPS coordinates, you can get very accurate information about the size of each grid. For example, the center of the center maw (where the Kraken spawns) is at the coordinates of 0/0 long/lat. Moving to the East increases longitude, whereas moving to the North increases latitude. NOTE: Most real-world coordinates are given in lat/long notation, but the game chooses to give the coordinates to you in long/lat notation, so try not to confuse the two. By using singleplayer to fly to the corner of a grid, then marking a waypoint at an adjacent corner and activating the guidance marker, you can get the following size for a grid 14,000 meters along a side, and 13 1/3 lat/long along a side. This means that the whole ATLAS map is 14 * 15 = 210 km in width and length, and the maximum lat/long coordinates are +/- 100. When would crossing the edges of the map make my trip faster? The right edge of the ATLAS map is connected to the left, and the top is connected to the bottom, just like in Pac-man. Curiously, this means that the ATLAS map is not on a sphere, like our Earth, but rather on the surface of a torus (a doughnut shape). Since there are a total of 15 grids in each direction, you could go 8 tiles in one direction, or 7 tiles in the other direction to get to the same grid. Therefore, you should never go more than 7 tiles E/W or N/S to get to your destination. If your route takes you on a path with more than 7 tiles in one direction (for example, West), just go in the opposite direction (East) and it will be shorter. Never go more than 7 tiles in one direction (E/W or N/S) to get to your destination. Go the opposite way, and you can get there in under 7 tiles. The furthest grid from you on the map is 7 tiles E/W and 7 tiles N/S away from you, for a total of 9.9 tiles to get to the opposite side of the map. How accurate are the numbers that the sextant buff gives you? To start, I will assume that the long/lat numbers are exact, since they are simply related to the in-game coordinate system that the game invariably uses. From these numbers, we will discuss the accuracy of the sextant buff speed and direction numbers, and any relevant conversion factors. First up: speed. In real life, a knot is defined as about 1.15 mph, or around 0.514 m/s. Using this number, and the fact that grids are 14 km in width, a ship going around 20 knots would take over 23 minutes to cross a grid. This isn't the case (you can traverse a grid much quicker), so the game must think that knots are something different. To test this, I started a brig off in a random direction at full speed, in singleplayer. Using singleplayer commands, I made the wind a constant speed and not rotate, and I sailed for about 1/2 of an in-game day, and computed the total long/lat distance traveled, compared to the speed shown in the sextant buff. I determined that 1 knot is equivalent to about 0.077 lat/long per in-game minute, or 0.347 grids/in-game hour. To convert in-game minutes to real-life minutes, you just have to divide by 2.1 (I got this number by timing with a stopwatch for about 10 minutes and figuring out how many in-game minutes passed by). Therefore, 1 ATLAS knot is about 38.56 meters/real-life second. Thus, a ship going at 20 knots can cross a grid in just over 6 minutes. Here are a few useful conversion factors: 1 ATLAS knot = 38.56 meters/real-life second = 0.0367 lat/long per real-life second = 0.165 grids/real-life second 1 in-game minute = 2.1 real-life seconds 1 lat/long = 1050 meters NOTE: The speeds given by the sextant buff depend on your current CPU usage. If your CPU spikes, the speed will dip. I tested this by changing the slomo setting - as time is slowed down, the sextant buff indicator sped up. This is because the slower time allowed the CPU to rest more and keep up with the speed calculations. Additionally, I ran the user benchmark cpu test while playing the game at normal settings and similarly saw a drop in the sextant buff reported speed. I found that, for my game under typical settings and activity, the speed can increase by about 1% by slowing the game down absurdly, and it can slow down significantly when speeding the game up. Just a heads up - the speed is not universal, and the same ship may report different speeds on different PCs, even with all variables taken care of. The second task: Direction indicator/heading. I first noticed that the direction indicator is off somewhat when I set my ship to head North (0 degrees) and found my longitude changing still. When I set the ship sailing in a direction that had no longitudinal changes (even over a very long period of time), the directional HUD said 1 degree. More of my testing included recording start and stop lat/long for my ship, and the direction of travel. I then computed the angle from the lat/long data, to compare to the given direction. I found that the direction is accurate to +/- 1 degree always. This can contribute to error when testing and trying to determine actual numbers for these things, but I doubt it will affect gameplay in any noticeable way. The biggest effect I could see this having is if you skirt along a grid border, you should look at the lat/long directly instead of the direction, since you could end up veering off course for long journeys. Conclusion: The sextant buff is a very useful buff, which is why I try to keep it on most of the time I play ATLAS. It helps plot a course on the sea, navigate a new island, or just stay oriented in your home base. Although the speed and direction have a few small accuracy issues, this shouldn't affect your gameplay at all unless you are crazy like me and want to dig up the numbers behind the game that make it all work. That's it for this guide, let me know in the comments if there are any other sextant-related topics you want me to cover, or if you want me to make a guide on another subject that interests you. See you on the high seas!

To me it's got a lot of what I like about Ark, plus ships, treasure hunting, etc. For me the issues are, PvP lacks focus. Also, only the large pvp companies are really supposed to compete, which leaves everyone else out. Also, no real in-game economy. They managed to turn exploration into a chore. It's a mistake to say Atlas should be a "pirate game". It's pirate themed, but it should be more of a empire builder/4x game (at least from the macro level). Get as many people as possible taking part in that, without losing the create-your-own-adventure nature of the game. Give people reasons to do things and not to do things. People get board and leave the game or people get board, troll others and the other people leave the game. Leaving the game pretty much empty at this point.

"The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated." - Mark Twain

Grapeshot has finally resolved the "Offline Griefing" issue where players would run around nightly and sink my ships or constantly blow up my bases. It seems that the issue was that previously there was actually a player base and now that there are only 2-3 players on at any given time no matter the region, the griefing has halted. Thank you Grapeshot

The official populations continue to dwindle as the most significant game changes are geared toward single-player and non-dedicated.... speechless.

Thanks for the email guys. I received 4 in total and all of the crashes are not reproducing on our latest version of Single Player and Non-Dedicated Mode. I was able to load every single save file. It's likely with our most recent batch of changes that this has been fixed. This patch will be deployed sometime within the next 48 hours I imagine -- and will have a bunch more SP related fixes too.

I have a wonderful suggestion for you. Imagine if you will, that there was a place where you and your like minded play all day friends could go where you’d have complete control of any island you wanted. You would never be troubled with pesky tenants and their eyesore spam. Even better, you could with a stroke rid yourself of the deadwood of all your inactive company members and their useless tames. Gone like the detritus of your Atlas life that they are, you would finally be free to play in blissful pristine conditions unsullied by lesser beings who must bow to the demands of the lives of mere mortals. No longer troubled by even the hint of their loathsome presence, you could bask in the superiorness of your hard earned property rights unfettered by cares for free loading peasants. For you and your kind, this place is far superior to the unsightly filth of official servers, yet in form and appearance it is identical, merely the offensive presence of those who have not your focus, your dedication, your absolute devotion to...whatever it is that you do for every waking moment of your life spent in game. Where can I find such a celestial paradise, you ask? Nay it is not a mirage. No mere whim of fantasy or idle daydream. I give you.... Non dedicated servers! Coming Soon.

People still play this?

I love what grapeshot games are doing with ship figure heads and i fully understand why there in the free port....but i would like the traditional figurehead to be available in the smithy and leave other fancier one at the free port where u can spend your gold on them. i think the community can agree that building a ship without a figure head is silly and it doesnt look right. and on a little side note, grapeshot games if you see this and i hope you do could we get a little bit more transparency. i get you dont want to reveal anything major but give up a semi road map say "this is a very rough idea we have of something we would like to implement to the game" give us a sneak peek of somethings thats way off but we can get hype at now. im pretty sure of the amount of requests for new ships and hey us as a community are never fully happy but if you could put our minds at rest with that as well just confirm that yes we hear you and were working on it.

This is my attempt on creating an allround basic PVE base