Linea

Well the devs will have to decide what issues they want to address and what suggestions they will try. Its a testserver so they might aswell try 10% taxes and 99% taxes to see how it turns out if they think it could make the game successful and increase player numbers. It was stated that increased rates are only for the testserver and will not go to the liveserver, everthing else is meant to be the live patch after adjustments based on feedback. I guess the suggestion to increase rates on the live servers further has already be made multiple times but it might cause issues on other aspects of the game, especially making it too easy. I myself and everyone i asked so far will not consider living on island with 20% taxes or above. Its either lawless to build up or boot the owner from the island but that is not a good way to increase the number of people on islands. Another issue is that taxes can be increased at any time especially when you have build your base and cant just leave for another island so even those rare islands that still excist with low taxes arent a viable places to settle and the owner or a new owner will increase the taxes sooner or later. High taxes prevent players from settling on island together which is exactly the issue this update was meant to fix as stated by the devs. The game had serious issues with not enough people finding a place to build a base and this was with multiple flags per island that allowed for several players or companies to settle there. Now its only 1 flag per island and it can easily be defended by one person. Even groups that settled together before dont want to anymore as one will get so much resources from the others that they choose to break up and everyone takes their own island. The problems this update wants to fix will tenfold with the system as it is. Especially on live servers with lower rates and more players in the future which must be the goal of the devs. I have two suggestions the devs could try out on the testserver: 1. Lower maximum taxes to 10-20%, allow materials to be used for upkeep at lower rates than gold 2. Setting higher taxes will increase the upkeep, so you can do it but not for free to encourage allowing others a place to live while big companies can afford to push others of their island. (10% = 1x 50% = 5x, adjusting the upkeep accordingly) (Would also work well with PVE)

Tax rates can be set too high. It effectively prevents normal players from building on claimable islands at all while still allows griefers to build or spam obstacles. Great way to get the bad without the good from this new system and normal players will be all on lawless again exactly like before. If the server population should increase in the future we get the same problems that the game had at launch just bigger as its only 1 player per island now.

Thank you for the heads up. I'm eager to play all the new stuff that step by step fills the world and grows Atlas into a great game. I'd love to see some bigger things added in the future like more surface ships, bigger customizable submarines (travel and transport not collecting stuff, maybe with hangar for the mini sub) and underwater world/bases or airships that introduce lightweight air combat and new areas in the sky (of course airships are easy to shoot down from the surface so underwater, water surface, island and air battlefields are mainly separated). Hope for many positively returning or new players. Maybe you could clarify the planned server structure, not what day but what order you will bring down and up the servers. So we can plan ahead what server we will play on and to avoid disappointments when people expect the live servers to update when its just the PTR to test the update which can take excessive time if issues arise. Example: 1. Start PTR - remaining servers stay online with current version 2. Wipe remaining servers - restart with new version and empire and colonies variants? (NA, EU, ASIA?) 3+. Revisit and update game modes(servers) merge game mode, shut down or bring up new modes as needed Also pretty sure we will see necessary wipes in the future, so maybe you could set a wipe free time frame if possible or extra rates after future server wipes so we can rebuild fast. Again to avoid people being shocked when a wipe in the future is needed.

You are on a really good course there, its awesome. Two things among those many good changes that could have a second thought in advance are: 1. Number of companies on an island reducing upkeep. -> it seems rather pointless as nothing keeps companies from creating subcompanies and place one dude there to reduce the upkeep. Since an active company and players pay taxes there is no need for an passive upkeep bonus on company numbers. I can already see those many 1 man companies happening 2. Maybe add a low tech version of the sub for players that dont go at the kraken, so they can experience the underwater world too. And one personal preference, i would like a server setting and maybe an official network where there is no raiding outside of wars. So there is no daily guard duty but still pvp at any time. But overall i love how dedicated you are to the game and now i can see a bright future ahead, keep up the good work and thanks for the heads up.

You are correct that it is to avoid by all means that player trading gets negatively influenced and a positive boost to player trading is to remain the sole goal of these changes. The intention is not that NPC sell SAP at low prices to steal your customers but that NPCs buy your SAP at a lower profit as when selling to players so you always have somewhere to sell your wares and keep trading if you choose to. Even if NPCs sell SAP it still needs to be transported and it would always be faster and cheaper for players to sail to islands and collect it themselves so you don’t lose any trade opportunities. I would love to see dungeons that scale to the players and groups inside, so you always have a challenge at hand and still all possibilities the game can offer. Currently wherever you go its either too easy or too hard as its impossible to balance the same content for player groups with 1 to 400 members. Its quiet a big change and a lot of work for the devs. Thou instanced dungeons can run on a different server and their entrances been scattered on the world map which give a lot of options to expand the game. If it should be allowed to drop in and out of these instances it will be difficult to balance but im sure the devs could figure it out. Eve Online which is widely seen as the prime example off a sandbox mmo with full pvp and player reigned empires also has to rely on PVE areas, instanced missions, npc factions, quests and stuff which are staggered and lead to semi regulated areas and finally full pvp areas for players to make the rules. It might proof impossible to bring two things together, full anarchy pvp environment with nothing else beside it and a lasting persistent world. Im sure you dont want heavily regulated PVP which is the direction it is heading right now, as it only has one ruleset for the whole game world. Full pvp might work in matches or small servers like ark with only a few players and private servers with custom rulesets but not on big persistent worlds. The Atlas map is quiet small with about 400 pvp points (islands) that are meant to host a lot of players, if everywhere is happy wacky the player population will be very small and pvp very dim. The devs already stated that they want to make the game open to all players and the whole content available for different players during every situation. The idea should be to create a living world as a foundation from which players depart into the endgame pvp areas which in return can be completly unregulated and allow players to freely make the rules. I assure you the suggestions here all have improved full pvp in mind and expanded possibilities for player ruled kingdoms and areas. That’s why I suggested different areas including high level full pvp and even adventure areas where you cant build and explore uninhabited island while sailing around without save bases for a harder pvp experience. Even large tribes and pvp players need a healthy playerbase on the server to rule. If a large tribe goes to war and needs traders there wont be players just standing around waiting until they need vast amounts of resources fast and deliver them on demand, there needs to be a constant trade environment to keep it going with small profits so traders are around once you need them to sell to players with greater profit. Also pvp-tribes will be able to recruit the best players from the server population, as the better you get the more you can advance into the especially rewarding and promising pvp areas. Beat players don’t leave the game and can retreat to previous areas and there is always a constant inflow of new but experienced players into the pvp areas to keep it going. It’s a quiet important necessity to keep the player numbers on the official servers up and healthy. Without new inflow of players into the pvp areas it seems impossible to keep the game world from turning static and absent of any progress which also means no pvp thou a lack of targets. It did work very well in Eve Online as an example of the influence such changes have and how they profit the sandbox player pvp concept. It’s a bit like the discovery of America and the real pirates. Explorers from good ol Europe send over ships and people to the new world to battle it out for the territory and power to gain the riches and free land that can only be found and claimed there. I agree and will continue to avoiding any unnecessary changes that have no positive influence.

Very promising changes on the horizon. Will the blackwood biome appear on the official map (15x15) as well and will it spawn new island or change excisting ones or will it only exist on the new 1 tile map? About the offline protection, i think it would be good if there is a difference in difficulty to raid a base and steal resources compared to steal the claim and the base which is a much harder hit to the owner and easily drives people off the game. My concern if offline raid protection is based on npc defenses it would also make base raiding to steal resources and fight the owners in pvp very difficult. My suggestion is to base offline protection on a penalty system for claiming a flag with buildings inside its area without a fight, meaning if you claim a territory that has buildings inside and recent activity the claim timer will be much longer and you dont have to stay for it to tick down. it can only be reverted by the owner or his allies. but additional the claim timer will reduce or increase whenever a defender or attacker is killed inside the area which would allow to battle over a disputed area during online times while still allowing to claim undefended areas without any effort. The upkeep for claims could also have negative effects, i guess its not meant to make it harder to have a claim but to make it unattractive to have unnecessary claims. 100 gold per day is quiet a problem, you cannot build without a claim so how would you get started with farming these amounts of gold while it is still easy once you have a established base and group. if there is an upkeep it should also accept normal resources so everyone can afford it, even 100-400 wood would keep players from placing unnecessary claims if they have to fill them up. Also it could be made so that claims set to public and allow everyone to build will not have an upkeep only if you want the land to be private and all for yourself.

shooting any mounted weapon should block the buff for 1minute. and generally ships shouldnt be made of paper, a wall costing 80 wood has 10.000hp a plank costing 1500 wood has 12.000hp sure noone will put ships at risk and use them if they fall apart so easily taking everything on board with them. there could be much more encounters if battles would actually last a bit giving you options and not end in seconds or resolve by throwing planks at cannonballs...

Besides rebalancing the gathering and carry abilities to make every tame viable like many suggested, i would also suggest to rearrange the creatures into a more exciting and challenging system. Normal Creatures - Reduced Size to real size - Normal wildlife, plentiful, less aggressive - normal behavior, wolves hunt at night rest during the day etc. - tameable, some smaller versions like wolves are not rideable, can be tamed faster than the current taming speed - levelrange, every creature can spawn at levels considering their strength and size: chicken lv 1-20 wolf lv 20-60 tiger lv 50-100 elephant lv 50-80 Alpha Creatures - using the current size(oversized) of creatures - tameable, but take more time to be tamed - rideable, for example alpha wolves are rideable unlike the normal sized ones - creatures picked to spawn as alpha will double their level and receive a health buff (health buff does not carry over to tamed ones) - alphas can be accompanied by a pack of normal creatures, for example a pack of wolves following an alpha wolf - only appropriate alphas, no alpha chickens and stuff Omega Creatures - rare and strong monsters of large size like dragons and other beasts. if you come across one while exploring the jungle you be running for your life - only hunt them in groups (introduce a tracking skill so they can remain rare sights) - if one is found trigger an local event everyone can join in to fight together (separate loot for all participants) Titan Creatures - like the kraken, only for massive groups - unlike the kraken they also appear randomly triggering world events for everyone to attend - can attack islands and all need to band together to fend them off, will disappear after a while if not defeated - is a natural replacement for decay, instead of buildings and ships getting deleted after a while they will get damaged or destroyed by titan attacks that only happen like once a month per island Behavior - attack delay, for example a shark will not attack as soon as you contact the water surface but start circling you for a bit bevor attacking, a wolf will tail you and team up with nearby wolves and is more likely to attack when turning your back on it, etc. General - need more creatures to liven up the world in the long term - tameable LotD with tarot skills, give us undead breeding, be the first ;) Taming New taming mechanic optional or replacement however you see fit.Activate taming skill and hold out the food. This will prevent creatures you look at from getting aggro on you or fleeing from you, does only work if they dont reacted to you already so you have to start from far away with aggressive creatures and always look at them to keep them from reacting in the normal way(aggro/flee).Creatures will also flee or attack with a certain chance that depends on your sneaking skill and how fast you move towards them. Once you reach them there is a chance they will eat the food depending on its quality and what kind of food you are offering. Agressive creatures will attack when rejecting the food.You have to repeat until the taming bar is full, if attacked you have to flee and loose aggro to continue taming or if it stays in the game you continue with the bola method.

Notice: I integrated all ideas so far into the first post for better readability.

Hi, i like your ideas, there are a few things to consider as the victim might be unable to pay a bounty or the criminal might go unpunished by picking said weaker players. Also rich players could misuse the system to harass players with their abundant amount of gold. Should avoid situations like this, passive player get his only ship sunk by aggressive player and cant place a bounty as he has no gold left instead the pirate that sunk his ship places a bounty on his head with the stolen gold from the sunk ship to prevent the victim from rebuilding on top of it. That’s why I would suggest an automatic system depending on what you do, like many other games have, green player (passive), yellow player (aggressive) and red player (pirate). It could be placed on top of the player set bounty system which could than be better protected against misuse. I’ll elaborate my suggestion for the bounty system a bit more. Tell me how you like it, I integrated some of your ideas with it J Player condition: Green – Everyone is a green player from the start. Yellow – When you attack a green or yellow player you will turn into a yellow player. Yellow players turn green again a few minutes after they last did damage to other players. Red – When you have a significant bounty by a npc faction on your head you will turn red. Only by loosing the bounty you can turn green again. Red players can only use Homeservers in pirate territory. Note that player bounties alone will not make a player turn red. So player bounties on green players can only be turned in by red players, pirates. Bounty (What is a bounty) Bounty is a gold amount on your head set by either the npc faction in which territory you commit a crime or by a player. Different factions do consider different things a crime. Crime (What gives you a bounty) - Killing green player, tiny bounty. (Except pirate territory) - Destroying building parts of others, tiny bounty. (Except pirate territory) - Stealing from locked containers, small bounty. (Except pirate territory) - Attacking ship, small bounty. (Except pirate territory) (Medium bounty in Trader faction territory) - Sinking ship, huge bounty. (Except pirate territory) (Medium bounty in Navy faction territory) - Taking green or yellow players as prisoner, large bounty. (Except pirate territory) (Medium bounty in Navy faction territory) - Player placing bounty on your head. - Killing yellow and red players, no bounty - Attacking red ships (ships of red players), no bounty - Sinking red ships, small bounty (Only in pirate territory) - Escaping a cage, small bounty (Except pirate territory) Jail & Debuff (How to loose bounties) A bounty will reduce when the player is online and sitting in a cage owned by the npc faction, player or company that placed the bounty. You can relatively easy escape a cage after a short while if you don’t want to sit idle but your bounty will no longer decline and you get a small amount added on top of it for escaping. You have to flee the area as well so your company rescuing you would be an option. If their head is delivered instead and the bounty is paid they will receive a debuff that reduces xp, damage the player deals, harvest and taming rates significantly. The debuff will contain the amount of bounty that got paid doubled and every goldcoin the player picks up will automatically be used to pay of the debuff until it is gone. Players remain red while they have the debuff. Bounties will also reduce naturally with time but very slow. Payment (How to get paid) Obviously the debuff or jail time must hit significantly harder than the bounty is worth to prevent misuse. Deliver the head or the player alive to a npc faction headquarter to receive the bounty placed by the npc faction. Bonus money for alive players. Deliver the head or player alive to the player or company that placed a bounty on its head. Be aware that players or companies can refuse to pay the bounty, so skilled bounty hunters need some measures to bargain ;) That’s about the basic bounty system for players. I like the idea of company or ship bounties. On top of this there could be more bounty systems: Company bounty: The company bounty is the cumulated bounty of its players and will decide if a company will turn red as a whole including all members. If player looses its bounty or is removed from the company it will also be removed from the company bounty. Ship bounty: If you earn a bounty while a ship owned by you or your company is close by the ship will earn the same bounty, plus players can also add bounties on a ship directly. If a ship with a bounty is sunk you will earn this bounty. Again the owner of the ship will receive a debuff that will take gold from ship boxes the player owns to pay off the debuff. The amount of gold to pay of the debuff is always twice the amount of the bounty that is paid to prevent companies to profit from bounties set on them. Unlike player bounties, ship bounties can be paid off with the normal gold cost at the npc factions.

Ok now i set up an idea for the sinking and repair mechanic of ships that could turn out pretty cool Basic assumptions: (you can skip this and go directly to the suggestion below if not interested in the details) The game is too easy both building a ship and especially sinking a ship but you cant have one without the other, so to bring the building and survival part more to the initial release version we need ships to be harder to sink. Not just by misuse of mechanics as weight but also in direct combat. While it is realistic that a tiny hole will sink a ship if no one repairs it because offline etc. it does kill any gameplay big time. It should be comparably difficult to building a ship to sink said ship. For example in real battles even after hundreds of cannon balls ships wrecks often keep floating thou everything above the waterline was destroyed. Since you need to put a lot on ships like many planks and stuff but you only need to damage or destroy one plank there is no gameplay balance and no way to save ships by running from the enemy until they give up from wasting too much time for no reason. Also you can store several copies of your ship inside the ship by having hundreds of spare planks to instant repair during combat which often results in enemy ships simply not able to carry enough cannon balls to counter it in active battle, its also a mechanic that the following suggestion will replace with a more rewarding system. Suggestion: (All ideas need to be applied together to work correctly, given numbers are not set in stone and need to be tested and balanced) Planks Planks need to take more damage they are destroyed far too easy by any means. Planks should be able to take a lot more shots including all sources be it from player weapons or SoD. Considering a wooden wall taking 80 wood having 8.000 hp it wouldnt be wrong if a large plank taking 1500 wood would have 150.000 hp. So atleast bit more hp on planks would make a lot of sense. Ship Health / Resistance The ship health will no longer resemble the amount of water the ship has taken in but the ships condition (The sum of all planks HP). The ships condition grants a resistance buff to planks and reduces when damage to planks is taken. Resistance Buff / Sturdiness Planks have a damage resistance with the following formula: Ship HP% - Plank HP% + Sturdiness Bonus - Example: Ships Condition at 100%, Plank at 100%, Sturdiness 0% = Resistance 0% - Example: Ships Condition at 90%, Plank at 10%, Sturdiness 0% = Resistance 80% - Example: Ships Condition at 10%, Plank at 100%, Sturdiness 10% = Resistance -80% - Example: Ships Condition at 80%, Plank at 40%, Sturdiness 10% = Resistance 50% Ship Weight / Water Weight If a ship takes in water the water will be added to the weight. Also the weight will have more influence how fast a ship can turn, accelerate and move. Draught / Load Draft The weight of the ship no matter if it is from resources, cannons or water will make the ship go deeper and raise the water line. Obviously the ship will sink when the waterline raises above the bulwark. Water Leaks The ship can only take in water from leaks below the water line. If a plank is partially below the water line the inflow of water will be slower. Bulkhead You should be able to build bulkheads that divide the ship into sections and prevent water inflow from the front section to reach the mid or aft sections. Also a fully closed deck will prevent water from reaching the upper deck. To have water inflow on the mid deck the waterline need to be high enough to reach said deck and leaks need to be present on the planks. Repairing Planks Planks can no longer be destroyed. If a plank reaches 0 HP it will be turned into a burst plank. A burst plank will take 3 successful hits with the repair hammer to start repairing again and will take a reasonable amount of resources with every try. Only fully repaired planks can be replaced with a new plank or demolished. Burst planks will make a damaged ship look a lot better and act like a missing plank in case of shots going through them and water leaking in but dont allow a new plank to be placed for easy repair. Visible Damage If bulkheads and decks stopping water inflow planks can have more conditions to make combat look better and easily tell the their condition: <50% light visible damage and tiny water leak <25% visible damage and small water leak <10% heavy visible damage and medium water leak 0% visible burst plank with large water leak Ship Sails Besides that you should be able to add different sails to the same mast, like a handling sail and a speed sail on one mast. Once a mast gets destroyed it gets replaced with a broken mast that has like a 10 minute cooldown before it can be repaired. Same if a sail gets completely ripped it will have a 5 minute cooldown before it can be repaired again to allow boarding actions. The same applies as to planks and it takes 3 successful repair hammer hits to start repairing once the cooldown is over and you cannot demolish or replace a sail/mast until it is fully repaired. Wind Sails do take damage from strong winds, starting at 50% of the max wind strength they will have a tiny wear effect and at 100% it will be quit noticeable. Cyclones of course deal a lot damage to sails but less to planks so you can lower sails if you cannot avoid them. Cannon Balls Since battles last longer now they should be a bit cheaper and reasonably lighter to carry enough. Avoiding abuse of the weight mechanic On anchored ships the weight that a player can add to a ship is limited to two times his carry weight. Should the ship lift the anchor the full weight is applied. On PVE you can remove sleeping players if you own the ship, they will be moved to the end of the emergency ladder if selecting to remove some overweight sleeper that tries to stall your ship indefinitely. The result: Battles now take much longer, removing instant destruction of planks as well as instant repairing of planks. You can concentrate more on the fighting than the repairing of ships now. At the same time repairing is limited by needing resources that add to the ship weight and dont allow hundreds of premade planks to be used. Planks will not break so easily and the overall ship condition influences how sturdy the planks are. Also the burst planks will make damaged ships look a lot better and the inflow of water not feel so awkward. That a ship cannot take in water above the waterline, means that it not always has to sink, it can literally be shot to pieces and more often plundered or taken over than just sunk, unless of course the last defenders decide to let it sink Ships having a weight that influences the water line makes the inflow of water and the outfitting of the ship more challenging and manageable at the same time. A heavily loaded ship is now easier to sink than a lightweight ship that can take in more water and has a lower water line. Also heavily loaded or outfittet ships will be slower from having more draught. A lightweight trading ship can now more easily run from heavy battleships or legion of the damned, sinking a fleeing foe that wants to avoid battle is now a task rather than a one shot click. Also a trader might want to throw their wares into the sea to flee some bloodthirsty pirate and stuff like this to give more option beside sinking and loosing ships.

Okay i will go at the biggest issue now and try to suggest a rework of the claiming system that will allow all players and potential players to enjoy the game. It is clear that in a game that has everything from single players, small companies to big mega corps and giant territories as well as pvp, pve, trading, fighting, land and sea claims ... One claim flag and mechanic will not do, there needs to be several mechanics and flags to make all this work. Player Flags: Home Base (Limit 1) - Every Player can place one Home Base that will claim a small territory like 15 meters just enough to build a house. The Home Base cannot be unclaimed by any means, you can place a new one thou that will delete the old one but once placed you will have a reuse timer of several days that prevents you from rapidly moving the flag. On pvp of course the buildings on the claim can be attacked and destroyed, the claim will remain thou but getting your buildings destroyed over and over will make you want to move the claim somewhere else. The small area also allows to use the blank spaces between bigger claims that are not useable yet. It will decay after not logging in for 8 weeks. Home Port (Limit 1) (Sea Claim) - Every Player can place one Home Port that will claim a small area just enough to build one shipyard. The Home port cannot be unclaimed by any means, the same regulations as the Home Flag do apply. On PVP structures can be destroyed on the Home Port. It will decay after not logging in for 4 weeks. Players will not have any other claims to place. Every other claim will be only for companies as following. Company Flags: Company Base (Limit 1) - Every company can place one Company Base that has the actual claim size. It will have some protection from unclaiming and serves as the company base that is hard to take over. - PVE The claim cannot be unclaimed when members where active on the claim within 2 weeks. - PVP The claim cannot be unclaimed with members active or sleeping on the claim. Once the claim gets unclaimed it will count as occupied and can be instantly reclaimed by the original owners when all enemies on the claim are defeated, the buildings on a occupied claim will remain with the original owner. After 48h the claim will turn into a normal claim of the new owner. - New Owner: If the attacking company has no own City claim the claim will turn into a city claim and all buildings will change owner. If they have their own city claim already it will change into a normal claim and the building will stay with the original owner and start to decay, giving them more time to claim their company base back and preventing complete take over of multiple company bases. - This claim should be difficult to take over as it is the main base of a company and a battle about this claim will last a long time to give the owners and even small companies the chance to fight back. - This claim will not decay by itself. Company Harbour (Limit 1) (Sea Claim) - Every company can place one Company Harbor. It works exactly like the Company Base only that it can be placed in the water to make a Harbor. Land Claim (Unlimited) - The normal Land claim. It is unlimited but has no protection other than the strength of the Company that owns the claim. It can be unclaimed within 10 minutes and allows for building settings to allow other to build like the current claim system does but you cannot take taxes on this land. As the settings can be changed at any time this land is considered private land. The claim will decay within 24h if there is no building on the claim. Upon taking the claim over it will turn into a occupied claim for 24h during this time buildings will remain with the original owner and cannot be demolished but you can build and not loose the claim from leaving the territory. Empire Claim (Unlimited) - The empire claim is like the Land claim but will always allow others to build and takes taxes, it is considered public land and the owner cannot demolish buildings. On the other side this claim gets more protection and cannot be unclaimed fast. It does require to be contested for 24h. Since you can build and live there it is more easy to contest it for a longer time and allow the owner to strike back. The claim will decay within 24h if there is no building on the claim. So even if you get a new lord and they might raise taxes they cannot kick players out of their homes by simply changing it to private land. Sea Claim (Unlimited) - The Sea claim works like the land claim but can no longer be placed on the open seas as it will decay within 24h if there is no building placed on the claim so it is more tailored to shores and shipyards or harbors. Deep Sea Claim (Unlimited) - Should there be stuff on the open seas that needs claiming the claim flags will be placed on the sea bed and not be shown on the surface, so you are not in some ones territory while sailing the open seas. Occupied Claim (Temporary) - Its purpose is so you can claim Territory fast and dont need to stay inside but prevent you from demolishing the buildings of the original owner and give them a chance to strike back. The buildings stay with the original owner and it will turn into your claim after a certain time. Claim messages You will receive messages about contested or decaying claims with coordinates to be aware of claims you are going to loose and strike back. Also you will see player and company names of contesters in the message so you could also choose to strike at their base instead and convince them to leave your claims alone. The numbers on protection and claim times are up for balance and not set in stone. It needs to be tested first. This should allow all players to enjoy the game better, help with the problem of claiming beeing boring and no real chances to actually fight over a claim in most chases as well as giving some protection and freeing up space to allow more players to stay in the game.

I agree to value player trading over NPC workforce. As NPC workforce does cost gold and should be gathering very slow it would be better to buy from players or to gather resources yourself, it can easily be balanced with the gathering speed to not harm trading. The idea is for those that venture out on their ships and are mainly rewarded with gold coins and when they loose their ship one day they still need to gather all basic material since the issue is not trading but transporting the resources to the place where you build your ship especially when you dont have a ship. Its kind of a reward for not loosing your ship for a while. The main trading will come from big wars and companies that need vast amounts of resources and take in deliveries from traders as well as NPC markets to keep trading alive at all times. I also had in mind the unofficial servers that often lack in trading and could set the npc workforce values however the specific server needs it once the system is implemented. On a side note, traders and gatherers can use the npcs as well to build a trade empire and focus more on running the trade shop, making deals or delivering wares to customers, there might even be npc captains transporting your wares between ports thou they would need a somewhat guarded route ;) Yes you are right about the voting system but i didnt want to make like 20 threads. The ideas are a complete rework of the game mechanics and are dependent on each other. Picking just one would not work so well and could turn out confusing when references to other ideas are set. Its more a long term goal to work towards rather than a hotfix for some issues. I hope the devs read it and see if it fits with their long term goals either reassuring their plan or bringing in some additions that might still be open. I do plan to post balancing suggestions in separate threads thou. I would say you should be able to trade even with a neutral standing and earn a bit of reputation depending on the faction. Trader factions give more reputation for trading but another source of reputation are the quest npc in towns that can give you trade runs but also combat, salvage or exploration missions which earn you a bigger reputation and gold reward on completing. The local market in npc towns having different prices allows to play as a trader if you want and earn gold if you reach a port with the right wares to sell with a bargain. Unlike civil flags of course a combat faction like the navy or pirates do require you to fight their enemies to earn their flag and makes you enemies with the other faction from sinking their ships. ------------------------------- Thank you all for liking the ideas, i hope it helps and can inspire the devs.

I wonder, will the height slider be scaling the character and affect height as well as width or will it just affect height resulting only in fat dwarfs?

The other side is that the underwater environment just boast to many possibilities and there need to be more ways to explore and even live there. So the sub is a must but it had not to be one with a high tech power generator and stuff rather more the steampunk way. https://www.turbosquid.com/3d-models/steampunk-steam-submarine-3d-model/800518 as an example, turn it upside down and you have an airship as well High tech energy generators is quiet a big step in the direction of laserguns and cruise missiles stuff. If you can build such energy generators on a sub its hard to tell why you couldnt do so on ships and bases.

Underwater “Islands” There should be natural air bubbles(caves) and player made domes under water where you can live. Also ancient cultures could have left artificial or magic domes that provide a place to live. Similar to an island with resource spawns and wildlife etc. these will expand the space to live in the game and bring more life to the sea bed as well as base of operation for the upcoming subs. Should airships be added some day the same could be done with floating islands to expand the space to live into the sky.

thats a great idea, you should be able to dual wield every one handed item. like a grappling hock in one hand and a sword in the other so you can attack when you swing over to an enemy ship. also it would make guns more viable as you are not defenseless against meele while holding one. maybe with a meele rebalance that does allow for less slashing and more parrying it will feel even more authentic and fun.

a low tier wooden dive boat would be more fitting instead of the tek stuff. even a magical airbubble to walk around the sea bed would be more fitting. it looks like we are going full sails into jetpacks, rocketlaunchers and mecha-dinos again. that would basically render all the new stuff like ships, cannons, guns, swords useless and make the game exactly like ark. if it is like ark thou it will get a primitive+ for sure just not on the official. can just hope this is the only tek stuff they add...

Dungeons: Player limit for dungeons. The game has everything from single players up to 400ppl tribes, its impossible to balance so there should be dungeons for different team sizes. The limit allows only so many people inside the dungeon at the same time and the content inside is balanced on that number. (max 2) Tiny dungeon - small with basic loot and suitable for one or two persons. Low chance for specials like fountain of youth, gold or rare stuff (including all mechanics of the game so everyone can take part and is not excluded). Many of these do exist on all islands. (max 4) Small dungeon - normal dungeon for a small group, hard but doable alone. Normal chance for specials. Many of these do exist on all islands. (max 8) Normal dungeon - normal dungeon for a medium group. Normal chance for specials. Many of these do exist on all islands. (max 16) Large dungeon - large dungeon with strong bosses for large groups. High chances for specials and rare loot. They only exist on special islands or zones. (max 32) Huge dungeon - large dungeon with strong bosses for large groups. High chances for specials and rare loot. They only exist on special islands or zones. (max 64) Raid dungeon - large dungeon with world bosses for huge crews. Very high chances for specials and rare loot. They only exist on special islands or zones. More versatile dungeons: A Cave (yea for sure) Under Water Cave (having air to breath once inside but also part under water) Shipwreck (in shallow water or deep in the ocean) Ghostship (once disabled you can go inside or drifting ships with enemies) Tempel or other buildings Hostile Settlements or island counting as open dungeon under water city inside an air bubble ...

Getting more discovery points? I think there are like 700 island, most islands have landmarks that give more points, seeing a whale killed gives 50 points and so on... Well effective would be to take a lightweight ramsackle slope from different freeports to reach islands fast and run around them naked.

Taming: New taming mechanic optional or replacement however you see fit. Activate taming skill and hold out the food. This will prevent creatures you look at from getting aggro on you or fleeing from you, does only work if they dont reacted to you already so you have to start from far away with agressive creatures and always look at them to keep them from reacting in the normal way(aggro/flee). Creatures will also flee or attack with a certain chance that depends on your sneaking skill and how fast you move towards them. Once you reach them there is a chance they will eat the food depending on its quality and what kind of food you are offering. Agressive creatures will attack when rejecting the food. You have to repeat until the taming bar is full, if attacked you have to flee and loose aggro to continue taming or if it stays in the game you continue with the bola method.

easy mode is paying with salt because its worth more per weight.

the purpose of a currency is so its easy to carry around and pay for a cart of stones with a few coins and not pay for a cart of stones with another cart of stones that are yellow.

i usually like the patch notes only when considering to not play the game, they are making good and steady progress. but the game is live and its horrible when playing it while they are still so early in development that it breaks every day which is a bit tedious even for early acess. for some reason i have a gut feeling that the fountain of youth will have a cooldown of several hours after someone used it. so get in line if you think no one will block others from getting to the fountain anyway. its a single location where anyone has to go every few weeks... okay... its probably gets better if all players are young again and breeding with those hideous babies gets implemented. Atleast if you can put a paper bag on them so you can stand letting them live.

wolves have a knockback like a t3 elephant and attack 10 times faster, so they leave this unchanged and reduce hp. its easier shooting them from a distance but meele is still not working against them.