Linea

if we could breed our own crew that just needs food and no gold it would be fine. until something like this gets added it would help if the gold amount of chests is split when given to multiple players and the crew costs reduced, especially when anchored and offline.

Workstations: A new basic workstation that is easily build and move most none primitive part from inventory crafting to this station and the smithy. Crafting stations now take more time to produce parts and do not manufacture until manned by a player or npc crew. Faster crafting skills affecting crafting tasks set by the player with the skill, npc manufacture much slower than the player when using the stations. Sails: Ability to have more crew assigned to a sail. Open/close and turn much slower with one crew and faster with multiple crew, also speed buff for multiple crew on the sails or player manning the sail. Backpacks and stuff: Craftable backpacks that increase carry capacity. Items in backpacks have their weight reduced. Bags to be placed in inventories reducing weight of items inside. Can also be placed on the ground, carts... Saddlebags increasing carry capacity and reduce weight of items inside. Normal inventory reduced carry capacity but include very basic bags and backpacks that can already be crafted on starter islands and boost it to about the current basic level. Player wounds and condition: Introduce heavy wounds, heavy overweight - both force you to crawl so you cannot interact with for example ladders with heavy overweighting and stuff. Limb damage effects - reducing meele damage (arms), accuracy (head), stamina (chest) or walking/dodging (legs). Unarmed/martial arts: Add kicks and combo moves to make unarmed fighting more viable with knockbacks and combos for some additional effects like stunning or knock down. + Ability to disarm enemies.

Thanks for commending the ideas. So far i have some small additions: Docks: Possible to dock ships into drydocks again. Water docks, having the same protection like a drydock. Ships in water docks cannot sink. Destroyed Planks: Planks should not disappear when reaching 0 health (looks kinda stupid). Instead they should be replaced with burst planks that can still be repaired but need multiple repair hammer hits (fill a repair bar) to start repairing again. Npc repair: There should be a minimum threshold for npcs repairing ship parts. Npcs are wasting quit a lot of metal repairing planks that just lost 1hp. Npcs should also be able to slowly repair while not anchored. Universal Trade counter: Trade Counter as buildable item so you can set up a shop everywhere and start your own harbor/city with trade. Simple place items, set gold price and assign npc to make it active.

its only natural, the numbers will go up on bigger patches again and decline again. also the amount of land/space on a official servercluster cannot take 40k players, of course people drop out if it is too cramped to play. i guess 10k is the max a official servercluster can take to maintain a healthy environment but at 5k its probably the best balance of player density. maybe they can manage to host multiple maps on one server later (for example 4 maps merged into one server grid with 150 player limit) and host more and lower density servers to give more space to players. it works extremely well on private servers to cut player and npc numbers per map by 75%. private servers can already handle 4 times as many island on a map without running into trouble on the ram usage it seems a good way for the officials as well.

it makes absolutely no sense to limit player shops to freeports... if sleeping players did break the zone shops will do so for sure. there should be a shop counter item you can build everywhere where you can build to sell your stuff when having an npc use the counter.

With the upcoming bounty system that is said to net you a bounty for turning in some ones head after killing them, how would that prevent companies from having one account and character that does not join the company to kill off every member for a save instant respawn to loose the bounty and sack the money for said company? It would make the people that get a bounty set on their head profit or not care for it as it does not have any penalty with it. Doesnt work like in reallife when you can instant respawn with no penalties. If it should be working in any way it needs to include one or both of the following: 1. To get the bounty you need to capture the player and turn them in alive or imprison them in cages so they will have to sit in jail/cages for a while which will make their bounty decline with the time they are imprisoned. Of course their company can attempt to free them or they can attempt to escape but retain the rest of the bounty this way. 2. If the player is killed and their bounty claimed they will get a debuff for xp, skills or a tax deducted when harvesting which will make the bounty decline with time and amount. Bounty cannot be claimed again but the debuff stays until you worked of the bounty. If bounties go away from respawning with no other effect they are pointless if not harmful. The jail time and debuff/tax time should be significantly more harmful than what the bounty is worth to prevent players claiming their own bounty with a second account or unallied helper.

they changed the limit to 20 fresh crew for the whole company. you need to level up the crew so you can recruit new level 1 crew. guess many companies have some players with level 1 crew sitting around somewhere on the map and cannot recruit anymore.

cyclones should deal alot damage too open sails if they hit and damage the mast. little damage to planks and players and no damage scaling with weight.

Some suggestions on things that could be add during Early Access besides balancing and bug fixing. Update: I integrated all ideas into the first post for better readability. Ships Brig The current brig is just an expensive schooner. It needs a bit more gunports, there are still planks left that could fit a gunport and maybe they can be moved a bit closer together to at least have 10 gunports per side. Also the ships rail need to be lower so the deck guns don’t stick through it. Frigate A medium ship to fill the Gap between Schooner/Brig and Galleon. Having one or two gundecks with a total of 20 gunports per side. Ship of the Line A Flagship having about 3 or 4 complete gundecks and are extremely expensive even compared to the Galleon. Large companies need some kind of flagships as the normal galleon have become quiet common. Huge Sails The Large sails in the game are the right size for a brig but they are way too small for galleons and look rather stupid on them. The mast above the deck should atleast have a height of about the length of the ship. Sail Crew Ability to have more crew assigned to a sail. Open/close and turn much slower with one crew and faster with multiple crew, also having a speed buff for multiple crew on the sails or player manning the sail. Multiple Sails You should be at least able to add different sails to the same mast, like a handling sail and a speed sail on one mast. Ship details Besides planks and gunports there should be windows and balconies to design your ship especially at the stern like the real ships. Also when placing walls inside a ship hull they should fill the gap to the hull. Man stations by demand Option to set npc crew to man stations by demand. If you anchor they should unman stations and repair if you issue orders to an unmanned sail or cannon they will man the station or switch from another station that has no orders issued right now. Weather forecast Give a warning a few minutes before the weather changes and add skills that increase the warning period. Ship sinking Besides removing ways a ship should not sink. Ships should be more resistant to sinking, so you can shoot them to pieces and loot them more often than sinking them. For this there should be a general resistance for planks so you don’t sink by a single plank been hit two times. If a plank looses hp it will gain damage resistance. If it lost 50% hp it will have 50% resistance if it lost 99% hp it will have 99% resistance. But resistance will be reduced by a modifier resembling your ships condititon. All planks hp together will be the ships condition and if you lost for example 50% of the overall hp on all planks your ships condition will be 50% which will reduce all resistances your planks have by 50%. So the more damage your ship has taken the more easier it is to break a plank or damage it further but if your ship is in perfect condition planks will be very resistant to breaking. (would also require to adjust repair speed) 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 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. Repair All Add an option for ships to repair everything at a very low speed using materials from the ship inventory if you hit it with a hammer it will increase the speed. World Island diversity Additional Island to expand the world and give more room and options for players. Free Islands Civilian Islands with a neutral NPC claim for everyone to live on and maybe a NPC settlement for trading etc. Exploration Islands Islands you cant build on, just for exploring and the real pirate feeling. Claimable Islands Normal Islands to fight for. Pirate Nest Starter Islands for Pirates no protection and no limitations. Map rearrangement or special server (PVP/PVE Merge) All starter areas are on the west side. The farther you move east the higher level the enemies and the better the rewards and the rarer the resources get. First rows are lawless areas, next rows are PVE, then some rows with PVP with offline protection and last full PVP sectors. Could also add an exploration sector where you cannot build and find rarest stuff on expeditions to truly uninhabited islands. Golden Age Islands are mixed into this map with different difficulties as well. NPC Factions Having some factions to liven up the world. (All using real ships/versions of the playerships) Civilian NPC Trader ships and Settlements. Offering buildspots in the city or free building on the rest of the island. Navy Having forts and military ports. Guarding the sea from pirates and ships of the damned. Pirates NPC pirates attacking players and traders. You can yield and they take your wares or a bribe and don’t sink your ship for no reason, unless you fight back. Having pirate nests where player pirates can get services and stuff also sell slaves or stolen goods. Damnation Ships of the damned turned into real ships and only appearing during night time Faction Areas and settlements Factions have areas in which they are more numerous and the farther away from their area the rarer they appear. Ships of the damned for example only appear in certain areas at night while in the other areas there are npc pirates and in some areas there are only few hostile ships and a strong navy presence. Underwater “Islands” (Additional world layers) 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. There could be bigger subs (comparable to the surface ships) for traveling and transporting that launch the mini subs for resource collection and other under water tasks. Should airships be added some day the same could be done with floating islands to expand the space to live into the sky. The battlefields and playfields should be mainly separated so that sea, air, land and underwater battles not significantly interfere with each other: Surface Ships – strong hull, can carry heavy weapons and lots of resources, get new weapons like basic depth charges that are very effective against submarines and basic anti-air cannons that easily down airships. Of course more ship types here is a primary goal. Land – large fortifications and heavy weapons also can use anti-air cannons Submerged – have weak hulls and can only carry light weapons that cause little damage to surface ships planks but good damage to other subs. Can also use small deck guns when not diving to participate in surface battles but still way weaker than surface ships. Floating – lightweight airships, cannot carry much stuff and only lighter weapons good for air combat and reaching floating islands but with low effect on surface ships. 4 different experiences and battlefields to master and expand the game content and many more cool places to visit. Quests and World Tasks Add NPC in Towns that give Quests for a Gold reward. As well as quests on the fly you can find in the world. Exploration Quest Visit a certain island and cartograph it. Return to Questgiver for reward. Exploration Tasks World tasks, pieces of a (exploration) treasure maps are appearing on one island. If you explore the island you will randomly find the pieces if you have enough pieces to combine into a map it will lead to a treasure chest on this island. If you picked up the treasure chest it will have a long cooldown but you can do the same on every island to encourage exploration. Trading Quest Deliver certain materials to a faraway NPC town for a Gold reward. Special Trading Quest Transport a certain item or person from one Port to another. Salvage Quest Bring certain item found on a shipwreck to questgiver. Salvage Task Find a treasure Map that points toward a shipwreck for salvage. Rescue Task Find shipwrecked npcs and bring them to any town for a small reward, or enslave them and sell them in a pirate nest. And many more like combat quests, creature hunt, boarding trader ships or capturing civilian/navy ships… 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 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 (instances) Different Caves (like in game already) Under Water Caves (having air to breath once inside but also parts that are 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 ... Law System If you kill other players outside of company wars (add company wars of course) you will get a bounty on your head depending on what you did, a little for killing a player and more for sinking a ship or stealing a claim. If you live like a pirate you will be flagged as one. Bounties can be collected by players that capture you and hand you to the navy or you get attacked by navy ships. Bounty will only decline if you are imprisoned but not from dying and respawning. Of course you can escape relatively easy if you don’t want to stay imprisoned for a long time but you keep your bounty that way. Also include special starter islands/ pirate nests for players with a high bounty on their head. 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. Flags (Yield mechanic) Flag Basic You can raise a flag on your ship that also influences faction and pvp. It’s especially handy for pvp but also for pve server or areas. Flags have a cooldown before they can be changed again. Flags can also be applied to npc settlements and player claims and have the same rules. Available flags are: Trader Flag Is a neutral flag and has no special effect. Hostiles like pirates or factions you have a bad reputation will target you. Company Flag You represent your company and your deeds will affect its reputation and the standing towards other companies, factions and players and their reputation towards your company if they that take actions against you. You can take actions against hostile companies (declared company war) without earning a bounty on your head. Faction Flag You represent an NPC faction and can sail their waters and use their ports but are hunted by their enemies. Flags of factions are only available if you have a good enough standing with that faction. (Your reputations with said faction will increase from doing quests for npcs in ports and your reputation will decline if attacking faction ships or npcs.) Pirate Flag You will go hostile to all around you including unallied pirates and can take pirate actions but will earn a bounty on your head if you do so. No one will get a bounty for attacking a pirate, you cannot lower the flag for a while after raising it. The pirate flag will be forced if your bounty is too high making you a well-known pirate. Navy Flag You will be hostile to pirates and players with bounties, while everyone can attack pirates without a penalty, pirates can fight of navy ships without a penalty. Navy ships have an escape blocking aura. If you die within the aura around a hostile navy ship you will be forced to respawn in a bed that is also within this aura if you don’t have a bed in range you will pass out and can be taken prisoner. White Flag Raising the white flag will yield to enemies, npcs and players alike. Your sails will be closed and all abroad will be forced to kneel down so you cannot fight. Attacking a ship or npc that has yielded and sinking it will have very high bounty penalty excluding pirate ships. A yielded ship will unlock all containers and doors and can be looted by player pirates as much as they like to. Hostile NPCs will come alongside yielded ships and transfer a part or all content of boxes and inventories depending on reputation and faction, npc pirates and the legion of the damned will also take your crew. Player pirates can take over yielded ships and enslave the crew but it will earn them a very high bounty that’s not worth the gain unless you are among the few most famous pirates that can keep fighting of everything that will be after you. (Ships should not be sunk for no reason, that very important to make the world evolve) Reputation 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. Upkeep & Decay & Taxes New item resource-stack (like the ship resource-box). Repair hammer will automatically use resources from the resource-stack in the building. Like ships every building can have one resource-stack. Ships and buildings will now decay very fast. The resource-box and resource-stack will automatically use resources to counter that decay (upkeep). There is a minimum upkeep for every box or stack to maintain itself, additional it will charge a cost for the amount of pieces the ship or building has attached. Zones mechanics: Freeport – No building, cannot anchor ships in the port area. No de-spawn timer or faster decay needed. Lawless – Upkeep cost will keep buildings from decaying. Claimed Citizen – The upkeep cost will go towards the taxes and the ship or building stays in shape. No or low taxes on basic resource collection, normal taxes on gold treasures. Claimed Owner – No building and ship decay or upkeep for the owner and allies. Significant gold upkeep for the claim itself. Exploration Zones – No building, ships upkeep like in lawless. This will allow the server to get cleared fast from abandoned stuff including ships. It will also allow player that want to go on vacation to put enough resources into the box for whatever time frame they will be away. Foundation spamming is effectively countered as they will decay fast and it is costly to put a resource-stack for every foundation and keep it filled with the minimum upkeep. This versatile system, will allow to avoid bad experiences with de-spawn timers, foundation spamming, too expensive, cheap, long or short upkeep phases. And allows new players easy access as in all Zones the same system applies, upkeep & decay always at the same rates. Trading, crafting and resources Quality Crafting stuff will result in different quality. Better skill and higher tier resources will produce better results -> a ship plank from strong wood is better than one from soft wood. Crafting skills Add crafting skills that slightly reduce the required mats. Maybe different skills for every kind of material like metal or wood. Containers Containers have a maximum weight limit so you actually cant throw everything into one container. Containers can be moved, smalls ones by hand and carts and big ones with cranes(add cranes for this) and large carts. Trader counter A build and placeable counter where you can place items and set a price on them to buy or sell works when manned by player or npc crew. Freight Box When you access a player shop or trade hub you will have access and can select all inventories of your freight boxes in the vicinity of the shop to trade the wares or buy them. For example your ship needs to be in the harbor and every trade will take a while to commence (unloading). Trade Hub/Port The trade hub/port is a central coastal building that will show all offers of player shops in the vicinity and will also allow players to put their wares up for sale without upkeep but paying a tax when it is sold. The sales tax can be set by the owner and is limited to 30%. Every day the offer is not sold the tax will increase by 5% when it reaches 100% the offer is taken down and the wares belong to the owner of the trade hub. The trade hub has a reasonable upkeep for the owner. While the player shops/shacks will have far less upkeep, preferable they should decay and need to be repaired with resources not gold. Renting and Trading Allow to rent rooms or buy content of chests by asking a gold amount to unlock a door or chest. Npc settlements Liven up trade buy having npc cities with traders that buy and sell with different prices and demand and might give trade requests to players that are rewarded with extra gold upon delivery. Workstations A new basic workstation that is easily build and move most none primitive part from inventory crafting to this station and the smithy. Crafting stations now take more time to produce parts and do not manufacture until manned by a player or npc crew. Faster crafting skills affecting crafting tasks set by the player with the skill, npc manufacture much slower than the player when using the stations. NPC workforce Possibility to set hired npcs to slowly collect resources independently in a certain area around a collection box. As long as you can protect them you will be able to skip on the most boring part of the game and get mats for a new ship with enough time. Backpacks and stuff Craftable backpacks that increase carry capacity. Items in backpacks have their weight reduced. Bags to be placed in inventories reducing weight of items inside. Can also be placed on the ground, carts... Saddlebags increasing carry capacity and reduce weight of items inside. Normal inventory reduced carry capacity but include very basic bags and backpacks that can already be crafted on starter islands and boost it to about the current basic level. Creatures 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 - big monsters or large group of enemies like an undead army - 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 (there will be a warning a few days before the creature attacks like dead fish on the beach, bubbles in the water, strange weather or an undead armada on the horizon...) - 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 and are more likely to happen on heavily inhabited islands but no more than 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 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. Weapons and Armor Dual Wield Dual wield swords and daggers and add daggers. Cant do something wrong with this its an always welcomed feature. You should also 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. Unarmed/martial arts Add kicks and combo moves to make unarmed fighting more viable with knockbacks and combos for some additional effects like stunning or knock down. + Ability to disarm enemies. Job armor and clothes Every job should have appropriate clothing, light and warm version. For example dancers shouldn’t be dancing around in fur armor or ship builders in metal armor. Outfits give bonuses to the corresponding profession and liven up the world. Magic Since magic will be added some ideas for magic types and purposes Necromancy – Recruiting/summoning and controlling an army of the dead crew. Transforming into an undead yourself -> undead don’t need air and can live under water. Able to resurrect dead players and npc crew as undead crew. Turn your ship into a ghost ship, able to dive (cannons don’t work under water thou but good for surprise appearance) Voodoo – Cursing weapons, ships, players and animals and lifting curses, changing the weather/wind (bad) Divine – Blessing weapons, ships, players, animals or harvest, changing the weather/wind (good) SkilltreeAs a long time goal a rework of the xp system would be preferable.  There will be different XP for the different skill trees. For example building a ship gives you seamanship xp and sailing a ship gives captaineering xp or hitting with a meele weapon gives meele weaponry xp… -> If you build ships you become a better ship builder, if you fight a lot you become a better fighter and so on. This comes along with a rework of xp amounts so you make some worthy progress with each action, where building a ship for 8 hours gives you as much progress with seamanship as killing creatures for 8 hours gives weapon xp. Also the skill-trees are expanded to give more passive bonuses and active skills with every tree for a more in depth specialization above the basics. Player Conditions Player wounds and weight Introduce heavy wounds, heavy overweight - both force you to crawl so you cannot interact with for example ladders with heavy overweighting and stuff.Limb damage effects - reducing meele damage (arms), accuracy (head), stamina (chest) or walking/dodging (legs). Aging When you die of old age you will have to make a new character but keep your progress level and exploration and ships etc. and get to respect your character once. (No respect on level up anymore) When you die of old age and have a child you can choose to play as the child and will also keep levels, exploration and ships etc. with a free respect. Depending on how well the child was raised you will get a permanent stat bonus to your lineage like more health or stamina. When using the fountain of youth you will get a free respect and are young again.

Some more ideas and a more in detail idea for the bounties and the law system aligned to them: Flags (Yield mechanic) You can raise a flag on your ship that also influences faction and pvp. It’s especially handy for pvp but also for pve server or areas. Flags have a cooldown before they can be changed again. Flags can also be applied to npc settlements and player claims and have the same rules. Available flags are: Trader Flag – Is a neutral flag and has no special effect. Hostiles like pirates or factions you have a bad reputation will target you. Company Flag – You represent your company and your deeds will affect its reputation and the standing towards other companies, factions and players and their reputation towards your company if they that take actions against you. You can take actions against hostile companies (declared company war) without earning a bounty on your head. Faction Flag – You represent an NPC faction and can sail their waters and use their ports but are hunted by their enemies. Flags of factions are only available if you have a good enough standing with that faction. (Your reputations with said faction will increase from doing quests for npcs in ports and your reputation will decline if attacking faction ships or npcs.) Pirate Flag – You will go hostile to all around you including unallied pirates and can take pirate actions but will earn a bounty on your head if you do so. No one will get a bounty for attacking a pirate, you cannot lower the flag for a while after raising it. The pirate flag will be forced if your bounty is too high making you a well-known pirate. Navy Flag – You will be hostile to pirates and players with bounties, while everyone can attack pirates without a penalty, pirates can fight of navy ships without a penalty. Navy ships have an escape blocking aura. If you die within the aura around a hostile navy ship you will be forced to respawn in a bed that is also within this aura if you don’t have a bed in range you will pass out and can be taken prisoner. White Flag – Raising the white flag will yield to enemies, npcs and players alike. Your sails will be closed and all abroad will be forced to kneel down so you cannot fight. Attacking a ship or npc that has yielded and sinking it will have very high bounty penalty excluding pirate ships. A yielded ship will unlock all containers and doors and can be looted by player pirates as much as they like to. Hostile NPCs will come alongside yielded ships and transfer a part or all content of boxes and inventories depending on reputation and faction, npc pirates and the legion of the damned will also take your crew. Player pirates can take over yielded ships and enslave the crew but it will earn them a very high bounty that’s not worth the gain unless you are among the few most famous pirates that can keep fighting of everything that will be after you. (Ships should not be sunk for no reason, that very important to make the world evolve) Option to set npc crew to man stations by demand. If you anchor they should unman stations and repair if you issue orders to an unmanned sail or cannon they will man the station or switch from another station that has no orders issued right now.

It looks alot like we are currently running a stress test. Main purpose is to bring as many players, ships, creatures and stuff on the servers without any limitations to test how much they can handle and improve server architecture. I guess setting the focus on gameplay adjustments and improvements is planned for later. Thou it might be a wise decision to disable such broken systems for the time being until a proper fix or replacement system is in place.

Some more suggestions. Quests and World Tasks: Add NPC in Towns that give Quests for a Gold reward. Exploration Quest: Visit a certain island and cartograph it. Return to Questgiver for reward. Exploration Tasks: World tasks, pieces of a (exploration) treasure maps are appearing on one island. If you explore the island you will randomly find the pieces if you have enough pieces to combine into a map it will lead to a treasure chest on this island. If you picked up the treasure chest it will have a long cooldown but you can do the same on every island to encourage exploration. Trading Quest: Deliver certain materials to a faraway NPC town for a Gold reward. Special Trading Quest: Transport a certain item or person from one Port to another. Salvage Quest: Bring certain item found on a shipwreck to questgiver. Salvage Task: Find a treasure Map that points toward a shipwreck for salvage. Rescue Task: find shipwrecked npcs and bring them to any town for a small reward, or enslave them and sell them in a pirate nest. And many more like combat quests, creature hunt, boarding trader ships or capturing civilian/navy ships… Weather forecast: Give a warning a few minutes before the weather changes and add skills that increase the warning period. Crafting skills: Add crafting skills that slightly reduce the required mats. Maybe different skills for every kind of material like metal or wood. NPC workforce: Possibility to set hired npcs to slowly collect resources independently in a certain area around a collection box. As long as you can protect them you will be able to skip on the most boring part of the game and get mats for a new ship with time. Ship repair: Allow us to use materials from the ship inventory for repair and add an option to repair everything at a very low speed if you hit it with a hammer it will increase the speed. Visible damage: Visible damage to planks so you can easily tell their conditions and damaged ships do look damaged.

actually a person happy with the game could recommend it to hundreds of people and bring dozens of friends to buy the game. its not like the devs would not care but we need more patience, it takes time to fix this and there is alot broken. devs are doing a great job fixing things really fast and its making good progress so we might see alot more stuff to make the game complete that is already hinted at. thou a few temporary hotfixes for aggro animals and exploits would help to calm things down.

for now it would be best if ships dont sink on pve for whatever reason while anchored. can be shot to pieces, a wolf chewing a plank away, overweight, or exceeding the crew limit from players or seagulls landing on the ship and stuff. as long as its anchored it does not completely sink (atleast for 2 days or so, it must be possible to not log into the game for a day), of course as soon as you lift the anchor it will sink unless you fixed the problems in advance. one problem remains on pve that players can jump on your ship while you are online and on the open sea, you cant remove them thou pve rules. should have a remove neutral players switch for now that throws them into the sea. this would allow for the time to fix things up with the game.

Some suggestions on things that could be add during Early Access besides balancing and bug fixing. Ships: Brig: The current brig is just an expensive schooner. It needs a bit more gunports, there are still planks left that could fit a gunport and maybe they can be moved a bit closer together to at least have 10 gunports per side. Also the ships rail need to be lower so the deck guns don’t stick through it. Frigats: A medium ship to fill the Gap between Schooner/Brig and Galleon. Having one or two gundecks with a total of 20 gunports per side. Ship of the Line: A Flagship having about 3 or 4 complete gundecks and are extremely expensive even compared to the Galleon. Large companies need some kind of flagships as the normal galleon have become quiet common. Huge Sails: The Large sails in the game are the right size for a brig but they are way too small for galleons and look rather stupid on them. The mast above the deck should atleast have a height of about the length of the ship. Ship details: besides planks and gunports there should be windows and balconies to design your ship especially at the stern like the real ships. Also when placing walls inside a ship hull they should fill the gap to the hull. Ship sinking: Besides removing ways a ship should not sink. Ships should be more resistant to sinking, so you can shoot them to pieces and loot them more often than sinking them. For this there should be a general resistance for planks so you don’t sink by a single plank been hit two times. If a plank looses hp it will gain damage resistance. If it lost 50% hp it will have 50% resistance if it lost 99% hp it will have 99% resistance. But resistance will be reduced by a modifier resembling your ships condititon. All planks hp together will be the ships condition and if you lost for example 50% of the overall hp on all planks your ships condition will be 50% which will reduce all resistances your planks have by 50%. So the more damage your ship has taken the more easier it is to break a plank or damage it further but if your ship is in perfect condition planks will be very resistant to breaking. (would also require to adjust repair speed) World: Island diversity (and adding more Islands of course): Free Islands – Civilian Islands with a neutral NPC claim for everyone to live on and maybe a NPC settlement for trading etc. Exploration Islands – Islands you cant build on for exploring and the real pirate feeling. Claimable Islands - Normal Islands to fight for. Map rearrangement or special server: All starter areas are on the west side. The farther you move east the higher level the enemies and the better the rewards and the rarer the resources get. First row are lawless areas, next rows are PVE, then some rows with PVP with offline protection and last full PVP sectors. Could also add an exploration sector where you cannot build and find rarest stuff on expeditions to truly uninhabited islands. NPC Factions: Having some factions to liven up the world. (All using real ships/versions of the playerships) Civilian – NPC Trader ships and Settlements. Offering buildspots in the city or free building on the rest of the island. Navy – Having forts and military ports. Guarding the sea from pirates and ships of the damned. Pirates – NPC pirates attacking players and traders. You can yield and they take your wares or a bribe and don’t sink your ship for no reason, unless you fight back. Having pirate nests where player pirates can get services and stuff also sell slaves or stolen goods. Damnation – ships of the damned turned into real ships and only appearing during night time Faction Areas and settlements: factions have areas in which they are more numerous and the farther away from their area the rarer they appear. Ships of the damned for example only appear in vertain areas while in the other areas there are npc pirates and in some areas there are only few hostile ships and a strong navy presence. Law System: If you kill other players outside of company wars (add company wars of course) you will get a bounty on your head depending on what you did, a little for killing a player and more for sinking a ship or stealing a claim. If you live like a pirate you will be flagged as one. Bounties can be collected by players that capture you and hand you to the navy or you get attacked by navy ships. Bounty will only decline if you are imprisoned but not from dying and respawning. Of course you can espace relatively easy if you don’t want to stay imprisoned for a long time but you keep your bounty that way. Also include special starter islands/ pirate nests for players with a high bounty on their head. Trading, crafting and resources: crafting stuff will result in different quality. Better skill and higher tier resources will produce better results -> a ship plank from strong wood is better than one from soft wood. containers have a maximum weight limit so you actually cant throw everything into one container. containers can be moved, smalls ones by hand and carts and big ones with cranes(add cranes for this) and large carts. renting and trading – allow to rent rooms or buy content of chests by asking a gold amount to unlock a door or chest trader counter – a counter where you can place items and set a price on them to buy or sell npc settlements – liven up trade buy having npc cities with traders that buy and sell Weapons: Dual wield swords and daggers and add daggers. Cant do something wrong with this its an always welcomed feature. Job armor and clothes: Every job should have appropriate clothing, light and warm version. For example dancers shouldn’t be dancing around in fur armor or ship builders in metal armor. Outfits give bonuses to the corresponding profession and liven up the world.

i doubt there will be penalties for dying of old age. we can already die as much as we want and just respawn with no penalties. it looks more like a respec system to me, once you cannot respec for free anymore you will have to die of old age and start a new char to respec. but you will keep your level. Actually the level is the only thing you cant loose while your inventory, ship, house and claim can be lost the character level is the only persistent progression which is very important for these kind of games. player numbers would be too low to pay for the servers if there was only complete restarts and permadeath with no other servers/settings. its an option for a hardcore server thou together with general permadeath once bugs and balance are manageable.

1) the map and pve server or pvp server. this game needs both save areas, pvp areas with protection, full pvp areas. all starter island should be on the west side and the farther you move east the higher level the stuff gets and the rarer the rewards are as well as the pvp protection declines the farther east you move. 2) claim after claim no land to explore or build. let us build without a claim, most players dont need that much land just to place a shack and a shipyard, fewer but stronger contested claim areas and more free building areas. also more land in general or npc towns to settle in as well as new island where you cant build that are just for exploring. 3) hyper agressive instant respawning animals and alphas. no level scaling no balance. it is planned to nerf tames so we have more swashbuckling pirates and less bear riders enter your ship. but when those swashbuckling pirates get eaten by hyperagressive fauna as soon as they set a foot on a shore it doesn help much. same nerf to the wild creatures and reduced number, it works very well on private servers it would be a blessing for the game. also let our attacks stun and cancle animal attacks like they do to us to make meele more of an option. my suggestion would be to try to bring all servers together to make a giant world with starter, newbie, pve, semi-pvp, pvp areas including more island per server with free building, pure exploration or claimable islands.

you dont even need to bother bringing resources to sink a ship with weight just throw a few chickens or other plentiful creatures from the shore onto the ship to exceed the crew limit. not even need players to do it, have at anytime 3 seagulls land on a raft or slop and its gone.

if you use shields you can fight alot better against animals. but pirates with shields? there should be a proper block mechanic even without shields, so not only do the animals stun you but you can stun them too if you hit them.

well im sure it is planned to add npc trader ships, npc pirate ships and npc marine ships and also reduce the amount and change the ships of the damned into real ship. different regions having different amounts... everything else wouldnt make sense.

after all they need numbers not just a few hardcore players to keep the servers running. they gotta pay bills. but im sure once the more casual servers are working they will introduce a hardcore server with original rates and permadeath. maybe even move all starter areas to the west side of the map and even introduce minimum level caps to move farther east.

exactly, you cant mix a standard mmo with an survival game. look at final fantasy having millions of players playing happy together, pve, pvp, raids (killing stuff and people every few seconds). it does work because you can kill others but you cant harm them, they dont loose anything so you can have constant fighting and killing. but if you have a survival game where you loose everything and it takes alot of time to start over again you cant simply have non stop fighting and killing. you can of course make your own kind of game, like a survival game with a big world and many players and it works fine but putting mmo stuff there that doesnt fit the game breaks it. what can be done? first - less creatures, less damned, less players -> the world needs to be bigger (more land) so you dont meet your doom too soon. second - community managment, the current system does not punish violent acts and rewards them especially when the victim is offline which is unrealistic and thus creates a disfunctional community where unfriendly players flourish while friendly players leave and decline in numbers which generates an environment out of balance where you cant play anymore at all. there are plentyfull options here some are: 1. flag criminals with karma points: if you play as a pirate you also have to live as a pirate, excluded from save areas and civil regions, spawning and living in pirate regions where the ships of the damned roam while marine ships are roaming lawful areas. 2. bounty: you earn a bounty on your head with bad deeds and if captured will be taken into prison until it wears of or executed, if killed the bounty will not be removed so you cant just get rid of it with dying. if you got the gold you can buy your freedom but you need to be a very successful pirate to buy yourself out of everything. 3. some protection, more karmapoints if the victim is lower level or offline etc. 4. hardcore server with permadeath, that would actually discourage from reckless acts as you cant simply respawn. if its harder to be a pirate there will be more prey and greater rewards to be earned if successful.

just wait till they introduce a hardcore server with permadeath. you wont die of old age there

Even a random Seagull landing on your ship counts towards the crew limit. So beware of the mighty chicken farmer climbing on peoples galleons with his chicken hord and sinking it on PVE no problem.

i wonder where will the territory taxes go? will they add a new chest for it or will they drop into the owners inventory, sinking its ship?