Captain Jack Shadow

Insurance is just a suggestion, and obviously, if it were implemented, it would have to take into consideration the ability to recover materials, but one thing you didn't think of is this...what if you are destroyed well out to sea, and cannot recover that material? Or, what if your ship is destroyed while you are offline, and it's a few days before you get back? So, something that could be part of this mechanic is that if you recover anything from the wreck, you can't claim the insurance, and if you claim the insurance, the wreck is no longer recoverable. I would expect that if somebody sinks you at sea, they will dive the wreck and take anything of value.

If somebody puts a full crew of NPCs on a ship, and you board it, you can sink it. So yes, it is broken. They need to stop limiting the crew, and let weight be the limiting factor. But even that can be a thing that can be abused.

This is where more robust permissions would help. Every member should not be able to demolish company structures. Every member should not be able to fire cannons, or operate ships, other than ones they create. Firing on your own ships, should kick you out of the company, and AI fire at you, unless you are an Admin or Owner. Don't make people you can't trust, and Admin. As it sits, this game is a long way from primetime, and the Devs are disappointingly silent about any plans to address problems like these. My guess is that they never will.

Yes, we need a way to push off, to make space for us to turn the raft, and get it out of shallow water.

Right, and that change is due to people quitting over the imbalance between how much it takes to build a ship, and how much it takes to sink one. There are still problems, but reducing the cost of ships was a step in the right direction. If and when ships sink less, or there is an insurance system to help replace lost ships, they could, and should, become more expensive to build. If they add an insurance system, it should only apply to newly built ships under the more expensive resource requirements that would accompany the insurance system addition.

People rage quit because the ease with which ships are sunk, does not equal the expense. If you want ships to sink often, they need to be built often. It's an old maxim stated by Mr. Common Sense.

At the current cost for the bow, and arrows, the dura should be 100 shots, with the armor piercing shot being taking costing 10 shots, or whatever the boost in damage equals, minus just a bit. In other words, if the damage is equal to ten shots, then the dura loss should equal 9 shots. Spec'ing into strong arm should reduce durability by ten percent, and the second strong arm skill should take an additional ten percent. So 80 shots. However, that skill should boost damage significantly more than it does now. At this point, it seems to do little boost.

Depends on the Island. We are on a temperate island that has many mountains. It's one of the larger islands. As a result of all those mountains, it forces you to travel in areas where the animals have been funneled to...the valleys. As a result, traveling on foot is difficult as there is little opportunity to avoid wolves, lions and snakes. You have to fight your way through them. With the way bows now break, just going out to forage is a costly affair.

Depends on what you are looking for. Most people did not come here to play ARK again, and grind and grind and grind, just to have a ship. I see no gameplay value in smacking a rock ten times for a small amount of resources, instead of smacking it three times for a larger amount. Maybe you just don't value your time as much as the rest of us. We want this game to be about sailing ships, trading, selling, buying, exploring other islands, fighting bosses, fighting AI pirates, sinking AI cargo ships...and fighting each other in a manner that makes the game fun. Grinding is not fun for 90% of the people. You may want to spend 90% of your time smacking rocks, trees and plants, and 10% sailing, but that IS NOT what the majority of the people want. Personally, I would make it 3x harvest.

Simple. Stop including the animals, and non-crewmembers as crewmembers. Anyone who is not in your company, or an NPC crewman, should not count as a crewman. Animals you are transporting, should not count as crew...only count against the weight. People not in your company, should not count against the weight of the ship, and this can also be griefed, as they can load up heavy, and if they have enough do this, make your ship overweight. In PvE, doing that could be made to damage the offending player very quickly. Players, and especially Meta players, will do what the game allows, and or, rewards.

I agree, 100 shots is good. Also, the Strong Arm skills need to be drastically buffed, such that the bow and arrow becomes a viable weapon choice for players. As it stands, it is unrealistically weak. An arrow is just as dangerous to you as a bullet. What makes a gun a better choice is it's more compact size (pistol), and size and weight of the ammo. A bow and arrow, however, is more stealthy, as it has much much less noise associated with firing it. The skill tree needs to be seriously reworked into 3 categories, Combat, Occupation, and Talent. Skill points would be awarded to each of them, such that you choose a style of combat, an occupation, and a talent.

An insurance system that allowed you to get your ship back, if you are not in Outlaw, or Most wanted Outlaw status, would also help, though this might only cover the hull...as in the ship itself. Star Citizen has a good system planned for this. Hull Insurance (covers the basic ship) Upgrade insurance (covers what you add to the basic ship) cargo insurance (covers the cargo in the ship) Something similar could work here. For balancing, you could get a certain percentage of the resources to build a new ship if you are in Outlaw, but not Most Wanted Outlaw status. The insurance could be a token that you place in the shipyard that builds the ship, and adds the components to finish it, as in the planks, masts and sails. Upgrade insurance would require you to declare every added component, and pay accordingly, so doors, ceilings, walls, cannon, etc.. Ammo would be included in cargo insurance. This would also be charged based on what you are declaring. You are not required to insure anything, or everything.

By the way, this totally eliminates the need for any sort of turret defense. Being raided will suck, but not be the end of the world. And turrets, as shown in ARK, weren't effective at preventing raids anyway.

First, let's understand that the Devs have a vision of this game involving heavy trade and mercantilism. That sounds awesome for a game involving ships, and pirates. However, this can NEVER exist in a game that promotes mindless PvP and destruction. If you want the first part, you have to put throttles on the second. So how to do that? I believe that several things can be done. First, we do want PvP. We do want raiding, and we do want to sink ships. But how can we do this in a manner that doesn't inhibit fun gameplay? The basis would be a Reputation System that mimicked a justice system. This does not have to be hard or complicated. It simply has to recognize that all PvP and all Destruction are not equal. First, you have a system of lawful and unlawful points awarded, and and then have a few different player standings related to that system. At a minimum, they would be: Lawful Outlaw Most Wanted Outlaw (option) Dread Pirate With Lawful, you are unrestricted, you go anywhere and enter any port, freely. With Outlaw, you are free game for other players to shoot at, and you can't enter lawful ports. AI would shoot at you and your ship if you enter. With Most Wanted Outlaw, Lawful players are given a buff when combating you on land and at sea, and an AI Royal Navy hunts you. But people also want to sink ships, a lot. So, you put in smugglers, and pirates in all ship classes, with their difficulty ranging by the class of ship they are in, and the rewards for sinking them equal to their class. Sloops easiest, and Galleons hardest. Sinking them also gives you lawful points. Lawful points don't build up, they just remove Outlaw points. Conducting trade with lawful sailors and merchants in other companies, gives lawful points. Raiding adds Outlaw points, but so long as the destruction is not mindless, this won't add a huge amount of points. This is determined by what you destroy. Doors, hatches, and containers won't add a lot of points. Damaging ship hulls, masts, sails, etc...adds a lot of points. Sinking them adds a whole lot of points. Same goes for bases. Containers would also have an option to just destroy the lock. This allows for less Outlaw points as you do not destroy the container. This allows you to take what you want, and the owner comes back to find what you did not take, still in the container. This will allow for more mercantilism and trade because you don't lose everything and start from scratch. You have something to trade to get gold to purchase important things you lost. Presently, the container gets destroyed, the raider may not even take anything, but everything in the container is lost. The above will actually, also encourage real Pirate game play. You have somebody outgunned, and no way to run...you offer them the out of letting you board, and take what you want, then leave without a lot of destruction. Time will also be a modifier on your Outlaw score. Time lowers your outlaw score by a set rate, if no outlaw activities have been committed within a set number of hours. This would need to be subject to testing, balancing and tweaking to get it right. Companies and individuals could accept player placed missions for escort duty. A player merchant asks for an escort for their merchant ships, and other players accept the mission. Only upon acceptance do you learn where the origination and destination are. The original request only tells you within a 3x3 grid where both are. Once you accept, you are duty bound to do the job. This will affect your Outlaw score. If your company or allied company attacks this merchant, you get HUGE Outlaw points awarded. If a rival company sinks it, you get some, but not a lot. Getting the merchant to safety removes a good number of points. This also, would need tweaking to achieve the desired effect. Doing trade/business with lawful players and companies will add a small amount of lawful points. Declaring war on another company, would reduce the penalty for attacking ships and bases that are not ORP protected. You still want to encourage PvP, not PvE disguised as PvP. Also, a modifier based on your company's Outlaw status, and that of the Company you attack, could come into play. For instance, if you have no outlaw status, or a very low outlaw status, but you declare war on a company with a much higher outlaw status, you won't suffer gaining outlaw points as much. Individuals and Companies that reach Most Wanted Outlaw status, cause others to receive an offensive and defensive buff when battling them. Your status would not be a secret to you or others, and so the leaders would need to manage the activities of themselves and their members, and remove members who don't follow orders regarding this. Removing a rogue would not immediately remove their affect on your company's outlaw status. Time would remove it as per normal function. This prevents exploiting this system by kicking out those with high outlaw status, and bringing them back in when it is low, as a means of managing the company outlaw status. In short, once balanced and tweaked, this would not punish raiding, and PvP, that is not mindless destruction, and create an environment for a thriving economy. This system, along with some form of ORP, would prevent one person sinking a Brigantine, or Galleon, from shore or a raft, with some fire arrows. That is not the kind of game play most people are looking for. You cannot have mindless destruction and PvP in a game where you want to promote trade and mercantilism. However, a good system would also not eliminate PvP. It would instead promote it in a manner that made the game more enjoyable. Gamers, and especially Meta Gamers, will do what the game allows and rewards. They will not do, or do less, what the game punishes.

Dumb. We set them to neutral. We had to whistle them to passive when entering our port area because while on Neutral, they attacked and sank a raft parked there, owned by some random player not in our Company. Stop making excuses for a game breaking problem People must be able to go to bed with the reasonable expectation that their very expensive ship will still be there when they log back in a day or two later. If not, they will leave the game. They should not expect that one person can sit on shore, well within archer range, and shoot fire arrows at an undefended ship, with impunity. The AI to repair the ship should have been putting out the fires faster than the person shooting them, because we had 4 on that duty, and he was one person. We should also be able to arm all AI with guns, and bows, etc...to fight back. Better, simpler and easier to have ORP, so people can defend their ships themselves. But since we need to build bases inland to avoid shore bombardment from easily destroying a base, the ORP needs to kick in when all human crew are out of range of the ship. A warning that the ship is under attack, is also a necessary mechanic. The first message that the ship is in danger, should not be the ship's death message. This is another game breaking missing mechanic. This IS the ARK engine. In ARK, Neutral is for Dinos to defend themselves. They do not attack first. This is what you would want when you go offline. You do not want your ship to aggressively attack anything that comes within range. You want it to return fire against aggressors, not pick fights with people sailing by.

We had a full crew of NPCs, on Neutral, "defending" the ship. One man on shore sank it. Cannons are not turrets. Turrets in ARK were not an impediment to raiding someone. A simple, easy to execute process allowed you to get past them. Have you ever watched H.O.D an his crew bypass turrets in like 15 seconds? And we have less than that. ORP is the answer, like it or not. That or a reputation system that punishes both individuals and companies for mindless destruction.

Let me clue you in. Companies need to stop trying to be legalistic about the term Early Access, and need to stop hiding behind that as an excuse. The gamer's expectations ARE what defines Early Access, like it or not, and it is known that Gamers expect that Early Access means the only thing left is some tweaking and balancing...in other words, something more akin to Beta than Alpha. If the game is in Alpha state, say so. Don't hide behind the term Early Access, when they know that gamers believe that to mean the game is pretty much done as far as game mechanics go. At a minimum, they expect you to be very open and honest about missing mechanics, and give a timeline for when you think those will be added, and they also expect that those missing mechanics will not be game breaking, without some adjustment or inclusion of a placeholder, in the meantime. Consumers are not going to let companies get away with hiding behind the term EA, as an excuse for everything. The fact that you seem to want that to be the case, speaks volumes for who you are.

It seems that you should look it up. Games missing major game mechanics...which are game breaking, isn't early access. The problem is that industry insiders have expanded the definition to allow them to make it cover anything and everything, and be a blanket excuse. Missing a major game mechanic that is game breaking, is not early access. Having no game mechanic to defend a ship when offline, or away from the ship, IS game breaking, with how expensive these ships are. Had they made the ships super easy to build until they had this sorted, I could have overlooked that missing mechanic. But, they did not think this through. They assumed everyone would have huge companies, and rely on round the clock player protection, it would appear. That isn't going to happen.

Bahahahaha The logical hole is you thinking that you have all the answers. You have amazingly few, starting with you claiming to understand what early access is. You also don't seem to understand when the problems go beyond tweaking and balancing. The problems with this game go way beyond tweaking and balancing, and you seem to be too stupid to understand this. An early access version of this game would have some means of defending your ship when away from it, but as I have pointed out, this doesn't even seem to have been given any real thought. That's not early access, that Pre-Alpha. That's a game breaking lack of game mechanics.

Also, what you seem to not understand is that the game needs more than balancing and tweaking. The animal system, and the Alphas need completely reworked. Never in human history has an animal been tamed by repeatedly shooting it with arrows. This is beyond ridiculous. I made a suggestion of how they could use ARK code to make the taming better. And bolas trap without an animal, or human, being injured. Did you dismiss that and not even read it because you wrote it off as just more whining? Make animals more useful for gathering. Don't limit animal breeding by region, and give us greenhouses to grow things from other regions. Are they realistic for that period? No. But neither are dragons. The Alphas are way too OP with as plentiful as they are. I actually like the Alpha Horse mechanic where it defends the other horses, but it and all Alphas are too OP with as plentiful as they are. Unless of course, battling them is to be the goal of the game, and as I said...most people don't want that, and the people who all left credited them as one of the major reasons they left the game. They are end game powerful, but plentiful in areas where many beginners and mid-level players try to get things done for their company, forcing you to always move in packs of 6 to 12 people. We only have 10 in our company, and some don't play every night, and now 2 of the most active, appear to have quit also. I do acknowledge that they have made some steps in the right direction, on some of the smaller issues, such as the animals healing while dong battle with you. I believe they reduced how much the animals heal, when they should eliminate that entirely. At a minimum, drastically increase the time it takes for them to heal, and drastically reduce how much they heal each time. Bring in a reputation system. You can't have a trade and mercantile system, without a reputation system that rewards doing trade, and other good deeds, and punishes aggressive PvP. This is something Star Citizen is working on, and has had in bare bones for since the start. If you shoot at a lawful ship, you earn a crime stat, and now shooting at you no longer earns lawful players a crime stat for shooting at you. Not until you clear the crime stat. In this game, actions could earn lawful or unlawful stats. Taking an escort mission...in other words, accepting a request through game mechanics, to escort somebody from point A to point B, earns you lawful points. If they arrive safely, you get the points. Put smuggler AI ships in the game for people to attack. This earns lawful points. Attacking a lawful player earns unlawful points. One unlawful action should not make you an outlaw. THIS would need balancing and tweaking. Put a powerful government navy in the game to punish those with OUTLAW status. Gaining MOST WANTED OUTLAW status should give all lawful players a BUFF when battling you. Raiding somebody's ship should earn far less unlawful points than sinking the ship, or doing excessive damage to it. This would be defined by what is damaged and how much. Doors, hatches, and containers...not so many points. Hull, Masts, Sails, etc...many points. Same with somebody's base. Make the containers unlockable without destroying so that you don't lose everything just because you were raided. The game will never have a thriving economy system without this.

Once again, you show how stupid you are, and how clueless you are to what was typed. Never have I criticized this game for being made with the same engine as ARK. I do not have a problem with SOME things being like ark..for instance, the building system, or the crafting system, or the UI. I am pointing our actual problems with the game, and things that have driven people away from that game. Many of which were preventable if the Devs made the right decision. Things that are common sense. For instance, don't make the boys break after 40 shots, when it can take 10 to kill a fish because 7 of the shots hit the tail or fins and didn't register. A fish's tail and fins aren't a shield. Remove their collier if they don't take damage. Put a head on the sheep. And allow the strong arm skill, especially when both are chosen, to do real damage. In real life, a bow is not a weak weapon. It will kill you just as fast as a rifle, and is actually more accurate at range, when used by a skilled user, than a pistol. Especially pistols of that era. BEFORE nerfing the bow more, they should have fixed the problems, and increased the effect of Strong Arm skills. BEFORE making ships expensive to make, they have put at least a little bit of thought into how players would keep their ships safe when they logged off. The leader of our group, and his wife, appear to have quit. Why would he stick around? We grind to build a Brigantine, and take it out on its first voyage and 7 SotD destroy it in their SOFT WIPE fiasco. Then we go to unofficial, and grind to build another. One dude on shore, likely with just fire arrows, destroys the second Brigantine, that had a full crew of NPCs manning guns, and set to repair. Gold, Crew, Ship, and Supplies, all gone from one fool with fire arrows, or whatever he used. And two of us were online, inland at the main base. First clue something was up, a crewmember death message, followd less than a minute later by the message that the ship was sunk. And you think people should want to stick around for this, or think the devs have a clue? I have no faith in them. I am waiting for mods to make a better game than the Devs seem capable of. That may be harsh, but it is earned, when you release a game like this, make the ships very expensive to build, but so easy to destroy, with NOT ONE SINGLE WAY to protect the ship when you are away from it. The criticism is valid, and earned. You are guilty of a logical fallacy. People have legitimate complaints. Your attitude is that because some people can't be made happy no matter what the devs do, anyone who criticizes is wrong. This is ignorant. People left, and for good reason. Many complaints are on point. Just because people bring up valid complaints, does not make them a whiner, no matter how much you want to believe it. Being a mindless supporter of the Devs is just as bad as being a mindless critic.

When ships become hardened, and have some sort of reliable protection while unmanned, and thus remain in your inventory for days and weeks on average, they can make ships expensive to create. However, right now, people are leaving the game because they work like a slave to build their ship, kit it out, and set sail one say, then come back the next day to see that one person sank it because it is completely vulnerable, and super easy to sink, and ours was sunk by one guy on shore, while the ship was fully manned with NPCs on the cannons, and on Neutral, and yet they never fired a shot. LIkely because the guy attacked from the shore, out of the firing arcs of the guns, or used a grappling hook to board it, and set it on fire. Either way, we went there to find him on the shore, on a bear. So because the ships are so easy to sink, they need to be equally easy to build. What would have been better would have been to have the defense of ships already worked out. My feeling is that we should have a claim flag that is not easily capture-able, that must be placed within a set number of feet of the shoreline, and marks that area as your port, and makes unmanned ships in that area, invulnerable. Board the ship and it loses that protection. This should not make them unraidable, but the NPCs should attack any intruder that board the ship. But this requires really good AI mechanics.

Ridiculous holier than thou attitude you have there Sport. I have news for you, this is not my first rodeo. I have played many alphas and early access games. I was there nearly 20 years ago, when WWIIOL had the most epic worst launch in history, and I stuck with it, and excelled in the game. That game, in a way, was Star Citizen, before Star Citizen, but then, they didn't have things like crowd funding, and no game before it had launched in Alpha condition. It set records the first 3 days, and then forever after that, could not shake the reputation that it was garbage. It was not. It developed into a great game within 2 to 3 years. I defended it because it was worth defending, and the Devs, while not perfect, made mostly good decisions. As a result, it still has a hard core, though small following, to this day. The teaser trailer was very misleading. That's my first issue. What we say in that trailer, is NOT what we have today. I dislike the short sightedness of the devs who never thought about what would happen undefended ships, and bases. This is like ARK, but with no turrets for defense, and it's not like those were at all hard to bypass. The actually made that too easy there. It was a simple process, but at least you had something. That seems like a luxury now. And no warning that your ship is under attack? And a fucking Brigantine can be sunk by one idiot on shore? Probably used fire, while all our very expensive NPCs sat there like idiots. The game is a wreck. Nice idea, poor execution. My concerns are valid. Like the wasted points for strong arm on the bow. Even with that, the bow is pathetically weak. The skill tree is an abomination. They say they want you to have to cooperate with others, yet they make it such that I have to tame to be able to tame a creature, in order to ride them. I have to be able to make guns, to use them. The skill tree is a wreck, and if you don't understand that, you haven't played games with skill trees. This is the worst one ever made. Period. Engrams made far more sense than these do. In fact, that was one thing about ARK that was pretty good. They had made ships very expensive to create, and they still aren't exactly cheap. We settled on an Island with many mountains, and is the biggest on our server. As a result, those mountains funnel all the animals into the valleys you need to traverse through, and so you encounter many wolves and lions, and snakes just to go 400 meters to an area that has fiber. Not once have we been able to go there and farm without a stealth attack by lions and wolves, and snakes, often snakes and wolves or dogs at the same time. Mix in the ridiculous alphas and we end up respawning and trying to make our way to our body to rescue what we lost. Just trying to get from our base to the area we selected for a port is a very dangerous trip. The animals are insanely OP, such that our focus is on them most of the time, and not on our ships, and that IS a huge problem. I did not come here to fight unrealistic lions and wolves, and their otherworldly Alphas. I don't know a single person who likes those Alphas in the game. They are so ridiculous, they are worse than a Giga. Not one time was I ever one shot killed by a Giga. I want to focus on building my pathetically weak ships, not fight 5,000 OP animals between each sailing. Now we get to the Atari 1600 minigame to reload a pistol. What genius came up with that? I am sure a mod will come to get rid of that, along with all the other ridiculous such minigames. How about the ridiculous way we tame animals. Last I knew, you don't shoot arrows into an animal that you want to like you. They had a chance to fix this from ARK, but made it more ridiculous. Why not use the way you imprint babies? You trap the animal in a cage, or tranq it and cage it, then take it home, and imprint it over time. Passive tames just need to eat enough times, like now. But aggressive tames have to be punished for snarling at you, and fed when they act calm towards you. Now that would be realistic, and make far more sense. Eventually they should act affectionate, and want a hug, or go for a walk, and then they are tamed. I thought taming in ARK was dumb, and tedious, but this is even worse, even though it's faster. This is a legitimate complaint because they had the chance to do something that made more sense. Everything does not have to be a challenging minigame. But if it is, it can make more sense in the process. The facts are there, Sport. 3 out of 4 people left. I am at least still here, and have not demanded a refund that I could get, but I won't be silent about what is wrong with this game.

Just a guess, but I would think it has something to do with either reducing the smoothness of animations, or limits some of the AI from moving. Like instead of all of them moving all the time, some, just off center of your vision, don't move. Limiting animations would increase framerates.

Unofficial servers and mods are what will move this game in the right direction. The Dev's latest bumbleheaded decision shows they don't seem to understand the problems with the game. Between 1/4 and 1/3 of arrows, sometimes up to 1/2 of arrows do not register as hits, yet they think limiting a bow to 40 shots is a step in the right direction. It's like they never play the game. The bow is already nerfed. It didn't need another nerf. The reduced ship cost is a step in the right direction. Everything else they did is not a step in the right direction.