Ban Tier

... we have a new lead designer. Was waiting for this decision since their first livestream and horrible balancing changes. Now lets hope that the new guy understands, there are a lot more casual players out there than hardcore players. And that there are better ways to motivate veterans to play the game than making them more or less unbeatable for newbies due to incredible high stats and gear. I would for sure return to the game if it would be possible to keep up with progress of hardcore gamers with a more senseful ammount of playing time. Just one example: the current war-time equals a full workday. Ppl who had already a rl working day, who have friends and family barely can affort another working day just for pixels. There must be better and mor fun ways for holding and capturing islands. Nevertheless, good luck to the new guy.

+1 especially for balancing fights. I stopped playing after 1100+ hours, because some ppl/ships have insane resistances. Max specialisation + max equipp should be capped to max 150% compared to base skills (base skill is i.e. blue equipp and equally distributed points).

Short Feedback here: Yesterday we tried to claim an enemy Islands in our grid. First attack was quite ok, we were just running out of time due to the fact, the the claim timer runs backwards when the claim is interrupted. But the enemy had still beds on the Island and gear. So fair enough. The fight of the second Island became weird, because the enemy has build a high tower on their heightest mountain on the first Island and can now fly with gliders between the Islands without needing to use a boat. So despite the fact, that we could remove their beds on the second Island, were in control of the seas, they could come and set back the claim for more than 3 hours. We achieved 100+ kills with less than 10 losses, looted tons of mats but due to the flying mechanics, we were not able to claim the Island. I am not sure, if gliders are intended to fly between Islands. But if we want to play a naval game, it should not be possible to bypass this aspect of the game. So I would suggest to nerve gliders drastically so that they can only be used to fly for a very short duration (10-15 seconds). If you need to jump of a high point, you can first free fall before you open the gilder, so no problem. Other options would be to change the claim mechanics, i.e. the claim will only start to be interrupted if an enemy player entered the circle and stayed in the area for x minutes. Even better would be a system, where numbers count. The claim will be interrupted if the enemy scores lets say 100 points. Each enemy in the circle "earns" 10 points per minute. So 1 player needs to stay fpr 10 minutes in the area or 10 players for one minute. Personally I would prefer just the nerve of the gliders because it has less impact on the existing defenses. But due to the fact, that the fight over land ownership is my personal motivation for PvP, I am also open for carefully changing the claim system, so that we get real fights over Islands AND over the seas arround it (as our first claim in the morning) and less suicide actions.

Well I am not sure, if you understood the mechanics. A settlement owner can only demolish your structures within the first 24h. And if the landlord is interested in taxes and good settlers, why should he do that within the first 24h ? Thereafter in a dispute he must raid your base in the same way, any base can be raided outside peacetime. You should ask your future landlord, if you get the permission to place defensive canons. If he agrees, all is fine. If he denies, well I would look for a better place. The landlord can temporarily change the setttings regarding placement of canons, so he can also kind of control, how much defenses he will allow. I think this system is not bad balanced, you just need to play it right. So if you play the system right, at least you should be able to defend your stuff. Just find the right landlord and place to settle.

@Willard : you did not fully understand my post. We do ok with the 9 hours window, but as you pointed out, it IS a LOT of time. My point is that if Grapeshot wants to sell more copies of their game and fill up the servers, they need to continue to improve the experience for casual gamer, who do NOT want to invest so much time. And one point is to make the life of raiders as hard as possible. You need to have skills to kill a base in 4 hours, but that is what I call "ambitious PvP". Making the life for the attacker easier is the wrong direction. The dramatic drop of playernumbers and the fail of the empire server proofed this. So I hope, Grapeshot continues this direction.

This is a perfect analysis, why the Game still has so little population and so many negative reviews. The devs simply forget, that ppl might have a RL family and friends, RL jobs to earn the money the need to buy the game and future DLCs. My personal impression is, that there are two groups within Grapeshot itself fighting over the direction which the game should take. One group dreams of mega companies and mega fights ala EvE-Online. The tryout of the Empire-Server, denying an influence map for colonies from the beginning, nervs to game mechanics in the favour of larger clans (whale payout nerv) etc. I can only hope, that the more sensible group of devs, listening to smaller and medium clan players, will win this internal struggle. The colonies system revived your playerbase to a certain ammount. Continue to improve the mechanics in the favour of small to medium clans and you will not only see that your playerbase recovers, it will make the game also more interesting for new players to buy. We are a small company and barely can cover the 9h windows due to my ppl having a live. A window of 6-7 hours would make a attack of up to 5-6 hours (one hour claim timer) possible. And I call this still a long battle. A shorter window of 4-5 hours would even allow casual players, to enjoy PvE content or recover after an attack, so that the PvP can continue.

When a ship slighty touches an obstacle, it jumps like crazy and when unlucky - like me - you hit the ground much faster as your actual speed was resulting in breaking planks and sinking the ship. This bug was fixed and returned as many other bugs. Really disappointing @Grapeshot

Same bug here, ressource distribution seems to be bugged. Gras bushes yield tons of garlic in M14, no resin at all and iron nodes give tons of silver which is useless without gems. And last not least, no Resin at all. Absolutely not sure, if this is intentional because the combination is useless.

Maybe the OP should reread how the game was announced on steam: Piracy is just one aspect among many others. But ppl continue to call the game a "hardcore" survival game just to justify their griefing. So it is very good that Grapeshot tries to shift the game from a griefers-haven to a more settlement and civilization-building game, which is influenced by piracy.

Well puckles will work during non-raid times as far as I understood the system. Players and structures are only protected within the radius of the settlement, which is not covering the whole island if I understood their post right. So you can build puckles and PvP outside of this radius, you just can not build offensive structures during non-raid times on that island.

Lol this is a joke excuse for offline-raiders. You really think that offline-raiders will stop at a certain point just to finish off the enemy during online times ?

This is nonesense. Either you grant a protection or not. How would you try to balance your cost ? And why should everything be raidable at any time ? If you really want to take stuff from other people try to get it, when THEY are ready to defend it. YOU want to take something, so YOU have to to pay the cost of being online, when your opponent is.

Well just to correct your vision, outside the settlement radius on an island, ppl can still PvP all the time. And other companies are allowed to build defensive structures (swivel) all the time. So yes, the owner can try to demolish unwanted structures, but you have a slight chance to defend. So not that bad, but still not the best solution.

You mean PvP should only be for ppl without a RL job and RL friends/family ?

Is this a 9 hours window per day ? So playing ATLAS equals a fulltime job ? Are you serious ?

Even if you have the balls to attack during online hours of ppl, most so called PvPers do NOT have the balls. I lost only one ship in a real battle in all my time, but at least 4 ships to offline attacks. You thinkt this is fun ? 2x or 6x harvesting events are not the solution. Raid timers as in EvE Online, Darkfall or Albion Online ARE the solution to get more PvP happening. And all these games are 24/7 PvP games, you just can not attack certain STRUCTURES all the time. And I did not check, but if we have now a decay on structures in lawless activated, it will be the time to stop playing on the official servers. Well done Grapeshot.

IMHO only the goal to make the game enjoyable for players with less online time and WITHOUT merging a large alliance is a step in the right direction. Making anchored ships stronger and buff walls like hell is the wrong solution. It will not help to make the people fight other people during their online times, it will even prevent PvP action, because smaller groups will not be able to bring the needed firepower to sink/destroy stuff, if they continue to buff. Furthermore the ability to quickly move people from one corner of the map to the other (beds) is just favouring alliances which cover all time zones. They can quickly react to any agression and attack any target without much preparation. This is simply killing a game, where the real endgame-content is owning and fighting about land. But it is a basic decisions for the devs, who will be their target group. Many small to medium companies fighting in many spaces about small land areas or large companies holding large portions of the map and supressing all small to medium companies. The result of the later approach will be the same big blue mega companies crap as in EvE online. You can already see it on the atlas maps. For the long term sucess of the game, the mega companies approach will be the less attractive one. If Grapeshot plans to sell future DLCs to finance the game, only the few left over players in the mega companies will buy it. All small to medium group players will have left the game by than and not buy any dlc because they are disappointed. Same applies for any sort of monthly payment for the official servers. Only the few people left over will pay. And steam charts and reviews might be an indicator, how well the game is doing in binding its customers. Edit: I should have read the captains log first, Grapeshot seems to try to get smaller companies back. Wish you good luck and I hope the best.

There is no alternative other than installing some sort of raid timers (offline protection is the simplest solution here) to enforce PvP for Base-Raiding. Anything else will cater PvE Raids -> offline raids.

Almost a good idea. Make it one free flag per 5 company members and cap it at 10 free flags. That would reflect company size and free up a lot of land.

You once again proof, that you have no clue about how base raiding with an online crew works. The moment you start killing our NPCs, we get a message. Well we are no dumb AI, so we react to a message. Furthermore we have friends and neighbours, so that we get sometimes Intel about an enemy aproaching our base via alliance chat. And again, we are no bots who have to parse the chat, we are thinking reacting human beings. And that is the difference between PvP and PvE. And just to be precise, I do not have a clue if you are a good PvPer or not. I am just saing, that your comments show clearly, that you are not attacking bases during active times of their crews. Otherwise you would not post such dumb questing how we should become aware of an attack. And I am really asking myself now, if you really play the game especially on a PvP server or if your are just a youtube feeded forum troll. So unless you come up with some real arguments why offline base raiding is PvP, I am done in this thread.

Your reply clearly shows, that you never attacked a online base in your life. The moment we see, that our base takes damage, most of our crew comes back to the base and starts defending. If we are getting "zerged" (by a 150 ppl limit per grid, I would us the term "zerg"), we call our friends and allies. That is how a proper PvP game should work.

Labatts is just derailing the post, because the original question if offline raiding is PvP is a very valid one. And no offline raiding is never PvP, because whatever defense you think of has no own intelligence and can not adapt immediately like a player can do. So offline raiding is Player versus a (player setup instead of Dev setup) ENVIROMENT. Or short PvE. And offline raiders or ppl who refuse any sort of ORP just are no real PvPers.

I can confirm, today we were robbed by offline raider and they were able to kill our NPCs on Puckle guns. The foundation of the gun has zero damage, the gun 90 and teh NPC was killed. VERY ANOYING !!!!

We are living in lawless and it is by far not that easy. It is impossible to secure all the land, so an oppenent can easily build a base to start his attacks. In claimable land, you just put flags everywhere and a attacker has hardly a chance to build up a base to start his attacks. And please do not tell me, foundation spamming is securing land. You can remove a foundation easily. So we have to defend "our" land a lot more actively, than the land-owners with one sleeper in a bunker. Lawless mechanics are fine, at least for us.

Good anouncment. Just as a tip: do not stick too much with mega-companies and do not favour a renter system. The life as a renter company will not attrack many new players. And as someone said before: you better be quick with changes, when we roam over our island, there is already a big number of finished demolishing timers ...