Grendalsh

When can we take exact amounts of resources out of a resource box? Can we please have a keybind to pull one single stack of something from a ship resources chest?

OMG PLEASE YES

Just now, gladriele said:

I am wondering are you looking at adding more content for pve to do it is honestly getting quite boring as there is no new content for players and you can only blow up so many pirate ships

PVE is, by nature, finite content. Once you've beaten the kraken on all three difficulties.. why do it again? No matter how much new PVE content they add, at some point you will have played it all. 
Conversely, Player vs Player content is infinitely replayable. The problem being that at present the choices are a PVE world or a PVP world. 
There needs to be an opt-in, bounded PVP activity. Something similar the Kraken grid, where when it's activated, anyone in the grid is flagged for PVP, even on the PVE cluster, with rewards and win conditions besides simply team deathmatch. 
Examples:
They're stealing our ship!
During this event,  make all ships (near) instantly pirateable. If you're able to get on deck, and get to the wheel, you can sail it. if your company is still holding the wheel at the end of the event, you gain ownership. 
Stop putting holes in my ship!
During this event, gold is deposited in your ship's resource chest for a percentage of damage that your ship does to enemy ships. Careful not to get too greedy! Also, a good event to come salvaging in the grid afterwards for ill-gotten gains.
Can't sell sunken ships.
During this event, earn rewards (mythos, gold, BPs?) for ships that you control at the end of the match. Near-instant stealing rules apply, but ships ownership reverts at the end of the match. The challenge is to Capture ships, not sink them, so grappling and boarding actions are in order. 
This is my island!
The grid is populated with numerous small islands, each with control points. Players are rewarded based on how many islands their company owns at the end of the event. 
Squidball
A mini-kraken spawns in the middle of the map. It will move across the map away from whichever tentacle is taking the most damage. Companies are randomly assigned a compass point on the map, and win if the kraken is pushed into a control area at that compass point. 
Legend of Leagues
Yeah, LoL, Atlas style. Mid-sized Islands spawn at opposite corners of the map, and the goal is to capture the opposing team's island. Participating companies are assigned to an island team. Small shipyards at the islands spawn 'creep' ships - SOD schooners, while large shipyards allow players to purchase premade Brigs or Galleons. Smaller islands have mercenaries that can be bought or pressganged - squads of sloops up to a boss Galleon. SInking enemy ships awards Dubloons to the team's crew silo - currency specifically for purchasing ships during the event. 

Contrary to the patch notes..
Dolphins tamed before this patch are not harvesting seaweed or coral.

Meanwhile, Seahorses ARE harvesting seaweed and coral, but only in the trenches. 

Disagree. The 80% weight reduction isn't an issue. I can have two full cargo racks on a schooner and barely be at 60% weight.
However, higher grade cargo racks should have better speed reduction penalties. 
eg, for a schooner
Common = -20%
Green = -18%
Blue = -16%
Yellow = -13%
Mythic = -10%

Never take a cargo boat out solo in PVP. Escorts ships or you deserve to lose it. 

On 6/19/2020 at 9:19 AM, SusanT said:

Your suggestion on vitamin deficiencies are out there, it is already hard enough to micromanage it as it is, I guess if you have a LARGE company that are doing the gathering and building and feeding and taming and raising the babes and gardening then sure as you have nothing to do anyway..... that would be fine but not for a solo player. I don't join large groups for a reason, I like to get my moneys worth out of a game and that means playing all aspects it has to offer, gathering, taming, mating, raising, etc. etc. why buy a game if you are just going to have others play it for you, seems a waste imo but to each their own.

Reread the part about significantly extending the time it takes to GET the vitamin debuffs. The premise is you should need to neglect your nutrition for multiple game days to get those, not just because you haven't eaten a fish in the past 10 minutes. If you're even trying to eat a fish or drink some milk every other game day or so, you would never get the debuff. Conversely, if you actually neglect your Vitamin C enough to get skurvy, it should take you a couple game days of eating citronal to treat that, or you could speed up the recovery by eating crafted food. At present, everyone just kills themselves to clear the nutrition bar, which makes the game mechanic meaningless. 

A smaller world will drive more interactions for a smaller population. 
How are you addressing the need to escape the land resource grind in order to participate in the ocean game?
Some method of hiring NPCs and training them to harvest mats would go a long way towards freeing players to focus on actually pirating at end game.
Being able to blueprint a completed ship, throw that into a smithy, and have NPCs take over constructing the basic hull would free players to focus on customization and play, rather than spending a week landside for every sea adventure. 

Vitamin deficiencies effects should persist through death, to make cooked food worth the effort. No more killing yourself to get past not bothering with vitamin D. 
Conversely, significantly increase the time it takes to get a vitamin deficiency. It should take several days real time to get a vitamin deficiency debuff, and similarly a few game days of eating right to remove it. It should be something you had to actually work at neglecting your character to get, but them have to actually work to get rid of. 

Pirates don't spend all day making ships. They buy or steal ships made by NPCs. So.. why not have an 

NPC operated shipyard

Supply Blueprints, materials, assign NPCs, and go sailing while they make you new ships. 

1. New station, Ship Blueprinter. 
   1. Placed aboard a ship. Once a ship has been launched, players can craft a Ship Blueprint that documents the current state of the ship. 
   2. Ship Blueprint includes a list of all building objects, but not consumables, currently on the ship at the time of blueprinting
   3. Ship Blueprint includes the quality of all objects.
   4. Ship Blueprint also includes embedded placement information of all objects.
2. New Skill - Shipwright (Basic, Expert, Advanced, Master).
   1. Skill level determines how many ships can be built from the blueprints.
   2. Reduces resources need to craft Ship Blueprint
   3. Improve starting and/or max levels for ships crafted from Ship Blueprint
3. Shipyard Job Board. 
   1. Snaps to the shore side of a Shipyard
   2. Has snap points for a billboard, storage, and craft stations. 
   3. Has one Ship Blueprint inventory slot. Ship Blueprint in inventory will be listed on the Billboard, along with required parts /mats.
   4. Has virtual 'stations' for assigning NPCs. Number of NPCs depends on size/quality of attached shipyard.
      NPCs assigned to the Job Board will construct parts in the Ship Blueprint list, using mats deposited in the Job Board Mats storage, in the crafting stations attached to the Job Board.
   5. NPCs will deposit constructed parts into the Job Board Parts storage. Players can add parts as well.
   6. BP parts in the Ship Blueprint will either need crafted by players and deposited in the Job Board Parts storage, or the necessary blueprints will need to be present in the crafting stations attached to the Job Board for the NPCs to use. 
   7. Once all parts in the Ship Blueprint are present, NPCs will begin assembling the ship in logical order. 

Rationale: In order to use the NPC Shipyard, it will be necessary to have

• Have either built an original ship and blueprinted it, or have acquired a ship blueprint through trading, piracy, or perhaps looting?
• Have collected the mats and parts to build the NPC shipyard objects, crafting stations, etc
• Have bought/looted sufficient NPCs to operate the shipyard
• Maintain the Gold and food to keep the NPCs working
• Have the BPs for any BP parts

All of these incentivize players to get out and do pirate activities, rather than sitting in the harbor, crafting planks and rebuilding the same ship for the twentieth time. 

1.  A new skill 'Dowsing', unlocked after the Shovel and Treasure Finding skills, or after Tilling 3 in the Cooking tree. This would allow players to find underground springs, similar to the Treasure Hunting activity. Springs would exist on "green" soil, same as can currently be found. 
2. The size of the island would determine the number of wells present. 
3.  Once an underground spring is found, players can dig it up using a shovel, same as treasure hunting. Once the spring is dug up, it would create a permanent small geyser and puddle of fresh water that players can drink from or fill waterskins & jugs. 
4. The Shovel quality level and Treasure digging skill used determine the water refresh rate of the spring. Grey/none might provide 200 water/hr, while Epic/Advanced might provide 1000/hr. When the spring is depleted, the geyser would disappear, but the puddle would remain (like the mud puddle in Ark:Scorched Earth).
5. Players can later improve a Spring at later dates by following the Dowsing skill again and using higher quality Shovels, higher tier Digging skills, and using the Treasure Hunting accordion buff.
6. New item "Water Well" in the Stone working skill. Same as the well in Ark, can be placed on a Spring/puddle and will collect fresh water. Has an internal inventory of 1000 water. Can have pipes connected to store water in other Stone Water Reservoirs, or irrigation to plants. 
7. The well could have Blueprint versions with buffs to Water refresh rate and/or water storage volume. 

@wildbill Will need to research this.The ATLAS wiki data is unclear on the food values and decay timers of the Cooking and Healing herbs.

However, as long as 1) NPCs are eating it, 2) it has the same decay time as vegetables (9:36 in Larder), and 3) provides the same 5 food value as veggies, then it's a valid alternative to crop vegetables. 

I previously noticed that NPCs weren't eating the Cooking or Healing herbs in their larder, but that may be due to them eating the stacks of berries first due to their lower food value. 

36 minutes ago, Pietje said:

 

SO I would have 1 crew member,  So i can safely drop 2 stacks of potatoes in food larder + enough gold in chest. And be gone for more than a week?

Now try with eggs   That would probably go really long.

 

Also other slightly unrelated, crew do contest/refresh the claim timer right? 

Eggs last ~30days each in a larder, so a 100stack would last forever..
However.....
An egg only has 3 food value. This means that NPCs will eat eggs before Veggies, and 1 NPC will eat 1 egg/hr, finishing a stack in <4 days, vs <6 days for a veggie stack.
Unless you have a  couple dozen chickens, it will take a while to collect a stack of eggs.
Conversely, 1 crop plot will yield a couple dozen veggie per harvest, even without Tilling.
In the time it takes to pick up a stack of eggs, one could harvest a dozen or so stacks of veggies. 

At this point, I just save the eggs for cooking player food. 

Before the recent Gold/activity changes, I finally nailed down food consumption at roughly 1/20 minutes, 3/hr. This would be 1 veggie per 1.67 hours, equivalent to an idle NPC at 1Gold per 1.7 hours. Since cannoneer NPCs want 1g/1.2 hours, it appears food consumption is not tied to duty. With the new gold wage changes, I'll be doing some more testing to see if food consumption has changed as well, as Idle NPCs now want 1G/2.7hr.

In regards to just dropping stacks of berries into the larder, consider the following. A stack of berries will decay in about 2 days. At 100 berries, 1.5 food each, that's 150 food value. At 3food/hr, an NPC will eat a stack of berries in about 50 hours, which is about the decay timer for any other stacks of berries in the larder. Result - only 1 stack/NPC will be eaten , the rest will decay before being eaten, and no matter how many stacks of berries you put in the larder you'll have to refill it every 2 days.

A stack of Veggies will take 960 hours (40 days) to decay. At 5 food each (excluding Wheat and Maize at 1.5 food each), and 3food/hr, a stack of veggies will feed one NPC for just under 6 days, and a second stack will still have ~80 veggies left. While it took some time get running, I have a farm with about 200 plots. It takes about 20minutes to harvest, and an hour each week to grind fertilizer. Each harvest yields enough veggies to top up about a dozen NPC larders. After getting 1 stack/NPC in each larder, it's only necessary to top up the larders every 3 days, and if I pre-stock 2 stacks/npc, they can safely go a week.

If you're just dumping a couple K berries on a ship's larder each day you take it out, then not such a big deal.
If you're maintaining a harbor with a couple dozen larders feeding a 100+ NPCs, unless you want to farm and run berries every day, veggies are the way to go. 

1. At shore/pier, Hauler mount handler pops item stacks from mount inventory into dinghy. 
2. Person in dinghy picks up packages. This method allows a person to carry massive weight beyond their weight capacity. 
3. Row dinghy to ship
4. Load dinghy onto ship. 
5. Slow walk from dinghy to storage chests on deck and unload. If necessary, move from temp storage on deck to storage below decks while underway.
6. Reverse process at destination.

I've been trying to sort out the rates at which AI NPCs consume food, in order to manage feeding an army of them scattered across an island's defenses.

I've been able to sort out the following:

• NPCs will eat the first food type available that will address their current hunger (missing food stat). This means they will eat berries (1.5 food value) before they eat veggies (5 food value) or cooked food (25-50 food value).
• I observed that it took about ~2mins for an NPC in the Sweeping animation to reduce  0.1 food value. This would imply they lose 1 food value per 20mins, or 3 food per hour.
• I left this same NPC on idle alone near a larder with a 100 stack of berries. After 80 mins, he had eaten 9 of the berries (accounting for spoilage). Berries are now 1.5 food. At roughly 6 berries per hour, this yields a food consumption rate of ~9 food per hour. 
• So far, my unmeasured observations of consumption of the veggie stacks I've been stocking in the larders for NPCs on cannons has pointed towards a consumption rate of about 2food per hour. 

My hypothesis at present is that different activities have different food consumption rates, similar to the gold/hour costs. However, I've been unable to get consistent values for the same activities. I'm in an area with a lot of traffic, so it's difficult to have controlled experiments. 

Has anyone been able to get consistent values?

I would like to see the sail and mast constructions decoupled. That said, changing rigging is not a simple affair, and should be a bit more involved than simply swapping on the fly.

At a minimum, it should require being anchored.

The Mast would have two inventory slots. One for the yardarms specific to a rigging type, and a second for the actual sail. The mast and yardarms/rigging would be crafted at the smithy, and the sail itself would be crafted in the loom. Since paintings are item specific, this would allow having an inventory of painted sails that could be replaced, rather than painted after the current mast, rigging, and sails combo is permanently installed. 

• The cargo saddle could add a secondary storage to the animal's inventory UI, where the crafting recipes would be on a bench.
• The cart's inventory would have a 'Weapon' slot, allowing the placement and swapping of mounted weapons. 
• If a Weapon is equipped, the cargo inventory would only accept ammo, and the cart's bed will remain empty for an AI.
• If no weapon is equipped, the cargo inventory will accept resources and crafted goods, and the cart will have a visual of crates and goods in the cart's bed.
• Items stored in the cart's storage would receive a weight reduction factor. Raw resources would have a higher weight reduction factor than crafted goods/ammo.
• The saddle would not be removable from the animal until all items have been removed from the cargo saddle's storage.
• Weapons and AI mounted on the cart would count against the item/weight limit for the saddle, and against the animal's movement speed.
• Ammo could be placed in the cart storage, for use by mounted weapons.

Alternatively, there needs to be a new weapon mount saddle, specifically for mounted weapons, and the cargo saddle needs to be just for cargo.

• The cargo saddle could add a secondary storage to the animal's inventory UI, where the crafting recipes would be on a bench.
• The cart's inventory would have a 'Weapon' slot, allowing the placement and swapping of mounted weapons. 
• If a Weapon is equipped, the cargo inventory would only accept ammo, and the cart's bed will remain empty for an AI.
• If no weapon is equipped, the cargo inventory will accept resources and crafted goods, and the cart will have a visual of crates and goods in the cart's bed.
• Items stored in the cart's storage would receive a weight reduction factor. Raw resources would have a higher weight reduction factor than crafted goods/ammo.
• The saddle would not be removable from the animal until all items have been removed from the cargo saddle's storage.
• Weapons and AI mounted on the cart would count against the item/weight limit for the saddle, and against the animal's movement speed.
• Ammo could be placed in the cart storage, for use by mounted weapons.

Alternatively, there needs to be a new weapon mount saddle, specifically for mounted weapons, and the cargo saddle needs to be just for cargo.

A "T" option for gates for placement in ships decks as large hatchways. Would make it possible to get animals below decks and still have a ships deck to work on.

Give gates an alternate horizontal placement as a large hatchway. Would allow adding a cargo hatch into the deck of a ship, for easier access loading/unloading to belowdecks storage, or securing trade animals so they're not taking up the main deck.

Overall, the Nutrition management system needs to be a long term system, not something that can be manipulated over a span of minutes. It should take time and effort to either suffer malnutrition or overdose, but it should also take time and effort to recover from letting nutrition get that bad. The Balanced Nutrition buff should be a benefit for actually managing nutrition over time, not just over a single play session. Hunger and nutrition need to be marginally related, but avoiding starvation shouldn't cause overdosing, and avoiding overdosing or maintaining Balanced Nutrition shouldn't require starvation death.

1. Vitamin levels should decrease naturally at about 1% per hour. Given a starting point of 50%, it would take about 4 days of ignoring a vitamin C to get the scurvy debuff. You can ignore vitamins for a while, but eventually it will catch up to you, and it will be a pain to restore, so it's better to maintain than to ignore. 
2. The Deficiency debuffs should have several stages. based on bands of nutrition. At 20%, you might cough once per 5minutes. By 10% you might cough once per minute. Vision might have periods of blurring at 5% Vit A, increasing to periods of partial blindness at 1%, and periods of full blindness at 0%.
3. It should be possible to maintain food levels in any given day without overdosing on a vitamin. 
4. Low Vitamin levels should persist through death. Dying to reset your food is fine, but that scurvy isn't going away until you nosh on some citrus.
5. High vitamin levels should lower when dying, by perhaps 1%, until about 75%. If you overdose, dying should prevent the overdose debuff from triggering again immediately at respawn.
6. The vitamin value that food gives should be based on a sliding scale. As an example: Got 0% Vit C and Scurvy? Any Vit C food will give .01 Vit C value/food value until you hit say 1% Vit C. So scarfing an entire stack of Berries or a couple Bubble & Squeek would be enough to stop the Scurvy debuff for an hour. From 1% to 5%, Vit C food gives .005 Vit C/food value. After 5%, Vit C food gives .001 Vit C/food value. 
7. Cooked food should average out vitamin pairs. ie, Pork Pie should raise or lower the A/B values based on which is higher and the current Vit/Food band.
8. Buff foods should cost vitamins. For instance, Ale gives the Combat buff, at the expense of increased Vit A reduction rate for the duration of the buff.
9. Balanced Nutrition buff only occurs while all vitamin values are within the 45% to 55% range, and within 5% of each other. eg Having all values at  60% wouldn't count as Balanced.

Alternatively, allow Indoor Pipes to 'blue beam' connect to a water cistern within a foundation or two away. 
There should be an option for using the snap-to-grid benefits of the Indoor pipe system for players that either don't have Fresh water on their island, or are building distant from Fresh water and are using Water cisterns as their source.

Vitamin levels need to persist through death, with hunger maybe reset to 25%. Malnutrition should be persistent, but not fatal. And there needs to be a mechanic to either balance or lower vitamin levels.

Yeah, you respawned, but you've got Scurvy until you find some vitamin C mate.

Realist is unrealistic.

Leave him to faceplant in his fantasy when he realizes how unrealistic his plans are. 

In order for this to be a game about Pirates, there has to be something to pirate. That means players who AREN'T PIRATIN' are an integral part of the game. So, while yer all arguing over which side of the coin yer lookin' at, ye needs to step back and recognize yer lookin' at the same coin getting stolen from ye by pirates with bigger vision...

1. Players still need to transport resources to Freeports, and bought goods back to their bases. There will be plenty of lucre on the seas to pillage.
2. Trade routes will begin forming, which will make it both easier to find targets of opportunity, and easier to patrol those routes looking for Pirates to fight. There will be value in either having your own escorts, or hiring them.
3. This will be a new way to earn gold, which means companies that would rather sell metal on the market than hunt SOTD will have a valid means of hiring and paying for AI crew to secure their bases. Raiding will become a more risky endeavor than attacking ships at sea. There's a reason fortified islands were rarely attacked in period. 
4. Sinking ships means having to salvage wrecks. Boarding them and destroying beds means being able to offload cargo at sea. Look for combat tactics to change as people realize NOT sinking a ship is more profitable.

TL:DR Markets beget steady trade begets fat targets begets good piratin'

1. Put water cisterns on your roof and plumb down with a tap right above your grill. Hot swap bags for recipes that need water. A simple 3x4 building will hold 12 cisterns, with enough water for 24 cookings between rains.

2. Agree that the spoil timer for troughs and larders need extended. Currently the multiple is x4 for larders, x12 for preserving salts. This needs some balance.

3. Allow us to pay NPCs to do menial farm tasks: Collect poop. Make Fertilizer. Deposit fertilizer. Collect Crops. Free me up to go pirating for gold, and I'll pay NPCs to be my farmhands.

4. For all that is holy, CHANGE SALTED MEAT/Fish to only work using RAW SALT, not Preserving Salt!! Stop consuming the Preserving Salts in the bag that using Preserving Salts to keep things from spoiling!!!