Kast

8 hours ago, Introser said:

That exploid is older than the sub itself ...

True, but that was before 'ships' was added as a target type (in order to prevent players and tames from doing the same thing). 

So, apparently submarines are considered "ships" as far as cannon targeting is concerned, and they will trigger NPC-manned cannons set to attack "ships" even when the sub is underwater and invulnerable to cannon fire. The other day, we watched as an enemy sub triggered our defensive towers to fire, draining over 2,000 cannonballs. Once the cannons were out of ammo, the enemies sailed their ships into our harbor. I just don't know what to say at this point.

There's a bug post about disappearing building pieces... from March? The devs responded and said that they were aware of it, so it's either not a priority or they don't know how to fix it. In our experience, it typically happens after we demo anything nearby - even if the two pieces are far from each other. We're just so used to it now: after you demo anything, run around and check the roof.

So, we've been dealing with a not-to-be-named Chinese company on NA that we believe has somehow refined fissile material and fit it to medium cannonballs. Basically, they've been using a gatecrasher schooner with stacked rear-facing medium cannons that appear to be hitting stone structures for around 9,000 damage per shot (that's per cannonball). Granted, no doubt that they're mythic cannons and the boat is max-damage... but, I don't know, one schooner dropping a large stone wall in a single volley seems a bit excessive.

I'm all for min-maxing and gimmicky tactics, but come on.  Maybe Grapeshot might want to consider putting some cap on damage, especially versus stone.

I've had something similar. There's some sort of temperature bug where 'freezing' occasionally doesn't seem to drop. I spend a lot of time in polar, so I have 70 fortitude most of the time, and I've kept the debuff after zoning to tundra (while wearing fur armor). Getting a shelter buff seems like it might fix it.

I agree that the constant base wiping is a serious issue and it's probably one of the main drivers of the player exodus; but I'm not sure that the idea of invulnerable structures is the way to go. IMO it's a matter of economy: a working base can take a small company many hours or days to set up - and then it can all be destroyed in minutes by one idiot with a bear cannon. For the raider, there's really no risk and very little expense - and the potential reward is the entirety of a company's labors.

Reward should always be commensurate with risk, but right not it's not. There are a few ways that this could be corrected: drastically nerf bear cannon range so that NPC-manned defenses can actually hit them on level ground, drastically increase the durability of stone structures versus cannon fire, or drastically reduce the damage of bear cannons. In another thread, a poster suggested a company vault, which could also work. Or hey, how about some sort of 'buried treasure' mechanic for storing valuables when offline? We are pirates after all. 

7 hours ago, Dragoon14th said:

Why not just have the cannon have a long ass reload time.... or better have it to do 30% damage to the bear health so you can only fire 3 time before bear dies..... this is due to me thinking that recoil of cannons can be brutal against bears since it force and recoils are insane .... Or induce a 30% chance of the cannon misfiring and instead self explode harming the bear destroying the cannon and doing 50% of damage to the cart.    

There bear cart with cannon nerfed..... 

I don't know about the bear dying... But it'd be amusing if there was an RNG chance that each shot could cause the bear to panic and flee. 

During ROTC, this old Cajun Master Sergeant drawled, "If your commanding officer uses the word 'orientate', do not follow him."

I think the problem is really manned vs. unmanned range, which seems to be vastly different in favor of manned. For a while, I thought that the problem had to do with NPC agro range; but NPCs on cannons/puckles etc. do appear to track enemies at range - they just won't fire (even though the weapon would definitely hit if manned). I suspect that weapon stations have different ranges depending on whether they're manned by players or NPCs. Basically, the operator should have no bearing on a cannon's max range.

1 hour ago, ragnar cook said:

Grenades do more.

 

1 hour ago, Captain Jack Shadow said:

The company bank is now where things are kept, when not on your person, in a ship, or  All resources, all maps, all BPs, all gold.

I really like your idea of a company bank. It makes me think of the vaults from Conan Exiles (pre-nerf): 600k hitpoints and it can only be damaged via explosives or fire. So, the Atlas company bank/vault would require that the raiders spend a good chunk of resources to crack it open; as opposed to a bear, some cannonballs and a dream. I like it.

I'm not so sure about invulnerable walls etc.. I think that risk of loss is a big part of the excitement of the game. However, raiders need to experience the fear of loss too - and that can be accomplished by forcing raiders to engage/eliminate defenses that can actually hit them and their tames, as opposed to shelling a base safely out of range. There are plenty of people who would love the 'tower defense' building potential of Atlas if it weren't for the fact that the defenses will probably never fire a shot in anger before the walls come down.

There are a lot of reasons why players have moved on from Atlas, but, on PvP servers, the constant demolishing of everything one has built (often when offline) is going to be in the top three. The bear cannon - one single asset has probably cost Atlas hundreds or thousands of players. "Hey, it's a PvP game! blah, blah". Yes, I know. I play for the PvP and I've blown into many a base and sunk dozens of ships - I've used it a lot, and I'm telling you that the bear cannon is a ridiculous weapon.

We've done a lot of testing on both official and private servers, and a manned bear cannon will out range ANY NPC-manned defensive weapon. That means that all of those defensive positions around your base are utterly useless if you're not also there at the time of the attack. And since there's no in-game notification (other than the log) of an attack across grids, chances are that you won't be present when any particular attack occurs.

So, two suggestions:

1. Cut the range of bear-mounted cannons by 50%. Not 10% or 20%... by 50%. It's a serious change, and the folks who enjoy running off your new players will certainly cry bloody murder, but it'll make base defense meaningful again. Seriously, when in all of military history has a towed weapon ever been able to out range a fixed gun emplacement?

2. Allow weapon-mounted NPCs to notify company members (across grids) when they've agro'd on a pathfinder.

There are a lot of reasons why players have moved on from Atlas, but, on PvP servers, the constant demolishing of everything one has built (often when offline) is going to be in the top three. The bear cannon - one single asset has probably cost Atlas hundreds or thousands of players. "Hey, it's a PvP game! blah, blah". Yes, I know. I play for the PvP and I've blown into many a base and sunk dozens of ships - I've used it a lot, and I'm telling you that the bear cannon is a ridiculous weapon.

We've done a lot of testing on both official and private servers, and a manned bear cannon will out range ANY NPC-manned defensive weapon. That means that all of those defensive positions around your base are utterly useless if you're not also there at the time of the attack. And since there's no in-game notification (other than the log) of an attack across grids, chances are that you won't be present when any particular attack occurs.

So, two suggestions:

1. Cut the range of bear-mounted cannons by 50%. Not 10% or 20%... by 50%. It's a serious change, and the folks who enjoy running off your new players will certainly cry bloody murder, but it'll make base defense meaningful again. Seriously, when in all of military history has a towed weapon ever been able to out range a fixed gun emplacement?

2. Allow weapon-mounted NPCs to notify company members (across grids) when they've agro'd on a pathfinder.

11 hours ago, znasser said:

I don't know if something like this could be done,  but maybe they should change how render distance for ships works, so that bigger ships can be seen for a much longer distance than the smaller ones. Making the sloop something that you are unable to see unless you are very close to them could make them useful in some situations, at least for pvp.

That's a great idea.

I'm guessing that opening the cargo somehow triggers a "this is flotsam" flag on the container, and that flotsam reduced the cargo within by a percentage. I'm also willing to entertain the possibility of a quantum physics explanation.

The crossbow is easier to aim and has consistent range. At longer ranges, I suspect that the crossbow's DPS would be higher(no draw).

My understanding is that both the tier and the durability of a shipyard contribute to the max level of a ship: Fine = +1, Journeyman=+2, Masterwork=+3, Legendary=+4 and Mythic = max level 50. And then the quality adds +1 level per 10 quality over 100 rounded down (and the ship quality is always 10% less than the shipyard durability).

So, for example: a quality 136% legendary shipyard would produce a max level 48 ship (base 42 + legendary(4) + ship quality(2) (136% durability - 10% = 126% rounded down to 120%).

Or am I completely on crack?

It's simple for an admin/dev to determine who placed an object; the problem with signs (obviously) is that anyone in the same company as the placer can change the message on it - and I seriously doubt that GM-accessible logs would show who wrote what throughout the history of a particular sign. It sucks, but in today's hyper-sensitive snowflake culture, racism is a serious zero-tolerance no no.   

4 hours ago, Archsenex said:

imprinting re-normalizes to the speed of maturation, so it should be ok, EXCEPT if the animal was already in flight when the bonus was rolled out.  then, since the timers don't update, it can leave you unable to finish imprints.

That was it. The bears in question were started before the update. Thanks!

While the 3x this weekend is great, it's causing issues with taming/imprinting. Specifically, tames mature 3x as fast as normal, but the imprinting interval is 1x. So, basically it's not possible to get the max number of imprints before the tame fully matures and the tames end up with less than optimal stats.

9 hours ago, Willard said:

None of you guys know exact parameters of this new feature but you know exactly how it will be exploited...

This doomsaying is exactly why they should not announce new features more than a week ago.

 

Watch the live stream video where they discuss and demonstrate the ship harpoon. Basically, it's like ship ramming in that you can only stop ships the same size as your own or smaller. That's why I predict tackle brigs (name coined) as part of the new meta. And for PvE servers, anyone who ever played Archeage remembers ship harpoons and the fact that they were predominately a trolling tool. When trolls lay their pointed heads down to sleep they dream of ship harpoons.

49 minutes ago, Percieval said:

This will be exploited and people will hate it, that’s a fact. Grapeshot is well known to think about 1 scenario and not the other, the one that says ‘Way to exploit’ on it - they usually ignore that one. 

That sounds fairly accurate. In the live stream, one of them mentions how 'Darksiders will love this - now the Royal Navy can stop those brigands before they escape to the freeport!' They seem to overlook (in a less than RP way) that it will also kill maneuvering in naval combat, not to mention dissuade  captains from taking risks since a harpoon might mean that they can't egress if things go bad.

If they go ahead and implement it, 100% guarantee that they'll have to tweak/nerf/remove it within the first week.

I truly hope that Grapeshot reconsiders adding the ship harpoon to the game in the May update (at least on PvP servers). Some of the most enjoyable naval fights we've experienced occurred when we were outnumbered. Being chased by four or five enemy ships, dodging fire, maneuvering for a quick shot and trying to stay ahead of repairs. But with the ship harpoon, one ship gets one hit and the fight's over.

Mark my words, the new meta will be stripped-down max-speed brigs with just a ship harpoon (and maybe a few fire-swivels), followed by one or more max-damage ships. I.e., a single well-balanced ship will never be able to outrun or out maneuver multiple ships: the ship will be tackled (ala EVE) and destroyed.

This is a highly avoidable error. Hopefully they reconsider.

Please reconsider adding the ship grappling hook to the game (at least on PvP servers). Some of the most enjoyable naval fights we've experienced occurred when we were outnumbered. Being chased by four or five enemy ships, dodging fire, maneuvering for a quick shot and trying to stay ahead of repairs. But with the ship grapple, one ship gets one hit and the fight's over.

Mark my words, the new meta will be stripped-down max-speed brigs with a ship grapple, followed by one or more max-damage ships. I.e., a single well-balanced ship will never be able to outrun or out maneuver multiple ships: the ship will be tackled (ala EVE) and destroyed.

This is a highly avoidable error. Please reconsider adding this weapon to the game.

Maybe it's time to add a CAPTCHA function for posting.