Kast

Region blocks... I like it! Now, it's going to be SUPER important that no one ever tell anyone from China about VPNs.

There's a thread about this in the Bug Reports forum, and Jatheish said that they were aware of it - granted, this was three weeks ago.

On 5/6/2019 at 9:52 PM, Martyn said:

Anyone taken on the yetis yet? They seem pretty tough even using carbines. 

Gorgons are two headshots.. Fire not tried tho yet. But we did watch 5 guys with bows killing them.

Hydra a mix of cannon, ballistra and using carbines worked, although it was in water, so easy killing really.

Not met a cyclops, mermaids are nice.  And yeti's pawned me.

This is how you deal with yetis:

I suspect that this change had a lot to do with kiting ghost ships - stack a few rear-facing large cannons and kite all day, no damage. But either way, forcing ships to do most of their fighting broadsides is generally a good move.

How about no upkeep cost at all and just take a percentage (tax) from every sale? And vary the tax rate based on island claim value or population.

Maybe it's more severe in some places. All I know it that fog or cold front (which is also basically fog) occurs literally every 10 minutes in polar and tundra.

22 minutes ago, Forb Hidden said:

When in RL a person can land a plane in a foggy snowstorm without sight... So why do u have problems to handle some pixels? Just open the map and sail on. With a buddy up on a sail u see a little bit more. 

Well, I am a pirate IRL and fog is just something that we have to deal with - let that barque slip away in the fog and you'll have the devil to pay with your crew! But when we make port and it's time to relax and enjoy a game, ideally it's not one that randomly blinds you with ill-conceived environmental effects. 

There's a cooldown before any cannon/swivel/puckle can be fired after you place it - it applies to the island owners too, apparently.

Of all the random environmental effects, fog is the most obnoxious. It's not fun and it's not a challenge. If you're hunting ghost ships, whales or players and fog hits, the best thing you can do is drop sail and check your various social media sites and maybe The Onion (in fact, I'm typing this while waiting through the third fog in 30 minutes). If you're going from point A to B, you just ignore the fog and travel via map; and if you're looking for something - well, the game has just politely asked you to stop doing that for a while.

The only possible use for fog might be as a means of stealth through heavily PvP'd regions. There is a value to that, but good grief, it shouldn't occur literally every 10 minutes. Make it rare, but maybe last all day, and announce it the day before: "Tomorrow will be very foggy!" etc.. That way, the blockade runners can prepare, and the rest of us can spend the day RPing on shore or something.

Yes, I put one on a ramshackle.

You need to anchor the ship during peace time (at a settlement you control) and at least 15 minutes before the start of combat phase. Also, from.... experimentation... it seems like the ship invulnerability applies only to actual ship components (planks, decks, sails, etc.), but does not apply to things like wooden ceilings, walls or NPC crew.

It'll be tomorrow. Which means that it should happen around June 14th.

We probably need to consider the possibility that the gold cost per island is greatly reduced on PTR and will be higher on live (like having every skill at creation - it's just for testing). Also, from the Captain's Log:

• Islands will be delineated and ranked through a points system predominantly based on size. A Company will have a total of 200 accumulative points to “spend” on claiming and settling islands. 

"Accumulative", i.e., grows over time. Which means the fact that companies can spend max claim points at creation might also be just for testing, and it could take time, achievements or some combination of both before anyone can claim anything.

So, plan your launch day accordingly. Or don't, who knows? It's not as if we've had much of any dev feedback here.

The nine-hour PvP window proposed for the Colonies server isn't the best solution, but it isn't the worst either IMO. But, if we think about it, that model sort of screws over ..."Pacific regional players"... the most (you know, the ones who run 90% of the offline raids on US/EU PvP servers). I doubt that Grapeshot would bother trying to stand up Pacific PvP/PvE regional servers since it's unlikely many of the locals would actually play there anyway. So, how do you prevent offline raiding when half of your players' prime time is opposite the other half's? I don't have an answer - it's just an interesting predicament.

10 minutes ago, Realist said:

Time to get rid of the cannon bear lol

Agreed. Or at least make it work like one might expect - bears are tractors, not furry ATVs with machine guns.

2 hours ago, Amy3 said:

yes, often, hope this helps

No, that's incorrect. There may have been occasional limited battles between megas, but that is not the norm. I know first hand of many quiet agreements made between top 10 alliances to avoid conflict at any cost. And there's simply no possible way that  the Empire server concept is remotely feasible.

I hope the devs reconsider the Empire server concept. It was doomed to failure the moment it was announced - several mega-companies have already stated that they'll be going to Colonies and will just make the alliance limitations work.

Generally speaking, players don't join mega alliances in order to fight epic battles against other megas; they do it for safety. Has any top 10 alliance warred against another top 10 in the current live game? Megas don't fight megas. In fact, it's the last thing they want to do - mega vs. mega is mutually assured destruction since both the winner and loser will be eaten by other top 10's who were smart enough to not war another top 10. Basically, the entire concept of the Empire server is flawed because that's not what mega alliances are or what those players do.

Apparently, it's a basic misunderstanding of what a mega-company actually is. People join megas for safety, not for epic battles against other megas. Each mega has a core of PvPers (I'd estimate 10% at best), the rest are farmers and crafters who feed the PvPers in exchange for protection. So, the last thing a mega wants to do is to war against another mega.

6 hours ago, Sneakydude said:

Then again you should also maybe change it into 2 or more factions Pirates being the most aggressive ones on the map, then the rest can split into other factions capping the limits on how many can balance out. PVP might be more interesting.

Hmm, that's actually an interesting idea. A faction-based gameplay option (rather than the doomed empire server) could be workable. At creation, each company must align with one of several regional factions. E.g., Brethren, Corsairs, Privateers, etc.. And each faction would  more or less function as a pre-made alliance, potentially helping to offset the player-created mega alliances.

Or not - don't want the update pushed back to July...

Large-scale PvP Mode:
ATLAS: Empires

ATLAS: Empires will honor the original ATLAS system with which players are familiar whilst incorporating some small adjustments to the claiming system to address issues players were experiencing. To clarify, ATLAS: Empires’ claiming system will be very similar to the traditional claiming system, but adjusted for maximum speed (increased rates) and no “anti-size” scaling. This will be the go-to hardcore mode for those looking for sandboxy high risk and high reward on a grand scale. We will not be limiting large companies, there will be no scaling based on members and there will be no pvp windows or war system.

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It's an interesting idea that will never work, sadly. Generally speaking, mega-company members don't join mega-companies because they're looking for epic battles against other mega-companies; they join them for safety. How many of the top 10 companies ever actually warred each other? If two ever did, the winner, with their resources depleted, would simply be eaten by one or more of the other eight megas that was smart enough to not battle another mega. It's a form of mutually assured destruction and it's more or less why they exist in the first place.

Swivels should not be usable on bear carts at all; only cannons. The entire mechanic whereby highly mobile pirate-bear Rat Patrol units race around the battlefield is just lunacy. Basically, bears should be limited to moving cannons into position, ideally at walking speed only - think of the bear as a tractor, not some #$^$^@ heavily armed G.I. Joe dune buggy.

31 minutes ago, Bullet Force said:

Yep no matter how PVE folks try and spin it these changes are solely designed to hinder and interfere with legitimate PVP. In effect they are designed to make it harder to PVP and therefore discourage players from doing it. The result is going to be glorified renamed PVE servers with a hint of PVP on top. I don't know about you but I bought this game because it said on the box open world PVP. With these changes the devs are betraying their loyal customers by removing core content from the game.

 

These changes will indeed be the demise of small companies. At least before small companies had a fighting chance of doing damage to larger ones through the use of strategic initiatives but now that is all but ruled out.

Small companies can't compete head to head vs larger ones they have to be use more creative means to gain an advantage rather then use blunt force but this has now been taken away from them.They will now just be sitting ducks for large companies, unable to afford the expensive war tokens they will basically be forced into a never ending cycle of defending off war declarations without ever having the hope of being able to retaliate.

"strategic initiatives", I like that. Since you're speaking in generalities, allow me to extrapolate... Basically, the strategy you're talking about involves smaller companies offline destroying the bases and sinking the ships of companies that they otherwise couldn't fight directly. Does that roughly sum up your point? If so, I respond with the following thought:

OFFLINE RAIDING IS NOT PVP!

It's the gaming equivalent of keying someone's car. It's not "a tactic"; it's what happens in the absence of tactics. And suggesting that it's a tactic employed by small companies to combat larger ones is completely disingenuous - large alliances forming bogus shell companies for offline raiding (in order to avoid retaliation) is the standard procedure.

Offline raiding is the cancer of every persistent world game with PvP and destructible property, and defending it in any form is utterly ridiculous. 

Don't assume that the PTS will be running at the same time as the legacy game servers. Grapeshot is likely paying quite a bit to host the official game - IMO, it's more likely that the official servers will wipe on the 20th. and some time shortly thereafter the PTS will come up and run on the same instances.

It seems like there's some confusion regarding the nine-hour PvP vulnerability window that will be included in the March update.  Is it nine hours each day or nine hours per week? The subject could use some clarification. But I think that most people are assuming that it's nine-hours per day - and if that's the case, then that's far too many hours, especially for weekdays.  Weekday vulnerability hours should be closer to four or five hours - few students or working folks are going to be able to put in nine hours per night, which means that... "non-US/non-EU"... attackers will still be able to essentially offline raid US/EU players regularly. A nine-hour window should be reserved for weekends.

On a side note, IMO Conan Exiles has one of the best concepts for preventing offline raiding - fixed server building-damage hours. E.g., for US servers, buildings can only be damaged from 5:00pm PST to 1:00am PST weekdays and 12:00pm PST to 3:00am PST weekends. Fixed server building and anchored ship damage hours would seem to me to be a much simpler fix.

The company log currently only reports successful territory claims or losses; it does NOT report territory thefts in progress. In our experience, an attempted theft of one of our territories always goes something like this:

1. A splash message appears on screen for a few second "Someone is stealing your territory at xx.xx, xx.xx!" Five seconds later, the message is gone.

2. We ask in company chat, "Did anyone get those coordinates?" If yes, we create a map marker with the coordinates and investigate (because there's no other in-game way to see map coordinates at a glance, and because the challenged territory is not marked as such on the in-game map). If no, then we run around holding "H" while looking for a yellow ring...

The company log MUST show ALL claim activity, successful or otherwise.