Salty Del

49 minutes ago, Jack Shandy said:

maybe if they reverted the speed sail to what they were on release, same speed but crap angle of usability, people would start thinking more about choice of sail rather than just speed sail, speed sail, speed sail all the time.

I agree. I think that speed sails have too much of an effective radius to make the other sails desirable right now.

I also like the idea of placing a mast and having the sails being an item you equip on it, so that you can change them without having to destroy the sail every time you want to change them. Just have a cool down period for actual using the sail, say 30 seconds or so. Enough to make it undesirable to do in battle, but not enough to be more than a minor annoyance at worst. Heck, raising the anchor seems to take that long sometimes anyways.

I like the sailing as it is. When it first launched, I appreciated the more realistic sailing experience, but I do see how now I prefer the current model for sailing around the world.

While sailing, I like to have music or a podcast playing, but I’m usually pretty vigilant about watching for ships of the damned.

The only change I’d like to make is to make the flotsam a little more worthwhile to stop and get. Thinking about this, I’m now wondering if you can use the harpoon to pull them in. I’ve not tried one yet, but looks like that’s a tonight project.

So far I’ve been able to find at least one tortugar a day, typically in about 45-60 minutes. I have yet to find a high level one, but that’s just luck of the draw.

My recommendation is to kill all the creatures in a few areas and make a circuit, so you loop back for respawns. On the island we’re in, that means killing lots of elephants, which means lots of marrow to tame the tortugars with.

I have not tried any other islands for them, but I think that’s not going to be as effective as doing a circuit. You won’t find them at sea.

As for their usefulness, my expectations were that they’d be a poor man’s sub. They aren’t, really. Low and mid-level tortugars that’s I’ve found all have very low stamina. I’ve only seen 220-240 stamina on 6 different tortugars with levels from 4-26 tamed.

What I have found them very good for us taking large animals. You can take their health down (slowly, they don’t hit very hard), then open the shell and bola from safety.

These things are amazing tanks! They take less damage than other tames with saddles, and they have relatively high health. Our max health one was ~1150, and that was only a level 23 tamed (wild 16).

They also give you ~450 hypothermia resistance. Which would be really nice when deep diving, sure. But, it would also be really nice in tundra and especially polar areas.

I haven’t looked up anything in the ice cave yet, but I suspect that you’ll want at least one tortugar to take with you in there (if you can). Have four people in it, pop open the shell and just lob grenades, shoot bows or fire guns and clear everything out. At least that’s what a I envision. Reality could be far different.

The ninth powerstone is on a new Golden Age ruins. I was very surprised to find that out.

The ghost ship is just its own quest now.

You’re using it wrong. It’s obviously meant to be used as leggings.

They are a rare spawn, but if you clear out the current animals in a few areas and loop back one will pop up eventually.

I’ve found them along beaches, or in ground level trenches on the island we’re on. I don’t know if they can spawn higher up or not, but I’ve not found one much above sea level.

It probably wouldn’t take too much for a (theoretical) GM to do. Check maybe a dozen different islands every day, and if they find somebody spamming, just destroy all of that company’s buildings in the zone. I recall a command in ARK that would do exactly that.

I don’t think it would be too long before the spammers give up on blanketing areas with foundations when it costs them everything else. The (theoretical) GMs, would just have to keep doing it,  not stopping when it slows down.

Are there actually GMs?

1 hour ago, Sadie Blackhawk said:

Lolol Salty like Shieldhorn big or bigger? I have a shield egg collection in one of my bags from a mated pair. Thanks for the write up. My partner in crime won't be home for a few more hours and he wanted to go turtle hunting. Guess i'll go prep for us and grab some crabcakes in the trench. Literally get the meat from killing crabs. 

 

I haven’t tamed a shieldhorn yet, but yes, I do believe they are bigger. They dwarf an elephant, and I think that with the shell open it may reach higher than a giraffe.

If you plan on catching more than one, bring a galleon. I could only fit one on our brig, and it looked ridiculous.

Tortugar are massive, and hard to miss when you come across them. They have bioluminescent spots on their backs that are pretty easy to see at night.

How we tamed our first tortugar was fairly standard. Found one, took down its health and bola’d it, then put billboards around it to hold it in place. Works well enough, provided that the billboards are on the same level. Did I mention they’re huge?

If you’re using a bear, be aware that biting its butt doesn’t work. You have to hit the sides or front. Don’t worry, these guys are tanks equipped with pillow cannons. Firm pillows, but still light damage.

Tortugars prefer crustacean meat. I’ve never gotten any of that, and I’m too shellfish to share it with a turtle if I had it. Marrow works very well though. Fish meat is alright, animal meat is about the same, and I imagine berries are your absolute last resort. I’ve still not tested the prime meats yet.

They are a tier 3 creature, so you’ll be needing a tier 3 saddle. To mount them, you have to press e to open their shell, and then e again to get in. The left mouse button is a bite attack, the right mouse button opens and closes the shell, and c is a tail swipe attack.

Are they worth the effort of taming? I’m not sure yet. They have a severe lack of stamina, which greatly limits how much they can swim. Your tortugar will die from stamina loss long before it drowns. I don’t have one I’m willing to risk to try out its limits, but when I do I’ll give an update.

And their eggs are massive! Did I mention they’re huge?

The cargo containers reduce weight by 90%.

I’ve heard that they have a limit of 2000 weight each, but I have not seen if that is before or after the reduction as I’ve not been back on to test that out.

The PTR is an unofficial server for some reason. Change to unofficial and it should show up.

49 minutes ago, Papito said:

QOL: Pressing the F key whilst driving the ship, now allows you to access it's inventory menu

 

I cannot get this to work

I tried it out and had no issues accessing the ships inventory from the wheel.

Crashes:

I’ve experienced two crashes so far. The first was a fatal error, and the second was the game just freezing. The fatal error occurred while laying prone to dig for water, and the freezing was when I was opening my smithy’s inventory. Both times required a reboot of my computer before the game would launch properly.

*UPDATE*  I just experienced my second fatal error. It seems to have occurred either the same, or very similar to the first. I laid down prone, had my pick equipped, then unequipped the pick to dig for water and then it crashed.

Smithy:

The lighthouse blueprint is now under Structures > Cooking.

Ship Cargo Rack:

While building a schooner, I put a cargo rack on it to try out. Opening the cargo rack sunk my schooner while still in the shipyard.

Lawless zones:

Lawless zones, or at least the J10, is acting as a Freeport. Fast decay, and cannot go higher than level 8.

Diving Suit:

Not sure if this is a bug or improvement, but the diving suit no longer has the helmet overlay. MUCH easier to see underwater.

7 hours ago, boomervoncannon said:

Doubtful such a thing exists so early in development when that info is subject to change with little to no notice, but it sounds like a good idea. I would start it myself but I know nothing about web page design and more importantly I'm lazy. Sounds like a job for Someone Else™.

You’re not lazy, you’re efficient.

And they recently increased the intervals between payments on your crew leases.

You can increase it further by levelling accommodations on your ship, which also decreases your vitamin depletion at sea and increases the number of beds you can have on the ship.

It’s the May Mega Update, but did they say which year?

Well, our island is quite small, as I’ve said. It is quite limited for resources, which I believe is a large part of why we don’t get many active settlers. 

We had one small group join our company as we were claiming the island. I believe we have three small groups that have built on our chain of islands, not including the taming pens and single foundations with beds, shipyards, etc.  that we can’t clear out because they keep getting refreshed.

Of the three groups that have settlements and are active, only one was problematic, but seemed to have calmed down. So 33% of the active settlers were/are what I would define as problematic.

If you want to count all of the companies that have built single foundations, four foundation bases and shipyards, taming pens and then abandoned them, or worse keep refreshing them, then the percentage goes well above 50%, probably closer to 67%.

And of all of the companies, which I think was about 12-15, only 2 spoke with us at all, and that was after we approached them. One was building his own base, and wasn’t doing anything that would obstruct others. The other had built a small base after his schooner was sunk on one of our shallows. I actually made him all of the base pieces he would need to rebuild his schooner, and I dove to salvage his old ship for him because of the sharks. We had all of the mats, so it didn’t take me more than a few minutes, and I wanted to make him feel welcome.

The only caveat here is that we have been on holidays the past week and a half, so I don’t know if the situation has changed much until we get back late tomorrow.

As an aside, I really don’t understand that mentality. You take the time to harvest the resources to build these structures, and then just abandon them when you could get half of those resources back, if not for the better reason of not just creating random clutter for others to deal with.

I think that you’re right as well, Winter Thorne. And as you’ve said, a lot of the issues were pointed out to the devs before the changes were made. But, I don’t see the devs changing the claim system anytime soon.

For now, the best we can probably hope for is for them to make adjustments to balance better between the owners and the settlers. I would say that as they currently are, they strongly favour the settlers, at least in PvE.

Yes, the proposed ideas do make it less fair for settlers, but currently it favours the settlers too much. Even with a land owner that tries to block settlers, it’s very possible to build there, and now you have a situation where the owner and settler lead to a combative situation. The settler spends more time trying to carve out a slice of land from the owner, and the owner is actively trying to find them and tear them down.

The sad thing is, most of these issues could be eliminated if people would actually talk to one another.

The alliance only option forces this discussion, if the person wants to build on a specific island.

The increased upkeep costs give the owners incentive to accept settlers, or pay more to keep the land to themselves.

I still think that a better solution would have been the original system with limited claims and no sea claims, at least as far as PvE is concerned.

They could even have added the upkeep that the new system has, and I think it would work quite well. Simply fast travelling between claims means little if you can’t take the gold with you to pay the upkeep.

But, as I said earlier, I don’t see the devs making drastic changes to the claim system any time soon. They’ve made their bed, and now we have to lay in it. Doesn’t mean we can’t ask them to fluff the pillows, or maybe change the sheets. I do kind of expect them to short sheet the bed instead though.

That does sound like a much safer method than mine. Especially if they change(d) whatever allowed it to work for me in the past.

Are you suggesting that the sharp changes in angles in the cross section of a ship are caused by people having higher latency, and that by removing these players there is no need for these chines and a smoother hull shape could be made?

From my experience, the only thing you need to do is try to create a new character on your second system for the same server as the original system.

If it’s still working the same, it will take you to character creation (I think, not 100% sure), and then try to log you in before taking you back to the menu with an error message, but it will then start logging in on its own with your existing character.

That’s what I remember happening when my HD died and I replaced it and performed a fresh install of Windows 10.

TL; DR:  Rights need to be better balanced between settlers and settlement owners. Lotus has good ideas.

I don’t believe that there is a perfect answer that will make everybody happy.

I think that overall the new system fixes more issues from the old system than it creates itself. It allows most people to have a space to build, even if they cannot find an island for themselves.

Before I go into details, yes, our company owns a small island in the south-eastern tropics. There are no metal nodes on our island, minimal fiber, a fair amount of trees and stones , a good amount of crystal, and tons of three kinds of saps.

To me, the largest issues that it creates is the potential for friction between the owners and settlers.

We welcome settlers on our island, and do appreciate when they ask us about where it’s ok for them to build and where not to build. Our company is made up of four small companies or couples to get the island, and each of the groups has their own small base.

We have one German settler on our island that one of our members was able to do some basic communication with. He built a nice base near one of our groups, and doesn’t cause any troubles.

On the other hand, we have another settler that started building a massive base right where our main forest is. I’m not even sure what language he was speaking, as he only tried communicating once, but I tried to communicate non-verbally for him to not build in the woods. I removed the sections that he had put down in the trees, they were only a few at that point, and put up some billboards thinking that he would get the message. 

He didn’t. He built bigger into the trees, even up to and beside the billboards. He also built a massive pen cutting off the easiest path between the small island we’re on and the island he was on with the trees. He also built a large, walled in section, presumably to keep that area for himself, that cut off travel for all on that side of the island. I removed the offending structures and then put a few pillars down to prevent him from expanding into those areas again. There is still a large area around him to expand into, and he has built that way now, but he also started foundation spamming in the water around his base.

There are several boat building bases and traps that have been left on our island, but the owners periodically come by and refresh them so we can’t remove them. We’ve asked them to remove them, and they just give a non-comital response and leave them there.

I can’t really exaggerate how small our island is. On the map it looks like it’s small-medium sized, and it cost 47 points to buy, but it’s really one small island with 5 smaller islands around it, with a lot of the water being either too shallow to build a boatyard or anchor a ship leading to being too deep for a shipyard or to anchor a ship. We’ve found several shipwrecks in the shallows, and put up buoys when we find the ones extending out into the water. 

I think that there needs to be a rebalancing of the rights from the settlement owners and the settlers, at least in PvE. It’s too easy for the settlement owner to get screwed over by a settler for either taking a day off patrolling, or just taking a day off. At the same time, the settlers do need some form of protection from settlement owners that would just arbitrarily destroy their buildings.

I think that Lotus has a great idea for a starting point by allowing the settlement owners to specify who can build on the island, and if alliances were increased for PvE then the owner could have an alliance to invite settlers to, once they have both spoken to each other and both parties expectations have been agreed upon.

I also think that increasing the time for a settlement owner to be able to remove offending structures should be increased. I’d like 5 days to account for reduced play time during the week, but even 3-4 days would be adequate.

If the settlement owner felt the need to evict a settler, there could be an option to flag all of a settlers buildings for demolition. That could start the 10 day destruction timer, and during that time the owner of the structures should be able to remove the structures themselves and get full resources back to rebuild in a new location.

Another of Lotus’ ideas that I agree with is to increase upkeep in general, but especially for larger companies that own multiple islands.

To also incentivize these companies moving to larger islands as they grow, settlement owners should be able to pickup or destroy their own structures at any time for full resources. This removes the need for them to start over again on their new island with half of the resources they already had, which is another reason for them to just stay where they are currently.

17 hours ago, WayneKinne said:

They are simply copying real life, Clipper Ships were the fastest thing on the seas. The bigger the sail boat, the faster it goes. It is called "Hull Speed" and is the result of hull length and width mostly and is also the result of wave size and water displacement. Even today a 50' sailboat will go faster than a 40' sailboat, all other thins being equal.

This is a pretty good summary of it.

This is all just my opinion on the ships as they currently are:

Galleons are actually right about where they should be.

The brigantine should turn slightly slower, as it’s pretty agile for a larger ship. The brigantine should also have an extra gun port or two to be better balanced between the galleon and schooner.

Schooners should be a bit slower than a brigantine, but turn tighter.

Sloops need an small increase to their turning speed when sailing at speed. If you don’t depower the sails, they turn almost like a galleon.

The bigger changes need to happen to the sails.

Speed sails are far too effective when off the wind. They have a 150 degree arc that they can be most effective at, and that’s with them only being at peak power when directly with the wind. They should start to drop off significantly when more than 5 to 10 degrees off of the wind, and give the lowest effective speed into the wind. Say 10% speed into the wind.

Handling sails are actually in an ok place, I think. If speed sails were less effective when off the wind, then they would really start to come into their own. These should give the 30% speed into the wind.

Weight sails would be more effective if instead of adding addition weight to the ship, they instead reduced the movement penalty for carrying more weight. Working the same as the armour speed modifier. Top speed should be the same as a handling, but have a similar effective profile to the speed sails. These should give a 15 to 20% speed into the wind.

With these changes, speed sails are most effective with the wind, handling sails are more effective off the wind, and weight sails reduce the penalty of carrying more weight.

Currently, I see little reason to use anything except speed sails. Unless your ship is meant for combat, when handling may give you an advantage for sail turning speed and requiring less effort to keep with the wind for better agility.

This is all just my opinion though, as I certainly haven’t tried out every scenario with every ship and sail combination.

Tamed by Panty Stocking? 

Sorry, I just find the name to be hilarious.

And the one who gives up loses their gold.

We put a dinghy on our galleon so that one of us can get the drop quicker that way than taking the time to turn around and head back.

I think we’ll do the same thing with our planned brig, just in case we need to.