Dazlarus

Personally, I would like to see the new PvP claim system of owning islands but with alliance build permissions as compared to the proposed free for all system. Limit the number of islands that a company can own either through a hard cap or a very steep soft cap. My idea of a soft cap would be to think of the blueprint quality modifiers for resources. If you want to make a fine BP you need to have 2 different types of all the resources that you need to build the blueprint. That same principle could be applied to claim upkeep. On your first island, you need to pay so much gold, wood, stone, metal, thatch, fiber, gems, crystal, and/or organic paste per hour to maintain your island. The amount you need to pay would be reduced based on how many of your allies are building on your island with a minimum number of building items required to count as a resident (let's say 50 items=a base). To prevent allies from just building a base to help a friend out and never using it, that proposed upkeep building comes into play. Buildings decay if outside of the range of the building and the building would need to be supplied with materials to perform repairs. When you claim your second island as a company the upkeep requirements would increase and you would be required to have 2 different types of resources to cover the costs, an example would be cotton and jute to cover fiber requirements. This would prevent even the largest companies from expanding quickly. I am a member of a large PvE company and it takes the efforts of the entire company to gather materials for high tier blueprints and bringing them back to our main base. Adding this level of logistics to larger companies would promote trade and communication in PvE. Under this scenario, even the largest companies would have to think twice about expanding beyond an island or 2 and it would be impossible to expand beyond 6 islands since there are only 6 different types of each resource. Smaller companies could sail around and ask to be a tenant on an island and if a company would like a tenant then they would add them to an alliance. Leave lawless zones exactly as they are and make a good place to farm resources and a good place for new players to stop off and build their first real ship. Before an island is claimed it should behave like lawless and if an island was already being built on when a large company wants to claim it they would have to make deals with everyone to get everyone to join an alliance so that there are no contesters to the claim. In the future there could be infrastructure improvements that would cause smaller companies to want large companies to have a presence on their island such as player run stores that sell non-native resources, food, blueprints, and other items that small groups would need to put a lot of effort into gathering whereas a large company would have to problem amassing large stores of these goods. There could also be NPC shipbuilders that could build any ship that the company who runs the town would be able to supply with ship parts and others could purchase schooners, brigs, galleons, and future ship designs. The company would have to ensure that the ship components were in a storage location near the NPC (who would be assigned to a special shipyard) and the customer could choose to buy the ship with no gunports, starboard gunports, port gunports, or all gunports. Sails, deck pieces, extra planks/gunports, and steering wheels could be purchased from another NPC store so that the person purchasing the ship would be able to customize their ship and not have a single point into shipbuilding. Services like this could cause smaller companies to want to live on claimed lands. What do you think of a claim system like this?

That takes you out of the game. The idea is that we should have the tools available to us in the game. It is also considerably better to do trades using the forums but that also requires you to get out of the game to interact with it. In PvE, alliances are the closest thing that we have to a friends list. Realistically, outside of the alliance chat, what are the benefits of an alliance in PvE? Like seriously, just think about it. You can't friendly fire on other companies because there is no PvP. There aren't going to be build permissions to allow other people to build on your land because you don't own any land that you aren't personally building on. What are the benefits of a PvE alliance with the changes that they are making? If I am missing something please let us know because as it stands I can't see a reason to limit alliance member numbers or quantity of memberships on PvE.

I will say right now that the Kraken itself is not the problem. It is killed multiple times a week with no lost ships on the NA PvE by people in my alliances. You only need 6 schooners and a brig to take it down easily and can be done with even fewer ships. The problem is needing 8 power stones to summon the Kraken which, are incredibly difficult to get even with a large group. On a released version of the game, I think that requiring all 9 above water power stones is perfectly acceptable and would be a fun way to have progression in the game. The only reason you need the sub over a diving suit is for the deep sea exploration which is required for the 2nd tier of the progression. With everything at this stage being about testing, we should have easy access to the newest and least balanced parts of the game to give feedback. Just my two cents but I do hope the devs change their minds on this decision for the Early Access period.

You don't need to be but you either have to sail around everywhere asking for things on every server and hope for a response or you can ask in company/alliance chats if anyone is selling a thing. In PvE it's the difference between pulling out a phonebook every time you need to find another business to have some work done compared to collecting a stack of business cards from people that you have worked with before and asking your friends for recommendations for businesses they have worked with before. Crowdsourcing is a lot more efficient than doing everything for yourself. It's a convenience thing. Not required but definitely makes trading easier.

I had this happen to me in F11 on NA PvE and lost all my exploration gear, cutting my exploration tip short

There is a lot to read here so I'm not going to. The only thing that happened for the last patch that could have caused this problem for you was a server roll-back. It sucks but at the same time, you shouldn't have been cutting it so close with your claims. I am a member of Atlas Shrugged which at that time was the #1 landholder in NA PvE and we had no issues with land being stolen OR having the opportunity to steal any of the lands that we had our sights on for expansion and we have people online around the clock (just the nature of being such a large group of geographically dispersed gamers.) It sounds like you just had a bad experience OP. Hopefully, you find the strength to get back into the game and kill some skeletons and grab some plunder with the rest of your pirate buddies. There are still lands to be tamed in the desert region in the center of the map and in the polar regions if nothing else comes up and you need a place to call home. (I would imagine it's the same situation over on PvP but since I don't play there I don't know for sure.)

Just to go 1 further. This is more technically an alpha because of the planned features that will inevitably cause massive rebalance to happen. I see the same sort of shitposting on many early access games I play because people don't understand how game development (or software development in general) works. Same BS statements were made about ARK... like chill folks, we don't even know what the "end-game" looks like yet. Magical steampunk pirates are very removed from what we have just like how the early days of ARK are very different from what the end-game Tek tier and battles on space stations that the game turned out to be about. We are Pathfinders. We will discover what happened to our ancestors! Viva la Golden Age!

This is a minor bug but is rather annoying. When I am in inventories I frequently have my cursor jump to the center of the screen. This happens constantly when opening an inventory while reloading (probably another bug in itself if I had to guess) and when using T to transfer stacks between inventories.

I will report back here after trying our a tower design if I remember because I have heard about NPC manned mortar towers on PvP and puckle gun pillboxes. I have plenty of access to metal to keep up the pain on my island but was confused on how defense towers work. Hopefully I can do the science and figure this stuff out to clear this all up for the masses of fools like me

+1 I love almost everything in here and totally reminds me of the only other "next-gen" MMO that I play/follow, Star Citizen. The only thing that I hope the devs don't eventually do on your extensive list is the NPC workforce. I would much rather see people who like gathering resources (me) be able to sell those resources to traders and other players. This would also be a boon for people who like taming and breeding since tames can improve the efficiency of gathering resources. The people who don't like gathering materials should be able to fund their ship upgrades in other ways (quests, jobs, treasure maps, bounties) and the traders can make money as the middle man with their profit margin justified by the threat of the pirates that roam the seas. Star Citizen is trying to create a universe where anyone can live out their dream of flying a space ship and filling any role that a sci-fi universe holds (pirates, outlaws, marines, navy, trader, industry, exploring, science, bounty hunters and the list goes on. I hope that Atlas can create a pirate world where we can live out a pirate/privateer life. We can trade, steal, dig up buried treasure, and grow our infamy which is exactly the type of variety that caused me to play through Sid Meier's Pirates game back in the day so many times. Every replay of S.M. Pirates was a different adventure. Are you going to reunite your long lost family? Are you going to challenge the legendary pirates to become the biggest and baddest pirate in the Caribean? Are you going to try to find all of the legendary pirate's buried treasure? Are you going to try to become the most successful, richest, most land-owning privateer for the Royal ____ Navy? If Atlas can come even halfway to realizing what S.M. Pirates did back in 1987 but with modern graphics and in a multiplayer environment I would easily call this the greatest pirate game ever made.

I would personally like to see the diving suit replaced with a diving bell. 1 ship could facilitate many divers without the protection offered by the submarine. Make the submarine expensive for end game crews while the diving bell would be for coral collection and looting shipwrecks. Deep sea oxygen consumption and temperature buffs would need to be reworked I would imagine.

The way I see it right now is that stone structures are the metal tier from ARK. Stone structures should be very expensive as they are now AS LONG AS they are strong enough to justify the cost. Currently, they are not strong enough in PvP. The only things that should be able to damage stone structures are war tames (maybe rhino and upcoming crab?) and explosives. Explosives can include grenades, canister shot, spike shot, mortar shot and any future type of exploding cannonball. If you are strong enough to have a base made of stone in it should take preparation and planning to raid, even when defenders are offline just like metal (and later, Tek) bases were in ARK. I play Atlas on PvE official servers and have my base in a very hostile area complete with lions, wolves, cobras, rattlesnakes, crocs, and vultures. Our base is built on pillars just off the island and constantly gets attacked by cobras and crocs. Getting attacked is a large portion of the fun. Repelling those attacks and repairing before things go totally wrong is an exciting way to break up the normal grind associated with this game. The entire base is made of wood, in large part because of the changes that were made to the cost of stone structures. I do not feel cheated out of a stone fortress but I do feel really bad for the people on PvP servers were offline raiding can easily happen with a couple of pickaxes. Stone vs metal pickaxe should be 1 damage per hit and stone should be buffed to have 100,000 HP and take increased damage from explosives vs conventional ammo. Blowing a hole in a wall with 2 dozen grenades to steal some stuff, I like. Broadsiding someone's beach fortress once with a galleon and reducing it to rubble, I don't like (unless they were using my proposed explosive shells instead of standard cannonballs.) Also, to be clear, explosive rounds are already more expensive than standard rounds in regards to the canister shot vs grapeshot in the swivel gun but to have what I am suggesting work, the price of explosive ammo would need to jump significantly. Having the cost per shot in metal, fire gel, and blasting powder increase would significantly help with this. Currently, the cost vs benefit of stone vs wood just isn't there. Large amounts of rebalancing as I suggest here are going to need to be considered for the long term health of the game. Increasing the cost without also increasing the benefit to appeal as an "end game" base building material has alienated parts of the community. Sure, but it is important to remember that the game is in early access and things like this can be fixed to improve the long term health of the community. PS: Just wanted to say that I copied this from another thread I replied to about stone structures costing too much. This is my response, not someone else's in case that isn't clear. I thought that putting this idea in front of as many people as possible could help with the idea I am proposing. What the devs did doesn't make sense but could easily be changed to make a ton more sense as the game goes forward. Simple changes could change community opinion of stone structures from "expensive" to "investment".

I personally really like the increase in cost for stone structures. As compared to the cementing paste problems in ARK pre-beaver dams, doing a mass gathering of sap is incredibly easy and encourages people to trade, explore, and otherwise travel instead of turtling inside their bases for all eternity. The part that I don't like is the ease of offline raiding. The cost increase was a perfect time to buff stone, not nerf it. If you are building with stone structures that are extremely expensive then you should be practically immune to pickaxe raids while offline. I would have also increased resistances for regular cannon ammo while making explosive ammo more expensive while also making it more suited to the task. Regular cannonball should be great at sinking ships without damaging the cargo onboard while spike shot should be good at taking out stone structures. I would also add fire gel and blasting powder costs to all explosive rounds and consider making explosive rounds for mortar and large cannons cost alloy instead of metal AND make them stronger than medium cannon and swivel gun explosive ammo. Just some thoughts on the situation.

The way I see it right now is that stone structures are the metal tier from ARK. Stone structures should be very expensive as they are now AS LONG AS they are strong enough to justify the cost. Currently, they are not strong enough in PvP. The only things that should be able to damage stone structures are war tames (maybe rhino and upcoming crab?) and explosives. Explosives can include grenades, canister shot, spike shot, mortar shot and any future type of exploding cannonball. If you are strong enough to have a base made of stone in it should take preparation and planning to raid, even when defenders are offline just like metal (and later, Tek) bases were in ARK. I play Atlas on PvE official servers and have my base in a very hostile area complete with lions, wolves, cobras, rattlesnakes, crocs, and vultures. Our base is built on pillars just off the island and constantly gets attacked by cobras and crocs. Getting attacked is a large portion of the fun. Repelling those attacks and repairing before things go totally wrong is an exciting way to break up the normal grind associated with this game. The entire base is made of wood, in large part because of the changes that were made to the cost of stone structures. I do not feel cheated out of a stone fortress but I do feel really bad for the people on PvP servers were offline raiding can easily happen with a couple of pickaxes. Stone vs metal pickaxe should be 1 damage per hit and stone should be buffed to have 100,000 HP and take increased damage from explosives vs conventional ammo. Blowing a hole in a wall with 2 dozen grenades to steal some stuff, I like. Broadsiding someone's beach fortress once with a galleon and reducing it to rubble, I don't like (unless they were using my proposed explosive shells instead of standard cannonballs.) Also, to be clear, explosive rounds are already more expensive than standard rounds in regards to the canister shot vs grapeshot in the swivel gun but to have what I am suggesting work, the price of explosive ammo would need to jump significantly. Having the cost per shot in metal, fire gel, and blasting powder increase would significantly help with this. Currently, the cost vs benefit of stone vs wood just isn't there. Large amounts of rebalancing as I suggest here are going to need to be considered for the long term health of the game. Increasing the cost without also increasing the benefit to appeal as an "end game" base building material has alienated parts of the community. Sure, but it is important to remember that the game is in early access and things like this can be fixed to improve the long term health of the community. PS: Wild animals should not be able to damage stone structures, period, regardless of alpha status, IMO. Obviously, this cannot be the case because of stone taming traps and alpha predator traps but I do hope that the devs can figure some way to make this a thing in the future.

@Notorious I was thinking of building some NPC manned swivel guns on the border of my base to deal with the cobras and crocs that populate the island I am living on. How do I set up these towers so that the NPCs get fed/paid and can use ammo? On ships, the NPCs eat from the mess table, pay themselves out of the ship resource chest, and retrieve ammo from the ammo crate. I don't understand how this works on land. Is there an invisible circle around them? Do you have to place the food, gold, and cannonballs into their inventories? Sorry if this is a stupid question but I need some defense for my base. BWT I am a PvE player so I am not worried about other players outsmarting the defenses or anything like that.

@qqjp All of your questions are answered in the videos and the original post that the OP made about this tool here: I hope this info helps you.

Thank you all for the responses. I happened to make friends with some companies in a tropical sector and have decided to stick it out with them on their low predator island. I am loving the amazing PvE community in ATLAS.

@LUC1F3R The disk usage should be low if you mean space that this would take up. You only need 1 install of the server version of the game. Everything else is handled by config and save files which are very small considering the size of the map. If by disk usage you mean throughput, it will be very heavy on the reads when spinning up new servers. Luckily reads wear out HDDs and SSDs slower than writes do.

Earlier today I met up with a friend at a predetermined spot. I decided to climb aboard their ramshackle sloop to see if I would place items onto their sleeping person. I climbed the ladder onto their ship and then I started sliding around very slowly. When I changed to 3rd person view it looked like I was floating/swimming upright. As I tried to escape (I could not jump so I couldn't get over the rails) I eventually slid into the hole leading under the deck where I knew I was permanently stuck. I panicked and bugged my friend to get back onto the game to help me out. She added me to her company and I was able to walk and jump. I play on NA PvE if that makes a difference, If this an anti-griefing mechanic either the retractable ladder needs to be locked off and/or you need to be able to jump to get over those railings on the sides of the ship. If I had wandered onto a random person's boat I would have been stuck inside of their ship until I eventually starved to death which is not ideal.

My fiance and I are looking for somewhere to build our 1st workshop and shipyard. We would prefer tropic or temperate areas. We are both fairly new to the game and therefore do not have much to trade but are more than willing to work for our homestead. Alternatively, we are more than willing to "rent" from someone who has space that they do not want to give up permanently which would still facilitate upgrading our Ramshackle Sloop to something more respectable. We are not interested in joining an established company since our goal going into this game is to push how far we can get on our own.

What you are describing sounds very much like my experience in ARK before I got an SSD.

Just would like to throw it out there that this game is in early access... the warning was right there when you bought it. The idea is that they got the game to a playable state and then they released it so that they can study how we play to tailor the experience. Also, places like this forum and Reddit provide places to provide feedback. The devs took ARK from hardly playable dumpster fire to one of the better games I have played over the course of the early access period. I have also been able to shoot snakes off of my raft and they just flail around but never attack me or my mighty vessel. There have been many times that I was fighting some wildlife and needed to retreat to my ship to survive and the creatures have not followed me, rather they seem to lose interest as soon as I am on the boat.

I also posted a thing about claim late last night but with the lense of an ARK player. In ARK there are tame limits on dinos to prevent servers from lagging out but also to balance tribes so that each tribe can only have so many dinos. In ATLAS, land is the most valuable commodity. It would be nice if companies had a limit to how many claims they can make, especially on PvE servers so that as companies find the valuable islands they can claim them and leave some of the trash islands for those who are just starting out like myself. I would appreciate feedback on my ideas from someone who is more familiar with the land claim system.

I can't wait to try this tool. I would have asked to be part of the test group if I had heard about this sooner. I have really been enjoying the game but am unable to find any land to claim and build my base on the Official NA PvE server. My computer has an i7 4790k and 32 GB of RAM. I tended to play ARK on clustered servers off of the same machine with no troubles up to 3 servers, adding the 4th would kill performance of my game. There is a lot less going on in this game per server than ARK does, especially since my group will mainly be living off our ship with small amounts of island base building to facilitate restocking the ship and upgrading it. I am very keen to try this out. Can you please update the main post with a link for the download when it is ready for general consumption? I can totally see this facilitating single player and small group play for the majority of the community that is fed up with the drama around the current land claim systems.

I second this but would also like to see it expanded to buildings as well for the same reason.