Mike L

Also it's pretty cheesy that enemies will sail a ship by, hide whatever they need to raid you in the ocean, spam the island with beds, and until you find the equipment in the ocean they can raid you with no ship anytime. Something needs to be done about that as well. I vote no building outside claims and lawless at least. Also make the settler cords useful, currently it gives you the cords of the first item they drop and that's it. This is also why I think they should just remove combat timers. Let it just be about war for taking islands. That way small companies likely wont be worth the war deck, unless they attack another company or something, and big companies would know when the fight is comming so they can properly prepare.

No I was meaning, with your proposed change of the island in peace, while the claim flag radius is always combat. With that if you dont piller spam your beaches someone will come by and make storage you dont know about on your island that they leave pvp kits in. Until you find there stuff your island would be in danger. Would probably still be better than the 9hr combat window though.

Like a big bank box? That is tied to a bigger bank that's deposited into by the company? I think I'm missing the point of it, it's just for gold storage? Whys it safe/payout gold?

You'll still need the structure protection in order to not let your enemies build enough to take your island. I dont see what changes there. However they do it, changes like these need to be put in place for lots of reasons. One of the biggest being the direction the games currently headed towards, which is one giant mega alliance that turns the game into pve essentially. It's already moved into two main giant white list alliances. Only a matter of time before one wins. That's why they should never have abandoned the small companies. I've always said it from the beginning, its literally those small companies that drive the game and make it interesting. Players that primarily play in big companies never understand this. They always say," but your just a small number of players theres no way you could matter. "

Well said, what do you mean by personal bank box in bank? Like a Freeport bank? Anyways these issues do need to be tackled. Sooners better than later, but these things take time. Good post though

Yeah I like that ships wont be sunk while offline, something needs to be done about that for sure. This system would be an improvement, also leaves alot of work to be done on it. Some claim flags arent accessible, so those islands will essentially be invincible. Something else that needs to be clarified, can you be black flagged by more than one company? Will the island owner be able to destroy anyone's ship on their island at any time? And last an exploit that needs to be fixed with or without this system is, enemies can build a fob without a bed in it without the island owners knowledge. This will lead to company "a" leaves all the stuff on company "b" island to raid them. Then company A simply watches the player count/ which players are online, until they see enough log off then it will be offline raid time. Any thoughts on the raid meta of this system?

So if I understand this correctly, cannon barrages will now damage crew, and not planks, and you cant offline sink ships because you have to use the flag system? So your ships are going to be safe as long as there anquored and your island remains claimed, that's a good bit of qql. I just hope there careful with the ship combat, and I already know there going to throw black flag and not fire a single cannon until it goes to either ship can sink..

Uhm? You made no point here. In these hypothetical changes there is no 9hr combat timer. I'm not trying to be mean. Was just stating that obviously if you took out the 9 hr timer players would have to war others or fight on lawless for land pvp. Still I think it would be a major improvement, for Qol and for sustainability and popularity of the game as a whole.

Not a bad idea, it would still get exploited by larger companies, but would do more good than bad. Small Freeport bank is another idea that may help here as well. I like the ideas to help small companies ,but another change I think we should push towards to help this problem. I think they should remove combat timers entirely. Just use war to wipe companies. That way islands become a safer place until they have too many enemies that want to war them. Also being a settler would be much easier. I took a few minutes to think about the game without combat timers, and realized it improves the game in almost every way to remove them.

What I'm saying here is, think about the game currently with its combat timers, and island proximity. Almost every company worth its salt in the game currently has taken two islands near each other and set combat timers alternating from each other so that they can keep there ships in complete safety, by moving them back and forth. If the combat timer is gone, theres not as much reason to take neighboring islands, there is no tedious moving of an entire companies ships to keep them safe. In the games current state, I havent seen much pvp that the defending company wanted to do happening in a combat timer. So on to the proposal of, why not remove the combat timer entirely, however there is an exploit with war timers right now. An alt company can simply keep declaring war on a company to keep them immune if you remove combat timers. So I think you should just add the qualification that a company must have had at least one island for 5 days before being able to declare war. Also during a war, both the defenders and attackers islands should be vaunerable to attack ,and the war should probably end when either island is taken Thanks to anyone for reading, keep making the game awesome devs, players will return!

You cant stop them from organizing no, but you can setup, storage that's unraidable but limited, you can remove combat timer, and you could change upkeep cost for small companies to be less(it would go up according to the biggest settler on the island so no exploit.). Small companies at least need a way to make it. Would bring players and groups back. The playerbase has died down to pretty much just large companies, that means quite a few players that left were wanting smaller groups to play with, unfortunately that's not a valid playstyle with how the game is now.

It just seems like your trying to solve online ship combat issues. Which the online ship combat isn't so bad. It's actually the most fun I have playing the game I was never talking about a defender who had submitted. I'm saying an attacker engages a defender who has alot of repair mats and planks what happens when the attacker runs out of supplies which could sink defenders ship, at what point is the fight over? I think you answered that the attacker is free to run? So the main thing this system does is allow someone to give up in online ship combat? So planks take way slower damage than crew. That's not much of a detail there. Your saying once crew starts dying the ship can sink? Or your saying the ship starts the battle with extra plank resist?

10x is much better than 3x Your missing that the enemy cant unanquor your ship, so this would only work for ships at sea. There is an easy to use war system for land pvp. Thanks for the feedback and concern!

It's harder to get the small ships very much xp in the first place. You could scale down the bonus for ships smaller than yours, but I dont see any reason not to take all the xp. Also it's not like this would get to any exploity level, since all ships have a max level. Would just offer another way for ships to level, and the ships sunk in pvp at sea, wouldn't just be wiped progress, they'd progress another ship. If you sink a level 52 galleon with a lvl 42 one, I feel that you should get to have a lvl 52 galleon after that, if that was your max. Leveling up ships takes a very long time, so say two companies have a ship battle, the loser of the battle loses some maxed out ships, the enemy now has maxed out ships vs non maxed ships. Unless they leave the company who lost the ship battles alone for a week or so, then one company will never have a means of having maxed ships without sinking the enemy's maxed ships with ones that are still leveling.

Wow, I never said you could use their anquor. So your ship wouldn't be gone. I dont feel like the players who lose a ship battle immediately want to quit. People want to quit when you come back to all your ships sunk while your offline. Which the combat timer is the biggest problem there. They should just remove it. And I'm not just trying to hate on ya, it's just a legit concern with this system. If someone throws the black flag and I'm unarmed, I would immediately surrender 25% of my loot and they wouldn't be able to touch the rest. After they find out what the 75% is they may not be able to let me go. There going to follow you and try to war your company or something. Dont get rid of crew limit. Npcs have weight, actual players dont. Theres no winning vs a galleon that has 100 players on it, hell they'd crash most servers they sail into. Theres quite a few problems and exploits that come to mind. Mostly to do with dangerous and explosive cargo. Also placing cannons after battle had begun, and also using a ship that looks like it should lose just to stall time. If attacker runs out of supplies to attack with and you just keep ramming them, do they lose their ship? If it's the defenders choice, if his ship sinks or not, then it must be assumed that planks cannot go missing mid fight. That's what I mean by changing the way ships take damage entirely. If the defenders ship cant be sunk unless the red flag flies then sotd, must not be able to do damage to them, and planks cant leak. I dont even know where to begin with problems here. Or they can be sunk, and if that's the case,then why do I bother with this system? It would still be fastest and easiest to get the loot, If i just sail up to them and plank half their ship, then the ship sinks in 3 minutes and I loot as I do now, what would this flag system do about that? If it makes them unsinkable then I could use two accounts with this flag system, just to make my ships unsinkable. I'm sure theres some good concepts here, but also tons of problems to work out.

Title almost says it all, ships should take all the xp from other ships it sinks in pvp combat. Would make even greater incentive to pvp with not fully leveled ships. Also it would be great if you made it only steal xp from unanquored ships, so not to encourage griefing.

Ship stealing- make steering wheels and sails useable by any pirate so long as theres no npc on it already. Offline ship griefing- increase anquored ship plank resistance to 1000% at least. Also make doors and walls easier to destroy while ship is anquored.(ship can be raided easily, but very hard to sink) Also remove combat timers! There 90% of grief play is gone. These three changes could vastly improve aspects of the game, and I feel as though they would be quick and easy to implement.

Thanks, yeah the small companies need a change like this, or they need a little Freeport storage, some advantage for upkeep, and maybe something like hard limits like this. If you can get the system to reward small companies more, the low company limit may not be needed, but with how it is currently this would probably be a great change.

Well it's just, your asking to change a lot of stuff that actually works right now, for example, you said that your npcs should be able to teleport to enemy ship on aggressive, I like the grapples on NPCs for that function better. I'm all for ships not getting sunk while offline. Which could be achieved by increasing resistance of anquored ships, by 1000% instead of the current lame 300%. Also make anqored ships take double damage on doors and maybe wood walls. Just that I think the simpler solutions might work better, just like how you asked about how a ship would change ownership with my suggested change, there is a ship claiming system in the game already, which doesnt work that well, but if your allowed to move the ship it would work perfect, and likely result in an awesome ship chase and battle for their ship back.

Thoughts, my first thought is that it would be much simpler to just make the steering wheel and sails useable by enemy players when npcs have been killed off of them. It solves the piracy part, and makes a way for ship stealing to actually feel like stealing the ship and be fun. Reading this combat system, something would need to be done to simplify it. Also it looks as if you should just immediately surrender if you think your going to lose. Wouldn't be a very fun fight. You throw black flag, enemy immediately throws white flag so you cant get all their loot. Also changing the spawn system to be counter intuitive to normal spawning, I dont think is going to have many fans. It's also just way to rule based, too much structure for what was supposed to be simply sinking, or taking over an enemy ship, this whole flag system is going to just be plain annoying in big fleet battles, and wars. The current ship combat system, isn't trash, asking them to change the way ships receive and deal damage to each other deffinately isn't nesseccary. The realism part isn't relevant to the game. The Royal Navys best could only fire 3 cannons in about 5 minutes, we dont want realistic ship combat. Also the most confusing part, your trying to take away the freedom to retreat?

This is a good suggestion, as the devs even have captain logs stating they wanted small companies to be able to play as well. Most of rhe original playerbase wanted to be smaller companies. The last month and a half though they have made changes so that the live servers are OLNY for big companies to play on.

It is a good change, at least giving another option to clean off claims. Good to see changes happening to fix griefing in pvp. Sad to see how much it cost though, this game is now just for bigger companies.

Yeah, thanks for the reply Dollie, it's a step in the right direction already. I'm sure the quick decay has already decayed tons of spam, helping the health of servers. Unfortunately, and I know your still working on it, so you may already have a plan for this, but without a company structure limit, per island or something, this is eventually going to make spam worse, as players are going to redo their spam as little huts or multiple pillers/ceilings together. With a company limit though, they'd have to be careful where they place their spam, and hopefully wont be able to lag out the server, also as a side note if you put a limit for structures for islands it gives more value to using blueprints to make better base pieces. Again thanks, it's still good to see devs are paying attention and listening!

Well one good change has been made with the decay, we just need a structure limit along with it for it to work properly.

That could also work polar, I dont like this solution as much, I think it's going to work towards one base design too much, also I never played rust though, so I'm not sure how annoying, or awesome this mechanic can get.