Mike L

Devs have spoken on this before, and said something like, it's such an essential part of small companies gameplay, that they feel it would be detrimental to remove it now. Theres no need to introduce a 1hr combat timer, all youd have to do is change tames to a 1 day claim timer, and remove the effect resistance has on Freeport decay, also dont allow the building of crop plots, and piping. Honestly though, I think they need to just restructure it so that every pathfinder has a small amount of personal storage, and leave it at that, so just an npc that I'll hold like 30 slots or so of anything. That way some of your best stuff can be saved this way, but certainly not enough storage for everything. Currently I have a horse breeding line, alot of storage tames, farming bears and giraffes, two brigs, one max level, one almost max, and a full farm at the Freeport. It's the best way to play, you'll always have good gear to fight with, and it's easy to gather up different materials to craft blueprints. However introducing a combat timer to freeports, wouldn't be very new player friendly, also would get quite annoying when you just wanted to do something simple, such as take a 5 minute break from the game, or get wood for your ship.

No such thing

Actually due to the nature of the game if players werent constantly losing everything, including tames and the ability to farm resources quickly, youd see alot more online action and loot out there. Youd end up stockpiling enough extra stuff, that it wouldn't be a big deal someone stole your mythical equipment set, or sank your ship. With the games current design, you should have farming tames, and at least a little storage in the Freeport. No claim is completely safe, and if you can have the advantage of being able to get back on your feet at your nearest Freeport why wouldn't you use it? Think about it though, after you have so much prim gear that your Freeport tames cant even hold it, and several boosted sets, and extra boosted stuff, why wouldn't you use it?? Or you can have a claim where anytime a zerg company like SDC, or Blackhole hits you your completely wiped, or just any ole noob comming to raid on a day your company couldn't be online, it's all wiped. Hmm. Tough choice there huh? Btw even companies like SDC and blackhole, and all the big companies, store stuff in the Freeport. Why would they do that? Gosh they know they can defend their claim perfectly with no one in the game being able to challenge it?? Obviously they know there stuff isn't completely safe either.

It's not all just bullying, this game sorta has a high limit on how well you can craft stuff. Makes it seem like alot of the fights are unfair. This game is also in no way pay to win, or pay to play. There are no in game advantages that money can LEGALLY buy you. Trading real money for anything in the game is against the rules, could get you banned, and if it's too much money, can also land you in jail. I have fun playing still however, most of my stuff is in the Freeport. The Freeport strat is actually great for small companies. Also when you build a base or a ship. Just realize that all ships must sink and all bases will be decayed or raided. I see so many players go into the pvp, thinking "I'll defend my stuff from whatever comes at me" already setting their expectations to an impossible task. Instead try thinking, what's the way I can have the most fun out of this situation?? Just keep a clear head, and think about what will really hurt my attackers right now? You cant defend your stuff, you can try, and I would hope you have fun trying, however in the end, all will fall. Big companies still arent an exception to this, SDC, Blackholes and some of the other big na pvp companies may seem like there stuff will always be there, but it wont, and when a big company goes, it ALL GOES down. Cheers! And if you see me outside of a Freeport and dont want to pvp, RUN.

Freeporting is the answer! I understand the game can take alot of time, honestly though, through Freeport breeding and gathering cargo tames at the Freeport, you can never lose your stuff, and you'll only have to log on to feed them once per week. Think about it!! You dont even need a ship, and you can make mythical equipment also breed really good horses, and you can pvp vs anyone without risking your stuff. (Other than what your using against them of coarse)

Yeah, well agree to disagree, like I said they should and probably will remove the exploit swivels. I dont think they should make them unmanable by npc though. No ship is un-boardable though even currently. You can even ladder trick swivels. Climb the ladder, but stop before you get to the top and barely climb so that the swivel shoots but doesnt kill you, then run and go sword it down real quick, also it's not always an instant kill, take alcohol plus have equilibrium, and take a pudding with 301 hp, theyll take multiple shots to kill ya. Just gotta realize the meta is currently be fast but able to sink them, after this the new meta will be schooners with no cannons, there would never be a reason to use anything else at all with this change, cannons would have no place on a ship.

Think you missed the point if you grapple to the side of the ship and jump off, the npcs all jump in the ocean, if the ship is moving there gone, but the player is still grappled and can reboard the ship again. A side note as I was saying "red alert" usually ends with all your npcs in the water anyways, as theyll aggro onto any fish or shark in the water and jump ship. (Set their targeting range to low to help with that, although it'll still happen) LOL you get in the top of the sail, and use bow,crossbow,knives, and yes grenades will also kill npcs off swivels but so will projectile weapons. Kill sail npcs first, then swivels, then when they try and come get you up there, hit them with a spyglass and theyll fall off the ship into the ocean. Also who is your company? I can come show you what I mean in your harbor. Cuz the cannon bear/horse kills all the puckles and ballista lol. Flame arrows just keep npcs from repairing the ship planks. I said grenades before I know, but smart puckle setups can actually stop grenades, but a cannon tame outrages all defences even on flat ground.

Also on that note, I'm an experienced player, and yep all 10 armored npcs would die in less than 10 seconds but if they managed to actually melee me once(they wont) I would grapple to the side of your ship jump off, ohh no there goes all your npcs after me into the water. Then I'd be back on the ship and youd have no npcs to defend with. Also it's not that unlikely that they all jump ship for a fish or a dolphin as well, because pressing "N" changes them all to aggressive.

Only 2 options for this currently, make friends with someone who has land, and settle there and only have 9 hours a day your ship can be destroyed or, increase resistance alot so that you can park in the Freeport and repair it twice a day. Over 240% resist and likely just repair once per day.

Skykevin, you sound like you've not had to defend a harbor vs geared players yet. It's pretty difficult even with deck swivels and one person not putting deck swivels on their ship, will cause the sinking of everyone's ship in the harbor likely. They'll glider suit into the sails of ships and start killing all the npcs on the ships first. Then they'll grenade the puckles. Then they'll either bring out a few cannon tames, tame a cannon tame and use alloy from your ships, or just make tons of flame arrows and start sinking everything. Ohh and I know your going to ask why they cant be killed and stopped, well that lies in gurilla warfare tactics, they can see where the stuff you care about is, you probably wont always know their position however, so it's not as simple as just shoot them. I've done both attacking and defending, attacking is usually as easy as, destroy something watch them all scramble for ya, and in the process they'll usually mess up so bad that they'll even destroy their own stuff trying to kill ya. Eg. They'll drive their ship into a harbor wall because they dont have sail npcs. It's a much better solution for players to learn to use bows, crossbows, throwing knives, and grenades as opposed to removing npcs on deck swivels. And on the topic of boarding ships with deck swivels on open waters, get up in your ships crows nest, spin up your grapple and have your captain ram their ship, get in their sails and you can board without getting touched by swivels.

Mostly it's just that if you cant have npcs on swivels anywhere that can be over run with zerg, would be. That includes harbors and parked ships. That's the biggest problem I see with it, could always change the idea to npcs wont shoot swivels on moving ships. With how the game is now though, anywhere theres ships could be easily taken by prepared players, and the meta will become, using glider suits off of schooners ,and there would be no point to blueprinted ships or anything bigger than schooners. One person boarding a ship can quickly disable it. I'm not saying boarding should be impossible, but it's a big big deal, and if you press n with fully geared npcs unfortunately all your going to see is a lot of npc death messages when they circular strike with sword, or crushing blow with the mace. Youd have to change more than just no npcs on swivels.

I believe ship stealing should be part of the game however I feel like it's been done all wrong, I say Increase the time it takes to steal anqored ships, and also hear me out now, make the sails and steering wheel of a ship usable by anyone so that if a ship is out at sea it can have a flag placed on it and be driven away.( claim flag drops if you go I to a freeport) would make ship stealing more realistic and actually FUN.

Ya this is still a good running post, I vote green anquor ships shouldn't be sunk so easily. Like suggested before, slow sinking rate could be good, or I wouldn't mind undamagable planks after green anquor, however the first one would need to be balanced so that green anquor ships can no longer fire cannons/swivels. (In pvp the enemy would green anquor a gally at your harbor entrance) and for the second undamagable planks, you'll need to remove the anquored resistance, because you could make the ship almost unraidable with some extra wood pieces. But ya your ship only being able to be sunk out at sea would be awesome, and probably retain more players.

Well they can make it difficult with walls/doors for now but devs have acknowledged that as an exploit, theyve already removed other forms of it, and also tell you dont place grills on your npcs either. But even if they do exploit have some grapple onto the side of the ship, crouch and throw several grenades at one of the deck swivels. If anyone goes up to try to replace pieces they'll die to grenades. Just have to keep blowing it up until it works. Or just like you said bust their deck with cannons, or sink em the old fashoned way. I think they should and will fix the exploit swivels, they shouldn't remove placing npcs on them though. Would be a boring job just manning a deck swivel the whole ship fight.

Some balance probably is needed here, but requiring the different mats is balance at the same time. I think they should scale back all the bps a little and put ranges on them that makes sence like prim bp= 100-110% boosted, ramshackle =120-130%.. ect. NORMALIZE them a bit. However I will also say that bps arent everything in the ship fights. I'm just gonna say I've looked at the skills and can do math. You can beat mythical with primitive stuff, just nobody can actually coordinate the meta ship fighting strategy. However if bps didnt require mats, people would use a prim schooner to make a mythical gally in a few hours. Also another tip for them not being able to snap their fingers and destroy you, a brig under 20% weight ,or a schooner under 30% will almost always be faster than anyone else's fighting ships, as long as you use speed sails. So you can always retreat to Freeport if your light.

Depends on what your using it for, if it's for combat I'd say full resist for sure, depending on how many players your going to have crew it. The more players you have the more useful the dmg becomes.

Your not missing anything underwater stuff is a bitch to raid. You can.. use explosive barrels in some fashion by dropping them on it, or cannons will hit underwater, the cannon ball however is no longer visible, so just shoot at it till you get numbers and keep the cannon aimed there.

Ya it's a limit of 5 companies you can ally. They decided to cut out smaller companies that way. So probably just go with the 5 biggest allies you can.

Ohh it is around her neck it looks like it's in the monkey though, but back to the original point of the post, I think it may be a sword skin. Unless it's a leak for a 2h sword, thatd be cool.

I mean maybe? Could just be a sword skin. They also showed a picture of a girl riding a cannon. Hope that's not a leak lol. Monkeys even wearing chest armor with what looks like a powerstone in it.

Good and bad, it's a way that limits foundation wiping, but that's not exactly the issue here. Takes like a day or two to build up. Takes much longer to collect far away resources, blueprints, and amass gold. If the raiders knock your doors down and raid you every two days. You dont have much you can do to progress besides, collect stuff in Freeport, or at the bottom of the ocean. So youd still have a base, but it wouldn't be worth using again. I just think we need to figure out how to have mostly online combat, because just like ark, online combat is actually usually fun. Offline raiding is a joke no matter how much defence is set up. So I think the main idea to work on is, how to prevent offline combat a bit, without implementing full ORP. full orp has exploit issues that will always be there.

Well at least with the combat timer removed, everyone would be notified that it's time to fight, a shorter timer would be an improvement, but wouldn't change the meta of, check their server each day to see how many are on in their combat time, first time almost no one is on, raid it all. You'll always have that problem even with short combat timers. It's a requirement that you at least log on in combat time everyday to look like your going to defend. That's not really fun to me, being forced to log on just to keep playing. If it's just war then at least you'll know when you HAVE to log on in advance, and if you cant be on on that time, you know it's time to pack up and run. Big companies would still hold a lot of power, but they arent going to keep putting war flags down for no loot, and no fight, so they shouldn't be harassing small companies unless theres just nothing else to attack/do.

If you COULD live out of Freeport? What stops you? Tames last 8 days at Freeport, they can have any amount of items/resources on them. Ships over 200% resist only need to be repaired once or twice a day to stay in Freeport indefinitely. Living out of the Freeport isn't only possible it's easy. Most companies wont do it because ship maintenance isn't that easy though. That's the only main difference between freeport living and claim living. You can park as many ships as you want on a claim with no maintenance. The devs have acknowledged all of this and said they arent changing the freeports anytime soon.

Uhm? Is this a sarcasm post? Look like two levels of sarcasm. You can already do both of those. Can store everything and even breed in the Freeport. Combat timers are already a pve restriction in a pvp world, and I honestly think they made the game better with them. Just need to take it one step further, and remove combat timer so its, pve unless war flag is dropped. HOWEVER there is an opposite rout you could go which may be more fun as well. Which would be, full time vaunerablity, and permanately double rates. Game becomes less grind, more playground. Like anarky settings. I vote try removing combat timer though!

Right on the dot sir. Why I've been wondering why theyve forgotten the small companies. The combat only really works on smaller scales anyways. I still think the combat timer needs to be removed. Would make the game manageable for all sorts of group sizes. Yes he's right though, larger companies already complain islands cant really be taken in war unless it's a zerg where they cap out the server. However with the combat timer still in smaller groups arent going to be able to survive, leaves you with no real working pvp besides arranged skirmishes between large companies, it still needs to be fixed.