SkyKevin

More changes than I expected and some really good ones in there. Especially the changes to kraken/yeti to make them repeatable. I can those becoming some awesome high traffic areas to get the pvp action going!

I think the npc's jumping ship like that is likely considered a 'bug' by all means and isn't the intended use for that mechanic. Once again, you can't kill swivels on a well-built ship from the top of the sails. There are ways to protect the swivels from any type of bow/crossbow/knives and grenades while still having full coverage of your ship deck. Sure you can use cannon tames to plank ships and take out puckles, I don't think anyone is arguing otherwise. But the conversation is about an actual ship boarding meta that currently barely exists. If you we're to take npc's off swivels on boats it would only lend to the pirating experience and take away the easymode secure feeling of sailing a ship by yourself.

If the NPC's can push you off of a ship while its moving grappling to the side of anything less than a galleon would simply delay your boarding effort considering you can't medkit or grenade or regain stamina while grappled. Imagine if players had to defend their ships against other players oooo scary thought. There are ways to even the odds against attackers by using things like windows and doorways or even walls as killboxes and choke points to beat players that outnumber you on a ship. These builds just don't exist right now because the meta is simply to keep a nice big open deck with swivels on either side.

I've been fighting large scale battles against some of the top companies from both NA and China against players geared to the teeth. I think you misunderstand that I'm talking about removing npc manned swivels so boats that are out on the water pvping can be boarded. The difference between boarding a boat thats sitting still in a harbour and out on the water moving is completely different. However, I'll take the assumption your boat is in the harbour. Tell me how someone is going to sink your boat in a harbour defended with puckles and ballista? you mention they'll bring a few cannon tames or use tons of flame arrows.... well deck swivels don't do anything to stop a cannon bear. Flame? That hasn't done more than 10 dmg to a plank since they super nerfed it in season 1! killing random griefers is a daily occurrence for my company 5-10 guys with journeyman+ gear and cannon bears. They have never sunk a single ship in our harbour with those "guerilla tactics" because the anchor buff makes responding to a grief incredibly difficult. You would have to have complete control of someones harbour to stop them from popping planks back onto a ship that you're trying to slowly cannon down with a tame. We're talking a single galleon plank taking like 50 cannonball shots from a tame and then a few minutes later you walk up and drop a replacement plank down and hit it with a hammer. I've done both attacking and defending and defending is 10x easier. The advantage you have to being the one in a harbour with puckles and green anchored boats will be no problem whatsoever. We have deck swivels but we don't rely on them to defend the ships. It doesn't really matter if someone gets on your ship and kills the npc's because players have NO WAY of sinking a green anchored boat without the help of some sort of cannon being shot at the boat. Boarding is and should simply be a meta for disabling a ship from the top deck so that your ship can come by and sink it. players learning to use bows, crossbows and throwing knives? I don't know anyone in any of the top companies that use any of those things because they are literal garbage against a geared player. Lastly, to your point about how to board someone... If you grapple from the top of your large speed sail onto the top of their large speed sail there is still a distance that your character will fall before you can move up the grapple to the top mast. If you are any lower than the first platform on a large speed sail you will be shot by a npc swivel and die before you can climb up even with ships being side by side. BUT lets say you do end up on the top mast of an enemy ship. You then have to use grenades to kill the deck swivels if you want to take over the ship. You can't do that if the swivels are hidden/covered. A proper build makes even that already difficult meta completely useless.

I think you're missing the point entirely, swivels need to be nerfed/taken off of boats. The fact that people rely so heavily on them to defend their boat when there are many other avenues is a clear example of that.

I think what you guys are saying is that if you didn't have swivels to insta kill people on your ship, you would end up losing in a swordfight to higher skilled players. I don't see anything wrong with that.

Very good idea, yes, yes, yes

Any ship Schooner or bigger takes over a day to claim. It's far more likely that someone will just shoot one of your planks and sink your ship that way. The system needs a buff. I would suggest shorten the claim timer for unanchored ships but keep the claim timer duration for green anchored ships OR as Mike said earlier in this thread, allow some way for people to control enemy ships whether its sails/wheel so that you can spend the 2+ days moving the boat somewhere safe that you can claim it. If someone were to steal my schooner, brig or galleon I could simply sail a raft over to where it was left and scuttle it with the current timers the way they are.

I'm sorry but the only "armed crew members" are a few swivels on the ship deck that insta 1 shot you when you jump on board. If you think it should be impossible to board a ship then you wouldn't want this changed. You also don't get a free ship if you board them, you actually have to have some way to sink it once you've boarded and the only way to do that is with another ship or cannon bear nearby. The claiming mechanic is a joke (8 hours for sloop - 3 days for galleon) so there's no way you would be able to actually capture the ship. I agree you could change it so swivels won't work on moving ships, I just know that requires more coding and changes than simply hitting a "disable" button. I disagree about boarding though, Armored NPC's actually take a lot of sword strikes to kill, if you have 10 of them surrounding you in plate armor with swords in their hands in the small confines of a ship deck you will find they can last quite a while. I just think the meta hasn't really realized it because there's no need to put plate armor and weapons on all your npc's when you just have 1 naked npc on a swivel which 1 shots anything it sees.

Yea losing a mythic galleon because a bunch of guys boarded you would suck, but at the same time, there's no reason you should ever have 1 guy manning an entire mythic galleon by himself. I stated in the original post, once this meta becomes a thing it actually means having player crew members ready to defend would become important and you can always lean on gearing up your ship npc's as well to fight on your behalf (thats the N key when your on the captains wheel). I don't think you would have to man a swivel for someone your entire ship battle, just whenever you get boarded you might jump on one. I think it would also affect the way ships are built, you might make more straight hallways as a choke point for people to be easier to shoot. I know that sinking ships using ships is obviously the main meta of the game and they're trying to fix the exploitable way, but they could just simply disable npc's on swivels (the same way they did in season 1 for horse and bear swivel carts) and it would fix everything and make the pvp once again more player-driven.

I don't think it's necessarily broken to be fighting someone on a ship with swords. Good job sinking 4 brigs with a sword and glider because that wouldn't happen if a ship had real swivels. As to your other point, I haven't tried crossbows on NPC's which is interesting, but they make ships with swivels hidden behind doorways so you wouldn't be able to shoot them anyway (same as grenades). So how do you go about any kind of boarding meta when the only way to truly "board" a ship is to erase their entire deck with a boat? I think your last statement is the perfect reason why boarding is necessary, If you're against a mythical gally, the best thing to do may be to board it and kill the captain/crew. Right now it's nearly impossible to do because the swivels can be hidden and cover every inch of the ship.

Carbine's don't work on swivel NPC's anymore, they have to be melee'd or use grenades/canister shot. Additionally, people are able to hide NPC's in doorways that allow them to shoot out but not be shot or grenaded themselves. Npc's already can sit on puckles/balista's/catapults for base defense. There are ways to build a ship that is completely impervious to this sort of thing, you can't get up to someone's top mast with a grappling hook because you will simply be shot by a swivel on the way up. You can try to glide but it's very glitchy and unreliable.

TLDR: Npc's on swivels are broken, disable them to be mounted onto swivels. I've talked to a few people on this subject from different companies now and pretty much everyone agrees, please remove NPC's from being able to sit on swivels. Having a device that can be placed behind a doorway on a boat makes ship boarding difficult if not impossible. It's something that either needs to be policed as a bug (along with putting the captain's wheel inside a box) or taken out of the game. The easiest way to fix this problem would simply be to not allow NPC's to man swivels. That way, you can still defend your ship but you need a player to jump on the swivel if someone boards your ship. I think it would at a much more interesting design to ships in consideration for where you might need a swivel placed to create a "kill box". Additionally, it opens up a myriad of different ways in which you can attack a ship (especially with the new harpoon changes). I could get close to an enemy ship and have a few of my crewmates jump over to the other side to engage the enemy in swordplay on their deck, meanwhile its chaos as the captains are still fighting on the wheel to shoot cannonballs at eachother while the melee breaks out on either or both of the ships. This would lead to a new meta when it comes to NPC's making them more useful for fighting. Now the CODE RED button actually would mean something as if someone jumps on your ship you may decide its time to get your cannoneers to focus on the problems on your deck. This also creates a new meta of actually arming your NPC's with gear and swords. Currently, people just put ncp's on stations without any kind of gear on to save weight. Instead people might keep an extra reserve of npc's with gear on board just in case someone manages to glide on to their ship. Even when it comes to giving your NPC's new stat upgrades it would make a huge difference between fighting a level 100 with a bunch of additional melee damage and an upgraded sword vs the current meta which is simply all npc's are leveled into health as they will never leave their station. At the very least, npc's on swivels should be taken off of ships. I understand the intent especially for using them on another boat, but I think that it would make the game far more interesting and pirate-like to have people grappling over to your side to get in a scrum. Lastly, I wanted to touch on swivels on the ground. This is more of an optional change as I don't want to take away from the main issue which is swivels on ships. In that same right, however, I think that swivels have no place on the ground being manned by NPC's either. When it comes to base defense you can use puckles, catapults, and harpoons for defenses. The reason I find this so irritating is that people are building large bases on top of pillars that even if you manage to climbing pick your way to the top, they have full swivel coverage that stops you from being able to actually do anything. At least with puckles you can tank a few hits and find a position to use your grenades. With swivels, it's 1 shot and you're done. I''m open to any other input people may have regarding this, but I think it would make this game quite a lot better if we were to take NPC's off swivels and let players actually have some pirating fun. I hope the dev's see this as they don't often seem to care about posts on this forum. But hopefully someone will be able to catch their ear!

They literally have skills in the game devoted to instantly using medkits to heal in a pinch as well as making it easier to use them...

A green anchored brig takes over a day to claim. If you have swivels on deck its even harder for them to drop a flag down. If you abhor the tax/protection system then it's your responsibility to defend your boats 24/7. If you don't want people to offline grief you, then claim an island or go live as a tax tribe on another one. There are plenty of vacant islands in the game right now that you can easily claim. You don't get to live on an island that requires 0 upkeep and have the luxury of invulnerable ships for 15+ hours a day. You don't get both. Ai do suck though.

I'm not trolling, no one steals boats right now because it takes too long or it's too difficult to remove all the players or npc from the boats without sinking it. If you're playing on a lawless island you should expect people to attack you 24/7 you can just as easily settle on an island with a larger company and have an 8 hour window for being attacked. Many large companies are advocating for this because they like the tax. I also never said anything about offline griefing or whether I did it. I think you're just upset because you can't handle games like this. I would suggest going over to the PVE server if this is how you react to losing a boat. As per the conversation around ship stealing. I stand by my point it needs to be buffed so we can do more pirating on the seas.

Please make it easier to steal ships. The current claim timer still takes far too long considering the difficulty to remove all the players/npc's on board. The ship stealing skill is also a joke considering it only increases the timer by an extra few seconds and requires constant spamming. The OP is very wrong about ship stealing given that even a tribe of 1 person should be able to log on at least once during their island's wartime to contest the ship claim and reset it.

There should be a minigame or some kind of mechanic in place for players who are sailing on a ship. I know they're working on adding more stuff to do while you're sailing from point A to point B and I think some sort of sailing minigame or rigging objective would be perfect to keep players out at sea instead of bed teleporting away for 90% of the voyage. I think the best way to do this would be to keep everything the way it is currently but add a bonus to sail speed for any sails that are manned by a human player. You could make them have a higher turn speed, velocity, and even possibly damage reduction to sails if they have a human player on board controlling them. This would help to break the current meta of having only npc's on sails all the time and I think people would appreciate being able to go somewhere much faster if they have the human crew to help them do it. Imagine instead of doing a galleon trade run by yourself for 2 hours, you get your mates on all 6 sails and it only takes you 30 minutes because all your guys are working together trying to keep them correctly in the wind or doing whatever minigame they could come up with.

I think to make sailing better they need to change red sails back to stopping your ship. It would make handling sails a viable option once more and add a new bit of skill to ship combat (HOPEFULLY) stopping the full speed sails meta that's going on currently. More random/interesting winds would be nice but I don't mind it currently. I'm excited for them to add things to do while we're sailing like the fishing nets, because I find that when going long distances you don't bother to stop for floatsam, SOTD, or floatsam. If they have more stuff you can do while the ship is moving like fishing, playing dice/cards, or other painting/crafting options would be nice. At least that way you can convince other players to stay with you on your ship while sailing as opposed to everyone bed teleporting away to do something else while you're stuck behind the wheel by yourself.

I think they need to go harder on the fleet mechanic. So far it's pretty great and I like that the battles are more interesting but I'd like to see them using some new tactics as opposed to right now, they're more of a nuisance as they essentially just all sail directly towards you at once. If they had some advanced tactics to try and fake out or trap the player, that would be exciting.

Honestly, I would like them to lower the combat phase down to 8 hours, but that's only because then it gives a time schedule that will fit more into people's lives. Other than that, it shouldn't be made any shorter. Larger companies are having a terrible time taking islands from other companies because it's so difficult to do so with the current mechanics, EVEN with a 9 hour raid window if you don't take the flag they will build defences back up by the next day. Additionally, if a flag under capture is being contested it will reset to 1 hour which means you just need to have an ally stand in the circle once an hour to properly defend the island until it goes peacetime. As for small companies it's simple. If you don't want to defend for 9 hours a day or do not have the resources/people/commitment required, then maybe you should consider living on someone else's island and negotiate a fair tax rate with them? There are plenty of larger tribes willing to allow people on their island for that reason now that they benefit from having people with them. You can't decide that you want your very own island without the commitment it takes to own and defend that island. There are plenty of islands that are left vacant as well so don't complain that you can't find anywhere to go because there's plenty of space available to build on. To the OP. Take what I said above about small companies and do that. You mention that your ships are sunk and your base has been raided while you are offline and that it has happened multiple times. What that tells me is you were afk raided multiple times and so you got to keep your island. If you can't install proper boat defenses then you should go live on someone's island with a harbour because there are plenty of people who have spent countless hours farming so that they can keep boats safe. It's a service so don't expect it for free but it might be better than having to keep building everything once more.

I've been revisiting this idea and a lot of people seem to mention that Schooners are somehow a suitable ship for solo players, but in my opinion it is simply too large to manage the entire ship if you assume you are on your own. You have to run back and forth between the two sails and both decks if you don't have any npc crew to help. This is definitely doable but extremely inconvenient if you are under attack by any ghost ships or players. Based on the sloop's size it is all around better for this sort of multitasking and is pretty much already set up to be operable by one player. This is why I think if they just boosted the max speed a little bit, they would be fine. To be clear, I don't think sloops should be faster than schooners, but they should be buffed a bit so that if you're running a sloop as an exploration vessel it wont take you twice as long as if you did it in a schooner. As an example, a schooner with 7000 lbs of cargo (roughly 70% capacity) can go much faster than a sloop with only 1000 lbs (33% capacity). The sloop currently with that weight difference is completely blown out of the water as the schooner will zip by. It's fine for the schooner to be faster but at least make the sloop able to trail close behind or barely keep up.

I would argue all 8 are reasons that would improve the game for all players. If you're going off of experience on a pve server then It really doesnt matter, you could sail a galleon around and be fine solo. Pvp official is a lot more dangerous and involved so you probably wouldnt understand why these changes improve things for the playerbase. If you read above i said make sloops slightly SLOWER than schooners so they are still not the fastest ship in the game but still able to keep up if they are lightly loaded. I know larger ships are supposed to go faster but for the purpose of balance they need a speed buff. Lastly, the sloop is not the first ship you get your hands on. Back on release the raft was considered your starter ship. Now you have on top of that the ramshackle sloop which comes with two small speed sails (much slower than a single medium) so why do you consider a sloop to be a starter ship when there are two much lesser types of ships available? by that logic the game only has 3 real ships when im saying make the 4th one viable.

I think increasing the sailing speed of sloops would make them a viable ship for solo players. I do a lot of solo sailing by myself and with the current meta everyone uses schooners. Right now using a sloop is a complete joke given they are not good for travelling, cargo, or combat in any way. Here are some reasons I think Sloops should be SLIGHTLY slower than schooners. 1. Sloops are for the solo player, not much room to build on them or base crew so they should accomodate smaller groups of 3-5 people. 2. Sloops are easier to manage. less resources when a plank is destroyed or to repair them means solo players who DONT have access to tames and other high efficiency resourse gathering can still keep their ship repaired with less effort. 3. Sloops have little cannon ability. The size of the crew and size of the deck on a sloop doesnt allow for gunports and barely room for a few cannons on the main deck. So they still wont compete with other ships when it comes to combat. 4. Swivel cannons might matter. Right now canister shots are pretty much never used as they have terrible range and damage compared to medium cannons. It would be nice to have sloops be agile enough to take a few shots with their swivels at larger ships with more canons and hopefully deter them from just outrunning and outgunning them. 5. Sloops are friendly. If I pulled up to an island on a sloop to do a treasure map, no one would care, they probably wouldnt even sink my ship because its not worth the cannon balls. If you pull up in a schooner or brig, chances are it will be attacked while you're busy dealing with the Army of the Damned on the island. This can happen with a sloop too but usually i find its less threatening to island owners so they ignore it. 6. Light weight. Sloops already have the smallest cargo capacity and the least capacity increase per level. This means that they end up being even slower than schooners due to the fact they simply cannot carry as many resources. This is obviously intended given the size of the ship, but seeing as weight effects speed, it is much easier to load a sloop up to 70% capacity than a schooner. Yet a schooner at 70% is arguably still faster than a 10% weight sloop! 7. Personalized ships. Sloops should be the type of ship that you decide to go do a treasure map on or possibly a scouting or exploration mission. They cap out the crew and plank health in a way that makes them the perfect personal or small group ship. They dont need to be stocked as much as any other ship so theyre great to just jump on board and sail to your destination. However, given the distance between islands and speed difference from sloop to schooner, I believe the idea of having a personal sloop for exploring further than your home tile has been lost due to this lack of speed. 8. Incentivising Sailing. Right now it is a rather large chore to take a ship out. Most people assume it is a responsibility that if they do take their schooner out they need it properly stocked and to make sure it doesnt sink. More people may take ships out onto the seas more often if sloops provide an inexpensive and casual way to travel between the islands. It would allow them to move with out as much of a fear of sinking from other pirates. This helps those who want to be pirates as well because they have more targets available on the waters. I hope everyone can keep an open mind about this, sloops at the moment are considered as worthless as rafts when it comes to seafaring and I would love to see them used more often so there is more variation than the current Schooner only meta most people use.