Sheepshooter

It does not depend on how much gold a ship costs... ...but how much the gold costs... ...in time and effort to get it... The only thing for sure is, that the ships will 'cost' more than before - as said by the devs... Which might become a good thing, as the worthless ship spam might be over... Makes the ships more of an achievement... Unfortunately they still sink as fast as the worthless versions before... And that might become a big issue, now that when your ship gets off-lined or sunk in harbor by a barrel, it is 'just' the resources PLUS the gold... Will you replace your ship, that you cannot protect properly, daily if the gold is harder to get than the fiber to build it? Or will you build even more massive harbor defenses ( = more structures = more lag ) thereby not going sailing... And even then... Barrels...

Barrels = 0;

Love you George, but you missed the point here... It is not about EA player count we are talking here... It is about access to content of the game (if it would go gold in this possible state), when trade routes are main source of gold...: Not enough players -> not enough player generated trade routes -> not enough gold to go around to buy ships (which will cost more and more gold in the future) for individual player -> limited access to content like ships and stuff which need ships -> people stop playing when they hit this hard gold limit, which is self-reinforcing -> rinse repeat... And yeah, they don't care right now for players... barrels are not even talked about, much less fixed... It's a big club, and you ain't in it...

Yeah...!!! 2x harvest = 2x barrels...!!! It's on like Donky Kong...!!! Which I guess more people are playing right now...

Well, if it works as intended/understood, the Forts will not have peace timers, so to hold it you need 24/7 active players and you likely cannot be everywhere at once. So the small guy can just sail up to a Fort kill the npc defense and claim it for how long it takes the old owner to get it back, while getting gold in the meantime. And if Monkguru is right that players will not build rebuild the defenses, it will be like claiming abandoned ships now - just plop a flag and move on, maybe you get it, but your investment is zero anyway. Also as there is a bank on it, just not claim it, but just take the gold out of it, yarr!!! For big companies to hold onto many Forts will be like herding cats... Can you keep ships close to every Fort so no one just jumps on and loots the bank from you? And we are talking like Submarine sneaking up or sloop out of defense range, jumps out, grab the gold, move on... sounds perfect for solos/small that run under the Radar. It will be like getting wreckage but easier. If you find a wreckage and there is other ships nearby, would you stop and take a long dive? - no... With Forts there is no diving, searching, slowly getting back to the ship... Obviously if they allow beds on the Forts could be way more difficult to claim them... But if you encounter resistance, move on, why waste time... And likely the smash and grab on the bank would be to fast for the owner to spawn in time... The only problem with all this would be if...: - no one actually uses the shipping routes to move stuff, thereby generating gold in the Forts... - game has deadly low player numbers that even if everyone uses trades there is no much gold made in total. Then there will not be not enough gold to go around for building ships and maintaining crews/islands, therefore game dies faster. Currently you can basically play alone on officials and enjoy most content of the game... if gold becomes as important as the say, and has to be farmed by trade routes as they say, people leave the game because the amount of gold available is too low to play the full content... they game then not dies when the last player leaves, but more likely when player count drops below say ~500... we are below that already...

Is this the line to ask 'WTF BARRELS!!!' and do we have to social distance while waiting ?

As far as I understand their intention, - they want trade routes to be the go to resource movement - promoting cooperation between different biome owners. - they want to have more ship PVP around those trade route points (no protection timer on them) which seem to be everywhere (including Lawless and Powerstone), so if you are able to take out the NPC defense (a problem non-existent in Atlas) you can earn gold within ~30mins. Also you can raid the banks there. - "Because of performance concerns" trade ships are not intended to get raided, because only a few will actually sail, the rest is not rendered. So just spam trade routes for 1x fiber until no more get rendered and then send your big hauls safely.

Seems like Barrels are the Hunter Biden Laptop of Atlas that is not officially talked about...

I guess at this point they need to wipe so people come back to the game, even if they can patch without need for a wipe. I for one hope for a wipe. Stopped playing a few weeks after the barrel-stupidity. Whats the point in repairing ships and feeding tames if the problem is not resolved after 1-2 weeks? If you are still "playing" by just keeping things alive you are actually not playing. After so long a time the barrels should have been removed or fixed, so we could actually come back and 'continue' play the game. So I hope for a removal/meaningful fix of the barrels, otherwise even a wipe would be useless for player numbers.

[World map] Well the problem with limiting Freeport to low-level is, that everyone has to leave in like the first hour. The goal is to get higher level quick to get the build skills you need. At that point we only need ONE Freeport as a start-server. The use of Freeport would be non at all, just for Level-8s to not get smashed while doing their Ramshackle Sloop... What about buying NPCs? What with the trader - just travelling traders? My guess is they have to decide what they want for the gameplay. Shall it be full loot pvp than get rid of the Freeport save zone. They would have to (FINALLY!) rework defenses to actually work while offline (or put in some kind of condition based protection, like the Island Fort idea). Shall it be the LastOasis approach where you log off your ship, than make it a structure-limited (ships are logged out = not rendered) save zone. That would also promote ship PVP as in you still have a ship when you come online to PVP with... It would mean we have to "accept" you cannot wipe anyone fully (which is what we use the Freeports currently anyway already)... It would need to be limited to something like no crafting in Freeports, so you have to get into PVP area to build and rework ships... The Freeport could also double as a server market so all offers can be found in one place. It could be an option to make a special Port structure that you can build on your island which allows you to log out/in ships. There could be a timer on it so you cannot save log instantly and you cannot pull out ships instantly ready to go - give it like 15mins maybe. There has to be some form of invincibility so the Port cannot be destroyed and all ships with it. It could also double as a player spawn point (we accept renters!) and a market. Could be also a connection point for the planned NPC merchant ship routes. [Player Islands] It just says that one character can have one company therefore "company" can have as many islands as they have characters = accounts payed. Alt-accounts it not something impossible in Atlas and in use already. So a company island limit does not work as a hard limit, same with any company member limits or alliance limits. So please do not go down that rabbit hole of "limits, Limits, LIMITS!!!" does not work and only hurts players that stay true to the idea of such limits and keep small and easy to kill off.

Only 8 headshots...? Damn, leveling will take forever... better they spawn in more Alphas in that case...

your Problems: If you are too small to hold an island, maybe you should not try... maybe you should get under the wing of a bigger island owning company...? Or maybe you take an island and get other companies to live there and get invested in protecting it...? works just fine... your Solutions: Remove Lawless (finally!) so that all the people that cry about not owning an island and ganking each other in Lawless all the time - and come back here crying - stop being their own worst enemy... also opens up ~100% more islands to claim. And please do understand removing the Freeport protection would kill the game right now, as the barrel-stupidity allows for no ships outside Freeport - no Pirate ships, no Pirate sailing game (over). If the game would allow for meaningful protection (as was somewhat possible before the newbs activated the barrels again) there would be no need for Freeport protection (other than against the KOS-Bob-killers from Lawless). your [Player islands]: Please do understand (after 4 seasons) that $4,99 = one Bob = one Company = 1+ islands. Limit in islands, company members and alliance members does NOT WORK ever and only heart the small guys that cannot get big enough by association... your [Sea pvp combat] and [Ship weight & build]: As you might have not realized yet, the devs are working on a new ship system. The current ships are going away and get replaced by something less structure intensive but easier to add more ship types (as the new guys have no idea how to make new ships under the current system). There is a reason that there is a structure limit on ships, and it is not the weight/speed problem, but lag from loading in all this stuff again and again (saw that video of the huge ship battle / slide show?) your [Blueprints]: Yeah that system is as broken as the character system... too much pro no-life Zerg farming, requiring no-skills, just farm time and manpower... [Why am i writing all this]: Island protection should be something of a "capture the flag (island citadel)" type of thing, where the citadel has to be taken before the island becomes unprotected. Therefore we save alot of (in the end) useless structures. Unfortunately the current (even before the barrels) meta does not allow for such localized PVP because NPC defenses are useless on their own...

Two and one men on the dead servers grid Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum The Cpt.Yarrr was fixed by the Sheepshooters Pike The Sheepshooters brained with a shield spike And User1's throat was marked belike; It had been gripped by barrels ten 'an there they lay, all good dead men Like break o' day in a boozing ken Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum

If there only was... ... no PVE server and no lawless zones (as in more claimable islands), all the pain of PVE and lawless living game play would go away... I think the third guy left already...

a combative PVE Bob... who know...?!?! some more of those and they can shut down the PVE server... although PVE Bobs are the worst griefers...

show Dr. Sheepy on the map where living in Lawless hurted you...

LOL, how are we responsible that there a less PVE player...? in a game that does not work as a PVE anyway...? And again how are PVPs responsible that you lose tames on PVE which is a no-issue on PVP... Somehow PVP play the game as is, PVE pretend to play something different than it is and do not survive...

I don't think I refuse to hold them devs accountable... no white knight here... But I also refuse to be stupid to lose my tames in the current (since almost 2 years...) state of the game to known bugs... Especially if I can work around that... it is not game breaking... If you think you "absolutely, positively, do not have to put up with this kind of crap" you can either stop playing, or continue to lose your tames to year long, known bugs... Stop playing would be my suggestion for you... survival games seems not to be for you anyway, if you do not want to survive by avoiding the buggy dangers the game world put you up against... Pro-tip to you PVE players.... better play single player and set wild dino damage to ZERO... problem solved... no noodles killing your tames through your RP-bases, no griefing of your building space by others... and no lag from servers loading in your giant useless RP-castles that you spam all over the place... thankfully in PVP we can "remove" your stuff if needed... But let me guess, you will "not put up with" the game engine not being able to support your structure spam... even if you know about the limitations and it breaks your game...

And yet, knowing what would happen, he used it as "intended", expecting a different result... and got radiated as expected... At this point everyone should have learned that there are bugs and they getting fixed is unlikely and that they are getting worse is more likely... Yeah, I don't like the bugs either... And I am frustrated that ladders in water are bugged AGAIN... but rather than to want to talk to the manager, I carry a grappling hook all the time, so to get on my ship every time... adapted, overcome... Somehow don't lose tames to clipping noodles since S1... build accordingly as everyone else... who ever loses tames to them that way can only fault himself at this point of the game development... Sydhart did something stupid and got punished for doing so...

wait a minute... you know for 1,5yrs about the noodles clipping through walls and killing tames... and yet you still build like it does not happen and being surprised that it STILL does...? you know for 1,5yrs that the tames get dropped of the ships... and yet you not make a head count when you change servers...? you know for 1,5yrs that walled-in-taming/obstructed glitches the animal and moves hit box AND that the animal is more aggressive against you when you made the damage in the first place...? this is like "Yeah, it says on the microwave to not dry my cat in it, but I still do and expect different results, because Karen!!!"

you seem to forget... - since the last major update many months have past... - many system bugs are getting worse with no work on it... - Devs are working on ARK Genesis...

It is no the people, it is the game design... If the game mechanics allow someone to grief they will... Civility is a learned behavior... if the game mechanic does not teach that (like it is taught in RL by enforced limits on what is acceptable) you will have toxic players... It is not like because in RL everyone is domesticated reasonable well it means it transfers to the next "world"... Atlas (and many others) is like a RL breakdown of civilization... no rules and human fall back to their basics... Not sure if you did it right when you moved to the new island... but as is know since week two of Atlas, the land defense PVP is totally broken... It is too easy to raid offline, so players do... if the game defenses would work, you would have less of this kind of griefing, because your defenses would "teach" the griefers that it comes at a high cost to attack a base... so they don't so easily... "An armed society is a polite society"... in Atlas you are unarmed as the victim the moment you logout... easy pickings... Fun fact is, that griefing also happens even if there is no material gain for the griefer, so it would not help to make it worthless in game mechanics to grief/raid, because griefing in itself (harming someone for LOLz) is worthwhile... only it it hurts the griefer potentially more than it stops/gets less frequent... The stupidity of today's MMO-survival game design is, that the devs always think they just need to make the survival sandbox and everything will sort itself out... problem is, that the devs thereby make limits (by doing as few game mechanics as possible) on what people could do because of the limited supplied game mechanics... so, instead of the limitless possibility in the RL, in game you hit a limit in what you can do to scare of griefing, the game mechanic does not allow you to... The other problem with MMOsurvival compared to RL is that in RL if you die you are fucking dead... gives a huge incentive to NOT DIE... and griefing is a good way of getting killed in RL or in game... but in-game the griefer comes back, thereby lost nothing important... Of course any survival game would be pretty useless, if you could not respawn... because of this it is on the game designer ("The Creator") to implement other game mechanics that put in a equally high cost risk for the griefer... Or they have to put in protections for the other guy, so that the griefer can grief without damaging the victim... unfortunately that is the way devs always go, not make the griefing come at a cost, but care bear the victims... which only results in the griefer looking for the next thing to hurt others... look at Atlas PVE... the got more toxic griefing than Atlas PVP... On moderated non-official servers the admins cannot make required changes to the game mechanic, but they can ban griefers ~ RL death in the game world... it works to an extent... the griefers and cheaters get the server death penalty leaving behind the other players to live happily ever after... potential griefers on the server know what will happen to them... If there is no game mechanic implemented or there is a intervening "God" (Admin) it will happen... In Atlas where the "Gods" have forsaken this world for ARK, the only thing you can do is use the other broken game mechanic to protect your stuff, because you have to live with griefers. It is possible... but obviously it is not possible as advertised - you cannot safely live on a island... So don't do it or accept the consequences...

we talked about this from the start... My thoughts still are - they should only allow guns in gun port structures, with them being also on the top deck... get rid of the front/rear shotguns... - if cannons only fit in gun ports they can make easy cross count so that too many cannons on one side gives balance problems... - for free placing of fire power the swivels are for, give them a small ball ammo... or allow Puckles as they are really designed as ship CIWS anyway... - with the cannon-to-gun port change we need atleast a new ship in between the brig and gally... having like 12-18 gunports each side... - have to change the SOTD aswell, so they also have no turret cannons and shoot most of them broadside... or switch over to the single player pirate ships... - to customize ships further have three typs of planks: normal, cargo, armored... having different buffs and de-buffs... - make the normal wood structures damage pass through... thin sheet of wood will not stop a cannon ball like a thick plank can... actually the splintering wood makes it more lethal for the crew... But hey, it seems to be too difficult to make new ships, as the one we have are from the time this was just a player made mod... the knowledge seems to be lost... And even with new ships and/or significant changes to the ship game, Atlas is still lost, as there are way more other problems killing the game... and no one there to fix them...

Well, I am in that camp for real, as I have my boats (as in plural, with BP items and leveled up ready to go) the next day already... Also what do you think how long it takes to E hit 40 planks on a brig? A minute... while we have all the resources that we did not loose making new ships all the time... Your time-game does not nearly count up to what we do... Also yeah, I guess you will not build a new ship every day - I would be a little down too if my ship was gone again, not wanting to do it again right away... also you need to farm and or steal a new ship first, takes time... so no new ship today, but maybe tomorrow... Lucky for you you still find prey with hundreds of planks lying around unprotected... cannot compare that to the BobAverage that mostly have halve a ship in a box normally... Anyway, if you make just one ship once every 10 days your cost are the same as ours... But we have our ship usable for 10 days, you only for ONE online session... And yeah, if I need to just go places without beds a Ramshackle from the nearest Freeport is the way to go... But if I need something bigger, I can go with a real ship and just park it in the SAME closest Freeport... and apart from jumping there once a day it can stay there until I need it somewhere else... because we can have more than one ship... A boat can hold x amount of weight and y crew while under way (although a gally can hold 300 NPC easy with just one guy and his bucket - that is how we bought Puckel Crews in the 'good old days'...) When it is fully anchored it can hold UNLIMITED crew and weight... just don't un-anchor it without your bucket... If that thing is untouchable while anchored it can spawn and supply a raid indefinitely having lots of beds and unlimited (ninja farmed) resources = gear... If you disable beds during war time, I hope you get back to your safely parked ship before your friends island goes into war time... otherwise you have to get to your ship by other means or have to wait till it gets into peace again... but you can use those Ramshackles from the nearest Freeport to get back to your ship and back going... The best option would be that they make Freeports real ship safe zones (no decay timer, or maybe gold cost), just so that the average Bob finally understands how he should play the game as is (no save base for you, Bob! - but you can live on your ship for real)... and you stop complaining about having to go online every day, otherwise you would be back to you building a ship again every damn day... Reducing ship number does not work, because every player can have one company each. And there is already a one ship per player limit enforced, as ships do not sail without at least one player on it.. Obviously, if the medium to mega companies would start living in Freeport like we do (which for them is even easier and gives more options) no one but you would be living anywhere else, getting raided by us Freeporters... Would it break the game? maybe... like it broke EVE... not... We would see alot more ship combat... because every ship out there has online players shooting back or running away... so no more offline raiding for ship planks for you... Could it be crowded in Freeports... maybe... but as ships sink without repair and more ships need more repair, there will be a limit for each company on how many they want to repair... also if large company ships not get offlined, guess what, they will not have many spare ships floating around anyway... And because of the shit show the game is, having fewer ship over all and no giant useless bases that already got raided anyway, the poor XBobs could finally get close to an island without lagging out... A song for just for you and anyone else still playing in lawless:

So leveling them in food, allowing them to live at least till they get claimable (10days), and drive them out the Freeport for a few minutes for them to feed and back they go for the next 10 days... Thereby solving nothing, especially not the problem why they are put there in the first place... the broken defensive PVP system... How about solving the problem, not the symptoms or in this case a helpful remedy...?!?!