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Respect other players, no imperative criticism is needed here. I understand that such changes require a systematic and multilateral approach, the fact that I described the topic in a nutshell, and of course did not disclose the topic does not give you the right to offend me.

Ahoy Pathfinders! Today we finally get to answer some of your questions once again. With the recent patch/wipe and contests announced, we didn’t want your answers to get lost in the wake. Now that the waters have calmed, we’re back to provide you answers. Please check out the contest here to submit your videos and have the opportunity to win up to a $25 Amazon gift card. As a reminder, the answers below only reflect the current timeframe and are subject to change. While we can provide current insight on the game and what we hope to do, what is destined we can’t foresee. We appreciate your support and understanding. So ‘til next time, may your skies be clear, waters calm, and sails full in whichever way you roam. Without further ado, here’s our Q&A! Hang out at our Discord for a chance to get your questions answered in the next Q&A! Q&A Any plans to address shield stun duration or overhead mace torpor damage to make melee combat more entertaining and challenging, rather than stun-lock-and-torpor combat? Damage during land combat is something we are only loosely balancing right now as we continue to work through Early Access. We will be revisiting it closer to the 1.0 release. With barrel bombs (even shot from catapults) still dictating the "meta game," is there a plan to remove them from ship combat totally? We are working on new ways for players to counter dominant strategies in ship combat. We recognize that ship combat is not in a good place right now and are focused on the long term health of the game. Look out for new defensive modules when we expand the module crafting system in the next major patch. Are there any plans to limit structures per island, reducing the lag associated with the spam we have currently? We are coming at this from a couple different angles. * Some memory management improvements are in testing that will allow clients to load and unload structures faster. * Some new structure types that are larger are in the works so players don't have to build massive structures out of many small pieces. * We are working through some ideas with claiming to help undercut the motivations for placing lots of small structures for meta reasons such as making landing tames hard or preventing others from building nearby. Do you plan to limit the number of armored docks a company or island can have being used at any given time? Not directly. Armored Docks require gold to operate. As we develop the economy, we are looking for more ways to sink gold and keep it scarce so that placing an Armored Dock costs you the opportunity to do something else important with that gold. Are there any inbound flag claim (Height, Radius, etc) or Island changes (i.e.- Lawless Areas On Island Outside of Claim Radius)? We definitely had some significant changes to this in the last major patch! We'd like to see how the meta adjusts before we commit to other changes. We are also spending effort making these configurations more customizable and exposing that to unofficial server owners so you can try out what combinations of ruleset you think are most interesting. Long term we would like to make fighting over valuable locations in the game take a concerted, multi-day effort. We'll talk more about that as features related to it are closer to being rolled out. Are there any plans to add upgradeable end-game gear as a needed gold sink. Any chance on this being added back with the new BP crafting system you have hinted at? We would love to make the crafting system more customizable and interesting. We have to balance this with other goals we have for the game. This particular area is not one of our primary focuses and so it's coming along in the free time, after hours, and weekends between other higher priority work. Is there any way you guys will add a hull bigger than a brig with 4 large sails. But smaller than a galley? Our plans for updating the modular ship system are full speed ahead and this is on the horizon. Our next major patch is planned to be focused on getting our core customization options out for ships. Immediately following that we will be working on making modular ships craftable in the Shipyard and introducing a dozen or more ship sizes. One of the great benefits of this new ship system is that we can make an entirely new ship completely out of existing parts and we are only a couple months away from unleashing that power! Can we get an upgrade that increases the level (and rewards) of SotDs, allowing SotDs to be relevant in more than 8 out of 121 tiles in the game? Check out the latest patch! Ships of the Damned are much more prevalent and have a much wider variety of difficulty on the map now! Will the wipe affect the Unofficial Servers? There are new features that unofficial servers may want to take advantage of. Our goal is to not require unofficials to wipe to support our changes, when possible. Early Access means that some changes in the future may be so transformative that this is unavoidable. When will crew resource silos hold other food besides berries? Thanks for the suggestion. This seems like an easy fix that will improve quality of life a little. We always try to fit these sorts of things in along side our larger features. What does Atlas' long-term monetization strategy look like? Do you think it will be an Ark-like direction where you release multiple expansions? Subscription model? Mtx? Right now we are focused on improving the game and making it something you want to bring your friends into play. Of those options, the most likely is expansions. There's not any interest with the team right now to do subscriptions or microtransactions. What are some strategies you're working on for long-term player retention? Improving the game. Seriously. We are trying to build a game where you want to gather a bunch of friends and try to carve out your place in the world and compete against other companies. That's the sort of game you can play with people for years and still have fresh experiences. What are your thoughts on Armored Docks now that they have been in game for a while? They have added some really cool elements to the game but I also believe they have been abused by larger companies. Armored Docks still are not where we want them to be. As the meta changes, their role within it will also change. Right now we want to focus on fixing any abuses or exploits using the Armored Docks. After we get some other changes in we'll revisit Armored Docks as a whole and see if they are fitting the way we want them to into the meta. Is the current trade system completed in the devs opinion? Seems to not quite be everything it was advertised to become. It's not at all complete. We got it roughed in and then moved onto roughing in some other things. We'll be coming back to working on it when we get some of our other large systems in order. Any plans to improve how torpor works in general? Maybe make torpor do something like mess with the camera like the drunk debuff, torpor wouldn’t be such an instantaneous end to fights. This is one of the approaches we have discussed for addressing the current land combat meta if we spent time on it. Land Combat is a major undertaking and requires a ton of continuous work on balance, so we are mostly leaving it as is right now until we have enough free resources to give it our full, undivided attention. Is there a plan to address the lack of craft charges mainly on Gunports, Planks, and Cannons currently in the game? These were addressed in the recent patch. Final Note Again, we would like to emphasize that ATLAS is still in Early Access, meaning many things can and will likely continue to drastically change - even in the middle of development. Anything discussed is only up to date as of the moment it is posted. Features and changes that ultimately make it to the next patch, as well as timing, may be different from what was previously discussed. As always, we appreciate the suggestions and feedback from the community. Please keep them coming! Thank you for all of your support! Happy Sailing, - ATLAS Crew For the latest dispatch on #playATLAS keep yer one good eye trained on this here information Natter n' chatter on Discord: https://discord.gg/playatlas Hear ye, hear ye on Twitter: https://twitter.com/sailtheatlas Watch us scallywags on Twitch: http://twitch.tv/sailtheatlas Plus ye can band with us Pirates on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/playatlasgame View full article

This post is more of a brain-dump about the new lawless claim tower system than a commentary. It's not comprehensive by any means, but hopefully it might be useful for anyone with questions about it. We're a small company of ten folks this season, so we decided to forego the whole island claim race and give the new lawless claim thing a go. So far, we generally like it as it seems ideal for small groups or even a solo, since a claim tower locks down a good chunk of land for yourself without the need to spam claim blocks. Now onto the stuff: You cannot place claim towers on lawless islands adjacent to freeports or on "quest" islands - like the polar islands where you do the yeti achievement. There might be more islands that are blocked, but we haven't found any. Claim towers have no "combat timer" or permission functionality at all, and they will not protect you or your buildings/tames from attack. Basically, they just give you a ring of building blocking and immunity from the lawless decay timer. Attackers can happily skip past your ring of claim towers and burn down your thatch shack 24/7, so plan accordingly. Only the claim owner can build within the claim tower circle; enemies and allies alike cannot. Player and company owned claim towers become owned by the inviting company when joining or merging. Claim towers are fairly cheap (no alloy for land claim towers), and one person can probably gather enough mats for one in a few minutes. Water claim towers are pricier since they require alloy. If you played in the first season, the claim mechanic will be familiar (since it's basically the old flag-claim, but with towers). Each company, even if you're a company of one, begins with 200 points to spend when claiming. Your first tower will cost (4?), and then scale up as you add more. Tower claims do not need to be adjacent (or even on the same island), and they cover a reasonably large area (this isn't us, btw): There's a one-hour(ish?) delay after you place a tower before the land is officially claimed, which you can see as a flashing green circle on the map. When first placed, the tower will have very low hitpoints, and will repair itself over the next hour to a maximum of 400k hitpoints. Note: On hover, there's an option to feed the tower 200g. We have no idea what this is for - maybe it instantly repairs it to full? Dunno. You don't need gold to place one, and we're not in the habit of giving gold to random buildings without knowing why. You can place multiple claim towers at the same time, and their circles can overlap. In the case of overlap, the first tower placed takes precedence: I.e., the first tower placed controls a full circle, the second overlapping one controls its circle minus the 'bite' taken from the first claim. This is relevant when placing towers next to enemy claims: you can place a tower directly next to (but not within) an enemy claim, and your claim will not capture any land controlled by the enemy tower until it's destroyed, Enemy claimed areas can only be captured when the enemy claim tower is destroyed. At 400k hitpoints, common cannons will need just over 300 cannonballs to destroy it. Water claim towers can only be placed adjacent to your own land claim towers (I'm guessing that this is to prevent monkeys from claiming chunks of open sea, as often happened in season one). Land claim towers follow the local build height limit (not the bed/cannon height limit), so you can definitely land claim mountaintops around you (and you should). Your buildings within a claim ring will not be subject to the fast lawless building decay rate. You might see a 'decay quickly' when you first place a tower - ignore it, it's a dirty lie. If you read nothing else in this list, read this... it's really, really important: buildings within a claim tower radius are owned by whoever owns the claim tower. Which means, if the claim tower in which your base resides is destroyed, and an attacker places their own claim tower in its place, the attacker now owns everything within the ring of their claim tower: every building piece, door, chest etc.. now belongs to them (i.e., their company's name appears on hover instead of yours), potentially without a shot being fired - other than those at your now-destroyed claim tower. It is possible to build around a claim tower and completely enclose it within layers of blocks and/or honeycombed walls (see above bullet point). If you have a primary base, it's probably a smart idea to build your base around a claim flag. That's all I can think of at the moment, but I'll add more if anything comes to mind. Feel free to add anything if you have additional insight or have specific questions.

Why not ask some more basic questions like... Why did they remove one of the PVE maps, reducing PVE map space by 50%? Why the gatherer changes that now require people to have more gatherers? I think these gatherer changes are terrible. I'm not saying some don't spam, rather the devs are adding to this not making it better.

@ScarlettSwagger Few more tidbits... 1. The meat consumption is insane going from juvenile to adult. Can't remember if its 5 or 7 imprints, anyway, i would FILL 2 troughs with salted meat every 8 hours (12000 meat) for cub batches of ~8, still lost several batches due to starvation just by oversleeping a couple of hours. I was just hobby breeding but I'm 100% serious, 3 or more filled troughs recommended per 8 hours depending on litter size. 2. I parked my breeding females out of range with the bears also for the most part, once they're mature the food requirement isn't bad at all. 3. Can't remember if i raised the bottom floor/ campfire area EXACTLY 2 foundations but I think that's what it was. The important part is getting the campfires right below the mating/ birthing area to radiate upwards though... So basically just be aware they require ridiculous amounts of food growing from juvenile to adult. Was VERY fun though, some had ~750 HP, STAM, WT, w 200+ melee. Some of my dedicated sidekicks had 1000+HPS (all pretty much fully imprinted). Also I was just a part time breeder, fyi. Once again good luck, warned ya atleast TWICE about the food

If your game is actively going towards pvp and forcing PVE to go to private or unofficial servers (some of which require a fee) I want my money back. I will not be forced to go to PVP A part of the game I had no interest in. I bought this game for PVE AND PVE ALONE! If your forcing a change in the game I’m going to start forcing you to give me a refund. let the games begin. G

Ahoy Pathfinders! We’re back with another edition of Dev Q&A. We have info on PvE, game balance, and even a few cosmetics in the works. So thanks to all the pathfinders that submitted questions in the Discord. The Atlas team is dedicated to provide as much transparency as we can since we feel the community is also a part of the team. Often the loudest of the members, you provide us with feedback, suggestions, and even a compliment or two. Therefore, we feel it is necessary to be open with the community in all facets. We hope you will continue to support us through rough (and calm) seas. Until next time, we appreciate your support and ‘til next time, may your skies be clear, waters calm, and sails full in whichever way you roam. Without further ado, here’s our Q&A! Hang out at our Discord for a chance to get your questions answered in the next Q&A! Q&A Can you confirm if there will still be island claiming system or will it be lawless everywhere after the wipe? We are still making updates to the area claim system and are going to focus on that. The Island claim system is likely to stick around after the wipe, but the map changes are still being finalized so that is subject to change. Either way the Island Claim System should be available for private servers. Can we get some details of the theme and vision? We're not planning to overhaul the game. We are planning to lean into things we have and reinforce them more with new content. So you might see Army of the Damned themed things in the world more, or Atlantis... We're also talking about introducing some pre WW1 dirty industrial content. How are small companies and solo players going to work into the game? Just like they do in the real world. Seriously. Large behemoth companies can't do everything on their own, and they can't protect everything at once. As we move towards having Wonders that companies build, it's going to require a massive amount of trade, logistics and war to get one built. This creates opportunities for smaller groups to be part of the wheels of progress or engage in acts of piracy as large amounts of resources need to be shipped on the water. When can we expect balance changes? Balance changes are happening continuously in small amounts. We don't have a focus on getting balance "right" because so many things are still getting added to the game. We want to get all of our changes in to get a better understanding of the big picture and then will come back and tighten the balance. Can we get some form of roadmap even if it has a disclaimer that the plans could change anytime? Right now we are focused on getting ready for a larger summer release. This will include more ships and some of the ship customization system talked about in another question. In addition to that, we are working on multiple maps that connect different parts of the world, rather than one large, uniform map. We also are laying the foundation for Wonders that players can build in the world by creating a general system for giving buffs to your company based on buildings you've built. The content we are working on generally will support these systems as we move towards a world where companies have more long-term goals and reasons to compete over specific land. That pretty much covers the major things we are working on for the next six months to a year. ...we all know the focus is on pvp but PVE players are still generally curious what the long term thoughts and ideas really are while lots of them generally feel marginalized and pushed aside. We are focused on making Atlas one of the best and most unique pvp games out there. We want to be able to support PVE and Private servers so that other players can also enjoy what we create. Some of our changes are specifically driving PVP goals and do not fit well with PVE. We are looking at ways we can do a better job keeping PVP changes from creating bad experiences in the PVE community without having to spend a lot of time working on it to support two different play styles. In some cases, that means we need to not put those PVP systems on PVE. It also means we need to give unofficial server owners better tools for choosing how they want their world to be configured. Right now we are working on an overhauled configuration system that lets us do this with less disruption to our development cycle. Right now many things are hard-coded to work under certain conditions. Are the new claim towers going to be modified for PVE? Will the mechanic change at all? We would like to hear what PVE players think about this. While the disruption of adding the claim towers was painful because of the point in the season it occurred, generally we think it's better to be able to lay claim to an area and not have to build fence posts to prevent anyone else from building there. We do need to figure out some issues like decay times. Weight Sail buff or changes, when? All sails are getting updated and a new system is coming for changing the stats on sail blueprints. When is a harder question. We have some larger commitments that take priority right now and are taking a “time out” on some of the smaller things we've been working on to take care of some other business, like updating the mod kit, overhauling configurations, cleaning up a lot of bugs, and growing the team. What tweaks do the team have for the new claim system, we are testing on Lawless islands? We're still in the process of seeing how the meta changes from the new claims before making tweaks. As far as in the long term, we're planning to add some unique buildings and locations that must be captured with this system to get the benefit. The intention is for players to have strategic points on islands that give them an offensive or defensive benefit. Capturing an entire island might be a multiple day process as you have to take over these locations, build your own buildings, and wait for the benefits to kick in. When will you add side quests? Maybe ones that earn players gold, loot, and xp? Other ones aside from the skill tree achievements/ pve bosses? In the past there have been some MMORPG elements added to the game and we have decided this is not the best use of our time because this does not fit the kind of game we are making. Atlas is a sandbox survival game and we are fully committed to spending our dev effort on making tools for players to create their own interesting stories. Are you guys gonna make more tames/bosses? More tames are in the works! Our current focus (within the taming system) is making more existing creatures tameable. Crocodiles are next on the list and will be released soon. We don't plan to add new bosses. Our current boss fights didn't work well and were easily exploited, so we'd like to clean those up, and ultimately we want to focus on player stories rather than PVE content. When will we see further information about the new ship system and further adjustments? We are continuously making balance changes to the new ship system and the customization features described in this post are currently in development. The first customization feature will be released soon and will allow players to craft and swap a variety of railing types. The railings available with the launch of this feature will include Standard Railings, Cannon Railings, Cargo Rack Railings, Diving Attachment Railings, and Dinghy Hangar Railings. We know everyone loves the ability to paint their ships and we are also working to make the new ship system compatible with the painting system. Will the current ship system still be available to build next season or is it just going to be these new modular ships? There is no plan to remove the original ship system. That wouldn't even be a possibility until the other system is fully implemented. We would like the two systems to exist side by side unless something changes that makes this no longer possible. This poses some balance issues that we are going to have to address at some point. Will there be a new map implemented? Some changes to the map layout will be coming with the wipe in order to support Tradewinds. Later this year, you'll see a much larger overhaul of the map with portals to new areas. Is there any plan to add a farmhouse-like structure that could also feed tames? Or the ability for tames on wandering to feed themselves from wild berries/ food? We would like to eventually introduce a Stable structure where players can store their tames. We plan to add a similar module for the new ship system that allows easier tame transport. When will we get cosmetic hat microtransactions/vendor? We don't currently plan to add microtransactions for cosmetics or anything else even. Most of our art effort is focused on making new ships right now, but we do have one new hat coming soon! Final Note Again, we would like to emphasize that ATLAS is still in Early Access, meaning many things can and will likely continue to drastically change - even in the middle of development. Anything discussed is only up to date as of the moment it is posted. Features and changes that ultimately make it to the next patch, as well as timing, may be different from what was previously discussed. As always, we appreciate the suggestions and feedback from the community. Please keep them coming! Thank you for all of your support! Happy Sailing, - ATLAS Crew For the latest dispatch on #playATLAS keep yer one good eye trained on this here information Natter n' chatter on Discord: https://discord.gg/playatlas Hear ye, hear ye on Twitter: https://twitter.com/sailtheatlas Watch us scallywags on Twitch: http://twitch.tv/sailtheatlas Plus ye can band with us Pirates on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/playatlasgame View full article

Just wanna sum what I found so far about new lawless claims. - New structures outside claimed zones have just 12h decay. But those built before patch - have same 10/40 days timers. - Structures that built before towers appeared in territory goes to "claimed" state with no decay timer after tower appeared. Towers doesn't have decay timer as well. - Some pieces that built in claimed territory and attached to claimed structures - also goes to claimed state. - Structures that built in claimed territory and don't attached to claimed structures count as "not within claimed territory" and goes to 12h decay (this one is fixed). - Building on claimed territory that not yours is forbidden. Now about the towers. They are in "basic of building" skill, so no worries about extra skill point you need to spend for those. Costs: It fits 3x3 square (a little less). Water one has pretty cool night texture (but flag is down even after it hit 100%) It's not paintable, and flag also not paintable. It's white like you surrender lol : ) You can put one in unclaimed zone. Land Tower HP is 400 000 and it start with 40 000 health, It gains 400hp every 3 seconds. And hit 400 000 in 45 minutes. After it hit 400 000 you have your territory claimed. All buildings within your territory will be automatically claimed. If you destroy your tower, all building stays yours but goes to 12h decay (even those were in 10/40 days before claimed). Water Tower HP is 500 000 and it starts with 50 000 health. It gains 1k hp every 4 seconds after built. It claims additional territory in 30 minutes. You can speed it up putting 200 gold every 10 seconds to raise HP by 1%. For land tower you can speed up your building to 11 minutes 15 seconds. It'll require 13 400 golds. For water tower you can speed up your building to 10 minutes. It'll require 12 000 golds. ------------------- Your company have certain points for towers. - Solo company have 70 points. - Company of 18 ppl have 135 points. Each tower cost 4 points in the beginning and more you put in, more points it costs (6th one cost 5 points). You can not put 2nd land tower in claimed area: However you can put water tower in to land's tower area. But you can not put 2nd water tower in to 1st water tower area. If you put your tower right next to some players area, you'll have your area cut (Sry FH... didn't mention your windmill was there): And last thing. I you place tower and some other player will place his tower right near your tower - they both start to gain health. The first one that hits 400 000hp, will vanish all another towers within it's radius. Caution - the capture radius is not just green/red circle visible when you place your tower. But it's around 10 meters wider. So if tower will be placed at circle border or within 10 meters from outside the border - it'll be vanished as well.

We’ve got a pretty jam-packed post for you today! Because of your amazing participation, providing tons of questions for our team, we’ve decided to split responses into two posts. Since we received a large amount of inquiries regarding PvP balances, we’ll be discussing those questions separately in a later post. Because today, we have a few special topics we’ll be addressing first. Our first entry is a reply from the dev team regarding the inclusion of a new ship building system. Next, we have a new survey for you all to provide feedback on Ships and we can’t wait to hear your responses. Finally, we finish up with Q&A, excluding PVP questions previously mentioned. In an effort to provide more transparency between the team and the community, we continue to look for more ways to blend the goals of the two entities to make Atlas as great as we both know it can be. We appreciate your support and ‘til next time, may your skies be clear, waters calm, and sails full in whichever way you roam. New lawless Land Claim Changes In the patch dropping early next week, we’ll be introducing a new claim system to the lawless regions of Atlas. Moving forward, Pathfinders will now be able to claim land in these areas using a claim tower that will claim everything within its radius after it reaches full health. This takes about 45 minutes and may be sped up with gold. These changes will take effect immediately with the release of the new update and will make your structures be vulnerable to being claimed by others. Armored Docks may be claimed in this manner, and that includes the ships docked there! Previously we mentioned that there may be a wipe with the new claim system if it becomes necessary. However, we are able to implement this without requiring it, so please note that there is NO WIPE at this time. Note to Private Server Owners: Private servers will be unaffected by this change - functionality to make this change to your server will come in the patch after. Without further ado, here’s our Q&A! Hang out at our Discord for a chance to get your questions answered in the next Q&A! Q&A What are long term visions for the balance of island defense. I personally like that it's currently incredibly difficult to steal islands (contesting needs a lot of work). But a large contributor to why it's currently so hard comes from my question in #1--how easy it is to spam islands. If we suddenly had to think very carefully about structure count throughout the island, how are companies going to keep themselves properly protected without leaning on structure count? We agree that islands are incredibly hard to assault right now when facing an entrenched, knowledgeable defender. There are a variety of reasons for this, from the layout of the islands such as massive pillars, to unintended strategies such as spamming structures all over the place to prevent others from building or bringing in tames easily. We are focused on long-term solutions rather than quick fixes. Ideally, we want players to be forced into making choices about how they spend their limited resources. This means they should have to pick which places they are going to spend their effort to defend. The answer should not be that they can defend everything. We’re moving towards a game where you need to have a strong navy if you want to defend your shoreline. Cannonball physics are currently pretty bad. They travel incredibly slowly, to the point that these massive warships can actively dodge them like we're in some sort of space simulator. Additionally, there is no forward momentum physics so things like chaser cannons don't work. Is the team looking at adjusting these things? Shooting any of the ship-mounted weapons forwards results in some unrealistic behaviors that we'd like to eliminate. We're looking at solutions for this. Are alliances going to get reduced again (they should, or should have some sort of settler mechanic)? Atlas is about interactions, both positive and negative, with other players and Companies. We would like those stories to be told and dictated by players rather than by a heavy-handed developer approach. This means giving players lots of opportunities to cooperate and fight over limited resources. A single megacorp is not good for the game and yet we have large goals for Companies in mind that will require massive efforts from many players to accomplish. Keep listening and we'll be talking about those plans soon enough. In the meantime, we do not plan to mess with the balance of Companies and Alliances without fully addressing the overall ecosystem. What are some more solo XP grinding opportunities the team is looking at so smaller companies don't get left in the dust with no way to catch up? This is a great question. We really want to support lone wolves and small companies as a vital part of the game world. Compared to a lot of the other games we have played or worked on, Atlas XP seems to be in a really weird place and is frankly pretty broken. Large, organized death squads farm ridiculous amounts of XP with little real effort and hit level cap within a few days of a wipe, while players who are new or are in small companies are playing what feels like a completely different game. This creates a lot of power disparity between different groups of players and contributes to making it very difficult for players not in companies to feel like they can compete. XP is like a holdover from RPGs that this game has inherited, and it’s tied into a lot of different systems in the game. We want new players to have their options slowly rolled out to them so they aren't overwhelmed, and at the same time we don't want to create a grindy experience for veterans. Ultimately, we'd rather this game be focused on player expertise rather than character level, and long term are looking at how we can move towards that. Some of the specific things we are considering are ways to spread leveling out over the entire season while not making it grindy, or giving tools to everyone to get to the level cap early and creating more ways to increase your cap through actions in the game that are interesting, and again not grindy. Let us know your thoughts. Will there be more options in ship PvP? Yes! One of the goals of the new ship system is to provide players with more meaningful choices when constructing ships. As we expand the system, players will need to decide which pieces will provide the most value for their strategy. We intend to provide a variety of equally viable options that expand the meta and support a variety of playstyles. Final Note Again, we would like to emphasize that ATLAS is still in Early Access, meaning many things can and will likely continue to drastically change - even in the middle of development. Anything discussed is only up to date as of the moment it is posted. Features and changes that ultimately make it to the next patch, as well as timing, may be different from what was previously discussed. As always, we appreciate the suggestions and feedback from the community. Please keep them coming! Thank you for all of your support! Happy Sailing, - ATLAS Crew For the latest dispatch on #playATLAS keep yer one good eye trained on this here information Natter n' chatter on Discord: https://discord.gg/playatlas Hear ye, hear ye on Twitter: https://twitter.com/sailtheatlas Watch us scallywags on Twitch: http://twitch.tv/sailtheatlas Plus ye can band with us Pirates on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/playatlasgame View full article

100% this. After every battle, having to slowly comb over every single built structure to see if they're damaged and repair is valuable time that we could be spending at sea instead. Absolutely would love a blueprint feature. This can even cost gold to create, and require gold (in addition to resourecs) to recreate. Again, less time on land and more time on sea. Thematically it can be done via a shipwright type NPC, or saved in a shipyard.

Ah, c'mon!!! We need gathering group instrument! You know, a lot of ppl play solo not because they hate everyone, but because there is no groups instrument in the game. You can not announce assemble. Even in chat - you can not sail to some grid and start to yeling: "I gather for Kraken", no one will go, because everyone needs to run through island, gather like 8000 coal resource, and 6000 metal. Recycle it to gunpowder, create and carry to ammo box 1200 cannonballs. Put alot of repair resources to the ship's resources box. Putt all crew to stations. If there is a tundra, then sail few grid away for herbs and seeds to create med-kits. It may lasts couple hours. Only then, they ready to go. What we need is some kind of announcement boards. So any player will be able to write: "this Friday. we do Kraken, few Brigs and Galleys needed, start in 19:00 local" and all other players can read one and sign they in: "I'll definatelly go" or "I'll probably go". All those ice caves, Kraken, Ghost ship, Hydras and Drakes, Whales, lvl-16+ treasures, even LVL-50+ damned Galley may require a group (I do all of it, exept ice cave, solo with my brig and tiger tame, but some1 might unable to do that). Oh, and of course, group loot. There is no group loot system in seas. It should be the same as in treasure chests. One gather it. Every1 else find their own loot it their inventories!!! LODs guys!!! Do LODs : ))) Jeez guys. Players asking about that SINCE BEGGINING, it means in 2 years already!!! Oh and make wallhooks within masts indestructible! 500 HP is a joke every damned ship keep destroying them by a shingle hits!!!

Ahoy Pathfinders! We’ve got a pretty jam-packed post for you today! Because of your amazing participation, providing tons of questions for our team, we’ve decided to split responses into two posts. Since we received a large amount of inquiries regarding PvP balances, we’ll be discussing those questions separately in a later post. Because today, we have a few special topics we’ll be addressing first. Our first entry is a reply from the dev team regarding the inclusion of a new ship building system. Next, we have a new survey for you all to provide feedback on Ships and we can’t wait to hear your responses. Finally, we finish up with Q&A, excluding PVP questions previously mentioned. In an effort to provide more transparency between the team and the community, we continue to look for more ways to blend the goals of the two entities to make Atlas as great as we both know it can be. We appreciate your support and ‘til next time, may your skies be clear, waters calm, and sails full in whichever way you roam. From the Captain's Quarters We have heard your concerns regarding the new ship system and we would like to discuss our goals for it to help set expectations. We love the level of customization the original ship system provides and we will continue to support it for as long as possible. Currently, there are no plans to remove the original ship system. Early Access gives us the unique opportunity to share new systems while they are still early in development. The modular ship system is one of these new systems, and it will be released in three main stages, the first of which has already begun. In the first stage, we used the new system to create pre-built ships, like the Ramming Galley and the Majestic Kraken. Our goal with this stage is to give players a sneak peek of the system while also providing a quicker option for obtaining new ships. While the ability to purchase pre-built ships isn’t going anywhere, it’s not the end goal for the new system. The next stage of the modular ship system is coming soon and will introduce customization options to pre-built ships through module swapping. We will be introducing a system similar to ‘Sail Points’ called ‘Module Points.’ Each ship will have a pool of Module Points, and every module placed on the ship’s ribbing will cost a set number of points. Higher impact modules will cost more points. As a simple example, a Midship Gunport Module with two Gunports will cost more than a Midship Gunport Module with one Gunport. We will be rolling this system out piece by piece, starting with the ability to craft and swap Railing Modules. As we expand the customization system, our goal is to introduce a variety of modules that provide meaningful choices when building ships. Players will need to decide which pieces are most valuable to their strategy and budget their points accordingly. We feel that the original ship system had little room for choice and expression because the meta was so defined. Our goal is to expand the meta to include a variety of different builds and strategies supported by the new system. Initially, we will be releasing tactically-focused modules, but eventually we will also release cosmetically-focused modules. These could include things like different Railing types or a Midship Module with windows. Cosmetic modules provide no advantage in combat but would allow players to make their ship their own. (Cosmetic modules won’t cost additional Module Points.) The final stage of the system will allow players to build modular ships from the ground up. After choosing a ship hull size, players will be able to plug in modules from a variety of available choices. (As long as they have enough Module Points!) Our goal is to eventually have enough modules that the new system will have the same level of customization as the original system. This final stage of development won’t be complete for a while, but we hope you’ll stick with us for this journey! New Survey - Ships We're back with another Community Survey! Remember, surveys will cover a specific topic, so if we haven't pushed out a survey relevant to your interests yet, please know that there will be more! If there are any topics or changes you would like to see from us in future surveys, please let us know! We're only beginning this initiative, and hope to improve our process as we continue to develop ATLAS hand in hand with the community! This month's survey is focused on collecting early feedback to our New Ship System / Ships for Gold System. So far, we currently have the Ramming Galley and the Majestic Kraken out, with plans for many new and unique ships on the way. The goal is to create a highly customizable and modular ship system where players can make meaningful choices when building their ships. Before you complete the survey - if you haven't already, please make sure you have read the latest about our goal for this new Ships system in the Captain’s Quarters section above, as it will provide more details. Please find the link to the survey here Although we cannot promise to commit any specific change, we would want to be able to quantify which issues players care about most by using this survey to reach as broad an audience as possible. We appreciate your support! Thank you! Without further ado, here’s our Q&A! Hang out at our Discord for a chance to get your questions answered in the next Q&A! Q&A Will the new claim system address the long-standing problems many islands have of "lawless" areas in what should be Island-owned territory? We have been getting a lot of great data about claiming since Early Access started. Each system has had some good aspects and bad aspects. Every player has different needs and ideas about what they want. The new Area Claim system is meant to fill in some gaps and for now will live side by side with the existing island claim system. The island system still has some flaws and bugs and will be looking to address that in the future when we decide how it fits into the big picture. With the new theme and vision, will single player still be part of that? While PvP is our primary focus when designing content, we want to ensure new features are also supported in our other game modes. (Including Single Player!) Are patches being tested in single player or are they only tested for multiplayer purposes? Recent patches have addressed some Single Player specific bugs and we plan to continue this in future patches. Your reports speed up the bug squishing process, so please continue reporting any bugs you come across. Can you enable the market system on single player? The Trade System runs on a separate server from the game to allow Markets on different servers to talk to each other. When it comes to single player, it will have to be same-server trading only. This change will require some engineering work and we do not know yet when we are going to make that happen. Will there be factions or AI? It would make PVE more interesting. What do you think of having PVP only at sea while land is PVE? Our direction for Atlas is to make rich player interactions, whether that is through conflict or cooperation, and that is where we will spend most of our development effort. We have talked about factions and think those fit better with an MMORPG style game rather than a massively multiplayer sandbox game focused on PVP. When will there be a massive Structure limit for land bases? How do you intend to prevent massive Structure spam that was used in PVP as defense meta on any island and in PVE to claim land on lawless? Spamming structures is not fun gameplay and we would like to get it out of the game. We have some tools available, such as restricting the number of structures that can be built. Each of those options come with drawbacks. We'd like to find a solution that feels good within the world, is good for performance, and isn't so ugly. One of the things we are working on is giving players more choices when building. For example, rather than having to spam 100 walls, we are adopting some of the modding community's solutions and making large stone blocks so that larger defensive structures can be made with fewer pieces. We are also looking at making more automated structures that are designed specifically for defense. When can we take exact amounts of resources out of a resource box? Can we please have a keybind to pull one single stack of something from a ship resources chest? Thank you for the suggestion! We'll look into this. We love hearing ideas that make Atlas a smoother experience. What Holidays are to be recognized going forward? So far with the new team we've enjoyed Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s and then skipped over Valentine’s. Is there a list, or is it just if there's time given the more frequent Updates? We don't have a formal list of events, but we like to celebrate as many holidays as our development schedule allows. Our primary focus is on new features, quality of life changes, balance, and bug fixes, so most holidays will be celebrated with rate up events. However, the Winter Event was a lot of fun to prepare, so you may see something similar in the future. (Anyone want a pair of Bunny Ears?) Do you plan to make any changes to the current economic system? Gold is pretty abundant on PVP, and absurdly worthless on PVE due to the lack of any major goldsinks. Do you have any plans to change gold cost settings between PVP and PVE? PVP sinks gold into war-dec tokens, drakes, and 1000s of defensive npcs. PVE has none of this and island costs are minimal - there is little chance of islands changing ownership on PVE until the owner doesn't log in for 10 days. This is one of our core focuses on the game right now. We definitely have some more gold sinks in mind and would love to hear your ideas. Please note that with our small team, at this stage in development, we are focused on balancing PVP first. Gold is only one aspect of the economy. We would also like to see a thriving and competitive resource economy. Right now it's very hard for small companies to get a variety of resources, and very easy for large companies to get nearly all of the resources. Since this is tied so closely to competitive balance, it accentuates the gaps between these player groups. We have started working on the next map, and it will give you more reasons to value different islands for the unique characteristics they contain. This is something we’ll talk more about in the future. Question, will more gear for the players (like new swords, guns, and armor) be added as time goes on? Atlas is a game about telling player stories. Custom gear or content is one of the places we would like to reinforce that. Rather than take the standard RPG approach where the devs craft thousands of items, we'd rather give the tools to players to let them craft unique and interesting items within the game, so we will be working on those sorts of systems instead. That said, most of our art effort in the next year is focused on creating awesome new ships, so new visuals for player gear are not likely to be added soon. Does the team envision that it could be viable to just sail 24-7 and totally avoid land from the beginning of the game? With the introduction of new ships, Sea Forts, and water tames, the ocean is more alive than ever before and we will continue developing content that pulls people towards the sea. We have a variety of features in development including physical trade ships that can be intercepted to steal resources. We are moving towards a world in which a strong navy will be required even if you have a base on land. That said, land will always have a place in Atlas and the majority of players will want to explore both the land and the sea. We would like to hear more about direction on loot. The loot in this game is so bad right now we are seeing no crafts on bps, and are not seeing more of those bps dropping. We would just like a long write up of what direction you would like to take loot. Also why was loot changed mid season, crippling companies who now do not have the bps to replace boats? What data has been collected on the loot change? Most of us are still seeing low % items at the MW and above scale. Is there more loot balance coming this season? We have started making changes to loot focused on blueprints and will continue to do so. We are making multiple changes simultaneously to support some transformative changes and that means sometimes things will get out of balance for a while. Recently with blueprint crafts there were some errors in the math which made the number of crafts significantly lower than was intended, and we'll be fixing that. To be clear on the intention - we are moving BP drops to happen in higher frequency with lower craft counts. This means you will see interesting and unique BPs more often, and will not be able to sustain as long on a single good find. Regarding our long term plans, rather than make this a strict RNG loot experience, we're also working on a set of blueprint crafting, merging, and upgrading systems. This will be initially focused on sails as we prototype the system. This should allow you to get closer to the sort of customized, hand-crafted blueprints you want while still providing an element of skill and luck for getting there. We will reveal more on that system as it comes along, but look for sail BP crafting in the coming months. Will we see increased reasons to sail in our home grids? Currently the only place to sail for content is GA. Is there talk of making more local grid content that would incentivize players to sail to other grids other than GA? Our goal is to get more player interaction, especially on the water. Adding in Sea Forts is an example of an objective you need to sail to and compete over. Sailing can be obnoxious if you have to go long distances and that's why we're addressing that problem with the upcoming Tradewinds and after that we plan to introduce a portal system. Tradewinds is in final testing, and the portal system is still being worked out in design. Atlas is primarily a game about interactions with other players, so new water objectives we create are not going to be single-player experiences, but rather ways of drawing players together in conflict. What are your long-term game performance optimization strategies (realistic ones)? It seems pretty clear that from a technology perspective, it's not possible to support islands with 100s of thousands of structures on them and maintain enjoyable gameplay. How is this being addressed and how can players provide detailed feedback as you discuss potential strategies for dealing with this? We're looking to consolidate some larger multi-piece structures into chunkier single-piece structures. The overall structure count has a huge impact on performance. We don't want to remove the customization that is a hallmark of Atlas, so we're looking for ways to add new options rather than cull existing choices. Are there any plans to rework the chat system to give players a better method of communication? Not for a while. We'd love to eventually implement a mail system that allows players to communicate across servers. Would the ability to salvage ship parts of sunken enemy ships be possible? A skill with a chance on salvage to get the item at a low percentage. This will help provide an incentive for players to pvp for loot in ship combat. We're definitely looking at ways to bring more conflict to the ocean. Winning a difficult battle only to receive some resources can certainly be frustrating and we'd love to implement a system that allows you to receive a greater reward for your efforts. Will players who have been playing since Early Access be rewarded with something special when the game goes to Full Release? We will be looking for some ways to reward our long time loyal fans as we leave early access. It is a bit too early to commit to anything specific. What are some immersion goals on the horizon? While performance-related, it's currently boring/problematic to have ships rendering when they are almost within firing distance (versus spotting sails far into the distance). This is on our radar. We agree that the render distance should be increased to prevent ships popping in and out of view during combat, but we want to ensure any changes we make won't come at the cost of performance. Weather mechanics are currently very one dimensional and don't offer any actual strategic value (you can't choose to head into a storm to lose chasers, for example). We're planning to flesh out the weather system in the future. Some early ideas include allowing players to control the weather to make certain islands more inhabitable (or uninhabitable if you're an attacker). We'd also like to make storms more interesting by adding new encounters and resources inside them. Also, smaller things like allowing lanterns to burn indefinitely and automatically turn on/off at dusk/dawn. We always love hearing quality of life suggestions! Keep them coming! Final Note Again, we would like to emphasize that ATLAS is still in Early Access, meaning many things can and will likely continue to drastically change - even in the middle of development. Anything discussed is only up to date as of the moment it is posted. Features and changes that ultimately make it to the next patch, as well as timing, may be different from what was previously discussed. As always, we appreciate the suggestions and feedback from the community. Please keep them coming! Thank you for all of your support! Happy Sailing, - ATLAS Crew For the latest dispatch on #playATLAS keep yer one good eye trained on this here information Natter n' chatter on Discord: https://discord.gg/playatlas Hear ye, hear ye on Twitter: https://twitter.com/sailtheatlas Watch us scallywags on Twitch: http://twitch.tv/sailtheatlas Plus ye can band with us Pirates on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/playatlasgame View full article

I'm in the slow, long process of figuring how this all works. I'll keep adding info as I come across it, but I should have something here within the next week. I was able to scrounge the 225 seas for enough gold to make 3 schooners (btw, don't sail at night in the fog straight into a horde of SotD and don't face check icebergs) but a brig at 19k a copy is going to require some treasure hunting! Right now, I think you might be correct, sadly. I have a feeling singleplayer and dedicated servers work a bit differently with the givetreasuremap command. I still haven't been able to generate a map past Fine quality, and it looks like my initial findings in singleplayer don't quite match what I'm finding in DS. So it's going to be trial and error! Will update soon.

Summed up in short Pre-crafted ships are Garbage. The excuse that exploits on ships are rampant is so lazy. No Blueprints, no use for resources, no use for sails. Just cookie cut versions that the devs which we already know are terrible at designing and implementing let alone following through with their ideas promised to expand upon. How? By allowing you to build 40 structures on the boat. Oh gee... They still have not fixed the bug where the precrafted ramming galleon's nose of the ship when down to 0 hp from 15k instantly sinks the boat despite the rest of the ship being repaired. If they cannot fix a precrafted ship thats been in the game since the start of the season why would you think they could bring in new boats that arent as broken if not more broken that what is currently in game. (wild how their solution to fixing something is to bring in a totally new system that's more flawed than the last) Some dev justified their job somehow by suggesting this swap is my guess. What are your thoughts about these pre-crafted ships and their effect on the future of PVP in the game. PVE aside. Also i feel the devs are brain dead with the new claim system they fail to realize mortars are a structure in this game capable of cross island hits. How are you going to defend against mortars when part of the island is in peace mortaring your part of the island in The new Kraken ship cannot turn without the sails open HOLY Crap thats terrible the new kraken ship also when the front or back plank are 0 hp Instantly sinks. Man Imagine still having a known bug in the "new" boat system and then adding onto it. If they implement the new system they should get rid of craft limits on blueprints and let it be like ark.We also neeed BP CRAFTING STATIONS to Craft the blueprints that require ALLOT of resources 500 slots please... This would make people farm more for resources not grind out RNG (what is this a fucking casino? ) for a bp that goes away after 2 fucking crafts or 5 sails.. after 5 months of looking for it.. that's garbage and you know it. We deserve infinity crafts on blueprints just like ark...this will push an economy into the game because you can sell pre-crafted boats for in game gold or other Blue-prints. New players could find a great gun port blue print or sniper or Armour and trade it for anything with another. If a mega tribe has multiple sail bps over a certain % it's in their best interest to trade them for things they lack.... Every one clutches their boats like pearls bc they are afraid to lose something they invested 4 months farming for. RNG in this game i repeat is garbage and you know it. NO ONE QUITS A GAME BECAUSE THEY CAN CRAFT AS MANY BOATS AS THEY WANT. combat.? @devs

Let's have a conversation here Grapeshot. When ATLAS was first announced, the trailer featured a pirate port with pistol duels and gallows. It featured a host of mythical beasts, all deeply unfriendly. It featured epic naval battles on ships that looked like ships. Later, we are told, (in a very obscure way) about the lore and how the Damned and Kraken tie into it all. Most people are either ignorant to the lore, or think "hey that's neat." Some time down the line, we get the Trench. Visually, it's beautiful. Unfortunately, despite being at the sea floor, it's shallow as a puddle. It was also at this point the animals started to become more of a focus. The crabs were a weird choice. They serve no real purpose to players. They're just an ARK boner. Some time later, I don't really remember when, we get the Snow Cave. Fantastic looking dungeon. Terrible choice of occupants. Why the hell is it full of animals, when it could be full of NPC pirates, with a final boss called Frostbeard or something? So let's fast forward to now. It's quite a thing to allow people to tame dolphins and seahorses. I get it, someone on the team REALLY likes Aquaman. So, why then, have you not provided more Atlantis-themed content than the one Trench? Why are none of the buildings in that trench open to exploration? The possibility for story-telling in a sunken lost city is immense. Capitalise on it. Here's some ideas; Open the buildings up to exploration, rewarding Atlantean themed loot. Remove the skins from the vendor. Let people find Atlantean armour down in the trenches. Tridents. Diaries. Food and drink recipes. Skins for cannons. Statues that can be reforged into figureheads. Rare spawn Lost Atlanteans who can be subdued by reducing their health and recruited to crew your ship, stronger than regular crewmen. Doors that lead to mini-dungeons that can only be completed on foot. Quest givers. Maybe a sad, lonely, Atlantean warrior who remembers the war that destroyed the city and asks you to find relics of the past. Or hell, why not have the hecking City of Atlantis be a random encounter at sea. Imagine the spectacle of an entire city of ghosts rising out of the water for your crew to explore. All of those things sound a lot more interesting than using a dolphin or seahorse as an outboard motor. P.S. A cryopod equivalent would be immensely useful, especially with sea tames. And we all know it does wonders for server lag. So hey, there's another; The Atlanteans had Soul Spheres that they used to safely store and transport their aquatic buddies. The Snow Cave. A beautiful dungeon full of opportunity for story telling. Instead, yetis. Why is there an abandoned city under the ice? Who lived here? What did they leave behind? Was it pillaged? By pirates? Where are they? Why is there only one dungeon??? This is ever the problem with the game. NONE of the ideas you have get fleshed out, there is just the bones of an idea. Ships. So recently, we've finally got a new ship. It's a mixed bag. On the one hand, the new damage system is great. More patching holes, less vanishing planks. On the other hand, a massive shield box on the front of it, holding 2 large cannons? On one hand, oars! Yay! Alternative locomotion! (P.S. Where are our paddle wheels and steam engines?) On the other hand, incredibly limited ability to design the ship yourself. If personalised designs are the issue, implement fixes to them rather than trying to circumvent it by killing the system a lot of people enjoy. No walls outside of ship rail bounds. Cannons can't be placed above other cannons on the same deck. Or, let's go full Conan Exiles and require structural stability. The Kraken Ship. So much potential. Could have been a nice ship for those that don't want to spend time building one, fitting in size between sloops and schooners. Torpedoes though? I'm not convinced pirates used many torpedoes, especially ones that have missile guidance. Why not just allow people to put cannons on it? Regarding Torpedoes, if they're needed in the game (spoiler; they're not) why aren't there options for a more basic torp launcher that just fire in a straight line once launched? Torp and launcher itself just made of good ol' brass or something. Similar deal with the submarine. The original single man sub would fit great in the game for salvaging and trench exploration, and was basically a bicycle inside an iron ball with a breathing line. I could go on, but to summarise; stop half-assing things. Whole-ass one thing at a time. Expand on your ideas, rather than constantly adding new flavours to an already very jumbled soup. There are so many good ideas, but none of them are explored even close to their full potential and that is a huge shame. Remember the original direction of the game that got people excited. Expand on that.

The game files seem to contain a promising new ship-construction related feature that might be coming soon that will please you very much, I think. I won't spoil it for you, but you'll probably be really happy about it. But in the meantime, how about this? Paying coin to build YOUR OWN ship makes no sense. Especially for even a small ship like a schooner. But requiring blueprints to make more advanced ships wouldn't necessarily be bad. It already was the case for mythical ships and such. My suggestion would be to have the following options. Freeports Buy pre-made ships for coin Player Shipyard Build entirely custom-made ships with resources Build special ship modules (like the ram) with rare resources and blueprints Construct advanced ships and ship components with blueprints/rare resources Some ships and parts would require blueprints (for coin or by salvaging). No blueprints required Dinghy Raft Sloop Schooner Brig Blueprints required Galleon Ramming Ship Submarine Other (new) specialized ships Specialized ship parts Ram Torpedo launchers Secondary gun decks Specialized cargoholds etc.

@chukikiYou’re just as annoying on the discord. You cry way too much please go play something else so we don’t have to deal with you anymore. none of what you’re asking for is a good thing like I said on discord get good it will solve your problems. You’re right it is becoming a anti offline raiding game and that’s a good thing. so devs don’t listen to this guy. Thanks for all the great changes you have made to require people like him to fight people while they are online.

I think they could take inspiration from the Golden Age of Piracy in the Caribbean - have factions representing the different nations that originally fought over the Caribbean (English - French - Spanish - Dutch - Natives) - but have the players have to gain a Letter of Marque from one of these factions to get the benefits or be un-alligned. Factions would offer quests or missions for players to complete (randomly generated) but along the basic premise of virtually any video game quest or mission system (fetch/kill/destroy). The rewards would be payment in gold and increase in reputation for the quest giver and decrease in reputation for the effected faction. Factions should have their own goals (set by the devs frequently) which require players to supply resources of a large amount requiring group efforts or defend locations over a long period of time. Assisting with these goals would increase a players "reputation" with the faction and offer rewards such as gold or rare items. Reputation would gain access to harder quests with greater rewards. Each faction should have its own trade routes which could be attacked by opposing factions and pirates and defended by the traders faction players. A successful attack on a trade route would cause the attacked faction to run short on whatever supplies the traders were delivering and thus the faction would then offer quests related to this. Players could then take on the roles of traders/pirates/faction navy and work to make their faction the strongest in the world. NB. Factions wouldn't be something someone chooses and is then stuck with. completing quests for a faction would improve your reputation with that faction but reduce it with opposed factions. Get enough reputation with a faction and you can get a letter of Marque and fly the factions flag. Have a low enough reputation with another faction and get hunted as a pirate by that faction. This is quite heavily inspired by the way Elite Dangerous works but feel with a game of the magnitude of Atlas it could learn a lot from Elite Dangerous.

Ahoy Pathfinders! This week we have another Q&A with the Devs for you all as we wait for next week’s Patch! Moving forward, Pathfinders can expect a patch every other week barring any unexpected circumstances are changes in tide. Some of ye on our Discord may have noticed a new hand on Deck! Let’s get an official introduction to our new community manager! *Washes up on to shore* Hey y'all, I'm Conch. I'll be joining the crew as Captain Nami's first mate. I'll be handling most of the dialogue here in the Discord going forward and I'm look forward from hearing from you all. I'll say now I cannot make promises on where our journey may take us but I will do my best to relay your concerns and make our voyage as enjoyable as possible. You'll shortly see that my sarcasm is my sword and will be wielded often for the forces of good-natured humor (*Trolls Beware*). Other than that, I'm a BIG e-sports fan (*cough* TSM *cough*) so if it's been streamed I've probably watched some of it. Still waiting for competitive Atlas to take off *crossing fingers*. So if you find yourself in need, I'll be here. Here's to smooth sailing ahead! Cheers! It’s a new year, and we know some curious Pathfinders may be wondering how ATLAS is going to continue to shape out from here. We are still very much continuing development across all the features and mechanics we have introduced so far. The Trading System and the pieces dependent on it are still in the early stages; and there are still a line of new and unique ships to come! The claiming system rework is still in the testing stages as well. As we work on refining these systems we have put in place, we are also getting closer to defining the direction that we’d like to take ATLAS. We’re still planning it out, and once we have a more cohesive structure in place, we’ll roll out more information to the community. Teaser Ehhhh? What’s this!? We’re not seahorsin’ around! The Tameable Dolphins were only the first of the new underwater tames, which are going to be a part of a taming/breeding rework. Not to fear! This isn’t taking away from our development time in other areas. It is a smaller project that we are doing on the side to add a bit more fun and flavor out in the waters. We would also like to stress that we are not neglecting optimization and bug fixes in favor of new content. We hear your concerns and understand that there is a lot we need to continue to fix and improve. The team of engineers who work on optimization and fixes are different from the team of designers that implement new content. We are fixing elements of the game while developing new content in tandem. Oftentimes, optimization and bug fixing are a multifaceted issue and require more time and resources to address. Other times, these coding updates may be an under the hood improvement. We’re taking things step by step, and it may take multiple patches for certain fixes, and even new content, to reach the stage we want it. We thank you for your support and patience! Without further ado, here’s our Q&A! Hang out at our Discord for a chance to get your questions answered in the next Q&A! Q&A What is the next step in the new ship lego project? For now, we will continue to make unique ships built with a growing selection of unique modules. Further down the road we are looking into allowing players to buy / craft their own modules and build their own ships. Will the team be addressing or nerfing large walls spamming ? So we might actually be able to destroy a 50 layer wall of them or an entire island spammed with it. Yes. This is on the list. How is the progress on the claim system? Are you able to reveal more details on it now? While the focus of the game is, indeed, to get more focus on the sea, we can't ignore the land play. The "new" claiming system is an attempt to balance land play and make it more fun. In general, the team has found band-aid on top of band-aid in this department and we want to remove those layers and get to a cleaner code base and more fun gameplay. Where in Development is Mech Monkey? I'll never tell. Any plans for new servers? Modes? Yes. We have lots of things planned. We have hit upon a theme for the game that we really like and lots of other wonderful things that are really going to make this game pop in 2021. To answer your question a bit more I can tell you that we're beginning design for small, temporary worlds that you get to via maelstroms that appear on the map. They will only be available for a bit of time and will typically have something cool on them. This is really early but lots more really cool stuff is in the works. Any word on improving armored docks? Like maybe enclosing them so NPCs are safe? Also, having repairs inside armored dock would be helpful. Yes, this was always the plan, we just need a little more time to get there. Can you tell us more about the direction tames/breeding is headed? For now, we are looking at cleaning up the tame system and adding some more tames to the water. Beyond that, it's fuzzy. the more work we put into tames the more people want to stay on land, but the tame system is only a fraction of what is possible and who are we to stop that. I wish I could tell you more, but we really need more time to come up with something fun, deep, and different. When will there be a sail revert/rebalance and perhaps a buff to weight sails to make them usable? A major overhaul of the sail system is on the books. It's another example of the layering of issues that we are now stripping off to get to the fun of the game. No word yet on the timing. In the steam page, the responses from the devs, and older interviews seem to emphasize a focus on player immersion and faction building with a pirate/colonial aesthetic. The actual design seems to be more of a min/maxer grind fest with theory crafting elements. What’s the actual intended experience for the game? I hear you. Let me clear things up if possible: -Atlas isn't where we want it. The game has a long history already and I don't want to spend time there. Just know that where we are today is not where we want to be. -Vision is about destination. When we talk about vision, we're talking about where we want to be, not where we are today. -Finally, remember that the game's development is a cooperative experience. We put a bit of something out and then see how you like it and then we adjust to that. All that said, this is where we are today... We have hit on a theme for the world that is going to give it more cohesion, remove some of the more annoying limitations of the game, and open it to more possibility. If allowed, we'll be introducing this theme a bit at a time (the way a new idea would be introduced IRL) and then grow it from there. For a period of time last year we were guided to add a new strategic layer to the game to give companies new tracks to explore. The aesthetic and realism boundaries of this have expanded a bit and we're very excited for what's being planned for 2021. Final Note Again, we would like to emphasize that ATLAS is still in Early Access, meaning many things can and will likely continue to drastically change - even in the middle of development. Anything discussed is only up to date as of the moment it is posted. Features and changes that ultimately make it to the next patch, as well as timing, may be different from what was previously discussed. As always, we appreciate the suggestions and feedback from the community. Please keep them coming! Thank you for all of your support! Happy Sailing, - ATLAS Crew For the latest dispatch on #playATLAS keep yer one good eye trained on this here information Natter n' chatter on Discord: https://discord.gg/playatlas Hear ye, hear ye on Twitter: https://twitter.com/sailtheatlas Watch us scallywags on Twitch: http://twitch.tv/sailtheatlas d with us Pirates on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/playatlasgame View full article

Ty for your reply, yes I am playing PvE only. So summarized building a ship has become very hard and grindy. I did not miss anything. Sloops are very slow and only have the capacity to carry like 1,5k gold? If I remember correctly the sloop could not carry a lot. So the grind would also require a lot of back tracking. I don't think thats worth it. Many boring hours on the high sea would be awaiting me. Is there a particular reason why this change was necessary? Kind Regards