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My first question is about servers in general: We started playing Atlas a few weeks ago (there are 2 of us). We originally wanted to play on a dedicated private rented server and invite another friend or 2, but chose to play the single player on a non dedicated server (tethered) after reading that we'd have to rent several servers in order to get access to a large portion of the map on a private server. I'm still not sure we understand how the servers and maps work, and how many squares of the map you get per server that you rent. We just want to be able to enjoy all the content of the game with the boss fights, power stones, kraken , ghost ship, etc. .. and were afraid that we'd miss most of that if we only had a couple squares to work with. Can someone explain to me how many squares of the map you actually get per rented server? Also, if you only get a few squares to work with, does that mean you just never get to fight the bosses or see the content in the other squares you don't have access to? Okay, my next issue is regarding our non dedicated server randomly "breaking": Okay, so when we first started playing we played for probably about a week with everything seemingly going okay. We were enjoying the game and learning the ins and outs, building things, leveling etc. One evening the game crashed on us repeatedly and when the host tried to validate his files in Steam, it said 1 file was unable to be validated. We assumed something glitchy happened with some update and we just decided that although it was a pain in the butt, we'd just start over. We then found out that the spyglass was the culprit of our crashes, and it was each time the spyglass was used that crashed the game. We decided to just go ahead and start over anyway since we really weren't that far in, because of the file that said it couldn't validate and since the spyglass issue things were acting weird anyway. Fast forward now we're almost 2 weeks into our fresh server and now last night it seems like the server broke on us again. There is no sense in continuing to play if we are going to just have to start over every 10 days or 2 weeks. I'm hoping someone can give me some insight into what we can do to fix this. Sorry in advance for the long story, but I want to go through most of what I can remember we did, in case it is something we did that "broke" things again. Most of the evening of us playing went fine, then all of the sudden I crashed and it said I lost my connection to the host. While trying to re-join it would not show our sever in the list, so the host had to reboot his game and then it would show for me. We've never had those issues before last night. After the 2 times of that happening, everything seemed to work fine. We were able to continue playing with no issues for a while. We decided to go do some ship exploration, get some resources, and then do a couple of treasure maps. For a while everything seemed normal, while sailing, with normal ship attacks, shipwrecks to dive, flotsam floating etc. During our exploration we found what we believe may be the Kraken location (we aren't positive on that) and went inside the swirling water (nothing happened when we did). That was in F4. Then we went over to G5 and hunted the ghost ship for a little while. We think we may have found it during the day, as our ship started having some weird ghosting effects. At that time we didn't realize the ship only appeared at night. We decided to go ahead and do some treasure maps. We were going to sail home to C9 to drop our resources off and lighten our ship, then head out. At some point during that journey we realized we hadn't seen a Ship of the Damned in quite a while. Then realized we hadn't seen any shipwrecks or flotsam. We decided to re-log in case that was the problem. After we did, the shipwrecks and flotsam all re-appeared, but we still didn't see any Ships of the Damned. We sailed the rest of the way home and never saw any. I picked 3 Journeyman maps in A9. The host picked up the maps and noticed they said the minimum gold awarded for them were 0, which was odd. He handed them over to me and each one said the minimum was around 15k. While that was strange, we decided to go ahead and sail out to do them. We sailed from C9 to A9 and still never saw any ships, but did see shipwrecks and flotsam. We got to the location and the beam didn't show up for the host. He handed the map over to me and the beam showed up just fine. I walked over to the beam expecting it to activate the spawn, but nothing happened. I took my shovel out and started to dig and it crashed the server. We both came back in and tried again and it crashed again as soon as I tried to dig. We came back in a 3rd time, and this time we decided to pick up more t-map bottles to see if they also said there was a minimum of 0 gold as the reward. The host tried to pick up 3 bottles, and although it showed him picking them up.. the bottles weren't showing in his inventory. I went and found a bottle to pick up and the same thing happened, it wasn't in my inventory. We ended up just logging out after that. What would cause a server to just randomly seem to "break"? Is there a way to fix this? This game is unplayable for us if we have to restart from scratch every 10 days or 2 weeks because something breaks the server. We are really enjoying the game and want to continue to play. What can we do? Thanks for your time!

As far as im concerned what broke the game was grapeshot trying to please everyone posting here instead of sticking to their original vision of the game, the first iteration was the best, the world was huge sailing for hours to get some resources ment something, trading had value, but they listened to the whiners that want everything quick and easy, and now we have this mosaic of shit, that has nothing to do with the original idea of the game portals ffs etc... real shame.

has anyone ever seen wheatgrass on this PVE server , i want wheat seeds for wheat to tame an Elephant.

Two things, a) The angles for the weight and handling sails are wrong. The way these sails work in game is not how they work in real life. This really breaks the immersion and makes sailing less intuitive. b) Not only could this 'fix' be purely graphical at this stage - it could also easily be expanded beyond this to make the handling and weight sails viable choices when choosing main-sails via added gameplay elements - which I will go into below for those who are keen for a quick read. The game suffers because the sails are too similar - they are things that rotate to the nearest direction of the wind - with slight gimmicky speed and angle and weight values plugged on to distract the player into thinking these sails are worth thinking about. In reality, these sails function very differently, and including these functions ingame will make the sailing aspect (one of, if not arguably ,the main aspect of the game) much more dynamic, and rewarding for those who follow different play styles. At this stage its hard to tell how much research the devs did into tall-ship sailing - no doubt they got the basics right - square sails were speed sails, handling (only on modern boats but tall-ships had stay-sails) or gafs(weight sails) were for pointing upwind. But the inclusion of rotating booms that go infront of the mast pointing handling/weight sails literally into the wind makes me think more research is a good idea. Including more realistic sailing mechanics has the possibility to deepen and enrich the gameplay - not damage it. Ironically, I believe further complicating the system it will actually make sailing easier for the novice - who can stick with certain sail types for ease of use - and deepen the strategic depth of those who want to challenge themselves. Current sail "choices" Speed - faster, harder to set and sheet Handling - normal speed, wider angle of effectiveness (can point higher to the wind), very fast handling Weight - normal speed, harder to set and sheet, adds weight to the ship. The problem with these choices is that weight sails become nearly useless (especially since weight is a level-able stat), and they are difficult to set. All pvp builds I've come across opt for maximum sized speed sails and 1 small handling. Those who are good at sailing just go for double speed. Some who just want to 'run' away go for double handling for the higher wind point, thus ensuring an escape against a faster opponent so long as its 'clear' sailing. The game currently manages to miss a major perk of the handling and weight sails - that they are 'symmetrical'. This means that when ship is tacking upwind, you can 'set and forget' these types of sail, (the direction being parallel to the boat pointing aft) this allows the wind to be caught at the greatest possible angle upwind. In this set-up, when one performs a tack, the sail does not need to reset - however the sail DOES need to be reset after performing a gib. This has two great consequences - solo players who dont have NPC's or early build ships will have both an easier time sailing upwind and it encourages the use of both handling AND weight sails (not having to set a weight sail every tack really makes them more viable by removing their slowness con). Proposed changes Speed - these don't need to change - they're perfect, if anything however, any upwind angle for these sails could be removed - they physically can't go upwind and were designed for bearing down on an opponent at great speed - but downwind only. this gives you control of the engagement if you find yourself upwind of ur opponent. Handling - these need to function symetrically - instead of rotating to point into the wind they should be let out and let in from the 'central position' of the boom parallel to the ship. letting the boom out will catch the most wind downwind, letting it in will allow the ship to point very high into the wind. Performing a tack should be very easy with these sails, performing a gib should at the very least require resetting . Weight sails - function exactly like handling sails - except they are slower to set - and if a gib occurs and they have to fling from one side to the other you could add 'sail' damage to it. Additionally, they should add armour to the boat too. Addition of the STAY SAIL - these sails should be able to be placed between masts - this also encourages multiple masted boats as they have more manouvering over single masted (finally a large sail is faster than two mediums - but the possibility of an upwind stay sail sways the decision into a real toss up for the player) . These sails function like handling sails and are very easy to set and forget. They allow the boats to go upwind a lot more effortlessly. These also really make tall-ships look like tall ships - at the moment, Atlas ships look naked inbetween the masts. Anyway, thanks if you've made it this far. Rant over. at least graphically fix the handling and weight sails! drops mic.

I want to play but it keeps crashing

Ahoy Pathfinders! There will be no patch this week, so instead we’re delivering some information based on some questions we have collected and seen around the community! Since we announced the renewed ATLAS journey last Summer, a lot of things have changed in the development cycle, and we are still working on improving our processes and the feedback loop with the community as well. Like in any adventure, some parts of the journey can be rough but as we overcome them, we continue to move forward and build on our experiences. Whether we are making small steps or revisiting old ideas, it is important to remember that we are still sailing forward! Development is very often not linear, and understandably things can get confusing for the community - even for those seasoned Pathfinders who have been sailing the seas of ATLAS since the very beginning. We hope that today’s discussion and some of the answers to your questions will help the community understand our vision for ATLAS and where we are currently at. ATLAS, in general, is lacking a strong theme. Yes, we are a Pirate game, but it's currently a mishmash of a bunch of different stuff and we are looking to address that post the release of the current feature slate (Trade System, New Ships, and Claim System). Right now the idea we are liking most is something we're calling "Stormpunk" which centers around that idea that there are more resources to capture on the water (like harnessing lightning). We are going to maintain an element of fantasy moving forward, but it may not be so openly Dungeons and Dragons (although we love this game!) or "high fantasy" feeling. As with all things, everything will remain as we introduce new things, and we will fade things that people lose interest in. What is the long term plan or overall vision? It'd help explain a lot of these changes if we were also privy to just a rough idea what the long term will look like, because right now it seems things are going a bit backward in regards to accessibility, especially for small groups and solo players. At the highest level, the goals are as follows: Get players out on the ocean - there are lots of things we're doing to encourage this but it basically means that we want players spending more time at sea and less time on land. In order to do that we really have to blow out all the things you can do at sea so that they are as fun and interesting as what you do on land. Make ship-to-ship combat fun. There is so much to this, but we really want PVP interactions on the water to be richly rewarding. Increase player recuperation. Survival games can be tough and we want to make sure that players can be devastating to one another, but that the losing side player doesn't have to feel like they are starting over each time. We also want to make small companies and lone wolves more viable. We still have a ways to go before we reach these goals. We know that we are not there yet and that the current state of ATLAS does not reflect what we envision. Most of what we have implemented so far is still in its beginning stages, and are only just setting the foundation for how the gameplay is going to evolve. Trade System For instance, one of the main goals of the Trade System is to increase play at the smaller group and solo level. We recognize that right now the system is not very friendly to these players - There's a lot of balance to be done there and a number of missing elements, like the upcoming Tradewinds feature, but we are working on it. Ultimately, when all pieces are in place, we are planning for a system where large companies will actually be incentivized on a different scale for helping small companies and solos. The Trade System is still in its alpha stage, and as of build 515.17, all Trade Shipments are virtual and locked to a single grid. We are continuously working on Market optimizations as well as bug fixes and server side improvements to bring the system to full functionality. Subsequent patches should see more refinement to the Trade System, opening up more routes and eventually the NPC Trade Ships. Please note that at this stage, we may have to disable and re-enable Trades sometimes to work out and troubleshoot any issues that may potentially arise. What about the players that do not wish to utilise the market system? Asides from the market, are there any other big gold "earners" in the planning besides maps and whales/sunken treasures? Although the Trade System is meant to be one of the core pillars of gameplay, our main goal is that "gold comes from the sea". So yes, you'll see some additions and refinements to life on the ocean which should make getting gold easier for non-marketplace participants. Claim System We are looking into rebooting the original claim system that allowed players to take over a section of the island. This is done by placing down a claim structure that takes longer to build and is more robust than a claim flag. It may also have its own defenses. Once fully built, it will have to be destroyed for you to lose your claim and everything that goes along with it. We are not completely reverting back to the old claim system, but will be taking the original concept and building off of it. We are currently still testing some ideas. Ship Systems Getting a new ship system into the game that can support future expansions does take a bit more time than just putting out a "new" one on the existing system, and we are excited to be getting closer to it! We teased the first one, the Ramming Ship, a few weeks ago and we have a number of other ideas for these unique and specialized ships, but we don't want to spoil the surprise completely. The important note here is that we are moving from releasing ship parts to releasing complete ships that have special roles in the game and thus begin to grow the strategy of managing a fleet. All of the upcoming Ships that can be bought with gold will be primitive class and up. Ramshackles will still be available at Freeports for now, but when you buy things with gold they will be good ships. In regards to the existing Ship system, can we get tokens as random loot drops from bosses to craft schooners/brigs/galleons please? So there is a route for smaller groups to get boats? This probably won't happen. Right now we're really happy with how hard it is to get bigger ships. Many players have reported having more fun than ever with "Sloop Wars". Dropping tokens would benefit large companies more and go against what we are trying to do, which is to fundamentally change how ships are currently perceived. Right now, ship progression is linear. Once you can build a Schooner, you never build a Sloop again and so on up the ladder. We are more focussed on giving every ship type a viable role on the ocean and introducing strategy and reasons for each ship type to exist. On the Horizon Post integration of the claim system we'll be going back through all the content that is currently in the game and be making quality of life improvement and balance adjustments. We aren't very interested in nerfing things so much as bringing their fun factor way up. How far out are we from super wind sea-highways that make traveling around the map faster and consolidate content? We're trying to get it by the end of the year. A lot depends on how long it takes to balance the Trade System, new Ship System, and new Claim System. Any plans for expanding fishing so it doesn't suck so much? Like better random loot tables from fishing, maybe getting maps randomly from fishing. higher quality fishing pole=better maps/blueprints/gold etc. We can answer this by saying that we don't think there is nearly enough fun stuff to do on the water and we are looking to blow that out significantly. This will include water creature taming, better fishing, ocean resource gathering, and better diving. Any planned changes for freeports? Exponential decay or something to prevent freeport living? Not yet. We have to put in all the systems that allow lone wolves and small groups to survive elsewhere first. Long term, we envision settlements of any kind to be more friendly or hostile to you depending on how you've treated them in the past. Can you tell us more about the ideas behind how breeding is envisioned by the Dev team for beginner breeders through the most advanced breeders? Right now it takes too much time to do, unless an entire weekend day is devoted to it. Perhaps more difficulties while raising babies through their infant stages, but have it be for a much shorter duration so that it is more practical and enjoyable for a wider audience. One of our designers has taken the breeding and taming of creatures under her wing. In the background she is working on a completely revamped system that should be more of what you want to see. Can't tell you when it will ship, but I can tell you that we are working on it. Treasure Maps need a lot of work. Are big changes planned for the hunts to be more engaging? The distance requirement is also a negative map factor. It's not enjoyable to sail 7 grids out, 7 grids back to run a Masterwork map. Could maps that are of any qualities spawn on an island that are closer? Yes, a rework of this is planned, but it's down the road. It's not where we want it either and for sure we are looking at the treasure spawning closer. Additional Q&A What is some of the work that is currently being done to help with optimization and performance issues? About half our engineering staff is on performance and optimization. We know it's a problem and are working to fix it. The issue is that we also want to continue to put the rest of the planned features in the game to see if they are viable. We want a high performance game as much as you do. Remember, optimization isn’t going to suddenly happen in one patch. Some improvements may happen in small steps over time, while other improvements are a bigger engineering endeavor and may not be seen until we are further along. Is the team still looking at ways for players to keep some progress through wipes? Yes. We haven't figured out a balanced and scalable method yet, but we do want that. Adding a new global server structure with the Trade System was the first step on this and we'll keep working towards it. The challenge here is that the funnest part of a wipe for most people, is that they are all on an even footing again. Allowing players to retain progression may also allow them to maintain oppression. Can we please get a HUD indicator once a ship is protected by the new shiphouse structure? The green text popping up once the anchor is down is not such a great indicator. Totally agree that this is a bit confusing. A complete UI revamp is on the schedule and this item is part of that. This is nitpicking, but can handling sails trim opposite to how they do now? It is backwards to real world physics Ok. We'll look into it. Teleporting bed to bed, and killing yourself to respawn on lawless islands for discovery points is one of the lamest things I have to do in this game. Will other features be looked at for discovery points that are more interesting? In short, yes. We agree that killing yourself and bed teleporting is lame. We all want to fix that and give you more ways to travel the world more quickly. Will we be able to have the fog of war back? We had it early in the game, but it could be cheated by sharing game files and so was removed. The thrill of exploration was exciting for many players. As things stand at the moment, you just always have the full map explored. It's something we hadn't thought about. We’ll look into this idea. 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

Introduction Looking around, I have found a need for a comprehensive guide on the most efficient use of speed sails, cargo racks, and long-distance resource hauling. Especially now that singleplayer mode allows for quick and easy testing, we need to get more factual information about ATLAS out to the public. For simplicity's sake, I will avoid discussing weight sails, handling sails, and item quality (maybe you can look forward to a guide on those subjects from me in the future). Outline: TL;DR results Answering individual questions Quick summary of results Explanation of singleplayer testing Summary As a TL;DR, here are the questions I will be answering today and a quick summary of the answer: How do ship speed, sails, and weight work behind-the-scenes? Every ship has a max speed, if it theoretically weighed 0 lbs. Each sail you add contributes to the max speed, linearly. The speed is related to the square root of the percentage of your ship weight that is not filled. The following table has a few notable percentages (the speed % is compared to the max speed). For each type of ship, what speed sail configuration (small/medium/large) gives the fastest ship? sloop: 1 medium and 1 small speed sail schooner: 1 large and one small speed sail brig: 3 large speed sails galleon: 6 large speed sails What ship is the fastest? Contrary to popular belief, with optimal sails, galleons are the fastest, followed closely by schooners, and then brigantines and finally sloops (rafts aren't real ships :P). How many cargo racks should I put on my ship to get the fastest ship? This is a very complex question that depends on your ship type, the total weight you want to carry, your max weight, and the "empty" weight of your ship. As a rule of thumb, add a cargo rack if you have another 4,000 lbs in resources to put in one, and make sure you fill existing cargo racks as much as possible before adding more. What is the optimal way to haul resources long distances in as little time as possible? Once again, this depends largely on the factors in the previous answer. As a rule of thumb, load up your ship to around 50% weight when you are hauling resources. Here are some related questions that I Won't be answering today, but I will include some links to people that have answered them in the past (to varying degrees of thoroughness and accuracy - be your own judge on the matter): How accurate is the in-game depiction of knots (speed)? Do higher-quality (fine/journeyman/etc.) sails actually give any benefit? For a more in-depth discussion on each of these questions, keep reading! I will lead you through the testing I have done in singleplayer mode, and we will discuss factors that I had to ignore while testing, etc. Onward to information! IMPORTANT NOTE BEFORE WE BEGIN: I am going to use the terms "maximum speed" and "speed" throughout this guide, and these each refer to a different concept. The maximum speed of a ship is the theoretical maximum speed it could go if it weighed 0 lbs. The speed of a ship is the actual speed of the ship, with whatever weight it currently has on it. Most of the math is done with the maximum speed, not the current speed. I will start by talking about how to use the speed and weight of a ship to compute the maximum speed. How do speed, sails, and weight calculations work behind-the-scenes? Ship speed depends on the type of ship you are sailing, the number and type of sails your ship is equipped with, the number of cargo racks on board, and the weight percentage. We will discuss all of these things here. I will lead you through the testing I did and try to explain some of the nuances that I had to think about First - The effect of weight on ships: My results: Ship speed is related to the weight of the ship according to the following equation: speed = speed_max * sqrt(1-weight/max_weight) NOTE: This does not take into account cargo racks - see the equation below for a more complete equation. This results in a graph like the following: The maximum speed depends on the ship you are in and the sails you use - we will discuss this more in a bit. Since the speed changes as the square root of the remaining weight, you can see that the weight drops off really quickly as you get closer to 100% full. Thus, any weight above around 80% starts to really slow the ship down, and for that reason, I suggest never sailing above 85% capacity, since you just travel too slow. My testing method: I spawned each ship in using ssf <sloop, schooner, brigantine, galleon> (pick one of the arguments in the <>). I set up the wind using the commands setwind 100 and setignorewind true (both are necessary for consistency). Then I opened the sails to full and marked down the current weight of the ship and the speed, once it stabilized. Using this method, the ship speed is very stable, unlike in the actual servers, where the speed bounces all over the place. Now, I used the admin command gfi gem_base 500 0 0 to get 500 gems, and I recorded the weight and speed - rinse and repeat until the ship stops moving. We now have a data for ship speed versus weight. Plotting the speed of the ship versus the square root part of the equation above, I got a straight line with the slope equal to the maximum velocity for that sail arrangement: NOTE: Keep in mind that this method will spawn a schooner with 2 medium speed sails and a galleon with 5 large speeds sails, both of which are not the optimal sail arrangement. The max speed I got from these tests just correspond to a sub-optimal layout of sails. The important part here is how straight these lines are, which proves that this equation is correct. This is a great fit, so I am pretty confident about the equation and the max speeds we get from this method. From now on, we can just manipulate the speed equation to solve for speed_max if we know the weight and speed of the ship. This will be useful in the next section. Second - The effect of sails on the speed of a ship: My results: Sails add linearly to the max speed of a ship. That means that half as many sails will push the ship half as fast. However, I found it surprising that each type of sail increases the max speed differently for each ship. The following table summarizes my results. If you can find any patterns in that data, please let me know - I couldn't find anything. The main thing to note with this table is the speed per sail point. Remember that small sails cost 1 sail point, mediums cost 1.7, and larges cost 2.66 (ATLAS rounds this to 2.7, but it actually is 2.66 when you add multiple). The sails get more speed per point the larger you get (looking at a single ship). This means that it is always beneficial to use as large of sails as possible, and fill in any remaining points with smaller sails. This leads to the following optimal configurations: Sloop: 1 medium speed sail (max speed is 16.03 knots) Schooner: 1 large and 1 small speed sail (max speed is 21.05 + 4.55 = 25.6 knots) Brigantine: 3 large speed sails (max speed is 23.79) Galleon: 6 large speed sails (max speed is 26.88) NOTE: I discuss the optimal sail configuration more in the next section. This means that galleons are the fastest ship, followed closely by schooners, and then by brigs and sloops are the slowest. This is important, since many people tend to believe that schooners are the fastest ship, but this data shows that they are actually over a full knot slower on average. My testing method: I spawned the ships as I did above. This time, I removed all sails and set up the configuration I wanted to look at (for example, 16 small speed sails on a galleon). I marked the weight and speed while slowly removing sails. Plotting the maximum speed (calculated as mentioned above) versus number of sails gave a line, and fitting a linear trendline in excel gave a slope that you see in the table above. If you want to compute the max speed of a ship, just add together the values for each sail from the table above. Third - How do cargo racks affect speed? My results: A full set of cargo racks (2 for a schooner, 4 for a brig, and 6 for a galleon) will reduce your maximum speed by 40%. This means that each cargo rack reduces your speed by the following amounts: Schooner: 20% per cargo rack Brigantine: 10% per cargo rack Galleon: 6.67% per cargo rack If you only have some of the cargo racks, it affects your speed linearly (for example, 2 racks on a galleon reduces your speed by 40% * 2/6 = 13.3%). However, the racks also reduce the weight of anything inside of them by 80%, up to 8,000 lbs pre-reduction. This means that a full cargo rack reduces your ship weight by a total of 6400 lbs (80% of 8,000). The weight reduction will make your ship go faster, but it must counteract the speed reduction just for having the rack on the ship to be beneficial. This is complicated enough that I gave it its own section toward the end of this post. In general, always drop empty racks, and fill up your existing racks before you add another. My testing method: In singleplayer, spawn in ships as mentioned above. Get the ship up to speed and start adding empty cargo racks. Make sure to take note of the weight each time you add a cargo rack (they weigh 50 lbs each). You can then compute the maximum speed as mentioned above, and the plot of maximum speed versus number of cargo racks gives a straight line. The slope of this line is the maximum speed decrease per cargo rack. This will vary based on your sail configuration, but the percentage speed decrease (speed decrease / maximum speed) will be the same for every ship. Assuming you read the section above about maximum speed, we can update our equation to include the number of cargo racks: speed = speed_max * (1 - 0.40 * num_racks/max_racks) * sqrt(1-weight/max_weight) In addition, I added weight to the cargo racks to verify that the rest of the equation still holds with cargo racks. Indeed, you see the same square root behavior. This means that the cargo rack has only the two effects listed above: max speed decrease, and weight decrease. What speed sail configuration makes the fastest ship/ what type of ship is the fastest? My results: The table in the previous section summarizes my results about the how each sail type affects the maximum speed of a ship. Using this data, you can see that larger sails are generally more efficient than smaller sails. For example, look at a brigantine: Large speed sail adds 7.93 knots to your max speed, whereas the medium sails add 4.24 to the max speed. This means that the large speed sails add 2.94 knots per sail point, and mediums speed sails only add 2.49 knots per sail point. This is the reason that you should always use larger sails first, then fill in any remaining points with smaller sails. Using the table on the left, you can see that galleons are the fastest ship in the game, when used with 6 large speed sails. This is followed by a schooner with 1 large and 1 small speed sail, and then by a brig with 3 large speed sails, and finally the sloop with 1 medium speed sail. My testing method: I mentioned it above, but once again, briefly - spawn in each type of ship and mark down the weight of the ship, the speed you travel, and the number of sails as you vary the number and type of sails on the ship. The plot of maximum speed versus number of sails is a line, and the slope is equal to the max speed increase per sail. As for the optimal sail configuration, I did not test every combination of sails possible for each ship. Although we previously discussed why larger sails are more efficient, this does not automatically mean that using only the largest sails is always going to be the most efficient, since there are some leftover points that could, in theory, be used more effectively. I set up an excel spreadsheet (on the left) with all possible combinations of sails for which you cannot add another sail. Some of these use all of the sail points, and some do not. I then computed the maximum speed with each configuration and looked for the maximum speed out of all combinations. This just so happened to be the result where the largest sails are used first, as mentioned above (and everywhere else). This just proves definitively that there is no odd combination of sails that uses sail points more effectively that beats the tactic above. How many cargo racks should I add to my ship to maximize speed? Another way to phrase this question would be - how much cargo would I have to put into a new cargo rack to justify the additional speed decrease? This depends on the ship max carry weight, your ship's "empty" weight, and the number of cargo racks already on your ship. First, let's categorize the weight into "free" and "fixed" weight, by whether or not you can put it into a cargo rack. Fixed weight includes plank weight, repair materials, and crafting stations, to name a few examples. Free weight can include whatever cargo you have on board, armor or tools, or even blueprints (although you shouldn't store blueprints in cargo racks - there are only 100 slots to fill up with 8,000 lbs to be the most efficient). The reason we want to categorize the weight is because the fixed weight is just dead weight, there is nothing we can do to reduce it. However, it will affect when we should add racks, since the speed is not linear with respect to weight. This means that we should add a rack when the amount of free weight we can store increases the speed of the ship (by reducing the weight) more than the extra cargo rack would decrease the speed. Mathematically, this gives us the equation (where x is the free weight and n is the number of cargo racks currently on the ship) Obviously, this gets complicated fast, since we want to solve for x... Well, I did that for you, and here is the equation for the amount of free weight you need to store when adding a cargo rack: where the empty weight is your fixed weight, and f(n) is listed below: ok, this is still quite complex (we haven't even touched what to do when the free weight is outside of the range between 0 and 8,000, for example), let's unpack this a little. Unpacking the results: If the math makes you queasy, that's fine. I assume most people don't want the math, just the rule they should follow. Unfortunately, there is no simple rule, because the math is so complicated. But, we can get a few interesting tidbits from it: The heavier your ship is without any cargo (the fixed weight), the earlier you should be adding cargo racks If your galleon is very light (no fixed weight), the you should add a rack if you have 15.6% of your weight capacity in free weight. For a stock ship with 30k lbs capacity, this would be about 4,700 lbs of cargo. Of course, this assumes you have all your other racks filled already. Here is a graph comparing the speed of a ship with optimal use of cargo racks versus no use of cargo racks. The flatter sections show where racks are added (for a default galleon with no fixed weight): This may feel a little underwhelming, but you can get much more accurate numbers if you actually compute the free weight from the equation above. As a note, the amount of free weight needed changes with the number of racks on your ship, so it will change as you add more and more cargo. I suggest you add a sign on your ship, noting the ship capacity and fixed weight right after you make it, and then keep track of when you should add each of the 6 boxes on another sign. What is the optimal way to haul resources long distances in as little time as possible? This is another very complicated question. In addition to the problem of the cargo racks (addressed thoroughly above), you now have the added complexity of changing your goal. There are (as far as I can see) 2 main goals when it comes to hauling resources: Haul as many resources as possible in a given amount of time. This usually occurs when you have a supply route and you will keep making return trips indefinitely. Haul a given number of resources in the shortest time possible. This usually happens when you are trading or want to go on a relatively small-scale resource expedition. For the first goal, you want to minimize the time spent on each pound of resource, so you can move as much as possible with the time you have. For the second goal, you are trying to minimize the total time spent, which is not always accomplished by moving the fastest at any given time. This is more complex. Let's look at each one individually: Hauling indefinite resources in a given amount of time: If you haul more at once, you move slower but get more across in one trip. If you haul less, you move faster but get fewer resources in one trip. We also have to consider that half of the time you are sailing, you are just bringing the empty ship back to the resource location. This means that the fixed weight of your ship makes a big difference in the optimal strategy. If your fixed weight is high, you should haul more cargo to avoid making many trips. If your fixed weight is low, you should haul less and move faster, since the wasted time on the return trip is quite small. Working through some of the math, I made some plots for the item transfer rate versus the loaded ship weight (with optimal cargo racks). Here they are, and we will discuss them after: It turns out that for 0 fixed weight, you should carry 12,530 lbs to be most efficient, and for 10,000 fixed weight, you should load up to 19,600 lbs. However, you can see from the 10k fixed weight graph that it may be possible to improve the efficiency further, since the cargo racks are optimized for speed, not item transfer rate. Specifically, adding the last cargo rack earlier would translate into extending the rightmost section of the graph further to the left, where it looks like it may reach a higher rate than this optimization allows. This is an area that can certainly be improved in the future. More unpacking: In general, you should load your ship up to about 50% of the way between the empty weight and the full weight to get the most efficient run. It can get better than that, but this will get you a majority of the way there, if you use your cargo racks optimally. Not much else to say here, that is the main rule-of-thumb of this section. Hauling a fixed amount of resources as quickly as possible: The goal here is just to minimize the time taken to get the resources back. Since speed drops off quickly as your ship fills up, the strategy will be to split the load up into equal-sized portions and take the same amount of weight each trip, so you avoid a few heavy/slow loads. Then, since every trip takes the same amount of time, we can just optimize each trip. However, the optimal weight HEAVILY depends on the amount of cargo you want to haul back. Look at the next graph (of optimal haul weights versus the target weight you wish to carry back), and let me know if you can make any sense of the chaos: One bit of information to be gleaned from this mess is what happens when you need to haul a LOT of cargo. The chaotic mess converges to the same number that we got for the case where we wanted to haul an indefinite amount of cargo at as fast a rate as possible. Here is a zoomed-out image of the same graph I just showed. Obviously this behavior is much more complex than the behavior when you just want to maximize the rate. Therefore, I suggest that you just follow the advice there and let this section be more of a curiosity than actual advice. I mean, if you want to calculate the optimal carry weight every time you want to haul cargo, be my guest Summary Here, I will just list a bunch of bullet points that summarize the findings throughout the rest of the guide: As weight increases, your ship speed will fall faster and faster. Therefore, you should aim to keep your ship at around 50% capacity as a rule of thumb. This balances the amount of cargo you are hauling with the speed decrease from the additional weight. Galleons are the fastest ship in the game, followed by schooners, and then brigantines, and sloops are the slowest. When you are putting sails on these ships, start with the largest possible sail and fill in smaller sails afterward, to get the fastest sail configuration. As a rule of thumb, add a cargo rack when you have 4,000 pounds of resources available to store in it, and always fill up any existing cargo racks as much as possible. The heavier your ship is without any cargo on board, the earlier you want to add cargo racks when filling up your ship. The perfectly optimal weight arrangement is very complicated, and depends on many factors. You can look through the rest of this post for more info, but just know that these rules-of-thumb may not always be suitable for your exact scenario, and you'll need to use a bit of common sense. Thank you for reading through this quite long guide. If you didn't understand a part of it (or any of it), I will be keeping up-to-date with the comments, so feel free to ask any questions there. If you have any ideas you want me to look into further, I am open to suggestions for another guide. If you liked this extremely thorough type of guide, please let me know, so I can be motivated to make more in the future.

In single player ocean at least, Ships of the Damned appear on the mini-map. So, it's rather easy to check the map and sail around them without even seeing them. On the stupidly high temperatures, I think there is a bug were jumping in the water to cool off isn't registered and you temp stays at 61 degrees, and you die. Maybe quit and load back in? I suspect running close to water and then away from the water a couple of times will also trigger it to register. For gold The Tramp and its shipyard don't require gold. So, build a Tramp with a large handling sail (closest the wheel) and a medium speed sail. Before releasing, replace the cargo attachments with a diving attachment (with rails), dingy attachment and two tame cargo attachments. The default cargo attachments slow the ship down, so you don't want any of them. Initially manually handle the large handling sail and the wheel and use flotsam to get gold for two crew. Have them man the sails. Then wear a lantern and dive on the wrecks. This gets 80-200 gold each time. A Tramp in this config will easily outrun any SotD and wild pirate ship. Only put points into sturdiness and resistance.

Tried joing the xbox only official server and immediately crashed after crashing all day and cross play server any advice or help I really like this game ans want to play it with my friend but if I can't even load in I doubt he will be able to either

Hi all, I've been in this forum for just a few hours. I'm not a pro when it comes to setting up servers or ark servers in general. But I managed to get pretty far in setting up my servers. They start without any errors. The only problem I have is with my NAT, but that's due to the fact that my router suxx. So here we go, the guide: Contents: 1. download gameserver with steamCMD 2. download the Atlas world editor from github 3. create a *.json file with the world editor 4. export the *.json files 5. Redis 6. preparing your batch files 7. error handling (unfinished) 8. port forwarding (NAT setup) 9. controll / start everything 1. Download game server with SteamCMD so first of all, get yourself steamCMD from here: https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/client/installer/steamcmd.zip if the above link does not work, please go to the official valve page to download it from there: https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/SteamCMD#Downloading_SteamCMD unzip the downloaded file to your favorable place (I did put mine to c:\steamCMD to make things easier for myself. Be aware that you need some space for the dedicated server to download. I believe the Atlas server software is around 18GB at the moment.) start steamcmd.exe as administrator (it also should work without starting it as an admin, but to be on the safe side...) type (without quotes) "login anonymous" --> this will log you in now you have 2 options: Option 1: download the dedicated software to a specific folder: type following command and hit enter: force_install_dir "yourHDD:\yourPreferredFolder\" +app_update 1006030 validate Please replace yourHDD with the drive you want to install it to. Please replace "yourPreferredFolder" with your desired folder name (probably something like AtlasDedicatedServer). It is possible that the command validate is not working, in this case, just leave it away. This should no start the download of the desired server files into your specified folder. Option 2 (recommended): download the dedicated server software to your steamCMD folder and let steamCMD handle everything for you type following command and hit enter: app_update 1006030 validate in case the command validate is causing issues, just leave it away after it has dowwnloaded and verified/installed the dedicated server continue with step 2. download the Atlas editor from github 2. download the Atlas world editor from github go to https://github.com/GrapeshotGames/ServerGridEditor you will find a button "Clone or download". Click on it and select "Download ZIP" Once downloaded, unzip it to your desired place 3. create a *.json file with the world editor Prepping the map: go into the unziped folder Drive:\...\ServerGridEditor-master\ and open "ServerGridEditor.exe" as an admin (just in case... obviously this is always on your own risk. Things work fine for me without having it to start as an admin) click on "Load Project" either you are already in the proper folder "Projects" or you will have to navigate to x:\FolderWhereYouPlacedTheServerGridEditor\Projects and select "ServerGridSmall.json" This ill give you a small map with a 2x2 grid. go to Project --> Edit Change the field "Atlas ID" to a unique number (lol... that's the description, but yeah... how to know it is unique??? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ) (Change the field "Friendly Name" to your server name I guess ¯\_(ツ)_/¯) click on save tick the checkbox at the bottom of the window in the main editor screen, that is labeled with:"Show Ship Paths" use the mousewheel to zoom out of the map. At some point, you should see some "circles" with red and blue dots. These things are apparently ship paths (probably NPC ship paths). You need to delete them. To do so, move your mouse over one of the black dots (the mouse cursor will change to a hand symbol) and press "shift + delete". At some point I would like to add more info here about how to change the map, adding and removing islands, but for now I am too lazy Prepping the Server related info for the map: "ctrl + left mouse" on the top left grid to open up the "Edit Server" window for your first (in this case also home server) server Change "IP" to your external IP address (can be looked up at www.whatismyip.com for example...) Change Port: 57550 (this will be one of the ports that you need to forward on your router. So obviously you can change it to what ever you want if you know what you do) Change Game Port: 5750 (this will be one of the ports that you need to forward on your router. So obviously you can change it to what ever you want if you know what you do) click on "Save" "ctrl + left mouse" on the top right grid to open up the "Edit Server" window for your second server Change "IP" to your external IP address (can be looked up at www.whatismyip.com for example...) Change Port: 57551 (this will be one of the ports that you need to forward on your router. So obviously you can change it to what ever you want if you know what you do) Change Game Port: 5751 (this will be one of the ports that you need to forward on your router. So obviously you can change it to what ever you want if you know what you do) click on "Save" "ctrl + left mouse" on the bottom left grid to open up the "Edit Server" window for your third server Change "IP" to your external IP address (can be looked up at www.whatismyip.com for example...) Change Port: 57552 (this will be one of the ports that you need to forward on your router. So obviously you can change it to what ever you want if you know what you do) Change Game Port: 5752 (this will be one of the ports that you need to forward on your router. So obviously you can change it to what ever you want if you know what you do) click on "Save" "ctrl + left mouse" on the bottom right grid to open up the "Edit Server" window for your fourth server Change "IP" to your external IP address (can be looked up at www.whatismyip.com for example...) Change Port: 57553 (this will be one of the ports that you need to forward on your router. So obviously you can change it to what ever you want if you know what you do) Change Game Port: 5753 (this will be one of the ports that you need to forward on your router. So obviously you can change it to what ever you want if you know what you do) click on "Save" You now have configured the ports for your servers and you also already have set the external IP address of your hosts, so that people can connect to your server. The grid will be managed by your Redis server. A note to the above. I am not 100% sure about the difference between "Port" and "Gane Port" and it might be that this is causing the issues for me. At the moment I believe that both need to be able to talk to the internet, thus both need to be forwarded in the NAT settings. So this part of the tutorial might change if I am more clear about the meaning of these two parameters. 4. export the *.json files Go to Export --> Map Image this will export the map image. Put it into your ServerGridEditor-master\Projects folder. Name it ServerGrid.jpg Go to Export --> Local Export Put it into your ServerGridEditor-master\Projects folder You now should have 3 files ServerGrid.jpg ServerGrid.json ServerGrid.ServerOnly.json Copy these files into your dedicated server Drive:\...\ATLAS Dedicated Server\ShooterGame (for me this looks like following: C:\steamCMD\steamapps\common\ATLAS Dedicated Server\ShooterGame\) 5. Redis Go to Drive:\...\ATLAS Dedicated Server\AtlasTools\RedisDatabase (obviously, if you chose another path for your dedicated server, change the path accordingly) start the "redis-server_start.bat" and boom, it should just run like that. BTW. if it shouldn't run, try starting it as admin Note: I changed the redis.conf file (just open it with a text editor to edit) and changed the password, as I think it's a bit risky to leave the standard password, since this whole thing will be exposed to the public web. If you do change the password, make sure to also change it in the world editor before you create the map. In the world editor go to Project --> Edit and you will find a section called "New Database Settings" and 5 rows "DB Entry 1 - 5" and a field called Password. Change it there accordingly and export the map. I also did set the network settings to "bind 127.0.0.1" for testing reasons. I am not giving more context to this at the moment as I think only experienced people should screw with this and it should not be needed to get your server up and running. 6. preparing your batch files Go to your Atlas dedicated server folder Drive:\...\ATLAS Dedicated Server\ShooterGame\Binaries\Win64 (or in my case to C:\steamCMD\steamapps\common\ATLAS Dedicated Server\ShooterGame\Binaries\Win64 Create 4 *.bat files and name them something like Grid1.bat, Grid2.bat, Grid3.bat, Grid4.bat (or whatever you prefer) Edit the Grid1.bat file (with a text editor...) put following command in there: ShooterGameServer.exe Ocean?ServerX=0?ServerY=0?AltSaveDirectoryName=B1?MaxPlayers=100?ReservedPlayerSlots=30?QueryPort=57550?Port=5750?SeamlessIP=1.2.3.4 -log -server -NoBattlEye Edit the Grid2.bat file ShooterGameServer.exe Ocean?ServerX=1?ServerY=0?AltSaveDirectoryName=B1?MaxPlayers=100?ReservedPlayerSlots=30?QueryPort=57551?Port=5751?SeamlessIP=185.82.207.104 -log -server -NoBattlEye Edit the Grid3.bat file ShooterGameServer.exe Ocean?ServerX=0?ServerY=1?AltSaveDirectoryName=B1?MaxPlayers=100?ReservedPlayerSlots=30?QueryPort=57552?Port=5752?SeamlessIP=185.82.207.104 -log -server -NoBattlEye Edit the Grid4.bat file ShooterGameServer.exe Ocean?ServerX=1?ServerY=1?AltSaveDirectoryName=B1?MaxPlayers=100?ReservedPlayerSlots=30?QueryPort=57554?Port=5754?SeamlessIP=185.82.207.104 -log -server -NoBattlEye AFAIK the parameter MaxPlayers=100? is for max allowed players on a server and ReservedPlayerSlots=30? is the soft cap for the servers. So it should show probably that 30 people could join, where as MaxPlayers then is the hard hard cap. boom, ready to go, almost... the NAT settings are still waiting and maybe some issues to resolve. 7. error handling (unfinished) To be honest, you should already have overcome all the so far reported issues on this board. The ones I am aware of are: ship path error: that was due to the fact that there was a ship path outside of the server grid. By deleting them as described in the step "3. create a *.json file with the world editor" this should not happen anymore Sometimes people forget to start the redis server before running the batch files. This obivously also causes errors If ports are not configured correctly, this can also cause issues. Double and tripple check if the ports and public IP set in the "ServerGrid.json" file are set correctly (there is 4 sections, one for each server and it's ports and the public IP address) if your redis does not start properly, maybe try the new redis distribution (use google to find the link) and just start that instead. There is also a docoumentation on the official download page. ah whatever... here it is: https://redis.io/ https://redis.io/documentation (to be continued...) 8. port forwarding (NAT setup) Port forwarding... the good old NAT settings hitting you with nearly every online game. So there is in general enoug docoumentation around the web on how to do this with your specific router. Just google it again if required. Otherwise you basically need to open the above under point 6 mentioned ports to be forwarded to your server. I will try to guide you through this, but only in a very general way. You still will have to get your password for the admin login and understand where to change the NAT settings on your router. press "windows key" + r type cmd and press enter type ipconfig copy your standard gateway IP address (something like 192.168.1.1 or 192.168.0.1 or 10.0.0.1 or whatever) open a browser and paste the IP address there. This will bring you the admin console of your router. Navigate to your NAT settings (also called Port forwarding, usually under advanced settings) Setup following ports to be forwarded to your server UPD & TCP 57550 UPD & TCP 5750 UPD & TCP 57551 UPD & TCP 5751 UPD & TCP 57552 UPD & TCP 5752 UPD & TCP 57553 UPD & TCP 5753 9. Control / start everything In Theory, everything should be set now to start your server grid... Exciting It's very simple: Start your redis server (if you followed this guide without any break, it already should be up and running) double click your Grid1.bat to start your first server wait for it until it is fully started, then continue with the others (Grid2.bat...) in the same way. I might add some pictures, but I think it all should be quite easy to understand without. Notes / upcoming Please add comments and let me know if something is wrong, so I can keep it up to date. In case there is feedback, I will look into this thread on a regular base during the next days to make it possible for everyone to start their dedicated server grids. At some point it might be nice to also dig into wan clusters (I just came up with this term...) and how to get bigger grids working together with your friends. I think that this would be cool. I would also like to add a guide on how to change server grids. At the moment, if you join the official servers, you see there is a huge map, but not all grids are up and running. So I can imagine that it is as simple as just creating a huge map and all according batch files, but only run the ones you want and in case you want to move to another grid, just start up the required server. It might also be a clever idea to actually run this whole thing on seperate VM's. One for each server, so that it might be possible to allocate cores and ram better. But I am no expert in this at all. Since AMD has put out their 8 cores, things changed a bit in the server area, so this might be something that people are interested in because of that. Also obviously there is a few people on this board with xeon cpu's and they probably know a lot about how to set this up the best way? How ever if possible, I will dig deeper into the whole topic, except the devs finally will provide a proper guide about it. (looking at you devs... wtf? Just 15 more minutes invested into your documentation would have helped tons of people a lot)

I do understand starting new seasons, however, are the seasons really just 3-4 months? I get it, wipe and let folks try and get the lands they want, etc., but, 3-4 months without serious new content? I am a glutton for the grind but, this seems a bit much. ;)

I don't know where the best place to have discussions for this to explain what I feel is the best way to keep as many players as possible happy. I will use my stream as a faster way to talk to people as I write this massive suggestion thread. I am going to cover what I feel are the current problems of this game as well as what I feel could be done better. I will constantly be updating it. Currently the "hot topic" is claims which I will talk about the directions the game could take and what I feel would be best. I also will talk about things I feel are just poorly designed. Claims: Currently the PvE is in a lawless vs claim flag state. They have pros and cons I will talk about each system and how I believe it will play out. Current System: This system was good on paper but in execution is awful. Some people could not get land, some could not hold it, some people have more land then they should. The solution they came up was switch to lawless. This idea is terrible in my opinion. The amount of griefing that will take place will make the game unplayable. I have seen galleys with gates under them in lawless. I have heard of people that box in tames while people are farming. I've seen resources walled off. It's just going to be terrible. One person could literally grief a whole tribe. If you stop your boat somewhere for the night you could wake up with a box around it. The argument is the box will decay the solution to griefing it would be to repair the box then. If somebody doesn't like you they just wall your base in. It's so many possible kinds of grief you would need to watch out for the game would just be unplayable. (look at official on Ark) -->Idea Make a PvE server for lawless and for claimable (by server I mean NA-PvE-Lawless and a NA-PvE-Claims). Everybody wins... Kinda. I personally don't like the idea of lawless but some people want it so let them have it. // 3/14 update Claims per person: The idea of limiting the amount of claims a person can have has come up but it opens to a type of grief some of the bigger tribes used to kick out smaller ones. They would claim around them then make a box preventing the person from using their claim. The point was to they make you not want to be around the island and you quit or leave then they get your land. It was dirty and I would prefer people don't have to deal with this. It's why I lean towards 1 company in control of 1 island. --> Solution: The announcement on the last captains log was that they are going to use the PvP system of 1 flag per island. The size of the island your tribe can claim is based on the size of your tribe. (Bigger tribe = bigger islands) This made some people angry. I believe with no changes to how the flags work this would be a huge headache. With balance changes I think this is going to be the system that defines Atlas as a game. The problems I have seen are- -Anybody can build anywhere --> The island owner's job is to keep it clean. When the changes to the claim flag came out a lot of people came to F11 and built taming pens all over the place without us knowing. Some of them are still there undemolishable. The lawless griefing will happen if the owner can't say who can and can't build on the island. If somebody allowed to build on the island decides to grief their neighbor then the owner needs the ability to fix it. (Basically the owner is an unpaid GM for the game it's a kind of civil service for this dying game). Some people hate the idea of taxes. -Taxes // 3/14 update- So if we claim the land and it has metal on it and we notice that other people keep taking the metal on our claim our solution is put a wall up and keep others out so we can get the metal on our land. The tax bank is to deter people from keeping others out of their resources because they are losing out on potential resources. // (Note I frown on walling people out types of behavior) --> This is a touchy subject for a lot of people. People don't want to pay taxes to their overlords. When the tax bank first came out you could set it to whatever and it would not effect the person harvesting. So 10% taxes would make 110% item the harvester got 100% and the bank would make 10%, at 30% it would make 130% item and give the bank 30% while giving the harvester 100%. I guess they fixed it at some point. This is an MMO and should be played with a bunch of people so lets turn this problem into a solution that makes the game better. The way I would do this is going to get mathematical but all in all I feel it will make the game better. --> Lets make the "Tax rate" not change what happens when people harvest on the island it just makes the bonus and they get 100% of what they farm. So the "mega" tribe goes and puts their "Claim tickets" into their bank so they can claim an island. Each claim ticket is worth .5% tax. So an island that takes 20 tickets will have a tax base of 10%. Another tribe approaches them and would like to build their base on this island but they are not big enough to have actually taken the island (tax tribe). The mega tribe is like no problem they set it so the tax tribe can build. The tax tribe then can put their claim tickets into the tax bank (they have to put at least 1 in). Lets say they put in 10 tickets the bonus for the mega on everybody that harvests on the island goes up to 15%. This is the mutualism. This is the meat that is going to make this beautiful for everybody. So far it helps the tax tribe a little and the mega quite a bit. The tax tribe gets to put down a resource chest on land that can be flagged as the "Primary chest" this chest will get what they give to the mega. So that tribe that put 10 tickets in gets a 5% bonus from what the mega farms on the island. They help each other out. So the mega can get a tax rate of something super high lets raise the cap to like 50% (That is 100 people living on the island) The tax tribe max 25% (Don't want 2 megas to just share a huge island and abuse the farm bonus). Perks for all. -Random boats --> Logging in and there's a random boat parked in our harbor just blocking everything has got to be one of the most annoying things ever. This is a big advantage can come from a tribe that claims the island. A safe spot for people to anchor is something that is important in the game but people being able to anchor anywhere is also a problem cause you can grief with it. I think the lighthouse should be the solution. I people should not be allowed to anchor on a claimed island except around where a lighthouse is placed. I think the lighthouse should act as a parking meter though charging an increasing gold per hour. So lets say you are just parking for the night would be 50 gold. The time would increase it though so the longer you are there the more it becomes. So if you leave it there for 3 nights it's 500 gold in total. If you leave it there for a week it's 5k. This might seem steep but leaving your boat in somebodies area is rude IMO. This would create a problem for people trying to do maps. So I believe you should be able to anchor anywhere for a 2 hour window. After that time your ship would just unachor. The mechanic of the time flex would be based off of if you unanchor in an area it then takes that long for it to come off cooldown. This prevents you from just going out and coming back in real quick to reset cooldowns. So if you park for 8 hours at a lighthouse in 8 hours it will be back to 0 total. -Instanced islands The instanced island does 2 things. Basically it's the single player mode for the game. Trying to have a regular computer run this game without a server would be nuts because of the optimization issues. So to fix that people could have their own little island (it would actually be a medium island) with all the biomes and whatever they could just hermit to and build whatever crazy stuff they want with access to all the plants and tames and whatever. The only thing you wouldn't have would be boats the reason is because you would have a bed to teleport you to and from the island because it would be more like a solo/creative area for the game. The tutorial island is not intended to have any bearing on the outside world. Some people state they just want an area to build and don't want to play with others this is the area that they can do that on. This also will free up some land. This area would also replace the tutorial zone (freeport). I really like the freeport but it makes the game too easy IMO. (500k fiber/hour solo) etc. What I would want them to do would be change the freeport so only the NPC town part is not buildable then lawless area for the rest of the island. The lawless area would give the generic resources and have the damage decay of 100% damage over 3 days so people didn't use it as a primary base location. People learn to play on the personal island then adventure out of the freeport to lawless and build their first boat. This is what the lawless zones original intentions were so now people launch from freeports. (new players atleast) This will make it so the grids that are currently marked as lawless will become obsolete. So they can make them claimable. This leads to a huge amount of claimable islands. The idea is to make it so theirs more land than needed. I personally want the land to be held by your desire to log on and farm to keep the bank filled. -Finding claimable land //Changed 3/16 If the island is not claimed its name will be Blue if it is Claimed with no space it will be red, if it is claimed but has spots you can on build it will be yellow. What does spots you can build on mean? I tossed the idea around in my head about if I could change the game how would I limit where people can build. I talked to Winter Thorne and he mentioned putting an app in to the lighthouse. This set off a lightbulb. So a Mega tribe comes in and claims the island but wants tenants. As the tribe that controls the island the owner can drop a flag. They can go up to the flag and set a number on it this number determines how many tickets it will cost. They can also write in a note that says this is the rules for living on the island. This new flag now shows up on the map and basically says ROOM FOR RENT! Which will clean up spam and stuff on the forum. You can also put a note on it that describes resources around it how to get to them etc. So a player/tribe that is looking for an area because they don't want the responsibility of owning an island can go there and be like yes or no. If they want it they can click the flag and hit they are interested. This will put a message in the owner tribe's chat that says "Player is interested in area X/Y" the flag on the island symbol will also change color for the tribe. They come over talk to the person if needed and then they transfer the flag to them. This will transfer ownership of the land in the flag to the tenant. The owner tribe can no longer build in that area. The buildings they had in that area decay and delete in 4 days. So the tenant has complete control over that area. This fixes the i'm afraid the land owner will come delete my stuff. A new problem could arise that the tenant is toxic or stops playing or whatever. The tribe owner from the owner tribe can come over and remove the flag. If that happens it will go into a demo mode and 4 days later the land will go back to the island owner and deletes anything there (so they can't do it to steal it). This gives the tenant tribe time to get their stuff out. An exploit could be to wall off the flag so the owner can't click it. This is fixed by just needing the owner to drop another flag in the circle of the tenant flag, instead of dropping a new flag it just deletes the current one. The land also can't be claimed while the tenant's stuff is still there. Another rule for flags will be no overlap. This makes it so people get some space when they get space. Some people might not like the idea of having people put claim tickets into the flag. This does 2 things it would do synergy with that tax bonus idea and it also prevents a solo player from having a base on every single island. Which if the land owner doesn't mind they can set the flag to a different setting. Freebuild! which basically turns the area into lawless with no decay. //Added 3/16 --Reworked island resources A possible problem with a tribe claiming a whole island is the big tribes take all the small islands and the smaller tribes have nothing. I personally would not like this because this means I now have to maintain more tames and banks and then sail all over the place. I do see how it could be used by bigger tribes as a way to have the spread of resources needed for the blueprints controlled inside the tribe. I posted this in another thread but I believe the resources should be changed the higher the tier of island. The biggest islands should have 4-5 different wood/thatch/fiber/metal/stone/flint they should also have gems/crystal/honey/sap/salt/coal and they should be able to grow any crop and breed any animal. This will make the bigger islands way more lucrative than a bunch of little islands. Looking at high end progression I want to have the resource spread for blueprints and the best tames possible. This might seem extreme I see why people would be afraid of the big tribes taking smaller islands. If there's a small, a medium, and a large island with the same exact resources and next grid over is a little island that has a resource I can't get in the current grid then I am going to be using 2 islands anyway so it becomes an efficiency especially if I already have tickets put into another island somewhere else and now it becomes 2 smalls with the resources I need vs another medium/large that offers the same as a small. Another thing this would fix is that small tropical paradise with the waterfalls in the multiple tiers (B6/7 has one I think) could have a really neat base on it. It also has massive amounts of oil on it so I could see it being claimed just for the use of the like 20+ oil spawns it has (Like 200-500 a node). This could be turned into a favoritism for megas which I could see being argued either way. The way I look at it is that big island the mega has will be even nicer for the tenants to have with a resource spread. By having the tenant tribes put tickets in for the claims they have on these bigger islands that have more resources you are also going to free up more space for solo/smaller tribes that want to do their own thing. The people congregating will also help strengthen the community (it's an MMO). The complaint could be taxes which I strongly recommend you turn into a bonus not a tax. The only problem I could see would be people congregating on certain grids and then nobody in most of the map. However it will free up a ton of land doing that which will make a lot of space for growth. """ I copy pasted this from what I would do as a designer for changes to tames As a designer I would scrap how animals are at this point. Currently this game is turning into an Ark expansion. I would decide to stop living in Ark's shadow. Currently I've done all PvE material so my day consists of riding around on a level 70 bear with elephants behind me harvesting X resource with hopes of actually needing blue print weapons to complete the next PvE tier. Currently riding is basically a requirement for things to do effectively either everything else needs to be brought up or beastmastery needs to be brought down. I would change the tree to crew. It would allow you to get animals but the animals would have something they bring to the table and not be rideable. The shoulder mount thing would be fine but cruising around on (current meta tame) is basically Ark. So I now have a blank slate and need to make it so I can get tames. I would want it to be a low chance from mate boosted animals when you harvest their bodies or a high chance from an alpha. Could also put a vendor in the game that sells the babies. So now my players have a baby X. This whole temperature thing currently is silly and the way to fix it going to require a lot of resources from my company (grapeshot) so the cost would be too great to keep this. The concept is cool but the creation and implementation creates a poor user interaction with it so I would scrap it. The concept of feeding animals something special is a good one so I could fill up a bear with honey and it would mature faster or just use berries cause they are easy but longer time until they are grown. So now I have a way for players to get tames so I now need to make them useful. This would be the bottom tiers of the crew tree. Different animals would have a function that fall into combat or utility. For this I would think of how I envision an amazing creature of the type. Bear- Combat- Taunt enemies around the player acting as a tank. Chicken- Utility- When on wander produces eggs Cow- Utility- Produces milk (more on wander) Bull- Utility- when on wander fertilizes nearby crops Crow- Shoulder- When you die acts as a bed. Razortooth- Combat- nerfs alphas. Shieldhorn- Combat- Produces a shield that deflects projectiles. (Currently elementals have little counter play) Elephant- Utility- When on wander collects wood. Giant Pig- Utility- When on wander finds buried items. Giraffe- Utility- When on wander gathers thatch. Horse- Utility- Rideable, pulls carriage and cargo which helps tranports large amounts of people or heavy amounts of resources great distances (we need something that makes unloading a galley not horrible) Lion- Combat- grabs smaller creatures. Monkey- Shoulder- barehanded becomes climbing picks at a much higher stam use rate. Ostrich- Utility- Harvests seeds when on wander. Parrot- Shoulder- Makes musical instruments easier to play and buffs the buff radius. Penguin- shoulder- fortitude buff. Rabbit- Shoulder- When on shoulder provides a movement speed. Rhino- Utility- When on wander gathers stone. Seagull- Shoulder- When on shoulder reduces/removes fog debuff Sheep- Utility- When on wander gathers fiber Tiger- Combat- reduces movement speed of enemies. Vulture- Utility- When on shoulder decreases vitamin depletion. Wolf- Combat- has a howl that increases damage. Turtle- Make tameable- Shoulder- Increase swimspeed, decreases oxygen use, and reduces deep diving debuff. Rattlesnake- Utility- When on wander produces venom, venom is used for anti-venom which reduces torpidity. So now that I have all these super cool animals I need to transport them and the current bug is they fall off (scavenging tames in the ocean is super lucrative I know a guy that got a Razortooth) I would make it so boats have a animal attachment that is basically a cage and when you send the animal to it the animal gets turned into more of an item that is placed inside the cage instead of being on the boat (no more lost at sea tames yay). We now need somewhere to put all these wandering tames. I would make it so tames on wander don't leave your territory. I would also make it so you can apply a filter on the map to see where certain tames are. Now for the meaty part of the new tree. I would make it so NPC's you get from SotD have a type of suffix like Bob. Bob would be a builder. You would need points in crew to hire Bob and then you can put him on a smithy. If you have skills in construction you would be able to make things like stone at a reduced cost. The points in crew would only be to get Bob, the points in construction would make it so you can get the discounted building from Bob. This would make Bob your righthand man when it comes to construction of things. You would still need the recipe to make it though. So getting NPC's and keeping them alive would have benefits beyond "I need guys on my sails" which you would want to keep around because sailor NPC's would make your sails better. This would lead into reworks of the other skill trees, I would make farming capable of making the large crop plots grow fiber,thatch, and wood that the NPC's can harvest at a drastically reduced rate. The rate they harvest can be modified by giving them higher end tools. Artillery tree would also get access to alchemists that can be put on a mortar and pestle that will make it so you can stack unlimited resources inside it and queue up organic paste for more than 220 at a time... it would also make it faster to give the QoL that is missing from the chemistry station. I could keep talking about how I would change it but the TL:DR is make animals more companion rather than a requirement but still have meaning. Make NPC's more than a parasite when you arn't sailing. As a designer I would change a lot of things but for creatures this is what I would do. """ End copy paste for tames changes (Some of that is out dated but you get the idea) So lets take the changes for the game so far you get land and have tames and make the NPCs do work you could build a city have traders and basically you build a functioning city that other players come in and interact with. (Which would be so cool imo) Here is where stuff gets crazy though. this goes under new content. --Player Cities In PvE Getting Invaded-- // 3/14 Updated and added more So you have a city that is making money. This would attract pirates in the real world and I believe it would attract them in the game too. (It would in PVP) so they decide to come loot and plunder. This is where it gets rough to program (GOOD LUCK GRAPESHOT!) Only the highest tier islands would be targeted to have this though. The tax bank can only be dropped at a predetermined location and the tax bank determines where the city can be built. Once you have put enough resources into the tax banks. An NPC pirate invasion would trigger. The tax bank would get an item that you can place that starts a 30 minute countdown. The pirate boats would come and start a big invasion. You would have to fight your way from the town center towards the pirate boat then board it to fight and kill the captain. The Pirate faction would send waves at your beacon and try to bombard it. This would also make it so PvE players could use things like puckles, swivels, and my favorite MORTARS! If the pirate faction kills the beacon you lose, the bank loses everything in it and taxes can't be collected for a few days. Killing the captain will win the event for the players. When you win everybody gets discovery points and maybe a special type of vendor for the city. (Like a crew vendor that sells crew? ) This would build on my idea that the player cities should actually become the centers for trade instead of freeports. This would also play into another idea I have. -New pirate faction The PvPers will attack and sink your stuff to steal it but in PvE we don't have things like that.You just run from SotD and kinda afk for an hour to go do maps. We use a speed schooner or brig with no cannons. Lets change this. With the addition of NPC wrecks I want to see something else. An NPC pirate that has an aggro range based on the amount of resources you are carrying. It will be a fast boat that attacks with cannons and bar shot. (Which is what happens in PvP) The NPC pirates will come onto your boat and try to kill your guys. You could sink their boat and get some gold/ammo/resources/guns/BP's/Maps? I would make it so in order to get masterwork/legendary maps you can only get them from high end pirate ships instead of I want to do maps lets see how lucky I am running around on this bear. --Int as a stat I went full int once... It was awful. I try things just to get a feel for what they do. I want the best items I can get for my crew. Somebody else bit the bullet and went super high int so we can get that extra 5% bonus. The idea that somebody gets to just craft is stupid in my opinion. I think this stat could be removed from players and baked into NPC's that can craft (Bob the builder). The level of the NPC would determine his rolls on the stuff he makes. This would make it so you want to get your NPC's leveled up as high as possible. Also with crafting I would have the station interact with the bank/resource chest so I don't need to move thousands of pounds of materials around to try and make things. (New content will now go here) ~Lotus //Update Log 3/14 Clarity on instanced island. + Claims per person + Tax bank | Responded to Awakatanka + Winter Thorne + Daemon Cross + trqfreak350 + Eldred 3/16 I talked to Winter Thorne in another thread and came up with ideas. Finding land + Reworked islands idea.

Ahoy Pathfinders! The season has already begun and our path to full release is getting clearer on the horizon. While this ship’s journey is well underway, we still have a few stops to make before we arrive at our intended destination. Our current plans for the season include new additions and improvements to sea activity, the trading system, tame utilization, and single player. We do understand the current frustration from the community about the focus on introducing new content while there are still existing systems and features that need fine-tuning and fixing. Fear not though! We’re getting closer to being able to focus most of our attention on bug fixes and polishing of existing content. The waters may be turbulent now, but the storm will soon pass, so batten down the hatches and hold on for the ride! On that note, here are some things to look forward to in the current season! Sea Activity To put it simply, ATLAS is a pirate game. Player activities should focus on the sea and, well, pirating! To that end we are introducing some new features to encourage leaving your home base, taking part in sea combat, and increasing conflicts with opposing players and factions. Modular ships were introduced, in part, to supply a quick and straightforward way to get out to sea. We’ve made it no secret we’re not entirely happy with how they’ve turned out, so we’ll be exploring ways to improve their looks with new art and how sails work on them. Any major changes to modular ships will likely not happen mid-season, if only to prevent any issues with ships crafted prior to any changes. Floating Operating Bases Floating Operating Bases (FOBs) will introduce a whole new strategic system into Atlas where players will be able to build temporary floating bases to stage their fleet. The foundation of the FOB will be a large square with a hollow center. Along each side of the foundation will be snap points for Sea Docks, where player ships can be docked and protected. The foundation will provide support for all structures placed on it or connected to it up to 16 connections away, with no weight limit. There will, of course, be limits on where FOB foundations can be placed to avoid potential griefing. Placement Restrictions: Companies will be limited to one FOB per grid. Must be placed in the open ocean. Can’t be placed near Tradewinds, portals, islands or other FOBs (being allied will not reduce the placement distance restriction). Can’t be placed in Golden Age, Kraken or Maw grids. After placing the foundation, a decay timer will start ticking down regardless of if a player is within render range or not. There are only a few instances where this decay timer can be extended and once the decay timer reaches zero, the foundation will be destroyed. If the FOB foundation is destroyed, all attached structures will also be destroyed. Any ships currently docked will be released and no longer protected. Foundation Decay: Island Claim Grids: The foundation will decay after 36 hours and can only be extended if a War Declaration changes the grid into combat phase after the first 12 hours of the foundation's existence, meaning the foundation will be extended until the completion of the war declaration. Lawless and Lawless Claim Grids: The foundation will decay after 36 hours. PvE Specific: All FOB foundations will start with a 7-day decay timer which can be extended by 12 hours for 5,000 gold, with no limit on the number of extensions. On PvP servers, FOBs can be claimed by other companies using the same claim flag used to capture enemy ships. The flag can be placed anywhere on any structure connected to the foundation. If claimed, the ownership of all ships docked in Sea Docks will be transferred to the new owning company as well. Factions Fighting against Ship of the Damned and ships from other player companies is fun and all, but the rewards for doing so can seem underwhelming at times. A new faction-based system will be introduced that allows players to sail their ships under the flag of the faction of their choosing! While we’re still designing the specifics on exactly how factions will play their part in the game, you can expect to see ships from each of the available factions roaming the open seas, special faction-based rewards, and PvE quest line progression. More information will be shared as we get closer to implementing these new features. Trading System It’s been a couple of years now since we first started building a more automated and robust trading system, so we’ve had some time to evaluate how these systems are being used, their effectiveness, and enjoyability. The multiple types of auto-farm buildings, warehouses, markets, and sea forts all have an interconnected role in the current trading system, and we have several plans to improve many aspects of these. A few of our planned improvements: A new interface (UI) for Markets Physical trade ships Tame trading Improved Sea Forts Sea Forts will become a more integral and engaging system for both PvP and PvE players. Our last content patch included a slight preview of what’s to come by introducing our new smaller Sea Fort. We have much more in store for all of you though! From enemy NPCs, to hidden treasures and more, there’s plenty to entice players from all around. We don’t want to give everything away just yet though, so you’ll have to stay tuned for more details to come! Tame Utilization While creatures and tames may not be the main theme of ATLAS, they still play an integral part in current gameplay. With that in mind, we’ve been looking to improve how tames are being used. We’ve already introduced Tame Houses, Tame Hatcheries, and Tame Cargo Railings to improve breeding and transporting of tames, but there is still more we can do to improve their storage and utility. We’ve also received a lot of feedback from the community on Tame Houses/Hatcheries, with one of the main critiques being the current UI used to view what tames are currently being stored inside. Having to go through the radial menu can become quite cumbersome when there are more than a few tames inside, not to mention the available information displayed is quite lacking. We’ll be working on providing a much better user interface to display tames and their relevant information. Tame Barn While the Tame Houses/Hatcheries can be used to simply store tames, their unwieldy size and limited capacity do not always make doing so an ideal choice. The Tame Barn will be a new structure used for the sole purpose of storing mass amounts of tames. Tames within the barn will not reproduce or require food, they will simply be in stasis. Swarm House The Swarm House offers a way of obtaining new companion tames with the added benefit of passive resource generation. Swarm Houses provide the perfect habitat for Bees, Ants, Bats, Rattlesnakes and Mini Crabs. Nearby wild tames of the acceptable type will be drawn to the Swarm House where they will be captured and tamed. Creatures tamed this way will not be rideable or breedable. Passive Resource Generation: Bee: Honey Rattlesnake: Venom Bat: Nitro Fertilizer Ant: Toxic Flora Mini Crab: Crustacean Meat Single player While our current focus may be on official servers, we have not abandoned single player or non-dedicated players. One of the main draws of playing in single player (or a non-dedicated session with a friend) is the ability to play at your own pace. Official servers (and many unofficial servers) tend toward seasonal play with periodic wipes. Those with limited time to play often feel rushed to complete content and may not complete all goals before all that progress ends up getting erased. So why haven't we been keeping the single player map updated? When we update the single player map, this causes all existing single player worlds to be wiped as well. While not updating the map for so long has saved players from many unwanted wipes, it has also come with the unfortunate side effect of many new features not being accessible or obtainable. We want players to have access to current content without being forced to start a brand-new game unless they choose to do so. We also want players to be able to play on the same map as the one used on official servers. To do that, we’re investigating ways on allowing players the choice of what season’s map to play on at any given time. One of the possible ways we’re looking into is free DLCs for each map. 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 is probably a very unpopular opinion since Ark / Atlas players have this peculiar fascination with playing zookeeper to tame random wild animals and make them into pets, but... come on. It's a pirate game, and yet the overall state of balance fundamentally and heavily focuses on this concept of creature taming. Want to farm treasure maps? Better have a tame, because soldiers of the damned are too numerous and tanky to deal with on foot and are inexplicably immune to swivel guns, cannons, etc. Want to farm resources? Get that tame out there for carrying capacity. Base raiding? You guessed it -- tames. PvP? May the better tame win. Everything revolves around this stupid taming concept when you aren't sailing. Apart from sailing and shipbuilding, it's arguably the most fundamental concept of the game. And even when you're at sea, your ship ends up looking like a zoo, with elephants or bears or hogs on your ship deck. It's just... ridiculous. Everywhere you go and everything you do revolves around this weird pet mechanic that most other MMOs simply don't have.

6x6 the map being smaller makes me want to play this game less and less each season, the game was so much better when the map was 15x15, the regions and portals were nice but even now those are gone and makes the game boring and dull. I don't think the dev team wants the game to be a success.

The last update when you had players was v402.6-ish, before the farmhouses, prefab crap, the wipes, and all the excess crap that got added that no one wanted. Want to save the game? roll back that far. The 15x15 map was amazing, could literally roll back that far with minor changes, and many old players would return. For people who just like to tame, breed and farm just add a few Ark size islands. Add greenhouse structures so we can grow crops in any biome, breed tames in any biome. We wanted legacy ships to expand to frigates, sloops should have been slightly bigger. Get rid of or change the weird ship of the damn and army of the damned, pirates or skeletons-ish would work, remove mines, farms anything and everything prefab ships and structures. The point of sailing was to go out and get those recourses, not auto farm and sell them, limit island claims and shipyards, no company should need more than 2 small and 2 large shipyards. If ships sat for too long we should be able to claim them, breeding and raising tames should be less time consuming, these are things most people wanted but no one listens to small or solo players.... the main players of your game, instead you listen to mega comps and pvp players. Sooo many more ideas that we wanted but were ignored. Watch both your trailers and see and remember the aww that we seen and the game we remember and deserve. https://youtu.be/miwYMiEUYiA https://youtu.be/7pXqX73FGFY MAGA ( Make Atlas Great Again)

I'm trying to help 5 of my friends to get the sub and the v2 keeps spawning. What kind of drugs are the devs on?? I want some of that as well. I'm all the way back by the borde, I send them in and it still spawns v2. It never was like that before and why is it like that now? Like I said. I want some of those drugs!! So I can be totally oblivious to my shit life!!

Hello, I want to ask you if it will be possible to change the Icon for the time when you can't attack an island. (The piece icon) Sorry for messaging you directly, but I do not know where to raise this request. My family and I love to play Atlas. Can you help me with this?

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

Ok, I have a request. Is there a way to copy a tame or clone or copy? Lets say I have a favorite tame. But I want to start PVE from scratch or on another computer. But I want my old tame. Is there a way to ID, use that ID to recreate the tame. I don't mean the same type of animal. I mean literally, the same tame. Or I lost a tame or the tame died, is there a way to find the original code, and bring the tame back.Or lets say, I have a tame in front of me, and want to copy it. Is there a way to do so? Preferably with a cheat code or using the Admin Menu? I see commands like SpawnActorTame.

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