Search the Community

Hey guys, we are currently trading Strongwood for other resources. The resources we are trading it for are Other Types of wood/metal/fiber. We are currently located at N8. Delivery to us would be appreciated. PM me for more info about prices and work out a deal

The golden age of piracy occurred during a time when war and commerce were exploding on the sea. The English, French, and Spanish were in constant disputes over land. These nations often hunted and punished pirates (if they could find them). Trade was everything during the golden age of piracy. Without merchant ships to attack, there could have been no privateers or pirates. With that in mind, I would like to make the following suggestions that I think would appease and encompass several of the most active suggestion threads on the forums. Territory at Sea The sea in a given map sector belongs to the company with the largest non-anchored fleet. Ownership is determined every 30 minutes and lasts for 30 minutes. Upon taking control of the sea and when interacting while in or looking at the sea, the company that has an active claim has the option to set tax rates for trade and salvage and the bank to receive the tax. Tax payments take time based on the distance of the trade/salvage from the bank. This means no more sea claim flags. Trade When interacting with another player (E) or through the whistle menu, you are given the option to trade. Once two participants confirm their desire to trade, a pseudo-inventory appears for each player, allowing them to offer goods while also seeing the goods offered by the other player. A private chat channel is opened for the trade and accessible while trading. Each player has the option to "Accept" or "Decline" the offered trade. Both players must accept in order for the trade to complete. Any changes to the offered goods revokes the acceptance of a trade. Claim owners are able to establish a special tax rate for trade. Factions and Faction Ports Freeports are replaced by Faction Ports. A Faction Port is owned by one of four factions: Pirates, English, Spanish, or French (or something entirely new and dripping in lore). Each Faction Port is frequented by guard ships on the lookout for players with reputation that is considered undesirable by that Faction and will attack on sight. By default a player and company have no faction or allegiance. Trade ships and Ships of the Damned are replaced by faction-specific merchant and military vessels that can be sunk for large amounts of gold/resources. Ships of the Damned become a perk of Piracy that can only be "discovered" with a skill activation and are boosted in value and strength. By joining a given faction, a company or player gains access to: In-faction auction houses for trade Faction specific skins and items The ability to dock ships in the Faction Port The ability to purchase storage space for resources and items. Spend reputation and gold to request the aid of NPC-controlled faction ships for use against ghost ships or protection from other factions (follows for a given period of time, paid by the hour). Privateers and Quests Players are given the option to go on quests in Faction Ports ranging from privateering missions, salvage missions, whale hunting, and more. Missions requiring the player to track or attack a ship would provide a general area to search for on the players' map, and appearing in that area would spawn the ship. Reputation Interactions with players and NPC can cause one to develop a reputation. Killing a player that has not first damaged you would result in a reputation for murder. Destroying structures would result in a reputation for vandalism. Taking items from an enemy container: thievery. Attacking ships: piracy. Successful trades: trading. Defeating ghost ships: Captaineering. Taming animals: Beastmastery.... and so on. Factions would have their own interpretation of a players' reputation based on the faction of the victim or benefactor of these actions. Faction Ports would respond differently to each reputation, depending on faction. "Positive" reputation would result in additional NPC offerings and reduced prices. Reduced Visible Name Range & Flying Enemy Colors Each ship flies flag(s) on the rear mast. If in a faction and a company, both the faction flag and company flag are flown. The visible name range of players is reduced significantly. The current UI ship names are not visible at all. Instead the name of the ship is painted on the hull (high contrast based on paint color). Players can temporarily paint over the name of their ship. Upon sacking an enemy ship, the player is given the option to steal the enemy flags. The player can then fly these flags on their own mast for a limited time (perhaps 2 hours?) to confuse players and NPC ships.

Trade is an absolute necessity in a player driven game such as Atlas, especially player-driven trade, and thus it needs a gameplay environment and infrastructure that will incentivize, encourage and support trade where it works on both PvE and PvP? But how and with what will we achieve this, and why would it work? I don't think it's as hard as it may seem, consider what would happen if all land claims would require a cost and upkeep, a cost in terms of materials used to craft it (possibly a small amount of gold as well), an upkeep paid with gold. It would seem that players/companies would have to focus on activities that would yield gold, one way or the other. Whether that be through hunting, treasure, building and taxating their good infrastructure, trade and piracy, and quite possibly other sorts of venues. But the important part here is that you can't claim more than you can support, and with claim flags being made into a thing you have to craft and with good reasons to support it, it would suddenly be very different and people wouldn't just around and spam-placing flags. Also, there is the question if a land claim should be contestable if its upkeep have been paid for, I do think that land claims that have it upkeep paid for in it's latest upkeep cycle, should NOT be contestable, as this would make it easier to maintain land claims as long as you maintain a steady supply of gold. Did you notice some keywords above that would be important to focus on? ..Treasure Hunting, Building and Taxating Infrastructure, Trade, and Piracy! Exactly why would these be important to the context of creating a gameplay environment and infrastructure that incentivizes, encourages and supports trade? All of these will be able to yield the player/companies with gold, and will be important if one wants to claim and keep land, one way or the other. All of these aspects are aspects that fits nicely into Atlas, and they also will have an actual self-balancing aspect to the game as well. Because, one can only keep as many land claims as one is able to keep paying for with gold, and what the player/company does to obtain the gold, are up to the players. I think this would both encourage, incentivize and to some degree support trade, especially if the food/water/vitamin, health and death system is also implemented as suggested above. Because with this people are forced to play in a more thoughtful and cautios way. It would also make various professions a lot more valuable and desired by other people, like for instance medic, farming and cooking would suddenly be a lot more important. Especially if land owners and owners of certain building could also create jobs and set the wage. With the route of characters being very specialized in terms of skills, Trade would suddenly become even more important for people. It also means there would be a lot of people who're not skilled other types of disciplines, such as beastmastery, building buildings on land, wagon or shipbuild, armors, weapons & firearms, etc. This means that people would trade their skills or their goods, for gold or otherwise. But hey, what about Piracy, that doesn't incentivize, encourage or support trade!? That is to some extent true, however what do you think Pirates do with what their loot they don't need? They trade it for more profit. But it does have another important effect, and that is traders need to be able to protect themselves and their goods, either through hiring people to protect them and their goods or be capable themselves, both on land and sea. So people could also make a living through selling their service as a mercenary. But... Isn't piracy illegal and there are no punishments for it!? I'm glad you brought that up, because there certainly should be some laws against it in the game and it should be punishable through game mechanics and gameplay, but this is a topic for a different time, and likewise with making the piracy skill tree both land, ocean and -shipbased, I have intentions on bringing those up soon, so don't worry about those for now. I am interested in knowing your thoughts on this @Jatheish and the community as well. Perhaps others have ideas similar to this or ideas that will support this even further.

So first off just a quick message to the Devs. Thank you so much. I have been playing ark since it was at this stage in its development and thoroughly enjoyed the ride and I'm looking forward to the ups and downs that atlas has in store. I've always wanted a water world styled ark map and this is it, with its own unique spin and flavor. So onto the Feedback/ suggestions. Claims:A topic of much controversy the claiming system has been bashed by just about every single player at least once so far, but why? Well besides the well-known issues with contesting i think the big issue is wasted space. if we have four companys make a claim each, in a square, without overlapping, we have a space in the middle that nobody owns and that nobody can now claim. look at any island and you will find at least one spot where a claim could almost just about fit. to fix this have the claims act more like a bubble. where the lines cant overlap but instead just smush into each other and try to fill the available space. alternately laydown a smaller square grid over each map, and have a claim take its respective square on the grid. this second method would reflect how actual claims work today. i think the second issue is how claims are actually contested. i was attempting to claim some uncontested land on pve na, and i spend a solid hour trying to find out why every time i dropped my flag it would say contested. moving back and forth up and down this way and that way trying to make sure my lines weren't overlapping anyone's claims. i finally found the issue, some lvl 4 pc had logged out in a bush inside the area i wanted to claim. this likely never coming back player sleeping in uncontested land that i could have claimed was stopping me from claiming. To fix this. making it so that a player has to also put down a flag or at least have their flag out to contest the claiming of unclaimed land would help, also making it that only people in the company that owns a claim or their allies can prevent the stealing of a claim as opposed to any rando would go a long way as well. Lastly on the topic of claims. allies can steal your claim and even if you are online and standing right under the flag you cant contest it. this needs to be removed to prevent blue raids. Trade. there should be some kind of trade goods. things like silks, spices, and relics. things that we can sell for additional gold. taking these items to the trade ports or to a merchant's vessel would be a great reason to actually have to leave the house. Free market. Having the Free Ports have some kind of auction house where we can sell our goods for a set price would go a long way. These are just a few things that i have thought about. if i think of anything else i will be sure to ether update this post or make a new one.

Devs, you have done an amazing job at designing a game that incentivizes trading but a huge problem is we have no safe trading mechanics. We need 2 things. 1) A safe way to trade with other players. AKA a trade window. 2) Auto trading so people can set up trade routes. Something simple like you have to go get a crew member and then you put them in front of a stall and pay them to run your afk shop. This way if Jim on island A has a butt-load of copper and I on island B have a butt-load of silver I can just put a bunch of my silver in my shop and Jim can come buy it. Then I can sail to Jim's island and buy his copper. Without either of us having to be online at the same time. This will create an actual economy within the game. Which is a huge feature this game is missing at the moment. Even more so because you have the underlying structure set up for it.

Wouldn't it be nice if you could load up some extra resources into a building and people could stop by and trade gold for your extra mats at a price you set? Gold can just be the starting point, but you could eventually set it to request other materials as payment. This would making trading safe too, as you wouldn't need to drop items on the ground where other players could steal it. Another benefit is you won't even have to be there to trade! You could be out sailing and someone stops by to trade, convenient.

Having to option to create a market stall / trade stall to place for others to purchase resources / goods for a price. Example: Skill Tradewinds : Contruction Tree 8 Points Description: Enables the construction and management of a Trade Stall and & Trade Box, additionally enabling the player to sell items through the stall. Trade Stall (Wood Structure) A trade stall would need to be place in conjunction with a trade box, the stall would allow you to list items in the trade box for a cost in a desired currency, whether its gold or resources. Other players would press E to interact and would show the stall inventory and the costs would be listed like the crafting requirements tooltip. Trade Box (Wood Structure) A trade box would work similarly to a Ship Resources Box, allowing resources to stack to 500,000 and allow the resources to be pulled from the trade stall. Skill Tycoon: Contruction Tree (Requires Tradewinds, Esotary of Building) 8 Points Description: Gives access to further market structures. Enables Trade Market Enables Metal Trade Vault Trade Market (Stone Structure) Similar to a trade stall, though more elaborate design and stronger structure. Trade Vault (Metal Structure) Similar to a trade box, though more elaborate design and stronger structure. This i feel would promote more trade in the regions and potentially more pvp. The post I made on reddit;

Hi there I am looking for some free land or an available spot to claim. If I have any choice I would prefer tropical / subtropical climates. I am currently sailing around C7-D9, I am willing to travel where ever there is space. please contact me in case you got a spot. I am willing to trade / work for the claim. Thanks in Advance Psykikk