Naval Action coming to Steam EA on the 21st......

[mikeck]

I haven't been playing enough to say whether there is an adequate PVE game thee or not. The thing is though that in PVE there are still humans...they just can't attack eachother. Same trade, same crafting, same combat. The lack of human combat may turn off some but entice others. So I guess what I'm saying is that I don't understand HOW they could/would improve one over the other (PvP vs PvE). Like Elite, it's the same "world"...just different rules. Or am I wrong?

By the way, I think "Elite" found the magic balance. Players play in the same universe whether they are in "open" or "solo" mode. In the latter, you simply don't see any human players and the human players don't see you. But the prices and economy and wars are the same. If Human players is "open" have done something to drop the price of "harvesters", then players on "solo" will see the same drop. In other words, there is only one universe, but in solo you are in a different dimension almost

[Nefaro]

The difference between PvE and PvP servers, in MMOs, is that players on PvE servers can only do plaver vs player stuff by mutual choice.  Often in some kind of arena queue, or specifically designated zone.

[em2nought]

By the way, I think "Elite" found the magic balance. Players play in the same universe whether they are in "open" or "solo" mode. In the latter, you simply don't see any human players and the human players don't see you. But the prices and economy and wars are the same. If Human players is "open" have done something to drop the price of "harvesters", then players on "solo" will see the same drop. In other words, there is only one universe, but in solo you are in a different dimension almost

This is interesting, and has me thinking something I considered before.  I remember there being a dragon 3d file that could be substituted into RB3D for an aircraft.  It got me thinking that it would be an interesting development for wargaming if one group of players could be seeing the flying dragons of say Avatar on their screen while the wargamer playing against them sees Albatross DIIIs  and  Sopwith Pups on  their screen.  You hear and see machine gun fire, they see you breathing fire on them.  It would be a way for wargamers to have unlimited numbers of opponents.  How skilled the player is at the game he's playing in his reality determines the skill level of the opponent you're seeing in your reality.

[mikeck]

I don't know. I LIKE that I have to "run like smoke n' oakem" if an enemy frigate is bearing down on me. I also like learning naval tactics that allow me to carry a larger ship in combat....and feel like I accomplished something. BUT, for arena purpose I could see that as an option

[RedArgo]

Mostly been trading and crafting recently to build up some gold, so I can afford to crew my ships.  I haven't joined a clan, but it has been a friendly environment, even from the hated pirates and swedes who sometimes raid the US coast.  I'm really looking forward to the next round of changes.

Couple screen shots I taken recently...

my 3rd rate taking on an AI 3rd rate



view from the cannons



in a storm with a group of US ships looking for some pirate raiders

[mikeck]

I'm glad we get to (apparently) keep our experience after the next wipe and final release. Gold is fairly easy to get compared to experience.

I'm at level 20 crafting but I'm not sure how much it's worth? I use an"exceptional" Renomme and and "exceptiona" Belle Poule...both I purchased. It's more expensive to craft enough to get to the level needed to build them.

The naval battles are top notch and I can't think of anything needing improvement there. I do think they need to rework/fix the relationship between open world and the battle screen. Two issues: the first is that players in PvP will get in a battle, and then after it's over, just hang out in the battle screen. If you are in the Open World sailing around you can't see their ships. Get too close you get "sucked into" the battle and they can attack you. If you are in battle screen, you should not be able to interact with open world at all.

The second is that if you outrun and escape an attacker in the battle screen, the battle ends. Unfortunately for the guy running, when it drops everyone back into open world, it puts you in the same positions everyone was in when the battle started. Basically resets and pretends like nothing happened. This leads to "chain" attacks. Needs to be fixed

Only other thing besides finish on the UI, is the trade/economy. Outside of Sugar, tobacco and Compass wood, almost everything is more expensive to buy than to sell.

[Sir Slash]

Those are first rate 3rd. Rate pics Redargo.

[RedArgo]

Thanks Sir Slash :)

Mikeck, I agree the biggest issue right now is the transition between open world and battle.  Looking through the NA forums, there are a lot of seemingly good ideas to help address this. Hopefully, the devs are still looking at this part.  I guess ideally all battles would take place in the open world, but I think the scale and speed of the game wouldn't allow that.  Not many players would be willing to spend days of real life just to go up and down the coast.

I've never crafted a ship, I'm only level 10 crafting, lately I either make live oak frame parts and sell them or sell my hours to a guy who gives me 200 gold per hour to make stuff for him.  I've also found running coal up from Florida to Charleston may be very profitable, if I can continue to avoid pirates.  I just go down to Cabo Canaveral (sp?) capture an AI trader of some sort, load it up, get away from the coast and sail north.  Takes awhile, but I just do other real life stuff while I make the trip.

Really enjoying the game, hope they finish up and get the player population back up.  I usually play pm US central time during the week and there are usually less than 300 players.  Weekend days will approach a thousand.

[mikeck]

I'm on PvE and it's usually between 65-140 people. Tougher to make money crafting since there aren't as many contracts for that stuff and you can't sell it to the market. Anyway, I just remind myself that the game, like Total War games, is about the combat. The rest is just background

[RedArgo]

Huge patch dropping, seems to touch all parts of the game.  Haven't dug in yet to see exactly what's there.

http://forum.game-labs.net/index.php?/topic/16932-patch-996-new-conquest-new-trading-new-ships-and-other-things/

What's new:



Rookie regions
•Bahamas has become a rookie region.
•Additional uncapturable capitals are added in the Bahamas.
•Rookie region has special ROE (identified by the message rookie battles area). All battles start 1v1 and other players can only reinforce it using reinforcement zones for 30 minutes. Limit of reinforcements is set at 300 BR.

Map changed

The map is split into regions. All information on the regions and their composition can be seen on the in game map. List of changes here



Combat tuning

Starting from this patch we will actively work on ship rebalancing. These works were delayed because of the tournament, but the tournament helped to uncover more balancing issues that require attention.

Currently the main goal is to increase ship importance and reduce upgrade importance for combat performance.
•All men are created equal and all crew colliders were standardized. Previously some ships had men with 180cm height (on cutter) and some had 150cm height. This is no longer the case. Although cutter captains still have the biggest hands.
•Many upgrades were rebalanced and mostly nerfed
•Several perks were rebalanced and mostly nerfed
•Lower calibers that were often used on 5th and 4th rates had their penetrations improved. The change affected 4lb 6lb 9lb guns mostly. But these guns penetration drop from distance was slightly increased
•Carronades penetration drop from distance significantly increased making them effectively a short range weapon. Don't expect any penetrations above 500m.
•We also changed how penetration shot retain energy depending on the wood type. Fir hulls allow to pass more penetrating energy to the opposite side, live oak less. Previously all wood types had same penetration retention.
•Splinter damage: When a cannonball hits a broadside it affects crew differently when it flies above the deck creating casualties by shockwave or hitting men directly. Nelson's assistant was killed by a shockwave from a high flying cannonball. We have separated cannonball damage to crew into two parts. Cannonball hitting an unprotected crew will generally have less casualties on the ship than cannoball penetrating the broadside, generating splinters. If you aim at broadside areas with crew behind it you might inflict good damage on the crew.

Shipbuilding, Trading and Resources

Trading was completely overhauled. We are very excited about it because we have coded in a very flexible system allowing us to easy add or remove resources by group, nation, region, island and large area, control prices and margins, demand and supply and multiple other elements helping us to make trading and resource generation to feel more alive.

When we first introduced trading into game in 2015 it required several months of balancing based on mass use by large number of players. Thus - expect resource shortages, abnormal profits, and strange things in the first two weeks. Report them in the respective feedback topics and they will be fixed.
•All buildings were removed from player accounts and funds used to build them were compensated
•Shipyards removed from game for rebalancing, to allow players to build ships in multiple regions with regional bonuses. So building ships no longer requires a shipyard. All allied ports will provide shipbuilding capacity for the player. Funds used to build shipyards were compensated.
•Delivery orders will allow players to receive trading xp and crafting xp by helping the in game economy. All ports with the unfulfilled NPC demand and large player contracts will generate delivery quests that players can take and fulfill. This will allow traders to exert more influence on the market and see what is needed.
•Pricing systems were upgraded, new goods introduced, new NPC demand was created for some crafted materials (initially in the several areas only).
•Weights, prices, stacks and volumes will change. New buildings for new resources were added.
•Trader tools are integrated into the client. They will help adventurous traders to find good deals in the Caribbean. They might also help privateers to see where people might be going for good deals. Trader tools are accessible from the in game map (M).
•New resources will be required to craft quality ships depending on ship weight.
•Ship quality importance increased. Increasing ship quality will improve its characteristics starting from ship HP, speed, turning and other parameters. All ships stats and colors were recalculated as a result - stats are the same but because there are better ships their color of tooltip has changed.
•Speed and stiffness added to selectable characteristics, all RNG removed from crafting.
•Regional bonuses for ships introduced. Controlling certain regions will become more important if you want that particular bonus for the vessel. Capital regions will not give bonuses.
•2 new wood types added: Mahogany (ligher live oak basically), Bermuda Cedar (fir without negatives)
•Contracts will be allowed for upgrades
•Upgrades can be broken down for parts and resources
•You can no longer sell a ship if it has something in hold or has upgrades installed (many players were losing items when not reading warnings)
•Wood production slightly changed. Compass wood is no longer a separate resource. Compass wood (curved trees) can drop from any forest during wood production. Fine logs (e.g. fine oak) will drop some times when growing trees in forests.
•European traders removed (experimental feature)
•Salt can now drop when fishing
•Contract number increased from 5 to 10

ROE (experimental feature)

We will be testing several options for Rules of Engagement – ROE this patch. This might upset some users but it have to be done before release (will be impossible after).
•Open world battles: 2 circles system is being tested. 1 tag circle for attack and 1 large circle for pull. Battles will close instantly on start (except for rookie zones)
•Rookie zones battles. Battles always start 1v1. Battle will be opened until BR evens out. BR limit is set at 300. Players wont be able to enter if their ship will exceed the BR limit.
•Hostility missions: Battle will be opened for 30 mins.
•OW NPC fleets will no longer count for 5X anti griefing protection. Only players will affect that rating
•Crew size will lower battle rating of your fleet. Example (numbers are for illustration only): If sail a cutter with 2 Bucentaures in your fleet with 40 crew on each - you will fleet will be valued as 3 cutters for ROE.

Mission changes.
•Missions can be taken for every region from any port.
•Missions will generate or reduce hostility - thus enemy should be able to influence the flow of events. Because of that missions will always be open for entry for all sides for 30 minutes.

Bot distribution changes
•With new hostility system bot distribution changed. Regions will have national NPC fleets. For example you will mostly see british NPCs near Jamaica and only occasionally will see other nations fleets who sailed there from the nearby region.
•Pirate fleets added.
•Captured NPC ships will be good sometimes. And because of randomization of the hidden upgrades they might come up to be uniquely interesting (experimental feature).

Port battles and conquest

Port battle set up system changed significantly.
•Port battles will automatically arrange 46 (previously 48) hours after hostility level reaches 100%. Hostility will be generated by PVP (major impact), PVE (minor impact), Missions (minor impact), and War effort supplies deliveries (minor impact). Port battles will be a national effort and will require coordinated work of several fleets.
•Assault flag is be removed.
•Timers are removed (for testing) as we believe that in new system port battles will arrange themselves when there is max presence of players for both size (due to pvp impact). Also we expect that all timezones will need to participate to bring hostility to the port battle levels. If this assumption proves to be inaccurate we will bring back lord protectors (but with wider time limits). In addition to this we will reduce the speed of hostility generation if necessary to bring more timezones into action.
•New port system will immediately show players where the action is because the number of port battles and hostility zones is limited and nation can have a limited number of port battles set up.
•Port battles themselves will still be done on the open water with towers (but this wont last long).
•Alliances will continue for 3 weeks, voting period is set at 1 week.

Port and coastline defenses
•Large forts and towers will be added around ports. The number will depend on the island and coast line size. They are placed randomly at appropriate places. Please report weird looking coastlines in F11 or in the forums.
•Forts will fire at enemies of the state and can provide good protection for traders and small groups.

New ships
•Endymion
•Indefatigable
•Both ships are only available for capture from NPC fleets (experimental feature).
•Ship hulls were made by one of the community member Ragnar Hairy Trousers (sails for Britain)

Other tunings
•More slots for loot added in the battle result screen.
•You can enter allied contested ports
•You now can capture lineships if they belong to AI fleet of a player.
•You cannot add the ship to fleet if it has something in the hold
•Upgrades and paints will be saved if you add a ship to fleet. You can freely add precious upgraded ships to the fleets.
•NPC trader loot improvements - Bigger traders carry more goods
•You can surrender during boarding now. Press escape and surrender if you don't want to lose crew during boarding.
•Minimal crew requirements increased for higher level vessels. Players wont be able to sail 1st rates with 10 men. 1st rates will require 100 men at least to operate.

Fixed bugs:
•Fixed several particle bugs with demasting and mast collisions with water
•Several bugs with contracts fixed
•Fixed bugs with small/large repair kits when applied to fleet ships.
•Prepared perk fixed. It now works on all types of ammunition and charges.
•Fixed bugs with wrong rank of fleet ships when joining the instance
•Instance loading times increased
•Server technology improved.
•Hundreds of other bugs and technical issues fixed

Conclusion.

When new features are introduced they always play out differently with large number of players. Expect problems, report them and they will be fixed. Keep an open mind because the game is still in development and is not released.



Plans for next patch
•Raids
•Land in port battles
•Improvement of server events
•And probably a weekly pvp tournament
•Several things that were promised to be addressed did not get in and will be added next patch. Things like mast damage, gun loss/repairs and other combat issues.



edit
1.ship colors have changed for some vessels, due to recalculation of the color of the tooltip. Stats and parameters are the same. Color indicated that there could be better ships now.
2.All contracts for ship sales were fulfilled and ships bought out for system.

[mikeck]

Ugh....I was dreading this. I have a Renomme, Frigate, Belle Poule, Essex and Constitution and sail them all (except the Connie as I don't have the crew yet). I am afraid to fire up the patch and see that somehow they have been wiped!

After a month, I still LOVE this game and play every day. Nothing like a fleet battle...swinging behind an enemy brig and raking the &@$! Out of him with a rolling "as she bears" broadside of 14 Double-shotted 18lb cannons and 6 32lb carronades on my Essex. Well that and watching 9lb cannon balls bounce off her Live Oak hull.

[mikeck]

This type of detail is what makes this game so good. There aren't "hit points" or some mechanic where "cannonball hit = 10 points damage. It's very intricate and models actual naval warfare:

•We also changed how penetration shot retain energy depending on the wood type. Fir hulls allow to pass more penetrating energy to the opposite side, live oak less. Previously all wood types had same penetration retention.
•Splinter damage: When a cannonball hits a broadside it affects crew differently when it flies above the deck creating casualties by shockwave or hitting men directly. Nelson's assistant was killed by a shockwave from a high flying cannonball. We have separated cannonball damage to crew into two parts. Cannonball hitting an unprotected crew will generally have less casualties on the ship than cannoball penetrating the broadside, generating splinters. If you aim at broadside areas with crew behind it you might inflict good damage on the crew.

[RedArgo]

Ugh....I was dreading this. I have a Renomme, Frigate, Belle Poule, Essex and Constitution and sail them all (except the Connie as I don't have the crew yet). I am afraid to fire up the patch and see that somehow they have been wiped!

Supposedly, all your ships should be safe, maybe moved if the port they are in changed hands.  I guess I'll see tonight.  Currently, my active ship is in the bahamas on a coal/stone run and that area is being turned into the "rookie" region, so I don't know what will happen to me.

Looking forward to trying out all the changes though.

[mikeck]

 Apparently the patch increased the amount of items and created new items that are required to make "exceptional" ships. Therefore, some ships you may already own and purchased/crafted that were "exceptional" will be reduced to "Mastercraft" while others remain "exceptional" and no one is really sure why or what determines it

[Toonces]

I wonder if you guys can summarize your feelings on this game right now.

The reviews are all mixed up due to the recent patch.

I'm not looking for a crafting game.  I just want to fight.  I'm not sure if this is the game for me.