Sail

[helitron]

Good points suggested above.

Regarding hide vs. spot of certain ships and crews, I think it would make sense to reduce hide by the distance to the nearest ship. E.g. by 40 when in the same quadrant, by 10 in a neighboring horizontal or vertical quadrant. Also, I don’t remember if the sail state affects hide, but that could be also taken into consideration. 0 neg modifier at lowered sails and -20 at full.

Also regarding AB, that’s a very good point by FD. I would even go that far and suggest it should be calculated based on required crew sail average. Same as it is calculated for AC.

[FallenDabus]

Also regarding AB, that’s a very good point by FD. I would even go that far and suggest it should be calculated based on required crew sail average. Same as it is calculated for AC.

The biggest advantage to calculating it the way Helitron suggests imo is not the balancing benefit but its inclusivity. Currently, to be as competitive as possible, it would always be the character with the highest sail skill who always fires all the ship's weapons. This is also the case with my hotfix suggestion of "AB = (gunner sail + crew sail average) /2. By calculating it the way Helitron suggests it would imo "feel better" for the group, as several people can man the weapons.

In the naval contest I mentioned in my previous posts, it were the two high sail skill characters who respectively fired all weapons of their ship. Everyone understands mechanically it is hands down the best option and it is the default choice, but for the person repeatedly hogging all the weapons it is kinda eh as you really want to give others an opportunity to have fun firing, and I am pretty sure for others they'd really enjoy getting an opportunity to do so.

[ActionReplay]

Thanks for the input, great suggestions as always.

As for Naval Combat since a lot has changed with the Sails skill I understand numbers may have to be tweaked. A lone gunman with high Sails would be ideal today, yeah, as this is an individual check. You think just using the Ship's average for this is better? In that I mean just exclude the individual's rank entirely.

It gives some benefits as more players can use the weapons too. I'd be keen to hear more about naval combat balance as there's a lot of numbers in play now and I am not entirely sure myself what would work best. The hiding skill for Ships is pretty low compared to what sail ranks players can get; the AC / Dodge would have to rely on weather and their average ship's Sail value to defend against it which is more than likely not gonna win against someone with extreme ranks in Sailing.

I think a quick fix would just to be to use the ship's average value rather than the individual value for weapons. Perhaps reloading can be faster based on the Sail rank or something but again reloading was put there fixed for a reason to allow the other ship to react with time.

Btw, does Shouting work now between ships on the same quadrant?

[-XXX-]

IMO using the average is better and here's why:
Ttrying to determine the best "lone gunman" for job can feel a little OOC. Very much like the case with the Leadership skill, the RP around determining the highest raw skill number from among the party members can be a little awkward at times.

[helitron]

I am hijacking this thread again for another suggestion that could be interesting to implement.

At the moment, the only way to see which ships are anchored nearby are either by interacting with the dock/skiff or talking to a Shipwright, if present.

However, there is no information if a new ship docks or leaves the dock, unless these instances above are checked regularly. In the previous system, the skiffs at a dock indicated if there is a new ship coming or leaving. I think it would be nice to give some information to PCs present on a dock area if a new ship docks or even if ships leave the dock. In the end these are large vessels and should be seen by everyone and this would give at least some warning/heads-up that someone is approaching.

Not sure if this is possible, but maybe something similar to the floating text that appears when using the gondola system in Andunor saying something like "A new ship has docked" or "A ship has left the docks". I am not sure if it would make sense to give additional information about the ship name and direction, but that could be also interesting. E.g. "The Dreadnought arrived from South-East".

Thanks