Sail

[ActionReplay]

Thanks for the input guys, very thorough. I am fixing these bugs and will have an update up later tonight.

[FallenDabus]

So far I've encountered no new bugs and everything seems to be working really well. It's been a lot of fun, and again thank you for the time you put into it!

One suggestion I do have is to have the combat log spit out the ship travel speed (and sail status) every now and again. This is just to avoid folks very new to the sail system (or recent changes) being confused by the lack of visual indication. A line of "Sail State: Lowered, 5% Speed" should clear that right up.

Reference: viewtopic.php?f=12&p=267399#p267399

[ActionReplay]

So far I've encountered no new bugs and everything seems to be working really well. It's been a lot of fun, and again thank you for the time you put into it!

One suggestion I do have is to have the combat log spit out the ship travel speed (and sail status) every now and again. This is just to avoid folks very new to the sail system (or recent changes) being confused by the lack of visual indication. A line of "Sail State: Lowered, 5% Speed" should clear that right up.

Reference: viewtopic.php?f=12&p=267399#p267399

Sounds like a good idea, I can push a message each tick / minute. Though I'm a bit mindful it may be considered a tad too much like spam, perhaps add an option to the -ship command to toggle this and other settings.

[FallenDabus]

Yeah, being able to turn it off and on via the -sail command would be a nice quality of life addition.

[MRFTW]

Sounds like a good idea, I can push a message each tick / minute. Though I'm a bit mindful it may be considered a tad too much like spam, perhaps add an option to the -ship command to toggle this and other settings.

Having it pop up somewhere in the wall of text you get in your combat log every 5 minutes would be pretty unobtrusive.

[helitron]

Now that we have a storm, a kraken random encounter would be fun.

[ActionReplay]

Sounds like a good idea, I can push a message each tick / minute. Though I'm a bit mindful it may be considered a tad too much like spam, perhaps add an option to the -ship command to toggle this and other settings.

Having it pop up somewhere in the wall of text you get in your combat log every 5 minutes would be pretty unobtrusive.

Is being sent out every ship tick which is once a minute. You can disable low priority notifications from the -ship command now as well.

Now that we have a storm, a kraken random encounter would be fun.

This has been on my list for sooo long haha, need a good VFX for it though difficult to make it look good or at least decent with some water tiles being inaccessible for creatures. Even with a VFX we could animate it would be a bit janky. Open for ideas here.

[helitron]

This has been on my list for sooo long haha, need a good VFX for it though difficult to make it look good or at least decent with some water tiles being inaccessible for creatures. Even with a VFX we could animate it would be a bit janky. Open for ideas here.

A user on discord (potat) posted this image which is a weird spell cast on deck. It looks like some kind of kraken. Maybe reusing the VFX, extending the duration and resizing it may work? But I have no idea if that’s possible at all.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/ ... 210217.JPG

[helitron]

I suggest to hide the failed “spot nearby ship” rolls from the log. That would make it more realistic, since even when failing, everyone is informed that there is a ship nearby.

[ActionReplay]

I suggest to hide the failed “spot nearby ship” rolls from the log. That would make it more realistic, since even when failing, everyone is informed that there is a ship nearby.

Oh yeah you're right, let me look into that. Its basically free meta information. As for the kraken VFX I've been looking into that one as well, or at least a loopable version of it and some other tweaks.

[FallenDabus]

Now that we have a storm, a kraken random encounter would be fun.

This has been on my list for sooo long haha, need a good VFX for it though difficult to make it look good or at least decent with some water tiles being inaccessible for creatures. Even with a VFX we could animate it would be a bit janky. Open for ideas here.

Could make it a ghostly Kraken, as then it can work with this image quite well:



Deep fog begins to creep up around a ship! Misty tendrils begin to reach out - searching! The whole crew is dead quiet, only the rustle of the sails and the creaking of the hull echos faintly across the water. Then it manifests, a massive monstrosity clambering up on deck - malformed and twisted in death. With it the spirits of the dead it has claimed before! Wave upon wave!

Or something like that. >.>

Could make it really powerful and make those unnatural mists something of encounter ships avoid. No great loot or treasure, just something to truly dread to encounter at sea. Something that will make most crews turn around the ship in the other direction in the hope to avoid it. If they can spot it in time!

Perhaps provide two options. Lower sails for a benefit to hide from it or try and leg it with full sails in the other direction.

[-XXX-]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38AYeNGjqg0

[helitron]

No idea if this is possible, but it would be great to assign docking areas (e.g. Cordor docks, islets, gost ships, etc) as sea/ship areas. Something that would allow to use a spyglass and see if there is a ship nearby, and also the other way round, to spot from a ship If someone is in the landing area.
Maybe even allow to deploy siege weapons at dock areas to fire at ships within range.

[FallenDabus]

Something I noticed is that you can only "travel to Skal" if you set the course there from the port selection when you are in the 'Arelith' quadrant. If you sail to the 'Frostwind Alley' quadrant that has the arrow to Skal on the map, you are unable to travel to Skal from there. Would be great if "Set course for Skal" and "Set course for Sibayad" could be added as an option to Frostwind Alley and Slaver's Run.

No idea if this is possible, but it would be great to assign docking areas (e.g. Cordor docks, islets, gost ships, etc) as sea/ship areas. Something that would allow to use a spyglass and see if there is a ship nearby, and also the other way round, to spot from a ship If someone is in the landing area.

Think that would be a great addition.

Maybe even allow to deploy siege weapons at dock areas to fire at ships within range.

While I really like the idea of adding some sort of vulnerability at ports (and the current invulnerability ain't great), I suspect the naval-pvp meta would immediately turn into a constant sinking of ships in ports. It's very easy for four fully-warded player characters to place eight bombards in a port area, quickly sink a ship, pick up their bombards and lens out.

The Dreadnaught, Leviathan, Sea Leopard and the Sencliff twins would likely be sunk weekly basis in this manner. I'd imagine nobody would care to upgrade ships anymore as a result, and it would quickly turn from a cool option to a borderline abused mechanic. Especially if you can look at the player list and pick a time those places are rather inactive.

[helitron]

Maybe even allow to deploy siege weapons at dock areas to fire at ships within range.

While I really like the idea of adding some sort of vulnerability at ports (and the current invulnerability ain't great), I suspect the naval-pvp meta would immediately turn into a constant sinking of ships in ports. It's very easy for four fully-warded player characters to place eight bombards in a port area, quickly sink a ship, pick up their bombards and lens out.

The Dreadnaught, Leviathan, Sea Leopard and the Sencliff twins would likely be sunk weekly basis in this manner. I'd imagine nobody would care to upgrade ships anymore as a result, and it would quickly turn from a cool option to a borderline abused mechanic. Especially if you can look at the player list and pick a time those places are rather inactive.

I should have been more specific here. Obviously this would not apply to docked ships (like for naval PvP in general) but for ships in the same quadrant. Also, the docks should have some limitations for siege weapons, like ships. E.g. larger settlements like Cordor: tier 6 and smaller ports like Cliff: tier 4.

[FallenDabus]

Ah, that makes sense! That does sound like it would be a very cool addition.

[ActionReplay]

No idea if this is possible, but it would be great to assign docking areas (e.g. Cordor docks, islets, gost ships, etc) as sea/ship areas. Something that would allow to use a spyglass and see if there is a ship nearby, and also the other way round, to spot from a ship If someone is in the landing area.
Maybe even allow to deploy siege weapons at dock areas to fire at ships within range.

I think you can do this already? I mean with the Spyglass dialog option from the Navigator they can spot ships docked at Ports at least if your ship makes the check. Not at sea encounters though.

The Spyglass item though (I should really change the name on the Navigator option to [Vicinity] instead this is confusing) can't. Though it could be a nice touch to see if a nearby ship is currently anchored near a sea event and have engaged it.

But managing to spot a ship either through the navigator or the spyglass doesn't reveal this status? So much going on in the system I forget myself.

Something I noticed is that you can only "travel to Skal" if you set the course there from the port selection when you are in the 'Arelith' quadrant. If you sail to the 'Frostwind Alley' quadrant that has the arrow to Skal on the map, you are unable to travel to Skal from there. Would be great if "Set course for Skal" and "Set course for Sibayad" could be added as an option to Frostwind Alley and Slaver's Run.

Yeah, I think this is because of a technical reason as Skal is not on the map and the quadrant is outside but treated as Origin (Arelith) with a custom state applied. Though I'll look into if its possible to do it from the Frostwind Alley.

[helitron]

No idea if this is possible, but it would be great to assign docking areas (e.g. Cordor docks, islets, gost ships, etc) as sea/ship areas. Something that would allow to use a spyglass and see if there is a ship nearby, and also the other way round, to spot from a ship If someone is in the landing area.
Maybe even allow to deploy siege weapons at dock areas to fire at ships within range.

I think you can do this already? I mean with the Spyglass dialog option from the Navigator they can spot ships docked at Ports at least if your ship makes the check. Not at sea encounters though.

The Spyglass item though (I should really change the name on the Navigator option to [Vicinity] instead this is confusing) can't. Though it could be a nice touch to see if a nearby ship is currently anchored near a sea event and have engaged it.

But managing to spot a ship either through the navigator or the spyglass doesn't reveal this status? So much going on in the system I forget myself.

I was not very clear in my suggestion, but was actually referring to the dock area, not the docked ships. For example a crew approaches Sencliff by ship and wants to know if there are PCs or NPCs present on the dock. E.g. a war party waiting for pirates returning home. We had that situation where half Cordor was waiting for pirates to return.

The same would be also nice the other way around. The ability to spot from the docks area if there are any ships approaching or in the same quadrant (excluding the ones docked). But no idea how this could be implemented.

[ActionReplay]

No idea if this is possible, but it would be great to assign docking areas (e.g. Cordor docks, islets, gost ships, etc) as sea/ship areas. Something that would allow to use a spyglass and see if there is a ship nearby, and also the other way round, to spot from a ship If someone is in the landing area.
Maybe even allow to deploy siege weapons at dock areas to fire at ships within range.

I think you can do this already? I mean with the Spyglass dialog option from the Navigator they can spot ships docked at Ports at least if your ship makes the check. Not at sea encounters though.

The Spyglass item though (I should really change the name on the Navigator option to [Vicinity] instead this is confusing) can't. Though it could be a nice touch to see if a nearby ship is currently anchored near a sea event and have engaged it.

But managing to spot a ship either through the navigator or the spyglass doesn't reveal this status? So much going on in the system I forget myself.

I was not very clear in my suggestion, but was actually referring to the dock area, not the docked ships. For example a crew approaches Sencliff by ship and wants to know if there are PCs or NPCs present on the dock. E.g. a war party waiting for pirates returning home. We had that situation where half Cordor was waiting for pirates to return.

The same would be also nice the other way around. The ability to spot from the docks area if there are any ships approaching or in the same quadrant (excluding the ones docked). But no idea how this could be implemented.

Gotcha, yeah that can be done for sure.

[FallenDabus]

Unwanted 'Whining'?
Currently you can board ships with horses, and fight upon horseback on ships. Might be something that should be turned off, as it looks kind of silly and gets real cluttered quickly. Woe to the poor horse who is dragged upon a skiff and is rowed to a sailing ship.


Doppelganger Ships
Something else I realized is that currently you can do quite a bit of sillyness through the ship-quarter renaming. If I take the War Ship out of Sencliff I could rename it as the Leviathan or Second Sister and then attack other ships, without them being able to detect the difference outside of scrying my character. I could even snatch myself the Penny Rose and then rename it to Dreadnaught. It would not be possible for another ship to "detect" that the rickety nutshell out of Brogenstein is not the feared gnomish juggernaut from the Underdark.

I think if the spyglass revealed the name and the "type of ship" it might make things more interesting than just disabling quarter name changes for ships or revealing the original name via the spyglass. Something like:

Timber Fleet: Cog
Penny Rose: Small Cog
First Sister, Second Sister: Carrack
First Iron Courier, Second Iron Courier: Lanteen-Rigged Caravel
Warship, Sea Leopard: Square-Rigged Caravel*
Leviathan: Quad-Masted [Name]**
Troubadeour, Liberator: Tri-Masted [Name]**
Ironhelm, Hrafnagar, Sea Reaver: Longship
Dreadnaught: A massive, twisted abomination of metal.

*Think caravel is the closest real ship type to this one. Could also name it a 'Bastard Caravel' if one wants to be tongue-in-cheek about it.
**Does not have a good historic equviliant, so perhaps just create a new ship type name like 'Arelithan Galevant' or 'Swordcoast Galevant'.

[FallenDabus]

Ship to ship communication via the shout channel appears to be broken. We tried it twice today.

[ActionReplay]

Unwanted 'Whining'?
Currently you can board ships with horses, and fight upon horseback on ships. Might be something that should be turned off, as it looks kind of silly and gets real cluttered quickly. Woe to the poor horse who is dragged upon a skiff and is rowed to a sailing ship.

LOL! Horses on a Skiff, yeah its not something that ends well.

Doppelganger Ships
Something else I realized is that currently you can do quite a bit of sillyness through the ship-quarter renaming. If I take the War Ship out of Sencliff I could rename it as the Leviathan or Second Sister and then attack other ships, without them being able to detect the difference outside of scrying my character. I could even snatch myself the Penny Rose and then rename it to Dreadnaught. It would not be possible for another ship to "detect" that the rickety nutshell out of Brogenstein is not the feared gnomish juggernaut from the Underdark.

I think if the spyglass revealed the name and the "type of ship" it might make things more interesting than just disabling quarter name changes for ships or revealing the original name via the spyglass. Something like:

Timber Fleet: Cog
Penny Rose: Small Cog
First Sister, Second Sister: Carrack
First Iron Courier, Second Iron Courier: Lanteen-Rigged Caravel
Warship, Sea Leopard: Square-Rigged Caravel*
Leviathan: Quad-Masted [Name]**
Troubadeour, Liberator: Tri-Masted [Name]**
Ironhelm, Hrafnagar, Sea Reaver: Longship
Dreadnaught: A massive, twisted abomination of metal.

*Think caravel is the closest real ship type to this one. Could also name it a 'Bastard Caravel' if one wants to be tongue-in-cheek about it.
**Does not have a good historic equviliant, so perhaps just create a new ship type name like 'Arelithan Galevant' or 'Swordcoast Galevant'.

There are currently 4 classes for Ships based on their size, you can see it when using -ship stats. Can reveal this with the Spyglass too for sure. But its tricky with the names yeah I could honestly just use their original name in parenthesis to make it clear as well.

Ship to ship communication via the shout channel appears to be broken. We tried it twice today.

Oops, forgot about this. I believe its been broken since the big ship update. I'll look into it.

[Red_Wharf]

Maybe even allow to deploy siege weapons at dock areas to fire at ships within range.

Some places in the server already have siege weapons you can actually use against the ships, but they predate ActionReplay's sailing overhaul. I hope they can be repurposed.

[FallenDabus]

I recently began to get more into naval PVP (finally) and I believe I now have a better feel for it as a whole. I participated in two naval contests (Sencliff Liberator vs. Warship) that had pretty evenly matched crews, as well as a few short naval skirmishes of piracy.

Just as a really necessary disclaimer, overall it has been a blast. Everything below are just examples of how some of the wrinkles could be ironed out or how to polish the experience a bit further. The encounters work incredibly well, and I was really impressed by the visual feedback of being able to load and ready ballista (animated to be loaded) and how impacts actually are shown. It was very unexpected how much has already been done to make it immersive and fun. So really, everything bellow is just "the cherry on top" that would be awesome if it ever gets done.


Hidden Ships
One massive advantage an experienced crew has is the fact its ship is likely to remain hidden for long periods of the engagement. By having high sail you do not only have higher ac and ab, but you can also deny the opposing ship the opportunity to return fire, as well as deny them the information which direction to try to escape to. Right now it is simply too much of a continued, stacked advantage to be well balanced.

I would suggest every time you fire, the other ship gets a spot check +30 (if light or heavy ballistas are used) or +60 (if mangonels or bombards are used). Unless it is nighttime, foggy or you are in a storm, once you are detected you remain detected. The only way to avoid this would be if night falls, you sail into fog or a storm, or you leave the visibility range by entering a new quadrant. I would also suggest that unless you are in fog, storm or it is night, the other ship gets +30 to spot if you are in the same quadrant.

Stealth would still remain incredibly valuable. It allows you to attempt to creep up on a ship you want to attack, but once you begin the engagement you abandon any further element of surprise. Alternatively, it allows you to pass by ships unseen that might attack you.

I also think it would be good if an option could be added to not sail hidden / reveal yourself, similar to how you can currently set if you want to avoid boarders or engage them.


Ship Banner
Another aspect that is pretty amusing but I think ultimately shows a limitation of the current system is that my pirate has begun to fire upon and try to board more fellow pirates using Arelith ships than non-pirates. There is no effective way to communicate in a limited, naval fashion. We could not tell them to surrender to be boarded, and then have a laugh about us knowing one another. Nor is it currently possible to indicate to a non-pirate your intentions.

I would suggest allowing you to set your ships banner via the '-ship' command. You can choose to sail without a banner, or you can select the ship banner representing the flag your ship sails under. If you are a citizen of a settlement, you can set "Brogendenstein", "Guldorand", "Cordor" or "Sencliff Jolly Roger". Alternatively, you can set "Free Merchant". This gives most characters 3 options.

If you are of Sencliff, or have 7+ Rogue Levels you can choose to fly any citizenship banner (costs 5000 gold, representing procuring the fake banner).

If you are a Dread Pirate of Sencliff, you gain the additional option to fly "The Black of [First Name] [Last Name]" This allows you to build a reputation for your character or crew. Which is kind of important as pirates do not own their own recognizable ships.

Perhaps you want to be known as the merciless scourge that sinks every ship you come across. Perhaps you want to be known as someone who will only sink you if you return fire or flee, but will be "fair" if you surrender and let yourself be boarded. Perhaps you want to be known as the Dread who does not prey upon ships of Guldorand and Myon citizens, but does so on those of Brogendenstein.

This actually introduces a really nice, meaningful award to becoming a Dread Pirate. You earn not only your final tattoo, but your own Sencliff "Black".


Ship Colors
In addition to the ship banner, you would gain the option to hoist certain flags for limited communication across quadrants. Shout only works if you are in the same quadrant and it is really cool, however it leaves for very limited interaction if you are more distant than this. When a ship changes colours, the other ships (who see it) get an update in the combat log and they also see the ship colours by examing the other ship through the spyglass.

Option A: "The Black [Surrender and quarters may be given.]" (Sencliff & Andunor Option)
Option B: "The Red [No quarter will be given.]"
Option C: "The Blue [Surrender and be detained.]"
Option D: "The Green [Willing to cease hostilities.]"
Option E: "The Gold [Approaching to parley or trade.]"
Option F: "The Purple [Approach will be met with aggression.]"
Option G: "The White [We Surrender or in Distress.]"

Option G would also begin the process to lower the sails and once lowered allows 100% chance of grappling.


@ActionReplay
Also please let me know if you get tired of the suggestions and want a break from reading my posts for a while. I am aware the suggestion forum is closed, and this is kind of a continued loophole exploitation.

[FallenDabus]

Ship Combat "Exploits?"
I am planning to host several naval competitions events in part to get a better idea of how the different ship types factor into the balance of naval combat (as right now I do not yet have a good feel of how much that factors in), but there is one "hot-fix" I would like to suggest:

AB = (Sail of Gunner + Crew Sail Average) /2.

This would reflect that the crew needs to keep the ship steady and at the right angle for good shots. This may still remain somewhat unbalanced, but it would immediately shift things to a more reasonable level and I believe put it in the ballpark of where it should be. The great thing is even if the gunner has a significantly higher sail than the rest of the crew, that gets further balanced out with the bonuses and penalties from the sail state.

Currently the Ship AC = Average Sail of X crew, while Ship AB = Sail of one character. During one of our Sencliff naval competitions it became abundantly clear how easy it is to get an insane AB for the ship, but how difficult it is to protect against it with a reasonable AC. My character with her 96 sail is going to basically hit any ship every time. The gunner of the opposing ship had close to the same sail, while both our crews had AC of about 60. There were basically no misses, and if one ship is missing such a lone high sail character, they are at a massive disadvantage.