Naval system as of 10-01 Feeback Thread

[Wenchslayer]

Been a fair amount of players discussing this of late. Good spot to post. Since the sailing system has received frequent and noticeable improvements based on player feedback.

My current feedback:

System needs more incentive for Cordorian or Guldorand aligned playerbase to take part, as end game content is typically Amnian or Cordorian ships at this time.

System is currently dominated by Warlock/loremasters and clerics and other esoteric builds that while somewhat function in general content, are typically just built to max a sailing stat. Other classes need less of a barrier to entry whether through items, skill additions, feats or stat changes.

I haven't really seen many players willing to kit out multiple characters like the aforementioned in a crew. And I think it will be very difficult for anyone to maintain such a group due to Arelith's quite regular character turnover rate.

My typical experience has been 'Send out messengers for 20 minutes, then go sailling for 2 hours.' Anything that can lower the time needed to get a crew together and allow for more spontaneous use of the sailing system rather then then the often significant amount of pre-planning it takes now would be useful to encourage interaction with the system by newcomers. Current it takes far more planning to use a flagship then it does to do even endgame runic content.

TL;DR: Engaging unique system that feels satisfying due to teamwork requirements. Needs more class diversity and less barrier to entry based on class skills in order to encourage organic PvP and PvM content use while maintaining working as a team. Certain settlements also need better incentives.

[Skane]

I think having classes each able to perform a different ship role would be fun.

[ZeroPointEnergy]

It definitely needs incentives for non-pirates to participate.

If crews aren't gearing their own people then they're just shooting themselves in the foot. Everyone could make use of +2 sail dweomer gear.

[Kuma]

It definitely needs incentives for non-pirates to participate.

If crews aren't gearing their own people then they're just shooting themselves in the foot. Everyone could make use of +2 sail dweomer gear.

i'll be completely honest needing a whole suit of (aggressively non-optimal) sail gear in an overstuffed inventory really doesn't appeal to me

edit: this is precisely why epic bards (huge party skill bonuses) are particularly good at providing sail force multipliers: the crew don't have to stuff themselves full of yet another version of their gear but this time with sail

[Flower Power]

I dunno if they exist, but some +4-6 Sail rings (a la Climbing/Appraise gear) in the loot matrix might be nice and would help ameliorate needing an entire gearset to become modestly decent at sailing w/o a full 33-rank skill investment.

[Curve]

Yeah, the idea of going sailing only to be met by a crew of people who are geared for that system and hungry to display their big ships is not appealing to me in the least. Meanwhile I “need” a full skill investment and gear? I don’t want to be overly negative but its very off putting.

Edit* I just want to be clear that I know a lot of work went into this system. I think it’s smart and cool. This may just not be a system for me unless I make a dedicated pirate/sailor.

If there was some reason for settlements to have to protect their trade routes, pirates attack them? That might force interactions and conflict. That could be very cool.

[ZeroPointEnergy]

It definitely needs incentives for non-pirates to participate.

If crews aren't gearing their own people then they're just shooting themselves in the foot. Everyone could make use of +2 sail dweomer gear.

i'll be completely honest needing a whole suit of (aggressively non-optimal) sail gear in an overstuffed inventory really doesn't appeal to me

edit: this is precisely why epic bards (huge party skill bonuses) are particularly good at providing sail force multipliers: the crew don't have to stuff themselves full of yet another version of their gear but this time with sail

Yeah, inventory management is terrible in this server. I get it.

[ActionReplay]

I got a really good, thought out suggestion, from a couple players some weeks back about trading posts and naval trade in general for Nations that I will implement as soon as I'm done with the NPC vessels (Only Privateers left!) that will open up a new set of content for, hopefully, Guldorand and Cordor.

[Red_Wharf]

It definitely needs incentives for non-pirates to participate.

I wish Spot could be used instead of Sail when using the Spyglass, if your Spot score is higher than your Sail. Small things like this and carpentry repairs would help non-sail characters feel a little less useless on board.

[Curve]

I got a really good, thought out suggestion, from a couple players some weeks back about trading posts and naval trade in general for Nations that I will implement as soon as I'm done with the NPC vessels (Only Privateers left!) that will open up a new set of content for, hopefully, Guldorand and Cordor.

This is v cool. I can easily see a world where settlements feel they have to protect their trade interests by recruiting for a navy, paying privateers, or bribing pirates. Moral and ethical ambiguity is good. That would open a whole world of roleplay.

[FallenDabus]

I helped AR with several of the sail mechanics and balancing and its a bit of a can of worms. The big stumbling block is that as long as the system is to remain as simple and accessible as it currently is, while at the same time trying to do a lot of things at once, the options are very limited. As so much is built on the sail skill and the heavily restricted ship types, it is also far too easy to completely break the balance.

A great example is the sail skill vs. the different ships in PvE and PvP. The lower the investment to reach a high sail skill, the more both PvE and PvP balance will be reduced to the factor what ship one has access to. If we removed the sailing skill entirely or getting a high sail skill was even easier as it is now, the Cordor Flagship, Guldorand Galleon and Dreadnought be significantly more powerful. They'd continue to breeze through any PvE content, while locking everyone else out of it. It would also skew naval PvP even more heavily in their favour.

If we'd introduce easily accessible sail gear, it may mean that the balance is more or less reduced to the singular factor of ship types for a long time until they become rare due to characters rolling the gear.

There are two ideas I am playing with that I think could work.

The first are a few specific class restricted pieces of sailing gear to just help those very sail starved classes. Another suggestion I have been toying with is to lower the crew requirement by 1 on all ships that currently do not have a crew limit of 5 or 6. This would make it much easier for people to use the smaller ships and get out to sail, while preserving the balance requirement on the 1st Sister, 2nd Sister, Wailing Maiden (crew 5 ships) and the Guldorand Galleon, Cordor Flagship and Dreadnought (crew 6 ships).

I also think that Cordor, Guld and Andunor need a better charter ship. Something akin to the Sencliff Warship (currently crew 4) I think would help a lot. There is no competitive ship available to non-pirate sailors. They are either quarter-owned or crew 6 settlement ships. I've run a sizable and very active sencliff faction on the sencliff charters successfully for months now, and I do not think I could have done the same nearly as well if I were restricted to the Iron Couriers as the next best alternative.

I suggested it a while back, but I think Guld and Cordor navy should also get additional 4 crew ships. They need to have a smaller ship so they have an easier time building up a sailing faction.

I also completely agree on the content front. Non-pirates definitely need more incentive to go to sea, and I think what AR will soon be working on is a great step forward. Imo, content is a much bigger priority right now than the sail skill-related improvements.

[Deac0knight]

Not coming from be but I think it's a great idea much in the way bluff and perform are enabled on Arelith...

Create a minor gift (Gift of the Sailor) that is +6 Sail for 0 ECL (credit to Pingouinator for the idea).

[Skane]

Off-shore storage facilities protected by Amnish galleon(s) with large amounts of stone and wood that you can then take back to your settlement or sell could be a strong incentive to go sailing.

[Farlius]

I maintain each activity on a ship should use a different stat (whether full or portion idk) + skill.
Makes no sense to sweep it under the profession tag when that was a catchall for pnp, something we don't have to adhere to, nor do I expect many pnp DM's would if a player can justify why say dex helps in fine jewelry crafting.

[ReverentBlade]

I got a really good, thought out suggestion, from a couple players some weeks back about trading posts and naval trade in general for Nations that I will implement as soon as I'm done with the NPC vessels (Only Privateers left!) that will open up a new set of content for, hopefully, Guldorand and Cordor.

I am excited and nervous. I like incentives, but please don't make engaging with the system "mandatory" for keeping a settlement healthy. The gear reqs, character specialization, and time investment required for naval work under the new system is a considerable barrier to entry and I can't think of a faster way to exacerbate burn-out that to make folks engage with a system they would rather not.

Bonuses and -extra- perks for their settlement I'm sure would be a nice boon for the naval players, however.

[helitron]

Incentives are great to lure more players out to sea - the more are added the more will be convinced that it's worth investing into sail, even for non-pirates. Currently, many encounters are not worth it or barely pay off the time and gp investment. These could use some increase in loot drop or chances for special events. e.g. after diving at least 100 times at different positions and max depth - the general conclusion was that it was not worth it. Considering the time it needs to assemble a crew to sail to a certain spot and then dive over 500m - finding a chunk of gold and one raw fire opal is not enough for the time invested. It's faster to portal to RDI and solo Abazuur for a high chance to find runic material and noble ore which is a max 30 min investment.

That said, I guess we need to be patient until all these events out there will be worth the effort. ActionReplay is doing a great job in constantly adding and updating content. And the idea with the outpost for gathering resources for settlements is a very good one that will certainly push settlements to invest into a navy.

And the sail skill bonus is also something that may need to be looked at when talking about increasing presence of other settlements at sea. I agree it's a great skill to have for the system, but it's a matter of balance and only a very small playerbase is incentivised to min/max into that. Pirates obviously, and everyone else that makes a navy/sailor type char. This results in very few that easily reach 60-100 sail, and the rest of the population that has no investment or little investment because other skills are more important for daily survival compared to sail. I know you can use a ship also without sail investment, but considering the PvE or PvP encounters at sea against high sail skill crews, a lot of this content will remain gated behind heavy sail investment or risking to get gutted at sea. It's like having several dungeons and epic dungeons gated behind a climb DC or lockpick DC, where you need 3-5 players with enough skill to be able to pass these DCs and reach these dungeons.

Additional items that increase sail skill (rings, cloaks) or gifts - these were all mentioned by Irongron when the sail skill was introduced - would be a very good way to help chars without sail investment. However, it will be hard to prohibit the characters with high sail investment to profit even more from these items/gifts. And I think it will be hard to code it in a way that they can not be used by characters with high sail skill or additional sources of sail bonus - there is always someone who figures out a way to avoid these restrictions.

My suggestion would be to calculate the sail skill based on hard points invested (0-33, no modifiers from WIS) + a soft cap of max 20 points from other feats (exploration, fathomless), bard song, items. Alternatively, a max cap of 50 from all hard points, attributes, bonus modifiers, and items combined.
That way, the min/maxing will be avoided to a degree where the difference between someone that does not want to sail every day, and someone that does it every day will be reduced to something that is more manageable (keeping in mind that AC/AB and crits are calculated based on sail deltas.)

Probably adding a few cruiser ships for non-sailors, that don't require more than one PC and have a NPC crew on board with average of 40 sail skill could also help to lure non-sailors out at sea.

[helitron]

... that will open up a new set of content for, hopefully, Guldorand and Cordor.

That would be great.
But, don't forget Brogendenstein (incl. Earthkin Alliance), they also have a ship. Would be nice to also give them something to head out more often.

[Brodgar]

As another idea, the required crew of the ships could have positions to fill with a "skill cap" they require to count, instead of simply adding the skill and dividing by crewsize.
If not everybody on board is required to have maxed out skills, that could encourage lower level characters to join ship crews.

IE.: A ship with a crew of 4 people could have 4 positions to fill:
Captain, requiring a high skill or risk a malus
Helmsman/First Mate, requiring a high skill or risk a malus
Sailor x2, requiring a moderate skill or risk a malus (15ish?)

Each position filled could give a malus or a bonus to the ship total sailing skill (depending on the crew size required to sail the ship).
It would represent that not everybody on board must be a master sailor with Epic Skill Focus and magic items to be useful and know how to tie a knot.

I get this feeling that newer characters have it hard to join crews because of the lack of Saling Skill, which is a bit sad looking at the amount of mid-level stuff to do while sailing (events at sea).

Maybe having an experienced sailor on a position could give a small bonus to the points their position provides, giving an edge to experienced crews, but a system like this could would lower the bar to assemble a crew to sail and have more people at sea.

[Rowlind Salem]

I wonder if there's a way to have ship escort missions as writs.

Say, a lvl 13 writ where you have to stay on board and hold off random encounters for a lap around arelith.

Or a lvl 18 where you have to do the same, but from a settlement to Skal or Sibayad and back.

No navigation or handling the sails/guns involved. You're just along for the ride.

The intention being, give people a taste of what the ship rp has to offer. If your sail skill sucks, then it'll take longer and you'll get boarded more. Who cares though? It gets people on the boat.

The more ships that are available to sail, the better too. Even if they're just a bunch of penny roses.

[Babylon System is the Vampire]

While I do agree with some of the points in this thread (and heavily disagree with others), I think sailing is in a much better place then people are making it out to be in here. Now that pirate ships have tough encounters, the proper island has the same amount of content as sencliff does. That means that a two hour trip that is mostly rping with a little fighting here and there can net the same amount of gold/xp as circle grinding in a group in the same time. If that's not incentive to get out there and go, I have no idea what you expect will be. Not to mention most classes got two more skills recently, which makes it baffling that suddenly pvp builds can't do without skills they did without for years and years and years


Look, I don't want to doubt anyone's experience, but I was part of a crew that without owning a boat got people sailing every day (still do!). So its really hard for me to buy into the whole "I can't get a crew to go sailing" line. Sure, that crew is in sencliff and only now are the good guys getting sailing upgrades, and you would be hard pressed to find another player as dedicated and focused as FallenDabus, but if they can get 18 or 19 members at their peak you can't tell me someone putting in the time can't get 7 or 8. And there in lies the rub, because owning a ship or having access to the flagships needs to be what your character is about whenever you are on, assuming the new standards are enforced. Its really not suited for a part time gig, something you do with your character when they are bored. If that sounds awful to you, that's a totally legit reaction. I was certain on my pirate I did not want to own a ship myself even. But if you feel that way, and you own a ship? Yeah, somethings wrong with that. You also have to be willing to branch outside of your core group. You are not going to convince all your ooc buddies to give up them sweet skill points. They can still play a role, since most sailing builds will appreciate the muscle, but you need sailors and you need to make them feel like they are there for more then to just boost your sail score or they won't stick around. You follow that advice, harsh as some of it may sound, and you will have a crew up and running in no time.

[Sombricimos]

The sail skill is not the problem.
Pirates don't magically start with a bonus to sail, all players are equal at the start, on lv 3. All classes have access to sail.

The difference comes in content availability, pirates are way more encouraged to spend skill points in Sail because there is more to do at sea for them. In a way, even, it's mandatory and will impact you negatively if you do not invest in sail when playing a pirate.

Also a reminder that pirates have nowhere else to go, since their presence on the main island is usually not well received.

If people thinks it's aggressively unoptimal to take points into something that makes you good at sailing in sailing content and you don't want to bridge the gap with another set of gear like we do with open lock, then honestly that I'm not sure what I could demonstrate that'd make someone think otherwise nor do I want to try. It's not a joke skill, it'll get you access to some nice things/content, but it does take a bit of commitment to the concept.

Also this, if you are not ready to sacrifice just a wee bit of your original build's effectiveness and put it in skill points/ Skill focus/ESF sail... the blame is on you, not on the system. If you are not willing to do this, forget about playing (or even RPing, who knows) as a sailor/navy commander or a pirate.
A character should not be able to be top tier in all aspects / mechanics of the game. This is not Skyrim.

A player who invested gear, skill points and possibly an Epic Skill Focus in a certain skill should be better than others who haven't. There, I said it. And I really can't see what the heck is wrong with that. And this character will inevitably be worse in other aspects.

Is content gated by sail? Yeah, it is. Again, No one should be good at everything.
Worst case scenario, it forces you to interact with players who have invested in sail. Is it too much to handle, to have interactions on a RP server?

Anyway, now that I offloaded the content of a salt factory, here are some thoughts to make sail more available to all:

- Add sail (and climb while we're at it.) to the potential skill bonuses received by randomly generated loot (ring/amulet/boot/cloak/belt)
- "One with the land" (ranger / Druid spell) receives bonus to climb/sail. Or an equivalent version named "One with the sea" spell, whatever. It's wandable, and the scroll can be read by anyone with 15 lore or so.
- Absolutely keep that bug/feature that caps the sail bonus at 100, or lower that threshold even if necessary
- Minor gift of +6 to sail. Or less, whatever floats your boat. Badum tss.

And to end this post,

Here's what I managed to pull off with a ranger, 14 base wis. With a bard(Sea shanty bard song/Good hope), ESF sail and gear, I can reach 95 sail. I do have to switch gear when going on a ship other wise I'm sitting here with like 45 sail. Which is enough too. You can do most content with only 45 sail, only trouble you'll get is if you go to the edges of the map.

So anyone with 8 base wis would get that 95-3 (because Wis mod) so 92. Which is more than enough. So what's your excuse?

[Wethrinea]

I do love the sailing system, which in it's current iteration is way better than it used to be. Especially on those ships with low crew requirements, you can have a lot of spontaneous fun.

The 6 crew flagships are another story unfortunately. In Guldorand we have really struggeled to get sailors for the Galleon, much because of the limited playerbase it has compared to Cordor. The result is that it sees little use, because even if you manage to gather 3 or 4 characters with decent sail skill, you are still very much gimped. Different IC solutions have been tried, from hiring questionable pirates to an admirality, but the problem of too few players persist.

Perhaps nation flagships could have the option of bringing on NPC sailors with modest sail skills to make them usable (but not great) even when a full PC crew is not available?

[FallenDabus]

This was something that was recently suggested by another player as well, and I like the idea. It's a nice middle ground approach. While easily accessible high bonus sailing gear can negatively impact the naval PvE and PvP balance (as I covered in an earlier post), I believe NPC henchmen could be a very good solution.

I believe this could also be done in a very interesting, thematic way. Brogendenstein, Cordor, and Guldorand could gain the settlement option "Press Sailors Into Service". Sailing was an incredibly hard and dangerous job that was not very lucrative for those who worked on ships, so press-ganging to fill the ranks of navy ships became very common for states. One of the many reasons piracy came to be was a result of a practice that was akin to indentured servitude on navy ships. In that regard, piracy was very much akin to a working-class uprising. While that is historically, I do think it fits well into the FR too.

So if a port-settlement enables "Press Sailors Into Service", the flagships gain the option to recruit up to 3-4 NPC henchmen. These have 30 hard sail skill. While buffable, they are not a replacement for a 33 hard sail player character with a bit of gear. So they are incredibly useful to turn the empty (0 sail) slots into 30 (up to 50s max when buffed) on flagships in order to prevent the average from tanking. With the henchmen, it all remains within a reasonable balance. I would suspect it would not discourage folks trying to find more PC sailors either, given PCs sailors with 33 hard sail can top that very easily with dweomer-crafted gear.

The "Press Sailors Into Service" option could gain some sort of thematic cost / penalty down the road. I do not think the penalty is very important, but the flavour would add an interesting dimension. There being a roleplay-e story-cost for it at the very least. Could even increase the food demand of a settlement slightly (5-10% perhaps) to reflect you are forcing fishermen to man the navy ships.

Two sailor henchmen could be added to the portside taverns (like the Guldorand Lighthouse) too for common use. I'd rank these with a lower sail skill (perhaps 15), as other non-flagship ships have a lower crew limit and you do not want to lock out mid-level sailors from being useful to them. These would be accessible regardless if a settlement activates the "Press Sailors Into Service" option

I would also make the sailor henchmen unhirable by characters with Sencliff Ink. Sencliff is fine without henchmen, and you want new players to be immediately useful on crews to help sail. So I think it would help with this is just being a "landlubber" addition. Without adding more charter ships to Sencliff, you just want to avoid folks solo-sailing without looking for other players to help. Level 6 sencliff starting character usually already has around 9 sail.