New ship Update - Ship PVP

[Party in the forest at midnight]

Thinking about it - most ongoing effects probably arn't that great for the ship themselves. Maybe I should talk to AR about such spells making the ships hull weaker or something? Hrmm.

This would be a gigantic nerf to caster classes, who are already lagging behind melee currently.

[-XXX-]

IMO that the most awkward thing about naval combat with regards to the PvP rules is that there's no way of knowing what characters are on board when the ships engage and whether any of them survived when one of the the ships was sunk.

On the other hand, nobody is compelled to board a ship. IMO the most elegant solution would be an understanding that the 24hrs rule is being waived once the player boards a ship again. (Edit: by "board a ship" here I meant "go on a ship and go sailing" not "engage another ship and board it")


Btw, I think that Grumpy was talking about ongoing offensive AoE spell effects like Cloudkill, Grease, Incendiary Cloud, Entangle, Acid/Mind Fog, Wall of Fire/Ice, etc. These spell effects do not belong on area transitions.

[Rasha]

Risks are known at sea. Being sunk, drowned, boarded, murdered or captured is a matter of when, not if.

[helitron]

Maybe fully crippling a PC ship instead of sinking it would be a solution. The crippling would make it stop using any weapons and moving, and should enable boarding, like it is the case with NPC ships.
Taking it further, even enable some portal/lens failure when the ship is crippled. making jumping over board the only way of escape.

[Rasha]

You can stop firing anytime you want to grapple and board. No one has to sink ships. But, if you are in sailing gear, or don’t have a PvP build, it’s a lot safer just to sink your enemy than chance personal combat.

[Curve]

Safer and boringer.

[The GrumpyCat]

Safer and boringer.

Also a lot less rewarding. You sink a ship? You don't really /get/ anything except possible bragging rights. You don't even know if the pcs were drowned.

By contrast boarding a ship gives you
*Prisoners
* Trophies (if you really must go the head-bash rout)
* Gold
*Goods from the ship
*Information
*And most of all lots of potential rp.

Far more profitable in the long run.

[FallenDabus]

In my opinion, PvP starts as soon as one ship fires on the other. After all you can kill a large number of characters without ever being in the same area by putting a foot on their ship.

The means of communication and roleplay beforehand is to give a warning shot, to set a flag, to change your speed and course, and to communicate via the shout channel.

If I fly the purple flag I am telling another ship to back off. If I see them continuing towards me I can fire a warning shot. If they still do so, PvP begins and I start firing at them to sink or board.

If I fly the black flag I am telling another ship to stand down and allow themselves to be boarded, and if they do not resist and depending on rp once boarded, all will likely be fine. If they try to quickly sail in the other direction instead of slowing down and raising the white, they are communicating that they will have none of it and going to punch me in my metaphorical face if I attack.

The only two cases in my opinion where it makes sense for no combat to occur immediately at boarding is if 1.) a ship grappled out of hiding and is immediately boarded. 2.) if one of the ships raised the white flag.

---

I much rather look at the issues and the available mechanics at hand we can use to address them.

For example, if grappling out of hiding and near-instant boarding ganking has recently become a problem, this can be mechanically fixed by needing to raise a flag and giving a warning shot before the grapple goes on a 30-second cooldown and can be fired. If you do not raise a flag or give a warning shot, the grapple can not be used. (This does not apply if another ship has fired on yours or grappled you, but only the first ship to engage in such an action.)

If instant attacks to sink other player ships are the problem, the same solution as the grapple can be applied. Before you can fire on another ship, you need to fire a warning shot and raise a flag. Then the ship weapons are on a 30-second cooldown before they can be fired. If you do not raise a flag or give a warning shot, the ship weapons can not be used. (This does not apply if another ship has fired on yours or grappled you, but only the first ship to engage in such an action.)

In the white flag cases, once two ships are grappled to one another, allow the spyglass to reveal if the other ship's characters are warded or have summons out. That way you can confirm if the other crew has truly surrendered, or is lying in wait to gank you as soon as you cross. If they are warded, feel free to cross and kill them immediately. If they are not, then only in this case the rp before traditional PVP applies.

---

An approach like that, using mechanics to eliminate the need for rules in the majority of cases, and just having a single rule in the "if surrendered case" would be a far cleaner way, IMO.

The three-second immunity after area transition IMO takes care of the rule against coating a deck in area of effect spells. A character has 3 seconds to reposition themselves in a more favorable place, and even any traps they trigger do no damage anyway.

[-XXX-]

Grappling shouldn't work before the target ship is damaged below certain hull health % IMO.

[Sombricimos]

Following is my opinion after being an active sea content player for like more than a year, back when sailing was just randoms encounters.
Updates have been pouring for the past 6 to 7 months now and, I and many others are extremely grateful for it. The "rules", however, have taken some time to be decided, and I can't say I'm quite satisfied with these.

Here's in order what happens in a naval fight Arelith edition:
1 - Flag changed to indicate intent to attack
2 - Fired warning shot
3 - Fired at least once, and likely multiple times to get the ship hurt a fair bit to improve grappling hook chances to land
4 - By now the defending ship would likely have either raised a flag to surrender, fled (The spyglass allows to count numbers on deck, maths aren't that hard) or fired back
5 - Fired the grappling hook

And you are trying to tell me that all of this isn't enough of "RP before PvP", yet simply getting caught in the act of pickpocketing is?

I don't mean to say that one should no RP PvP. But a one-line +3 seconds of waiting for the information to reach the boarded's brain should be considered enough considering all the previous steps that happened.

If one of the side wants to use their one-line to try and promote actual RP... fine, excellent even.
But I feel that if the boarded side does not wish to parlay, it should be their right to defend their ship.

In a way it's a bit like quarterbreaking. If I catch someone breaking into my quarter, do I have to RP with them, bring a warm cup of tea and sit by the fire? I hope that's not what I'm expected to do, because that's not what I'll do.

I've never learned much about how sea battles used to happen in the golden age or even in modern times but I'm pretty sure it wasn't about taking some time for a cup of tea while your ship is slowly sinking due to multiple holes in the hull and imbalance caused by said holes.


Also can we talk about the 30/- DR 2800hp grappling chain that is now impossible to break because someone complained somewhere despite it being completly fine the way it was before these insane numbers went live?

I remember it took us a good 30 to 40 seconds to break it with 6 people whacking at it (before it was changed to the numbers mentionned above)

[Distant Relation]

The RP that actually needs to happen:
-Recruit or speak with players and characters who've invested into the sail system.
-Learn from them and bring them into your faction, make deals with them, sail together.
-Keep them as specialists in your faction, or mimic what they do if you find the system as intriguing as we do.

Right now we have a lot of folks trying out sailing for the first time. They're coming at it with their typical arelith characters - you know, uncrackable saving throws, 80 Lore, ESkF Discipline, all the trimmings. These are the characters that are hyper optimized in discords and in excel sheets, reduced down to tiny numbers and refactored to squeeze out a slightly higher number wherever they can. It's genuinely surprising to these folks that they can't just sail at the enemy, board and kill everyone, all the while disparaging folks who invest into the 'silly sailing minigame' with precious feats and skillpoints.

In this very thread we have ample examples of suggestions being made (in good spirit) that are either unworkable in the current sail system, or are already a part of it. Actual mechanics that exist in some form are being suggested here by helpful individuals that have only the vaguest sense of how the system works. This entire thread began with a confusion about how ship hide works!

Some of the suggestions and rulings changes being proposed here will drastically alter the landscape, and not for the better. Yes, you will be shot and sunk before you get a chance to board. It's too high risk to be hit with a grappling line and having to *wait* while you and your 15 friends congaline onto the ship with your sail-incapable, land-pvp optimized builds. Why should the sailors let you reach the point where your mechanics are mathematically guaranteed to give you the victory, when they can stop the fight at a point where they're mathematically guaranteed to deny it? So they can experience two lines of RP, get killbashed, and have their skulls displayed,, like every other pvp encounter in the server that isn't an imaginary unicorn?

How can anyone say with a straight face that after...
-Flag changes to communicate intent
-Warning shots
-Cannon fire
-Shouted lines (if on the same quadrant)
-Likely a few missed grapple attempts before one is successful
... there has been 'no RP'. There's more RP in all that than in the two mandatory lines of text that most pvpers begrudgingly agree to in order to meet the minimum requirements not to get a telling off by a DM.

Hell, we've had an entire conversation just with warning shots, flag changes and a single critical hit from a bombard. We encountered an unknown vessel flying aggressive colors, so we changed flag and fired a warning shot. They changed flag twice, likely in a panic, first indicating they wanted to be left alone, and then indicating they wanted to fight. One crit of a bombard, and they changed their flag again to white and allowed boarding. We boarded, had a nice chat, and left. - It was a misunderstanding, they were just fishing, and they hoisted the purple afterwards.

That's what sailing pvp has to offer. I hope you can join us.

[ProgENItorZ]

In my opinion, PvP starts as soon as one ship fires on the other. After all you can kill a large number of characters without ever being in the same area by putting a foot on their ship.

The means of communication and roleplay beforehand is to give a warning shot, to set a flag, to change your speed and course, and to communicate via the shout channel.

If I fly the purple flag I am telling another ship to back off. If I see them continuing towards me I can fire a warning shot. If they still do so, PvP begins and I start firing at them to sink or board.

If I fly the black flag I am telling another ship to stand down and allow themselves to be boarded, and if they do not resist and depending on rp once boarded, all will likely be fine. If they try to quickly sail in the other direction instead of slowing down and raising the white, they are communicating that they will have none of it and going to punch me in my metaphorical face if I attack.

The only two cases in my opinion where it makes sense for no combat to occur immediately at boarding is if 1.) a ship grappled out of hiding and is immediately boarded. 2.) if one of the ships raised the white flag.

---

I much rather look at the issues and the available mechanics at hand we can use to address them.

For example, if grappling out of hiding and near-instant boarding ganking has recently become a problem, this can be mechanically fixed by needing to raise a flag and giving a warning shot before the grapple goes on a 30-second cooldown and can be fired. If you do not raise a flag or give a warning shot, the grapple can not be used. (This does not apply if another ship has fired on your or grappled you, but only the first ship to engage in such an action.)

If instant attacks to sink on other player ships are the problem, the same solution as the grapple can be applied. Before you can fire on another ship, you need to fire a warning shot and raise a flag. Then the ship weapons are on a 30-second cooldown before they can be fired. If you do not raise a flag or give a warning shot, the ship weapons can not be used. (This does not apply if another ship has fired on your or grappled you, but only the first ship to engage in such an action.)

In the white flag cases, once two ships are grappled to one another, allow the spyglass to reveal if the other ship's characters are warded or have summons out. That way you can confirm if the other crew has truly surrendered, or is lying in wait to gank you as soon as you cross. If they are warded, feel free to cross and kill them immediately. If they are not, then only in this case the rp before traditional PVP applies.

---

An approach like that, using mechanics to eliminate the need for rules in the majority of cases, and just having a single rule in the "if surrendered case" would be a far cleaner way, imo.

This whole post above is something I agree with, as an avid sailor who chose to gimp my build to be less efficient than regular build by dropping some cruicial feats, just to give me an edge to what others treat as a "minigame". It may sound selfish and uninclusive when I say, that some of the proposals above are meant to give non-sail inteded characters out there to be able to just brute force their way out in the seas, but I feel this whole sea content is about to lean that way if it's not voiced properly.

Perhaps it can be treated like it like "pickpocket" of sorts. You get caught, you deal with the consequences of your actions. You succeed, you get away with it. Yes, you can sail and leave port to go where ever you wish to go, just do not expect to not get bodied and sunk by things out in the seas be it mobs or PCs that are more than likely invested to sailing. Yes, it is in a sense gatekeeping people from experiencing the content, but that applies to more things in the server than just the sea content. You didn't build to last properly in PvE? Say goodbye to experiencing epic content and dungeons with ease.

My words are most certainly biased, so please feel free to call me out if it sounds presumptuous. I just do not wish to see investments of people (like me) to become worthless.

[Xarge VI]

The only thing that's an eyesore for me in these awesome sailing updates are the daggers.

Everybody's expected to use a 'sailing kit' to maximize the skills, which means everyone's standing with daggers in both hands on the deck. I'd expect people to need their hands in order to apply their sailing skills to sailing.

Furthermore I find it super arduous to swap gear around or even fit the 'Sailing Kit' in any of my characters inventory.

Maybe the Sail skill should be removed from the basin and instead add craftable sailing gear. Larger bonuses in fewer items for the quality of life and immersion.

[Party in the forest at midnight]

Please do not remove it as a basin option. Because of limited inventory space I like being able to make a second suit with skills I could not fit onto my main suit. Plus I am playing a caster and I like having my casting stat on my equipment so I don't lose spell slots.

[Ork]

Sailing gear might be the way to go, but I think the amount of additional gear we have to have on person to succeed skill checks is getting a bit ridiculous.

I really like the spurs found in the cobbler that adds a +5 Ride to your boots with a -5 Move Silent. I think more of these sorts of add-on to gear would be a HUGE boon. Maybe remove sail from the basin, but allow crafters with X amount of sail skill make a boat booties that reduce slipping on the deck for a +5 Sail for a -5 whatever. And a +5 Sail bandana added to tunics, etc. etc.

Just an idea that might see the reduction of sailing daggers.

[FallenDabus]

I simply put sail on my primary gear, with the exception of two hatchets I can switch to. It makes it really simple. But I also play a pirate and do not have access to settlement storage, so inventory clutter is real.


The problem with removing sail from basin is basically what "Party In the Forest at Midnight" mentioned. You want something flexible for caster classes.

The problem of adding additional sail gear on top of dweomer gear is how easy it will make 95 sail the standard across the board. Large ships have a higher amount of crew slots that need to be filled. This gives smaller ships an advantage of usually running with a higher sail score than larger ships that balances the asymmetric power of ships. Aka, the easier it is to get high sail with sail gear, the less the sail score will matter and the more ship stats do.

So before adding more sail gear items, the balance between smaller and larger ships would need to be updated to support it. Else the update will be strongly in favour of the three flagships (Dreadnought, Cordor Flagship, Guldorand Flagship) and strongly in disfavour of every other ship.

[Rasha]

There is rumor that +5 sail gear and +5 projectiles have been found, however I can not confirm this. Perhaps a dev could confirm. I don’t believe anyone has actually found these items as of late. Do they still, or have ever existed?

[Edens_Fall]

Sailing gear might be the way to go, but I think the amount of additional gear we have to have on person to succeed skill checks is getting a bit ridiculous.

I really like the spurs found in the cobbler that adds a +5 Ride to your boots with a -5 Move Silent. I think more of these sorts of add-on to gear would be a HUGE boon. Maybe remove sail from the basin, but allow crafters with X amount of sail skill make a boat booties that reduce slipping on the deck for a +5 Sail for a -5 whatever. And a +5 Sail bandana added to tunics, etc. etc.

Just an idea that might see the reduction of sailing daggers.

I'd love this idea for climb etc.

[-XXX-]

Climb is not in the basin options and there is a purchasable specialized climbing gear instead.
I enchanted mine with sail, lol

[malcolm_mountainslayer]

Sailing gear might be the way to go, but I think the amount of additional gear we have to have on person to succeed skill checks is getting a bit ridiculous.

I really like the spurs found in the cobbler that adds a +5 Ride to your boots with a -5 Move Silent. I think more of these sorts of add-on to gear would be a HUGE boon. Maybe remove sail from the basin, but allow crafters with X amount of sail skill make a boat booties that reduce slipping on the deck for a +5 Sail for a -5 whatever. And a +5 Sail bandana added to tunics, etc. etc.

Just an idea that might see the reduction of sailing daggers.

Sailing gear + sailing does everything + everyone needs sailing is the one thing keepong away from the content. At least with ribic chesta an alternate set of gear was optional on multiple levels in that the dcs didnt need maxed skill+ gear and you only needed one person in your party to open/disarm.

The new sailing aaytem looks aamzing but everything relying on one skill makes it pumping it out on a crew more mandatory than discipline.

Removing it from basin and, or using the crew's sail skill on some kind of bell curve so that like a 33 sail guy in the crew doesn't dump on the 80 sail captain's crew average.

Also if there could be alternate skills like bluff or disguise vs spot. We can do sail vs crew sail average or assigned spotter's spot. ( like od youe crew has 30 sail average losing to 80 sail average, your 80 spot crew member should be able to see). This would help reduce need of sail skill Bloat but not make the alternative skills necessary to fill out a crew.

[Wenchslayer]

I simply put sail on my primary gear, with the exception of two hatchets I can switch to. It makes it really simple. But I also play a pirate and do not have access to settlement storage, so inventory clutter is real.


The problem with removing sail from basin is basically what "Party In the Forest at Midnight" mentioned. You want something flexible for caster classes.

The problem of adding additional sail gear on top of dweomer gear is how easy it will make 95 sail the standard across the board. Large ships have a higher amount of crew slots that need to be filled. This gives smaller ships an advantage of usually running with a higher sail score than larger ships that balances the asymmetric power of ships. Aka, the easier it is to get high sail with sail gear, the less the sail score will matter and the more ship stats do.

So before adding more sail gear items, the balance between smaller and larger ships would need to be updated to support it. Else the update will be strongly in favour of the three flagships (Dreadnought, Cordor Flagship, Guldorand Flagship) and strongly in disfavour of every other ship.

Considering that the Guldorand Galleon and Cordor Flagship are rarely used, and the crew of the dreadnaught recently spent eight figures on their ship, I'm going to go ahead and say that flagships are not in a favorable position right now to begin with. The investment to run one is extremely high and should be reflected in mechanical capability including the need to have to win a bid (And/or government position) just to keep it.

There are crews that are more then capable of running a flagship that have chosen to not to try to run a flagship simply because they don't want to deal with extra RP associated with it. You have to deal with governments, and maintain control of a political power base in addition to being a sea-captain and running the most mechanically intensive system on arelith in terms of base requirements. Also, you can and will get evicted if you fail to do these things. I would hope there's a reasonable payoff for doing that versus just having to win a random bidding contest with no strings attached.

The only reason the Dreadnaught gets used so much in the first place is because Andunor has zero other options to mount a magonel or heavier weapon class. It never breaks even on earning gold or resources all of which can be done with a 4 man ship and a smaller crew take. If a 4 man ship is released for Andunor, you will see the dreadnaught used significantly less because it's very inconvenient to launch it and people earn less gold from PvM content using it. Light sensitivity means that drow and gnome and other such characters have exactly two ship options versus the myriad of options for other characters. This means that the dreadnought is significantly over-represented compared to other flagships.

Galleon and Cordorian Flagship are just rarely used by comparison since better options exist for typical content short of PvP.

Flagships seem strong on paper until one considers the sheer effort required to own and maintain one with roleplay outside of the ship system 'mini-game.' Unless they are decoupled from settlements, any reduction in ability will just make it seem spiteful at this point due to their obvious lack of use (Aside the Andunor outlier for reasons already explained) .

I will also note that if sailing items are released, that means while a flagship is more feasible, so is two ships (4 crew each) running a convoy. In which case, the convoy would win statistically anyway due to having access to two magonels versus two heavy balistaes.

If a player group ever has the means to run a ship convoy with high skill crews, you will see the meta change extensively.


Second Edit:

On PvP ship culture

As far as PvP culture and balance, I'm probably in large part to blame or consider for this as I am a part of and helped create the largest and likely most antagonistic PvP crew on the server. (Andunorian Black Fleet).

Here's the takeaways that I don't say in character that I would like players to walk away with based on my personal experience with the system:

Ignorance of mechanics and roleplay requirements are what makes the system seem more obtuse then it is. Its' a new system and players don't want to explain the mechanics because we are supposed to roleplay them, not take away the magic of new discovery. Thus there's a degree of ignorance for those new to the system, that is not present for those who first tried the content 3-4 months ago. This ignorance is not easily rectified because we don't want to 'metagame' and tell them everything. Yet, saavy mechanical knowledge is often required to properly set up a situation that can be thrililing to both parties involved.

Most of our players were in the past, very new with the system since we were probably some of the first players to engage with the new sailing system when it was a complete unknown to everyone.

That meant there was a degree of misunderstanding regarding player roleplay and conduct due to a lack of mechanical understanding. An example was that we once sunk an iron throne courier in a single shot with a bombard critical strike. Same thing with the Penny Rose. This was before the chainshot mechanic was in the game, and before either of those ships had hull upgrades. We had no idea it would just sink like that or I wouldn't have ordered my crew to fire on them in the first place for reasons often specified by other posters. We were probaby the first ever players who actually fired on another ship. How could we know. The entire system of PvP, flags and signalling was very new, and known to very few.

There was also a PvP boarding action where we attempted to communicate with a crew, not realizing that our ship had a new feature (Laying out a darkness cloud) which made it impossible for those players to actually see what we said.

In those sorts of circumstances, it can be best to assume the benefit of the doubt because the system is still very new to most players. Just talk to the players in question about it, or ask a DM.

Secondly, I think that it's best to encourage mechanical solutions to increase roleplay engagement versus making players adhere to a set of rules that can be broken. If people don't want no roleplay boarding actions, then make ships required to be sufficently damaged or chain shot before they can be grappled in the first place. With the old grapple system, the chain was so weak as to invalidate boarding at all (Since it could be removed literally within 5-6 seconds before players could run over and click the transition to board.)

Also, mechanically the grapple shots were more likely to hit if you damaged the ship you are attacking. There were more then a few cases of random crits sinking a ship that had no intention of being sunk to our own disappointment as well. Chainshot solution solved this, and I should think that future updates will have the same level of on the nose thought put into them by ActionReplay.

[FallenDabus]

Snip

Considering that the Guldorand Galleon and Cordor Flagship are rarely used, and the crew of the dreadnaught recently spent eight figures on their ship, I'm going to go ahead and say that flagships are not in a favorable position right now to begin with. The investment to run one is extremely high and should be reflected in mechanical capability including the need to have to win a bid (And/or government position) just to keep it.

There are crews that are more then capable of running a flagship that have chosen to not to try to run a flagship simply because they don't want to deal with extra RP associated with it. You have to deal with governments, and maintain control of a political power base in addition to being a sea-captain and running the most mechanically intensive system on arelith in terms of base requirements. Also, you can and will get evicted if you fail to do these things. I would hope there's a reasonable payoff for doing that versus just having to win a random bidding contest with no strings attached.

The only reason the Dreadnaught gets used so much in the first place is because Andunor has zero other options to mount a magonel or heavier weapon class. It never breaks even on earning gold or resources all of which can be done with a 4 man ship and a smaller crew take. If a 4 man ship is released for Andunor, you will see the dreadnaught used significantly less because it's very inconvenient to launch it and people earn less gold from PvM content using it. Light sensitivity means that drow and gnome and other such characters have exactly two ship options versus the myriad of options for other characters. This means that the dreadnought is significantly over-represented compared to other flagships.

Galleon and Cordorian Flagship are just rarely used by comparison since better options exist for typical content short of PvP.

Flagships seem strong on paper until one considers the sheer effort required to own and maintain one with roleplay outside of the ship system 'mini-game.' Unless they are decoupled from settlements, any reduction in ability will just make it seem spiteful at this point due to their obvious lack of use (Aside the Andunor outlier for reasons already explained) .

I will also note that if sailing items are released, that means while a flagship is more feasible, so is two ships (4 crew each) running a convoy. In which case, the convoy would win statistically anyway due to having access to two magonels versus two heavy balistaes.

If a player group ever has the means to run a ship convoy with high skill crews, you will see the meta change extensively.

It is a very fair point, but I feel we come to different conclusions of how to address the issue with the Dreadnought.

I simply do not believe an inflated cost justifies additional mechanical power. A far better way in my opinion would be that the three district leaders in Andunor simply need to vote every X period of time who is given ownership of it for that time. That eliminates the insane cost that is caused by the bidding process. Now the conversation can become how powerful it should be on playstyle, mechanical merits and its role as the hulking terror of the sea.