_DC 60 (240 total crew’s sailing scores for a 4 people manned ship for real safety (outside of natural 1s), perhaps being at 200 would suffice to get out of the quadrant, can’t say for sure)
_No way to predict a storm from the land … Even inconsistent actually (already seen on land “be careful there is a storm”, while there is no problem in the same area at sea).
_Predictability even on ship is troublesome: Docked, you won’t ever see the trouble ahead. I’ve already seen a clear situation at port turning extremely quick to (less than 1 minute IRL between “storm in the vicinity” message and) being in a storm, and all this perhaps 4 minutes after leaving the port. Plus, the storm movement from a quadrant to another is not always following the wind direction.
_You don’t “act” to survive the storm, meaning you don’t have opportunities to do something meaningful outside of sailing skill numbers (not an action) and trying to not get into the storm to start with (but predictability).
_ A rental ship can be salvaged once sunk by a storm, only if –released, re-rented, then re-released and then clicked “back to port”. That’s at least what I observed with Sencliffs Rentals. Then the quartermaster will repair the ship in exchange of coins, or if you’re lucky to be in presence of a good carpenter he can do it provided with wood as always. It’s a bit complicated and probably not well known from the discussions I’ve had. This would perhaps not be a problem if there were more ships over the servers, but it seems they are a taxing resource.
_The storms are frequent (recently I see them ½ times when I try to sail), and large (4 quadrants at times), and can last long in the same area, preventing any activity at sea, and long enough to simply block chances to get out (sea takes time when all is good, if you add two hours of waiting for a storm to pass it quickly means no sailing this afternoon or tonight for a player).
My conclusions:
While I love the sea system in general, and think the storm experience is a nice addition, the result of it all is less sailing, and less fun. Any factor taken apart can find a reasonable explanation, whether from a coding limitation, or a notion of things having consequences. But all these factors put together result in a strong diminution of sailing possibilities.
If I were to propose ideas to help in this regard, I’d say:
_clarify the way to make a rental sunk by storm available again
_maybe have a bit less storms, or that they last less (more than 45 minutes around an area can be like a sign saying “no sea for you today”)
_no idea as to how to introduce predictability from land /make predictability at sea better, but clearly this would help too.
_ I don’t know if it’s possible, but I’ve seen only the 60 DC ... Perhaps storms could have variable DCs, so that the result is not always a destroyed ship for any crew under 50 sailing skill average of 4 people (this number seems high enough to me to avoid being too frequent reasonably)
Thanks for your time, and everything you do for this game!
