PATCH: Test Center Ship Overhaul Features

04 / 26 / 2020

Luthius has unveiled a comprehensive overhaul to the Naval system! Read more about it below:

 

Hello folks! The day is finally here, and the long-rumored Ship Overhaul Patch is now up on the Test Center for players to test!

This patch contains a LOT of changes to ships, with two overarching goals in the changes within: Reign in Inbalances and Increase Play Diversity

Currently, there are a large number of significant imbalances in the ship system, both in terms of PvM and PvP gameplay. The three biggest factors contributing inbalances, both for PvM and PvM, come from:

1) Too many players fighting on board the same ship (many of which are Alts or even potentially VPN charcters)
2) Too large of bonuses to certain ship stats, such as Speed and Crew/Cannon Damage, causing imbalances between player “investment” levels
3) Pet Abilities that inflict AoE damage

We feel that the changes listed below will go a long way to rebalancing the ship system to a more approachable level for the majority of the ocean-fairing playerbase

Additionally, a large number of new Upgrades, Abilities, Factions, Themes, Crewmembers, and other features will provide much more options for players to pursue and keep things fresh and diverse in the coming months and years

As with all of our Test Center Patches, it is not guaranteed that all or even any of the features will make it to the LIVE server, or in the exact numbers/form you see here. So keep that in mind when giving us feedback, and try to keep it civil :p

Any feedback can be send directly to me (Luthius) on Discord or can be replied directly to this Forum post. Please be patient if I dont immediately respond to your message(s): typically we get a LOT of feedback on these and it takes a while to go through it all

 

For testing, players can use the Green Statue in Prevalia’s Main bank to set their Carpentry Skill to 120 and then use the Gold Statue to create Ship Crafting ingredients (Board Commodities are spawning on the ground). Players can use the Ship Editor statue to create any Ship Upgrade or Crewmember type they wish, as well as spawn Doubloon Checks in their bank box

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Firing Angles

  • Firing angles for ship cannons have been significantly widened and AI has been updated to make it much, much more difficult for player ships to catch NPC Ships in a “blindspot” / “deadzone” orientation where they will not fire on the player nor attempt to move

Ship Speeds

Baseline Ship Speeds
Baseline Ship Speeds have been adjusted as such (smaller numbers represent faster speeds)

Small Ship / Small Dragon Ship: 0.1 Speed (previously was 0.15)
Medium Ship / Medium Dragon Ship: 0.125 Speed (previously was 0.175)
Large Ship / Large Dragon Ship: 0.15 Speed (prevously was 0.2)
Carrack: 0.175 Speed (previously was 0.225)
Galleon: 0.2 Speed (previously was 0.25)

Speed Bonuses
The speed bonus amounts granted from Ship Crewmembers and Ship Upgrades have been reduced to 50% of their previous amounts

Ships can only have one Speed Increase Ability in effect at any given time

  • Hard to Port ability now increases speed by 50% for 15 seconds
  • Beat to Quarters ability now increases speed by 50% for 30 seconds
  • Ride the Waves ability now increases speed by 50% for 60 seconds (now regardless of Sail Hit Points)

Combat Speeds

  • If a ship has been in combat with another ship within the last 60 seconds, all Speed Bonuses and Penalties (from Upgrades, Crewmembers, and Abilities) will be reduced to 50% of normal
  • If a ship has been in combat with another player ship within the last 60 seconds, all Speed Bonuses and Penalties (from Upgrades, Crewmembers, and Abilities) will instead be reduced to 25% of normal

Ability Speed Effects

  • The Tanglevine Ammunition and Chainshot abilities now have a -50% speed reduction effect (however, this amount becomes scaled based on the Combat Speeds mechanic listed above)

Sail Damage Speed Effect

  • Ship Speed penalty for Player Ships from taking Sail Hit Points Damage now scales between 0% to 25% as the ship’s Sail Hit Points approaches 0 (previously scaled between 0% to 50%)
  • Ship Speed penalty for NPC Ships from taking Sail Hit Points Damage remains between 0% to 50% as the ship’s Sail Hit Points approaches 0

Ship Upgrades and Crew Bonuses

Reductions
Ship Bonuses from Ship Upgrades and Crewmembers for the following Bonus Types have been reduced to 50% of their previous base amounts:

  • Movement Speed
  • Cannon Accuracy
  • Cannon Damage
  • Doubloons Earned
  • Crew Wrestling Bonus
  • Crew Damage Bonus
  • Spyglass Search Distance Bonus (only for Ship Upgrades, not Crewmembers)

Crew Attack / Crew Stop


Players now have two new options that give them better control over which ships their Crewmembers will fight against: Crew Attack and Crew Stop

Players can select a ship for their crewmembers to attack via the following methods:

Clicking the Crew Attack button on the main ship page
Clicking the Bullseye + Axe + Crew icons in any of the hotbars
Saying “Crew Attack” or “Crew Target” out loud
Typing [CrewAttack or [CrewTarget

Players can tell their crewmembers to stop fighting their current target via the following methods:

Clicking the Crew Stop button on the main ship page
Clicking the Red X + Crew icons in any of the hotbars
Saying “Crew Stop” or “Crew Halt” out loud
Typing [CrewStop or [CrewHalt

Ship’s Wake

  • Wake is a new stat on all ships, that represents how easy the ship is to Track by players and how easily the ship Escapes enemy NPC ships
  • Wake is represented as a % scalar value, such as 50% or 150%
  • A 100% Wake represens a completely average wake that offers no adjustments to mechanics
  • Each Ship Type has a baseline Wake value, and players can improve (by reducing) their Wake stat with Ship Upgrades, Ship Crewmembers, and Ship Abilities

Baseline Ship Wake values are as follows

Small Ship / Small Dragon Ship: 100% Wake
Medium Ship / Medium Dragon Ship: 125% Wake
Large Ship / Large Dragon Ship: 150% Wake
Carrack: 175% Wake
Galleon: 200% Wake

Tracking

  • When players use a Spyglass to Track ships, they normally have a maximum tracking distance possible, which is determined by Player Skills + Ship Upgrades + Spyglass Quality
  • However, the Spyglass Search Results for Player Ships takes into account the player ship’s Wake stat which adjusts the the maximum search range for any searches involving that ship

A 50% Wake represents a 0.5x multiplier to search range against this ship
A 100% Wake represents a 1.0x multiplier to search range against this ship (i.e. no change)
A 150% Wake represents a 1.5x multiplier to search range against this ship
A 200% Wake represents a 2.0x multiplier to search range against this ship

For example:

  • A player is using a spyglass to track ships, and their maximum tracking distance for is 100 Tiles
  • A Player Galleon with a 200% Wake is on the ocean and is 125 Tiles away from that searching player
  • Normally that Player Galleon would be 25 tiles outside of the Spyglass player’s search range and not show up in the search results
  • However, with a 200% Wake the Galleon effectively multiplies the maximum distance of all Spyglass searches involving it by 2.0x
  • As such, the searching player now has a effective search radius of 100 x 2 = 200 Tiles against the galleon, which would in fact put it within range and add it to the search results
  • Conversely, a ship with a 50% Wake would reduce the trackable range of other players towards their ship to 0.5x normal
  • So a player with a normal search range of 100 Tiles would only spot a player ship that has a 50% Wake if the ship was within 50 Tiles or closer

Escaping

Tethering

  • When NPC ships spawn, they are “Tethered” to their spawn location and will not move more than 100 tiles away from their initial spawn location no matter what, even if in combat
  • Tethering exists to prevent players from luring dozens, if not hundreds, of ships all to one particular location

Pursuit

  • NPC ships also have what is known as a maximum Pursuit distance, which is their (Cannon Range x 4)
  • If an NPC ship is fighting a player ship, and if the distance between the two ships exceeds the NPC ship’s Pursuit distance, they will stop pursuing the player ship
  • A ship’s Wake stat adjusts the maximum Pursuit distance NPC ships will consider towards player ships
  • An NPC ship’s maximum Pursuit Distance cannot be reduced to lower than 50% of its normal distance via the Wake stat of a player ship

For example:

  • An enemy ship normally that has a Pursuit range of 48 tiles is pursuing a Galleon with a Wake of 200%
  • In this case, the effective Pursuit range for the NPC ship will be increased from 48 Tiles to 96 Tiles due to the Galleon’s Wake
  • Alternatively, if an enemy ship with a Pursuit range of 48 tiles is pursuing a Small Ship that has with a Wake of 50%, the effective Pursuit range will be reduced from 48 Tiles to 24 Tiles

Player Combat

Fighting Party

  • Each ship now has a Fighting Party that contains a maximum of 3 Players
  • While on a ship, only Players and their Followers who have been selected as members of the Fighting Party are allowed to perform Harmful or Beneficial Actions to other players/creatures
  • Players will receieve a system message notification if they try to perform a Harmful or Beneficial action onboard a ship that they have not been designated in the Fighting Party for
  • The History Tab of the Ship Menu has been changed to Roles Tab
  • On Roles page, the Captain of the ship can chose which players will make up the ship’s Fighting Party
  • Players will be reminded when launching a ship if their Fighting Party is currently vacant with no players selected

 

  • Players can preemptively select members for their Fighting Party on land (while the ship is in deed form) and the list of players added to a fighting party persists even after a player docks the ship (the settings are always saved after any change)
  • The Friendly Players section of the page contains a list of all friendly players (Captain, Co-Owners, and all Friends) of the ship
  • Players will show up with Green Text for their names if they are currently on board the ship
  • Clicking on the button next to a player in the Friendly Players section will add them to the Fighting Party if room is available (max of 3 players)
  • Clicking on the button next to a player in the Fighting Party section will remove them from the Fighting Party
  • Players can not add new members to the Fighting Party while the ship is currently in combat

Begging Motivation

  • In order for ship Crewmembers to gain the benefit of the Begging Motivation mechanic bonus (using Begging Skill on a ship to boost Crewmember Damage + Wrestling), the player who activated it must remain in the ship’s Fighting Party
  • Players will now receive a system message notification when their Begging Motivation effect expires (5 minutes duration)

Boarding Parties

  • Players may now only launch Boarding Parties from ships if they are part of that ship’s Fighting Party
  • Other players not in the ship’s Fighting Party will no longer automatically join with boarding parties for their ship

Boarding Damage Bonus

  • The Boarding Damage Bonus stat on ships has been removed from the ship system (previously was linked to Boarding Success chance bonus)

Crew Hit Points Bonus

  • The Crew Health Bonus stat on ships has been renamed to Crew Hit Points Bonus

Crew Healing Bonus

  • The Crew Recovery stat on ships has been renamed to Crew Healing Bonus and now increases how much health is restored whenever a ship Crewmember is healed (by any source)

Readying Crew / Sending Crew Below Decks

  • The cooldown between Readying Crew and Sending Crew Below Decks is now a flat 10 minutes and not affect by any upgrades

Misc Stats

  • Fishing Special Skill bonus has been renamed Effective Fishing Skill and will be addressed in our Fishing / Harvesting overhaul soon
  • Fixed a number of incorrect display values in the Ship Stats gump page

Area-of-Effect Mechanics

  • Any Explosion Potions, player-casted Spells, or Pet Abilities that utilize an Area-of-Effect radius will now only affect up to at most 2 targets while on a ship

Ship Salvage

  • Ship Deeds are no longer Capturable/Ransomable (players may only Capture/Random Ship Upgrade deeds now)

Doubloons
Doubloon values for sinking NPC ships have been adjusted as follows:

Small Ship / Small Dragon Ship: 2000 Doubloons
Medium Ship / Medium Dragon Ship: 3000 Doubloons (previously was 2000)
Large Ship / Large Dragon Ship: 4000 Doubloons (previously was 6000)
Carrack: 5000 Doubloons (previously was 8000)
Galleon: 6000 Doubloons (previously was 10000)

  • NPC Ship Crewmembers have had their stats and skills adjusted, resulting in them being worth more Doubloons than before due to the increasing Difficulty Value
  • “Special” NPC Ship Factions are worth +25% Doubloons (explained later)

Ship Themes

  • 8 New Ship Themes are now available as Upgrade Deeds for players to install on their ships

Derelict Theme

Sorcerous Theme

Slime Theme

Ancient Theme

Gore Theme

Overgrown Theme

Tradesman Theme

Submerged Theme

Ship Abilities

  • 9 New Ship Abilities are now available as Upgrade Deeds for players to install on their ships

Lesser Abilities

Powder Mishap

Targets the nearest other ship within 25 tiles that is currently reloading their cannons
Adds 30 seconds to the target ship’s reloading time, deals 150 Gun damage per cannon on ship side, and deals 75 damage to each target on board (ability cannot be stacked)

Sea Change

Cancels all negative status effects (such as Slowed, Reduced Cannon Accuracy, etc) on the ship and cures poison for all targets on board

Depth Charges

Deploys 1 depth charge per cannon on each side of the ship in a formation in the water behind the tillerman
Any ship moving over a depth charge will detonate it and take 150 Hull damage
Depth charges last 60 seconds

Regular Abilities

Razorwire

For next 180 seconds, anyone boarding this ship takes 33% of their total hit points as Bleed damage over 15 seconds (ability cannot be stacked)

Grenades

Targets the nearest other ship within 25 tiles
Each crewmember onboard throws a grenade at the target ship that deals 100 Hull damage and 25 damage to crewmembers within 2 tiles

Bad Rations

Targets the nearest other ship within 25 tiles
Reduces the Accuracy and Defense of each target onboard the target ship by 15% for 30 seconds (ability cannot be stacked)

Greater Abilities

Eye of the Storm

Targets the nearest other ship within 25 tiles
Spawns a Storm Eye lasting 30 seconds, that follows the target ship and activates every 5 seconds
Each activation inflicts 150 Sail damage to the target ship and strikes at a random location, dealing 25 damage to all targets within 1 tile of that location (ability cannot be stacked)

Low Profile

Reduces the ship’s Wake Scalar by 50% for 120 seconds

Sargasso

Targets the nearest other ship within 25 tiles
Spawns a formation of Sargasso seaweed tiles around the target ship lasting 60 seconds
Any ship that moves over a Sargasso tile will have its movement speed reduced by 75% for 5 seconds

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Ship Upgrades

Outfitting Upgrades

  • We have added 2 new Outfitting Upgrades available for players: Sentry and Skirmisher

 

 

Special Item Upgrades

  • We have added 4 new Special Item Upgrades available for players: Weathervane, Telescope, Signal Pigeons, and Blast Furnace

 

 

 

Crew Item Upgrades

  • We have added 4 new Crew Item Upgrades available for players: Smoke Bombs, Intercepted Orders, Crew Hatches, and Dueling Pistols

 

 

 

 

Ship Crewmembers

New Crewmembers

  • Five new crewmember types are now available for players to recruit and place on their ships: Hedge Mage, Paviseman, Spy, Pilgrim, and Powder Monkey

Hedge Mage
Low Health, Average Damage, Low Wrestling, Low Armor
Ship Upgrades: Wake, Crew Health, Greater Ability Cooldown
Ability: Curse

Paviseman
Low Health, Average Damage, Average Wrestling, High Armor
Ship Upgrades: Crew Health, Cannon Accuracy, Doubloons Earned

Spy
Low Health, Average Damage, High Wrestling, Average Armor
Ship Upgrades: Wake, Hold Capacity, Lesser Ability Cooldown
Ability: Poisoned Weapons

Pilgrim
Low Health, Low Damage, Low Wrestling, Low Armor
Ship Upgrades: Wake, Fishing Skill, Movement Speed
Ability: Prayer

Powder Monkey
Average Health, Average Damage, Low Wrestling, Low Armor
Ship Upgrades: Cannon Reload Time, Cannon Damage, Regular Ability Cooldown
Ability: Powderkeg

Crewmember Abilities

  • A number of Ship Crewmembers now have abilities they will sporadically use, in order to balance out some of the “weaker” crewmember types who have less desirable Upgrade Bonuses and Combat Stats than others
  • Crewmembers with abilities will have a listing and button for them when viewing their profile, and players can click that button to read a brief description of the ability

Crewmember Abilities are as follows:

Carpenter
Maintenance: Every 30-60 seconds will repair a randomized ship damage type (1% for Hull, 2% for Sails and Guns)

Cook
Food Ration: Every 30-60 seconds in combat will randomly provide a 10% Wrestling and 10% Damage bonus to another random Crewmember for 30 seconds

Medic
First Aid: Every 30-60 seconds will heal another random Crewmember for 10% Health

Engineer
Tinker: Every 30-60 seconds will reduce a random ability cooldown by 10 sconds

Fisherman
Net: Every 30-60 seconds will Hinder their current combat target for 5 seconds (will not stack with existing Hinter)

Spy
Poisoned Weapons: Has a 25% chance on Weapon hits to inflict Deadly Poison

Powder Monkey
Powderkeg: Improves the damage of any Ship Bombs placed by players from this ship by 20%

Hedge Mage
Curse: Every 30-60 seconds will apply a 25% Damage penalty to their current combat target for 30 seconds (effect will not stack)

Pilgrim
Prayer: Every 30-60 seconds will heal all other Crewmembers for 2% Health

NPC Ships

  • We have updated our existing NPC Ship Factions (such as Pirate, Raider, Explorer) to use Ship Abilities more inline with their respective themes
  • We have updated the Stats and Skills of a number of NPC Ship Crewmembers to increase their difficulty and survivability somewhat
  • There are 8 new “Special” NPC Ship Factions for players to encounter on the sea, each with new creatures and crewmembers on board
  • Some of the creatures on board the Special ship factions may seem familiar, but have new and adjusted abilities/skills to reflect their altered role in ship combat
  • Special Ship Factions are worth 25% more doubloons than their normal counterparts

Vile Faction

Tradesman Faction

Tidecaller Faction

Submerged Faction

Ossuarian Faction

Lizardman Faction

Druidic Faction

Daemon Faction

Ship Spawns

  • Ship Spawners have been overhauled and a large number of new spawners have been placed
  • Each Ship Spawner has a different spawn radius, with spawn amounts and spawn frequencies scaling dramatically based on that radius
  • Ship Spawns now have a 66% chance to spawn a “classic NPC Ship Faction (such as Pirates, Fishermen, Merchant, Orc Reaver) and a 33% chance to spawn a ship from one of our new Special factions (such as Daemon, Lizardman, Ossuarian, etc)

Society Jobs

  • Society Jobs are now available for the Special Ship factions, and the amount of doubloons required for jobs requiring sinking a specific Faction ship or boarding and killing specific Faction creatures has been adjusted to account for the increasing number of total factions and the variable spawn rates of Standard vs Special Faction ships

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What’s Next
A number of other Ocean-related systems are currently in the works, with some being fairly far along, but we have decided to wait and finish the Ship Overhaul testing before we push those to the Test Center. Ideally they should be in testing form within the next few weeks. They include the following:

IP Restriction
While we have added the “Fighting Party” mechanic to reign in the number of players who can effectively fight from a single ship, there still exists the potential for a player to place their Alt characters on other ships. To combat this, we are considering adding an IP restriction to ships, thereby limiting accounts on the same IP to be ONLY be allowed to be on board the same ship and no others. MAH Multiuser Account Households would have an exemption, similar to dungeons

The Shelter Sea
One of our new mechanics intended to help out players new to Ocean content is creation of something called “The Shelter Sea”. A large area of ocean surrounding Shelter Island will be marked off with Buoys, and while a player ship is inside that boundary, they cannot initiate any ship-based attacks against any other player ships. If a player ship is attacked outside the Shelter Sea, they will NOT receive any protection from this mechanic even if they do sail into the boundary (2 minutes without combat must pass for them to be considered “out of combat” and protected by the Shelter Sea)

Only Small NPC ships will spawn within the Shelter Sea, allowing new players the opportunity to cut their teeth on manageable ship content without worry of being attacked by veteran player ships

Shipbreaker Beach
Shipbreaker Beach is a new system, similar to Shrine Corruptions, in that they will occur twice per day at random times. The idea will be that a large beach fortification will spawn that will defend itself from players. Players will earn points by damaging and blowing up the fortifications from their ships. NPC ships may spawn and try to support the fort, and players will earn points for damaging and sinking them as well. Player will unable to land on the beach and cannot recall/teleport/gate to the island

Fishing Overhaul
Our current plan is to overhaul Fishing to seperate out “Land Fishing” from “Ocean” fishing. To accomplish this, we will be removing the bulk of the rewards from “Land” fishing but also do away with the Captcha for fishing on land as well, thereby allowing players to macro the skill up similarly to Anatomy, Magery, etc. Fishing for any sort of “yields” will now primarily be performed for via Ship on the sea, or via Resource Maps on land

Catch of the Week
Catch of the Week is a new system that will most likely replace Fishing Society jobs or at least alter their mechanics in a fashion
Each week players will have a collection of new fish to catch, and players will be rewarded by turning in “bundles” of these fish (usually in a randomized of 3 Fish)

A rather large number of special ocean fish will be added to the potential fishing drops, which will be used in the Catch of the Week System

Any “Special” fish caught must be placed and held in an aquarium; if they spend more than 6 hours outside of an aquarium after being caught, they will “dry out” and not be valid for turning in for rewards
All existing Aquariums in game currently will now support our new Aquarium Menu, where players can add and store fish in them (and can also choose from several Aquarium Backgrounds and move fish within the Aquarium)

Players will be able to encounter Fish Bait, potentially as drops in land-based Resource Maps and a few other sources

Players on the ocean will be able to apply Fish Bait to their Fishing Poles and select a target fish type. For 60 minutes after applying Fish Bait, that player will have a much, much better chance of catching that particular fish type when they haul in a Special fish (when selecting a Fish Type players will be notified that the Fish belongs to the

Players compete to see whom can turn in the most Bundles of the current Catch of the Week fish, with players earning different rewards based on how they perform (rewards still to be determined)