Ship Prices discussion

[Most Lee Harmless]

I'd favor a proportional upgrade for any new attribute system : i.e a current 60att ship is 100% under the current system : so the new system will grant it enough atts to remain at 100% : a 45att ship is 75%, therefore it would receive enough new atts to be 75% under the new system.

I would not favor everyone being given a remodel for every ship they own : most would never be used by them and would end up on the market. Rather, I would prefer every ship to be granted an option (maybe a tick box on its ship page) to redistribute its atts, a one time only use : this would also cover inactives ships or seabed wrecks with no-one around to use a remodel on them. the subsequent owner would then have the option to upgrade it and redistribute its points.

[Maha]

is it really a problem that the old ships have already ATT points distributed to the old attributies?
when it gets implemented we all can upgrade our old ships to lvl 20 and gain an additional 28-45 att points to distribute over the old and new.

a total new ship could put all points on the new attributes, that is true, but that is a disadvantage shared by all players.

a way to overcome this is to have 2 tiers. the first tier is lvl 1 to 10 and allows only the old attributes. level 10 unlocks the second tier with the new attributes.

[Captain dungeness]

I'd favor a proportional upgrade for any new attribute system : i.e a current 60att ship is 100% under the current system : so the new system will grant it enough atts to remain at 100% : a 45att ship is 75%, therefore it would receive enough new atts to be 75% under the new system.

This is what I imagined when I read Captain Jack's post. It wouldn't be hard for the devs to scale the attributes of all existing ships: If you had 10 points in sails then with the new system you will have 10*(scaling factor) sail points.

...every ship to be granted an option (maybe a tick box on its ship page) to redistribute its atts, a one time only use

This sounds like more work for the devs that could be better spent on legendary voodoo. I have a better idea: make the voodoo card "Remodel" an uncommon card so as people buy more packs for legendary voodoo they will increase the supply of remodel cards for players who want to remodel. I don't see a problem with players paying a small cost to maximize their existing ships: the game doesn't owe us the chance for free maximization opportunities. The existing ships will still be fully functional, just not maximized.

-Captain D

[Captain dungeness]

I'm excited by the increase in max level because it will put more emphasis on smaller ships! A level 20 Sloop of War could possibly beat a level 10 Brig of War and a level 20 Brig or War could beat a level 10 Frigate. Many players will find they can only afford to max-level medium-sized ships so we will see more creativity than we currently see with level 10 Frigate fleets.

Here's some numbers on ship costs with different upgrading cost formulas. I colored them so show relative costs. The grey "sw" numbers are with level 20 Shipwright tech.



Maybe a combination of the two is best...

Here are the numbers for upgrade costs reaching a limit at level 8 but never exceeding 2M/2.5M.
As you can see the Sotl/MoW are still very expensive but not unreasonably expensive. These two options are my favorite because new/medium-sized players can afford a few max-level ships but the cost ramps up at a reasonable rate to allow only rich players to sail max-level large ships. The Sotl and Mow level 10 cost would drop slightly from the current formula which might help encourage players to take them out of their private marinas.


-Captain D

[Haron]

I think everyone will still use max level ships in combat fleets. So a higher max level will simply make combat ships more expensive, and not change who wins.

But if it's needed for "ship specialisation", it's needed. Those new attributes should be completely different from the existing ones, though. More atts affecting combat performance is unnecessary (I think we already have too many of those).

[Haron]

Also, this will make tail ships level 20, requiring 20 call leviathan to sink each tail. This will be the end to ship stealing, which to many is among the most exciting things one can do in the game.

[Captain dungeness]

Also, this will make tail ships level 20, requiring 20 call leviathan to sink each tail. This will be the end to ship stealing, which to many is among the most exciting things one can do in the game.

This is the worst part about level 20 ships: ship stealing will be much harder. Some of the most exciting times I remember were battles against players where we had the chance to steal ships. I'll be sad to see it get harder but hopefully Legendary voodoo will provide even more tools for skilled players to steal ships.

[Most Lee Harmless]

A further downside will be that with such war fleets needing to be lvl20, just for parity (and dont forget tech bonuses give % gains too and thus will become even more powerful) : such fleets become even more costly and the risk of losing such high value ships might well create a lot more caution in exposing them. Harder to steal? Certainly; and much more vulnerable to retributive attacks by Levi's. That said, a full lvl20 fleet stolen will repay the cost of more levi's having to be used.

I do see some interesting tactical experiments being done, should this progress : just how powerful would a LMM20 be? Sadly, few have taken their LMM's even to lvl10, fewer still arm them with any regularity : but I've seen a fleet of armed LMM10's kick small raider butt soundly, make them lvl20 and... interesting times, no?

A further consideration si the effect upon MC prices : average att count on a new-build is about 60% of maximum (maybe a shade more, it does seem to vary between ship types a bit) : given you dont waste MC's on junk, let's say it take 15 or so to max a current ship : that would become 30 or so needed for a full-bore lvl20 : so, MC prices will go through the roof, limiting who can do this kind of upgrade and limiting the total number of maxed out ships in the game. Is that desirable? Same applies to EJ value : with such high top-end costs for levelling up, EJ's become even more valuable too.

[Grimrock Litless]

Call Leviathan's value would go X3, and end up being the most expensive voodoo in the game. Since that to upgrade to level 20. Even on cheap ships, would cost tons. If it does still go up after level 10.

Which would make taking down a cheap ship to get to the good stuff, even harder.

[Admiral Nelson]

Call Leviathan's value would go X3, and end up being the most expensive voodoo in the game. Since that to upgrade to level 20. Even on cheap ships, would cost tons. If it does still go up after level 10.

Which would make taking down a cheap ship to get to the good stuff, even harder.

We have a genius in the house...