[Postponed] Proposed Plunder Bounty Rules

[Gunder]

@Gunder
We add a new random element though and this is sink chance plunder. The random element should not count against defensive preparations. At least we are ready to try this approach at the very least. We want more big fleets out there after all.

It is worth adding that it is the FIRST time that we tweak the game in a way to allow larger fleets. Up to now, we were mostly adding features to limit this (perhaps the second,if you count the Captains plunder update).

Calculating precisely is not that easy and attackers have weapons up to their sleeve to ruin these estimations (ie Booty Master). Still, I agree that they can calculate now in a better way but I think this is better for all.

The risk is still out there. If you work our tool that I gave to the discussion topic, you will see that the big differences are only spotted at 2 cases:
-Players running with 1.5M or less at hand get considerably less defends.
-Players are able to add more defense durability for their coin.

This 1-5% random effects tend to average itself intensively if you add up all attacks. For a 20M hand, you will almost always get the same number of defends (236) so it is not as random as we initially thought. The problem here is not the randomness but the large % of treasure at hand.

Thank you for the clarification, Capt. Jack, I am less skeptical now. I guess the point of a random amount is that it always will cancel itself out if you go trough enough attacks.

I can see your point about the new sunk chance plunder feature. There is still some randomness when hitting players with more than 400 ships. It will make it more profitable to hit players with a lot of ships, which seems logical. At the same time, the sink chance at 100 % has been moved from 201 ships to 401 ships, which again is a motivation to build a bigger fleet. This could however lead to the conclusion that I should stop building when I reach 400.

I am still not sure if I like the fixed 1.2 % rate, but I must say that the new system seems well thought trough. Good job.

[Captain Jack]

I have just published our idea for Search and Expose feature which could work well with these new rules. There are some thousands of players as I told you with 10 ships or less that await your plunder. Most such ships will not be worthwhile so mostly consider this as a feature for newcomers, to put their turns into good use.

@Gunder
You have few posts but you have made your mark already. I always enjoy reading your feedback. I want to let you (and everyone) know that as developers, we put value to the strategy of each player. We want to favor diversification in our every feature, not to limit it.

Therefore, anyone who feels that his personal strategy (the long term most probably) is affected in a bad way by our planning, feel free to send me a message in-game and explain me your details. It will help us determine what is best for the game and probably you as well.

[Captain dungeness]

I think there's some misunderstanding of what this change means so I want to share some maths and what I think it means.
SUMMARY:
-Admin is probably right, this will convince most small/medium sized players to hold more gold cash but it will also convince huge traders to hold less cash than they currently hold because it will take many more plunders to steal from millionaires.
-Player's decisions to use Howker/Cutter/Sloop tails won't be affected much by this change. If a player has less than 1M gold cash then they will be losing more gold per plunder than before so there will need the benefit of a tail even more.

This is how many plunders you can take before running out of gold:
With cutter/howker tails: current plunders (future plunders) <- assumes 5-ship fleets
30M gold cash = ~268 (347)
16M gold cash = ~212 (289)
5M gold cash = ~164 (198)
3M gold cash = ~148 (161)
2M gold cash = ~134 (133) <---future is the same as current @ 2M cash
1M gold cash = ~112 (90)
500k gold = ~90 (57)
250k gold = ~70 (33)
125k gold = ~51 (18)
50k gold = ~30 (7)

My conclusion:
1) If you have cutter or howker tails and generally keep 2M gold cash then you won't see any difference. If you keep between 3M and 16M cash you will be able to withstand between 10 and 80 more plunders then the current system. More than 16M cash will give exactly 80 more plunders than the current system.
2) If you generally keep less than 2M gold then it will take much less plunders to take your ships. It would take 57 plunders to take ships from a 500k cash player, so as that player, I would make sure I have less than 25 fleets since it would take many hours to plunder me 57 times if I have 25 fleets. I believe most players between 25 and 40 fleets will start keeping at least between 1M and 2M cash instead of about 500k cash.

Will this convince players to remove their cutter/howker/sloop tails? I don't think so.
Here are the number of plunders you gain from having cutter tail on a Large Merchantmen fleet: current (future)
30M gold = ~60 (50)
16M gold = ~60 (50)
5M gold = ~59 (46)
3M gold = ~59 (43)
2M gold = ~57 (39)
1M gold = ~55 (30)
500k gold = ~50 (22)
250k gold = ~45 (14)
125k gold = ~36 (8)
50k gold = ~23 (3)

If you have more than 1M gold cash in hand then tails give you 30 more plunders before you run out of gold. The future change makes you lose more gold per plunder so you probably want the tails to withstand the same amount of plunders as you can today. I think most players won't give that up their tails unless they are very confident they wont be raided. If you have a smaller number of fleets (less than maybe 20 fleets w/ 500k gold in hand) then cutter/howker tails do less for you (only 22 more plunders) so those players probably won't choose to use them until you become a large enough target for pirates to hit.
I might be totally wrong, but this is my guess.

-Captain D

[Captain dungeness]

Captain Jack,
If you want to reduce the number of players using Howker/Cutter/Sloop tails then I suggest increasing the base cost of those 3 ships by 10,000 gold. New players have many ways to raise money/credits to get cheap ships/loans so it wouldn't affect them too terribly.

The result on tails' effectiveness:
With this change the number of plunders a tail adds before running out of gold is decreased (from current to future):
8M cash: 60 to 36
5M cash: 59 to 35
2M cash: 57 to 29
1M cash: 55 to 22
500k: 50 to 16
250k: 45 to 10

Here I am assuming you would simultaneously implement the change mentioned in post 1 of this topic.

I'm curious what you think.
-Captain D

[Captain Jack]

Our purpose on tails, is not really to convince anyone to change but to make the usage of different tails more friendly than it is now. If you can withstand 250 battles with howkers, then it will not make a big difference if you can withstand 200 instead, with LMM.

I know however that few will take this path but I do not mind. We just want to make the path. If we really wanted to stop people using this strategy or reduce it effectively, yes, price increase would work. Or I could go with speed decrease as BS suggested earlier in the discussion, which I admit that is seems reasonable. We are not ready for such an upheaval though. Perhaps in the future, after ship specialization, we can review this again.

Your case studies are nice. I am curious to see if you approve of the changes or not.

[Most Lee Harmless]

Capt D has done a very nice post there, full of useful and important insights : thankee !

[Slindur]

This is the second time that I have posted this idea, though the first time no one responded and not sure what people think about it. If the goal is to add some diversity in ships at tail end of a fleet, I see a couple of things that you could do to switch things up. One thing is to have fleets fight starting with the fastest ship of attacking fleet fight fastest ship of defending fleet. This could make for some interesting battles, as cutters are the only ship that moves "very fast." That way, unless the fleet is only cutters, then the cutter will not be the last ship in the fleet and take the 10% gold hit. So if there was a 4 LMM + 1 cutter fleet, the 10% hit would be from the slower LMM. That is a pretty radical change in the game, though it might make for some interesting changes. It may be better for one of the alternate server or side games that have been mentioned in the past.

Another possible way is to take 10% of the average ship base price instead of only 10% of the last ship's base price. That could also shift things up pretty radically. Honestly, I do not know if I would vote or advocate for those changes, but it would be a way to switch things up and make some fleet strategy change and be more realistic.

Slindur

[Sebena]

This is the second time that I have posted this idea, though the first time no one responded and not sure what people think about it. If the goal is to add some diversity in ships at tail end of a fleet, I see a couple of things that you could do to switch things up. One thing is to have fleets fight starting with the fastest ship of attacking fleet fight fastest ship of defending fleet. This could make for some interesting battles, as cutters are the only ship that moves "very fast." That way, unless the fleet is only cutters, then the cutter will not be the last ship in the fleet and take the 10% gold hit. So if there was a 4 LMM + 1 cutter fleet, the 10% hit would be from the slower LMM. That is a pretty radical change in the game, though it might make for some interesting changes. It may be better for one of the alternate server or side games that have been mentioned in the past.

Another possible way is to take 10% of the average ship base price instead of only 10% of the last ship's base price. That could also shift things up pretty radically. Honestly, I do not know if I would vote or advocate for those changes, but it would be a way to switch things up and make some fleet strategy change and be more realistic.

Slindur

then ppl would switch from cutter to sloop or howker and yet we would be on the square one. I don't see any reason why people would want to switch even with proposed things from admins but again my opinion isn't taken in consideration so I decided I won't comment on this as this hurts us opportunists but I had to reply you so that it won't be second time that noone said opinion about it


Wolfie

[Captain Jack]

@Slindur
-I have seen your proposal the previous time too. It is not a bad idea but I do not think it fits this discussion. Read carefully my post before yours to understand why.
-Using 10% of avg ships in the fleet does not help the main objectives we have for this change.

@Wolfie
-You should never expect personal replies to any feedback you post here in the forums. Most of the time I will try to respond to everyone but I canot guarantee anything.
-I already replied on opportunists issue here. The real affects, as ALSO shown by Cpt Dungeness tables are minimal. If you could grab ships before, you will still be able to do it.

@Everyone (general guidelines to keep in mind on how development works around here)

Long Version
-This is no longer a discussion topic. What this means? That it is not productive to suggest completely new things. There was time for this while this suggestion was still a discussion topic (in discussion forums). Now, it has been clarified enough and there is a specific proposal on the table

Therefore, what we mainly expect from you are the following (I also posted so in the first topic):
-Tell us if you approve or not.
-Reasoning your approval or disapproval is a good thing to do.
-If you think some tweaks are needed, we are here to hear them. When I say tweaks, I mean different metrics on the ones proposed, not something completely different. For example, one could say, make this static 1.2% to a random 0.8%-1.5%. Or, "I do not like this static fee, do it this way", etc. If you think that no tweak would make it good for you, go for the disapproval option first and then state why. You may add your different idea here at this case but still it would be preferable to add this to the discussion topic instead (still open).

Short version
What is mostly important is to see your approval or disapproval first and your conditions to accept it if any. Then, we will decide (we may not reply) whether or not we can implement this and how.

[Sebena]

@Slindur
-I have seen your proposal the previous time too. It is not a bad idea but I do not think it fits this discussion. Read carefully my post before yours to understand why.
-Using 10% of avg ships in the fleet does not help the main objectives we have for this change.

@Wolfie
-You should never expect personal replies to any feedback you post here in the forums. Most of the time I will try to respond to everyone but I canot guarantee anything.
-I already replied on opportunists issue here. The real affects, as ALSO shown by Cpt Dungeness tables are minimal. If you could grab ships before, you will still be able to do it.

@Everyone (general guidelines to keep in mind on how development works around here)

Long Version
-This is no longer a discussion topic. What this means? That it is not productive to suggest completely new things. There was time for this while this suggestion was still a discussion topic (in discussion forums). Now, it has been clarified enough and there is a specific proposal on the table

Therefore, what we mainly expect from you are the following (I also posted so in the first topic):
-Tell us if you approve or not.
-Reasoning your approval or disapproval is a good thing to do.
-If you think some tweaks are needed, we are here to hear them. When I say tweaks, I mean different metrics on the ones proposed, not something completely different. For example, one could say, make this static 1.2% to a random 0.8%-1.5%. Or, "I do not like this static fee, do it this way", etc. If you think that no tweak would make it good for you, go for the disapproval option first and then state why. You may add your different idea here at this case but still it would be preferable to add this to the discussion topic instead (still open).

Short version
What is mostly important is to see your approval or disapproval first and your conditions to accept it if any. Then, we will decide (we may not reply) whether or not we can implement this and how.

I never expected personal reply as I know and understand that it should be in general but I said that noone cares about my opinion is because often when I state my opinion others state theirs ( which I respect fully) but also often these kind of posts are ignored as I try to keep them short and often that means they get lost between longer posts.

I personally dissaprove this as I stated it's aggainst opportunists which you said yourself as it lowers our chances of getting ship due "improved" defense system although I can't see why would someone keep more gold I know I won't wheater this is implemented or not.