Battles System / Plunder Revision

[Captain Jack]

--Reserved to initial plan after feedback---

[Captain Jack]

Ahoy all,

Prologue
This is something that has been troubling my design for the game for a long time. It is a core issue that affects everything. Mostly, the current system creates two major logical issues:
1)There is a cap in how strong a fleet can be, despite ability to spend more.
2)The stronger a fleet becomes, the riskier it becomes to have it. The risk, I could say, in simplistic language, is exponential while it should have been at most linear.

These 2 major issues create more major issues. For example:
-Battle system is underestimated and loses grips in the minds of everyone. Hence its role is downgraded in the everyday game life.
-Gold coins lose relevance at higher level - there is no cycling - we get hyperinflation.
This later creates a series of issues that is hard to list. I hope you get the point by here already.

So, I was looking for a solution that does not disrupt current gameplay but instead, it evolves it. We have had numerous such attempts in the past, where we tried to mess with loot caps etc. With joy I can say, I can tell you that this time I come with a masterplan.

The basic idea, in a few words

Since the masterplan contains a lot of technical details which make this appear dreadful, let me first explain in a few words.

So, what we basically want to do is to:
-Detach ship levels from the plunder procedure. Keep the level value on the ship as an investment.
-Replace the plunder procedure with a new concept. New concept still has ties with ship levels but only to a reasonable extend.
-Make plundering and defending more clear and downplay the importance of surprise. This will still play a role but will be easier to control.
-Allow investing in ships without the risk of losing it overnight.

The Masterplan

I will try to list new factors and changes. If I miss anything ,please participate in order to cover every aspect.

Changes

• Gold Coins plunder is no longer based on last positioned ship value.
• Ships no longer loses a level once sunk.
• Level no longer dictates when a ship joins sea bottom.
• Call Leviathan no longer "SINKS" a ship. It instead lowers level by 1. As a result, ships can only be sunk during battle.
• Protection from Call Leviathan trait no longer has level prerequisite (always applies)
• Players treasury amount is now revised from 1-5% to 10%-15%
• Overall Max plunder cap is removed. It is replaced by a max plunder cap from player's hand.
• Plunder Cap from Players hand is limited to: Minimum: 10k and Maximum: 100k
• Advanced Piracy still extends these limits by the named percentage (11k to 110k)
• Advanced Piracy effect is increased from 2% to 5% and stack from 5 to 2
• Max level of ships is revised to 20 (for a start).
• Pricing of every new level will be modified downwards (cheaper).
• More Technologies like Metallurgy, Gunpowder and Spanish Galleons will be added to cover more ship aspects.
• Player with most gc at hand no longer shows on Demographics
• The player's purse shows on plunder screen when fleet owners purse is 1M or less.
• Witch Hut feature: New Legendary card will display target player's treasury at hand. We can do this a rare card if you find it wise.

New Concepts

• New Emergency Kit attribute added to every ship
-When the last positioned ship of a fleet is sunk during battle, it loses 1 Emergency kit. When it has no Emergency kits left and is lower than level 10, it joins sea bottom. If it is level 10 or greater, it is plundered by the attacker instead.
-Every ship starts with 2 kits which can be replenished when lost or increased.
-The 2 kits are the minimum kits that a ship can have.
-These kits are replenished/increased with gold coins.
-The maximum Emergency kits is dictated by the ship level: Ship Level / 2
-The install/replenish cost is relevant to the amount of kits already installed on the ship and the ship base value.

Based on the above, a level 1 Ship will start with 2 Emergency kits. You will be able to buy an extra one at level 6.

-There will be a penalty when trying to replenish a kit within 10 hours from the time the last kit was lost. Cost will be 100% higher for the first hour and it will drop to 0%, decreasing by 10%/hour.

• The above decrease rate will drop to half through a newly added technology.
• New ship trait will add 2 extra kits to the ship that has it. These 2 extra kits will not count as installed when replenishing/installing kits.
• Gold Coins plunder will be based on the value of the Emergency kit that has been lost during battle.
Currently, the minimum plunder based on ship value is 1000 and the maximum is 75000. We will modify the values of the first Emergency kits to be relevant to this.

• Gold Coins plunder will not remove any coins from the player's hand
Let's see an example:
-A level 10 Ship has an 1 Emergency kit remaining on it, worth 100k. This has been already paid by the owner.
-When the kit is looted, the attacker gets to loot a % of the kit value. Let's say 50% at this example. Then 50k will be added to the total plunder.
Then the player has 30M gc on hand and the attacker rolled a 2% loot out of it, aka 400k. However, max plunder is 100k. Therefore, at this instance the attacker will gain 100k from player purse + 50k from the kit for a total of 150k.
If the ship had no emergency kit, the player would get 100k from the player's hand and would also plunder the ship.

• When player cannot pay the plunder fee from the purse, the ship is looted regardless of remaining kits.
• An ambushed fleet with less than 20 danger, cannot be attacked by the same fleet twice within 10 hours.
This means that when a fleet is ambushed, there will be a new check at every new attempt. If the attacking fleet has already attacked this fleet in the last 10 hours, the attack will be called off.

Key points

In order to evaluate the above, you need to keep in mind some key points. These are:
-First of all the ability to level the ships up to level 20 and later up to level 100. This will create super fleets that will simply won't be taken down unless the opponent can line up a similar strength's fleet.
-So, exposing the best fleet of the opponent won't be enough. You will also need to be able to defeat this fleet. And you won't be able to take it down instantly, like now with Leviathans/Booty Masters/etc. The only shot will be ambush with support from multiple fleets/other players. Still ambushes are 10 in total and the maximum kits a tail ship could have at lvl 20 will be 10 + 2. While it would be costly to keep 10 kits to ANY ship, it will still be a viable option to protect your most precious fleet.
-Then when such fleets will clash, the kits repair costs will play an important role. It will be a strategic option in how many kits to keep ON each ship taking in mind their cost and how much the opponent will earn from this.
-Of course, players will put their coin at work ripping the fruits out of this. The whole system will start working better after this (ie goldsmiths, plantations, loans, shipwrights).

Pirates
One could say it will get harder for Pirates in their quest for Glory. I am not yet certain. Let's see some points:
-Hostile Natives and Fugitive of Justice will not be removed but kept. In the same time, people will not react as bad, hopefully, as there will be measures of defense now. This is a strong argument.
-Damage cards role will be inevitably updated, something that is in the right direction. Damage cards are cheap and we can also revise where needed.
-This will increase the chances of ultra rewards on well planned attacks on unprepared, lesser prepared players.
-There are also improvements as Generosity will no longer play the role it does today as defleeting option has became harder.
-The important new element of income will be the loot of emergency kits which will have higher value than the current plunder now. Especially when targeting weaker trading fleets.
-Still, when player is not around to defend, it means no one will be around to replenish emergency kits. Therefore you might not plunder all ships of enemy player (Which is a rarity nowadays anyway) but you will be able to snatch some valuable ships.
-Even a lvl 20 Howker will have a good value and will be a good ship to plunder. I do not have numbers ready but we speak of all the loot on the emergency kits (up to 10-12 kits here) plus the ship value once plundered. Plundered ships will come with 1 emergency kit too (unless they have more, ie plundered from 0 purse).

Potential Issues

My most concerning issue is the global effect from Hostile Natives and Fugitive of Justice. This is something that is hard to balance. In the same time, these cards are balancers for players that employ too many fleets. This is why I refuse to nerf them or remove them. After all , I avoid nerfing anything to the last point. Even this proposal, has no nerfing included. Some elements will become obsolete because others become more powerful and I believe this is the most justified way to balance gameplay.


Conclusion

Surely I have missed tons of issues here. Still the topic is already too large, I will keep the first topic blank in order to update with initially approved plan after receiving your feedback.

[Mack]

whats the idea of showing fleets of players with less than 1mil

[Dmanwuzhere]

i disagree that this is the direction to go to encourage sea battles and feel not only is the pirate aspects of the game being diminished but your overall protection of traders has become a redundancy that chokes profit where it should not be constricted
you took away voodoo that hits warehouses
plantations that are easily the biggest moneymaker have nothing to steal or threaten their profit and profit can even be made without ships
and now the ships become harder to steal as well
it seems you are heading in the direction of a peaceful click as needed game that discourages any profit other than trade

higher level ships s**k if it becomes super hard to steal them or any other ship for that matter

instead of more and more restrictions on the fighting class how about opening more sources of revenue capable of being stolen

look at the port battles the fighting class has already shrunk so small that port battles are normally the same 20 or so (at most)
folks doing the hitting and in some ports the first page reflect days of activity when i can recall going over pages and pages in one day per port
not sure what data you are using to continue driving in this chokehold on the fighting class path but i for one dont want to touch trade with a 10 foot pole unless im stealing it

[Argo]

While most of it seems reasonable my concern is that my first impression is that it is another way of making it harder for pirates. It will not enhance opportunities nor steal-attempts for pirates ( it really is hard enough as it is) and doesn't seem to have balance at all to me - if anything - another way to protect traders more - Discouraging.

[Captain Jack]

whats the idea of showing fleets of players with less than 1mil

Not showing fleets. Showing the treasury of the fleet owner.
Right now, when you see a fleet, you see how many coins he has at hand. This will be concealed with new system. You will only get to see this piece of information when hand is 1 million or less.

[PFH]

I don’t like where this is going. The issues at hand don’t seem as big as they are made to be

The problem isn’t this. Have you seen how every USA player runs their fleets?

Why is it that every single player there basically runs 4 SOTL and 1 cutter fleets? Seriously?

The problem isn’t the risk, the problem is how hard it is and how risky it is to TAKE them.

Each of those players runs over 30m on hand to protect these monsters, and they are always online to watch each other’s backs (I’ve tested this.)

And now we want to give them more protection?

I strongly disagree. the issue is backwards from what the real problem is.

There isn’t an issue where you make it to be. It isn’t a problem. The problem, is how it isn’t risky to run fleets that large when you have people watching your back.

I’m on dmanwuzhere’s side with this. This is pirates glory.

#getridofplundergapsaltogether

[DezNutz]

Unless you eliminate the need for danger points to plunder ships and a few other changes, I don't see this as a viable path.

[Most Lee Harmless]

It is an unsolvable problem : before traits we developed, over time, the 'perfect' fleet. Before the plunder rules changed, we worked out the optimum purse to carry. Before changes to voodoo, we worked out the optimum defence. With each change we adapted and modified those tactics and now we are back where we began : players have worked out the optimum configurations and practices.

Its inevitably so : every game has the same problem. Once you figure out the best tactic then you win most every time. You can mix it up and introduce a level of uncertainty by randomising outcomes but even that has its limits : when it becomes more chance than skill it stops being a game worth playing.

Back when, the power fleet was five MoW's. Today we would laugh and eagerly toss those voodoo cards and steal the silly beggars fleet in a few minutes.

I can see the devs problem : to keep it fresh and uncertain they needs to mix it up some, remove those now comfortable, or even uncomfortable, certainties. To do that aint easy as it will mean removing crutches we have come to rely upon. Assumed calculations will no longer compute. It will become not harder, but different. And in a year or so, we will have figured it out again and this conversation will begin again.

So, I am not against these proposed changes as some changes are evidently needed. Maybe we have to go a little left-field to put that spark of uncertainty back into the game.

[Shadowood]

CJ - Wow, you certainly have given the player base a lot to think about with the introduction to this "revised" system. I am going to go through each talking point the best I can and give my personal feedback. Of course these are just my views and are not shared with all players. (sorry for the long post, but this is a major topic)


So, what we basically want to do is to:
-Detach ship levels from the plunder procedure. Keep the level value on the ship as an investment.
-Replace the plunder procedure with a new concept. New concept still has ties with ship levels but only to a reasonable extend.
-Make plundering and defending more clear and downplay the importance of surprise. This will still play a role but will be easier to control.
-Allow investing in ships without the risk of losing it overnight.
A pirates best weapon is "surprise". To downplay this, I wholeheartedly disagree to.

The Masterplan

I will try to list new factors and changes. If I miss anything ,please participate in order to cover every aspect.

Changes
Gold Coins plunder is no longer based on last positioned ship value. :: This is great! There are many that have thought for a long time that plunder should be based on Fleet Value and not the tail ship
Ships no longer loses a level once sunk. :: Again great! When I steal a ship, I want it in almost perfect condition.
Level no longer dictates when a ship joins sea bottom. :: This is interesting and reading ahead I see "Kits" are needed. I have questions below
Call Leviathan no longer "SINKS" a ship. It instead lowers level by 1. As a result, ships can only be sunk during battle. :: This takes out a strategy that some use when angry to just sink a ship and then hunt for it. I actually agree with this.
Protection from Call Leviathan trait no longer has level prerequisite (always applies)
Players treasury amount is now revised from 1-5% to 10%-15% :: Awesome!
Overall Max plunder cap is removed. It is replaced by a max plunder cap from player's hand. :: Not sure about this one, especially after reading the next line
Plunder Cap from Players hand is limited to: Minimum: 10k and Maximum: 100k :: Um, what? You are reducing the max plunder from $250,000 to $100,000? Not sure about this one, but I need to see how these "Kits" come into play
Advanced Piracy still extends these limits by the named percentage (11k to 110k)
Advanced Piracy effect is increased from 2% to 5% and stack from 5 to 2
Max level of ships is revised to 20 (for a start). :: How will Attributes be handled for say a current Level 10 ship with 60 ATTs? Assuming it will become a level 20 and the ATT stay the same or will ATT increase as well?
Pricing of every new level will be modified downwards (cheaper).
More Technologies like Metallurgy, Gunpowder and Spanish Galleons will be added to cover more ship aspects.
Player with most gc at hand no longer shows on Demographics :: I don't agree with this one. There is a cap of 50 million to even show up. And most players don't spend hours just refreshing this one page. This is not needed.
The player's purse shows on plunder screen when fleet owners purse is 1M or less. :: Not sure about this one either
Witch Hut feature: New Legendary card will display target player's treasury at hand. We can do this a rare card if you find it wise. :: This card is not needed CJ. All pirates do to check someone's purse is cast a "Pouch of Gold". This card returns a 1% value of purse on hand. Simple math to figure out targets purse. This card would hardly ever be used in my opinion unless Pouch was nerfed.

New Concepts
New Emergency Kit attribute added to every ship
-When the last positioned ship of a fleet is sunk during battle, it loses 1 Emergency kit. When it has no Emergency kits left and is lower than level 10, it joins sea bottom. If it is level 10 or greater, it is plundered by the attacker instead.
-Every ship starts with 2 kits which can be replenished when lost or increased.
-The 2 kits are the minimum kits that a ship can have.
-These kits are replenished/increased with gold coins.
-The maximum Emergency kits is dictated by the ship level: Ship Level / 2
-The install/replenish cost is relevant to the amount of kits already installed on the ship and the ship base value.

Based on the above, a level 1 Ship will start with 2 Emergency kits. You will be able to buy an extra one at level 6.

-There will be a penalty when trying to replenish a kit within 10 hours from the time the last kit was lost. Cost will be 100% higher for the first hour and it will drop to 0%, decreasing by 10%/hour.
The above decrease rate will drop to half through a newly added technology.
New ship trait will add 2 extra kits to the ship that has it. These 2 extra kits will not count as installed when replenishing/installing kits.
Gold Coins plunder will be based on the value of the Emergency kit that has been lost during battle.
Currently, the minimum plunder based on ship value is 1000 and the maximum is 75000. We will modify the values of the first Emergency kits to be relevant to this.
Gold Coins plunder will not remove any coins from the player's hand
Let's see an example:
-A level 10 Ship has an 1 Emergency kit remaining on it, worth 100k. This has been already paid by the owner.
-When the kit is looted, the attacker gets to loot a % of the kit value. Let's say 50% at this example. Then 50k will be added to the total plunder.
Then the player has 30M gc on hand and the attacker rolled a 2% loot out of it, aka 400k. However, max plunder is 100k. Therefore, at this instance the attacker will gain 100k from player purse + 50k from the kit for a total of 150k.
If the ship had no emergency kit, the player would get 100k from the player's hand and would also plunder the ship.
When player cannot pay the plunder fee from the purse, the ship is looted regardless of remaining kits.
An ambushed fleet with less than 20 danger, cannot be attacked by the same fleet twice within 10 hours.
This means that when a fleet is ambushed, there will be a new check at every new attempt. If the attacking fleet has already attacked this fleet in the last 10 hours, the attack will be called off. :: A pirate generally works alone. How can a pirate operate with a severe restriction like this? I see that you are trying to encourage teaming up, but you cannot handicap a solo hunter like this. Unless I am completely not understanding your stance here, I need more explanation on this point please.

KITS: They way it is explained I still see the use of Cutter Tail ships. This cutters will have 10 + 2 trait to protect the most valued fleets. If I am understanding how this mechanic works, all one has to do is position 2 ships at the end of fleet with a 10 + 2 Kit. Then the first 3 ships would be untouchable. Ambush Card can only be cast on 1 player 10 times. With Disfavor card this give you 20 attacks. This would not be enough to get past the 24 Kits on these tail ships. Am I missing a point?

Pirates need the chance at being able to steal ships. Above all I think this mechanic needs to be improved, not handicapped more.

Key points

In order to evaluate the above, you need to keep in mind some key points. These are:
-First of all the ability to level the ships up to level 20 and later up to level 100. This will create super fleets that will simply won't be taken down unless the opponent can line up a similar strength's fleet.
-So, exposing the best fleet of the opponent won't be enough. You will also need to be able to defeat this fleet. And you won't be able to take it down instantly, like now with Leviathans/Booty Masters/etc. The only shot will be ambush with support from multiple fleets/other players. Still ambushes are 10 in total and the maximum kits a tail ship could have at lvl 20 will be 10 + 2. While it would be costly to keep 10 kits to ANY ship, it will still be a viable option to protect your most precious fleet.
-Then when such fleets will clash, the kits repair costs will play an important role. It will be a strategic option in how many kits to keep ON each ship taking in mind their cost and how much the opponent will earn from this.
-Of course, players will put their coin at work ripping the fruits out of this. The whole system will start working better after this (ie goldsmiths, plantations, loans, shipwrights).

Pirates
One could say it will get harder for Pirates in their quest for Glory. I am not yet certain. Let's see some points:
-Hostile Natives and Fugitive of Justice will not be removed but kept. In the same time, people will not react as bad, hopefully, as there will be measures of defense now. This is a strong argument.
-Damage cards role will be inevitably updated, something that is in the right direction. Damage cards are cheap and we can also revise where needed.
-This will increase the chances of ultra rewards on well planned attacks on unprepared, lesser prepared players.
-There are also improvements as Generosity will no longer play the role it does today as defleeting option has became harder.
-The important new element of income will be the loot of emergency kits which will have higher value than the current plunder now. Especially when targeting weaker trading fleets.
-Still, when player is not around to defend, it means no one will be around to replenish emergency kits. Therefore you might not plunder all ships of enemy player (Which is a rarity nowadays anyway) but you will be able to snatch some valuable ships.
-Even a lvl 20 Howker will have a good value and will be a good ship to plunder. I do not have numbers ready but we speak of all the loot on the emergency kits (up to 10-12 kits here) plus the ship value once plundered. Plundered ships will come with 1 emergency kit too (unless they have more, ie plundered from 0 purse).

Potential Issues

My most concerning issue is the global effect from Hostile Natives and Fugitive of Justice. This is something that is hard to balance. In the same time, these cards are balancers for players that employ too many fleets. This is why I refuse to nerf them or remove them. After all , I avoid nerfing anything to the last point. Even this proposal, has no nerfing included. Some elements will become obsolete because others become more powerful and I believe this is the most justified way to balance gameplay.


Conclusion

Surely I have missed tons of issues here. Still the topic is already too large, I will keep the first topic blank in order to update with initially approved plan after receiving your feedback.

I am all for Pirates making more gold coin. If this feature allows for that to happen, I'm all in CJ. It just can't be at the cost of the ability of a pirate to steal these ships.