I think that ship-combat is currently too long and involves too few tactics. Either of these things are okay on their own, but combined they make ship combat boring.

The way I currently play ship combat is to engage a ship and, literally, drum my fingers on the 1-4 keys on my keyboard while watching television, until the combat is over. This is far from the definition of "fun".

Here is my simple idea for improving ship combat: Halve the time of all the timers on the weapons. That's it. It will not involve excessive reprogramming, and it will halve the time of ship fights.

Good idea for both your ship and enemy ships.

I would add one more thing (to thwart the four-finger drum). A hit on one of them too soon resets the timer. You would have to watch and wait for them to become available, otherwise, they DON'T become available, and you likely lose.

I would also love it if ship position increases or decreases the likelihood of hitting, so you could "cross the T". It would add a bit of actual navigation to the fight to get the right position and maintain it. (do a web search for "crossing the T" if you don't know what I'm talking about). Yes, this would make things a lot harder, but if you made ships less likely to maneuver to adjust for it early in the game, adding it only later, it would make it easier. Add in instructions when crossing the T becomes necessary much like Diego instructs you in changes to combat in W101.

Also, I find it almost too easy to let ships battle until the enemy ship boards yours. They are usually down by half by then and since their crew is the same level as their ship (while your crew is unaffected by the level of your ship) It makes shipboard battles almost ridiculously easy. I would make both crews subject to the level of the ship when boarded. It would keep the battle short and make pirates use a bit more caution.

This would also encourage players to get the best ship available, since presently all you have to do is let yourself get boarded, and the battle becomes at worst even. I don't know of any ship that avoids boarding you if they can blow you out of the water.

Max DeGroot on May 20, 2017 wrote:

Good idea for both your ship and enemy ships.

I would add one more thing (to thwart the four-finger drum). A hit on one of them too soon resets the timer. You would have to watch and wait for them to become available, otherwise, they DON'T become available, and you likely lose.

I would also love it if ship position increases or decreases the likelihood of hitting, so you could "cross the T". It would add a bit of actual navigation to the fight to get the right position and maintain it. (do a web search for "crossing the T" if you don't know what I'm talking about). Yes, this would make things a lot harder, but if you made ships less likely to maneuver to adjust for it early in the game, adding it only later, it would make it easier. Add in instructions when crossing the T becomes necessary much like Diego instructs you in changes to combat in W101.

Also, I find it almost too easy to let ships battle until the enemy ship boards yours. They are usually down by half by then and since their crew is the same level as their ship (while your crew is unaffected by the level of your ship) It makes shipboard battles almost ridiculously easy. I would make both crews subject to the level of the ship when boarded. It would keep the battle short and make pirates use a bit more caution.

This would also encourage players to get the best ship available, since presently all you have to do is let yourself get boarded, and the battle becomes at worst even. I don't know of any ship that avoids boarding you if they can blow you out of the water.

Getting "blown out of the water" does happen - it's happened to me on a few occasions. Once when I was sailing to Maruzami Temple, I got too close to a crowd of Jade fleet ships, I kept getting pounded while I was trying to get out of there - then my ship was sunk, I was sent back to Subata & I received a notice "Your ship was defeated".
It also happens around the Dreadnaught if there aren't too many ships fighting the Armada Escort - they no longer board you: then you end up on Skull Island docks with that notice.

There are plenty of people who are baffled with the simplistic ship combat we already have. They invest no time into raising their nautical level, and prefer to be boarded so that they can battle on the deck as they are used to doing. Choosing equipment, positioning their ship to best advantage, using boost to run or not, even these simple choices seem difficult to new players.

Cutting the timers would speed up battle, but then if it were over too quickly, multiple ships would not have an opportunity to score a hit and share in the loot. The "wolf pack" concept is a tried-and-true method for quick battles. Even one other ship will cut a battle's duration in half.

A better tutorial would be a huge help for new sailors, perhaps with an overhead viewpoint to show relative positioning, etc.

Willowydream on May 24, 2017 wrote:

There are plenty of people who are baffled with the simplistic ship combat we already have. They invest no time into raising their nautical level, and prefer to be boarded so that they can battle on the deck as they are used to doing. Choosing equipment, positioning their ship to best advantage, using boost to run or not, even these simple choices seem difficult to new players.

Cutting the timers would speed up battle, but then if it were over too quickly, multiple ships would not have an opportunity to score a hit and share in the loot. The "wolf pack" concept is a tried-and-true method for quick battles. Even one other ship will cut a battle's duration in half.

A better tutorial would be a huge help for new sailors, perhaps with an overhead viewpoint to show relative positioning, etc.

I agree that the present system may seem too challenging for players, especially when we have ships which are unsinkable.

What would be interesting are ships that are unboardable. The fight must be won ship to ship.

Keep the fight easy at first (come on, how hard is it to get in distance and press four keys repeatedly?) Then in later levels, add in more complexity.

Having tutorials would help.

There are unboardable ships in Skull Island skyway too - Armada ships at Dreadnaught (scouts and escorts).

Ship Combat is definitely stale half of the time, I too sometimes engage more in the TV then my fingers smashing the " 1 2 3 4 " keys. But I have a lot of ideas for ship combat, something I might make a video on.

So I do agree that there should be more movement and placement of your ship involved in creating bonuses, and having to change the placement of your ship in the skyway would take my eyes off of the TV but nothing too confusing like "crossing the T" which I have no clue as to what that is, after all we are pirates and we are not supposed to be like Admirals with vast naval knowledge.

My second idea is to basically make our companions give boosts to our ship, after all your crew is a big part in winning a real life naval battle but it really doesn't feel like that in broadside combat

witchdoctor daruis on Jun 21, 2017 wrote:

Ship Combat is definitely stale half of the time, I too sometimes engage more in the TV then my fingers smashing the " 1 2 3 4 " keys. But I have a lot of ideas for ship combat, something I might make a video on.

So I do agree that there should be more movement and placement of your ship involved in creating bonuses, and having to change the placement of your ship in the skyway would take my eyes off of the TV but nothing too confusing like "crossing the T" which I have no clue as to what that is, after all we are pirates and we are not supposed to be like Admirals with vast naval knowledge.

My second idea is to basically make our companions give boosts to our ship, after all your crew is a big part in winning a real life naval battle but it really doesn't feel like that in broadside combat

But which companions and how would the game choose the companion to help us? We have such large crews ( some are larger than others ) and don't forget there are those who buy Crown Shop, Bundle & Pack companions as well.

witchdoctor daruis on Jun 22, 2017 wrote:

Ok so I basically have an idea for how our crew can function in the ship

So the core function of it are our cannons, and the more cannons you have on your ship (this would take reworking I know) the more crew members could be working on your ship.

So basically lets say that your ship has 8 cannons for now, you can fill those slots with a companion, so if I wanted to I could fill that slot with Bones McGee, and his special talent for ship combat would be increasing the gold yield bysome designated amount because he is a marauder, and these talents could become stronger through promotion

Another example would be our Admiral Ratbeard, he could increase the effectiveness of everything on our ship for 1% at his first tier, and 1%+ for each promotion

There are all sorts of different things you could do for each companion, maybe Nanu Nanu could increase damage to watermole ships by %50 and Tonka could make us do %10 more damage to all ships in Cool Ranch

I feel like the crew aspect on our ships isn't utilised as it deserves

I like the idea of assigning companions to cannons, but rather than the more popular ones -- how about giving the less-favored these special bonuses for nautical combat? I'd much rather have a Bison Hunter named Faithful Hair giving me an accuracy bonus when it's his turn to fire than Bonnie Anne. At least, I'm assuming that we would assign them as a new Companion Task and it would take them out of normal battle rotation.

Willowydream on Jun 22, 2017 wrote:

I like the idea of assigning companions to cannons, but rather than the more popular ones -- how about giving the less-favored these special bonuses for nautical combat? I'd much rather have a Bison Hunter named Faithful Hair giving me an accuracy bonus when it's his turn to fire than Bonnie Anne. At least, I'm assuming that we would assign them as a new Companion Task and it would take them out of normal battle rotation.

If they had ranks in Cannoneering that would work.