Naval Action

[albert]

A new ship designed by a buddy of mine for the game, thought that was worth a bump and to show off how good the game is looking these days:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPfN2n1y3Bw

[albert]

So Game Labs just released their penultimate major update before full release and it's pretty big. I still feel this would be an awesome game for dMw players looking for multiplayer gaming with both PvE and PvP elements, crafting, politics, trading, major battles etc. Feel free to take a look and let me know if you want to try it out, I have a spare steam account with a character on it that can allow others to play along with me.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/311310/


What's new:

Rookie regions

• Bahamas has become a rookie region.
  
• Additional uncapturable capitals are added in the Bahamas.
  
• Rookie region has special ROE (identified by the message rookie battles area). All battles start 1v1 and other players can only reinforce it using reinforcement zones for 30 minutes. Limit of reinforcements is set at 300 BR.
  

Map changed
The map is split into regions. All information on the regions and their composition can be seen on the in game map. List of changes here

Combat tuning
Starting from this patch we will actively work on ship rebalancing. These works were delayed because of the tournament, but the tournament helped to uncover more balancing issues that require attention.
Currently the main goal is to increase ship importance and reduce upgrade importance for combat performance.

• All men are created equal and all crew colliders were standardized. Previously some ships had men with 180cm height (on cutter) and some had 150cm height. This is no longer the case. Although cutter captains still have the biggest hands.
  
• Many upgrades were rebalanced and mostly nerfed
  
• Several perks were rebalanced and mostly nerfed
  
• Lower calibers that were often used on 5^th and 4^th rates had their penetrations improved. The change affected 4lb 6lb 9lb guns mostly. But these guns penetration drop from distance was slightly increased
  
• Carronades penetration drop from distance significantly increased making them effectively a short range weapon. Don't expect any penetrations above 500m.
  
• We also changed how penetration shot retain energy depending on the wood type. Fir hulls allow to pass more penetrating energy to the opposite side, live oak less. Previously all wood types had same penetration retention.
  
• Splinter damage: When a cannonball hits a broadside it affects crew differently when it flies above the deck creating casualties by shockwave or hitting men directly. Nelson’s assistant was killed by a shockwave from a high flying cannonball. We have separated cannonball damage to crew into two parts. Cannonball hitting an unprotected crew will generally have less casualties on the ship than cannoball penetrating the broadside, generating splinters. If you aim at broadside areas with crew behind it you might inflict good damage on the crew.
  

Shipbuilding, Trading and Resources
Trading was completely overhauled. We are very excited about it because we have coded in a very flexible system allowing us to easy add or remove resources by group, nation, region, island and large area, control prices and margins, demand and supply and multiple other elements helping us to make trading and resource generation to feel more alive.
When we first introduced trading into game in 2015 it required several months of balancing based on mass use by large number of players. Thus - expect resource shortages, abnormal profits, and strange things in the first two weeks. Report them in the respective feedback topics and they will be fixed.

• All buildings were removed from player accounts and funds used to build them were compensated
  
• Shipyards removed from game for rebalancing, to allow players to build ships in multiple regions with regional bonuses. So building ships no longer requires a shipyard. All allied ports will provide shipbuilding capacity for the player. Funds used to build shipyards were compensated.
  
• Delivery orders will allow players to receive trading xp and crafting xp by helping the in game economy. All ports with the unfulfilled NPC demand and large player contracts will generate delivery quests that players can take and fulfill. This will allow traders to exert more influence on the market and see what is needed.
  
• Pricing systems were upgraded, new goods introduced, new NPC demand was created for some crafted materials (initially in the several areas only).
  
• Weights, prices, stacks and volumes will change. New buildings for new resources were added.
  
• Trader tools are integrated into the client. They will help adventurous traders to find good deals in the Caribbean. They might also help privateers to see where people might be going for good deals. Trader tools are accessible from the in game map (M).
  
• New resources will be required to craft quality ships depending on ship weight.
  
• Ship quality importance increased. Increasing ship quality will improve its characteristics starting from ship HP, speed, turning and other parameters. All ships stats and colors were recalculated as a result - stats are the same but because there are better ships their color of tooltip has changed.
  
• Speed and stiffness added to selectable characteristics, all RNG removed from crafting.
  
• Regional bonuses for ships introduced. Controlling certain regions will become more important if you want that particular bonus for the vessel. Capital regions will not give bonuses.
  
• 2 new wood types added: Mahogany (ligher live oak basically), Bermuda Cedar (fir without negatives)
  
• Contracts will be allowed for upgrades
  
• Upgrades can be broken down for parts and resources
  
• You can no longer sell a ship if it has something in hold or has upgrades installed (many players were losing items when not reading warnings)
  
• Wood production slightly changed. Compass wood is no longer a separate resource. Compass wood (curved trees) can drop from any forest during wood production. Fine logs (e.g. fine oak) will drop some times when growing trees in forests.
  
• European traders removed (experimental feature)
  
• Salt can now drop when fishing
  
• Contract number increased from 5 to 10
  

ROE (experimental feature)
We will be testing several options for Rules of Engagement â€" ROE this patch. This might upset some users but it have to be done before release (will be impossible after).

• Open world battles: 2 circles system is being tested. 1 tag circle for attack and 1 large circle for pull. Battles will close instantly on start (except for rookie zones)
  
• Rookie zones battles. Battles always start 1v1. Battle will be opened until BR evens out. BR limit is set at 300. Players wont be able to enter if their ship will exceed the BR limit.
  
• Hostility missions: Battle will be opened for 30 mins.
  
• OW NPC fleets will no longer count for 5X anti griefing protection. Only players will affect that rating
  
• Crew size will lower battle rating of your fleet. Example (numbers are for illustration only): If sail a cutter with 2 Bucentaures in your fleet with 40 crew on each - you will fleet will be valued as 3 cutters for ROE.
  

Mission changes.

• Missions can be taken for every region from any port.
  
• Missions will generate or reduce hostility - thus enemy should be able to influence the flow of events. Because of that missions will always be open for entry for all sides for 30 minutes.
  

Bot distribution changes

• With new hostility system bot distribution changed. Regions will have national NPC fleets. For example you will mostly see british NPCs near Jamaica and only occasionally will see other nations fleets who sailed there from the nearby region.
  
• Pirate fleets added.
  
• Captured NPC ships will be good sometimes. And because of randomization of the hidden upgrades they might come up to be uniquely interesting (experimental feature).
  

Port battles and conquest
Port battle set up system changed significantly.

• Port battles will automatically arrange 46 (previously 48) hours after hostility level reaches 100%. Hostility will be generated by PVP (major impact), PVE (minor impact), Missions (minor impact), and War effort supplies deliveries (minor impact). Port battles will be a national effort and will require coordinated work of several fleets.
  
• Assault flag is be removed.
  
• Timers are removed (for testing) as we believe that in new system port battles will arrange themselves when there is max presence of players for both size (due to pvp impact). Also we expect that all timezones will need to participate to bring hostility to the port battle levels. If this assumption proves to be inaccurate we will bring back lord protectors (but with wider time limits). In addition to this we will reduce the speed of hostility generation if necessary to bring more timezones into action.
  
• New port system will immediately show players where the action is because the number of port battles and hostility zones is limited and nation can have a limited number of port battles set up.
  
• Port battles themselves will still be done on the open water with towers (but this wont last long).
  
• Alliances will continue for 3 weeks, voting period is set at 1 week.
  

Port and coastline defenses

• Large forts and towers will be added around ports. The number will depend on the island and coast line size. They are placed randomly at appropriate places. Please report weird looking coastlines in F11 or in the forums.
  
• Forts will fire at enemies of the state and can provide good protection for traders and small groups.
  

New ships

• Endymion
  
• Indefatigable
  
• Both ships are only available for capture from NPC fleets (experimental feature).
  
• Ship hulls were made by one of the community member Ragnar Hairy Trousers (sails for Britain)

Other tunings

• More slots for loot added in the battle result screen.
  
• You can enter allied contested ports
  
• You now can capture lineships if they belong to AI fleet of a player.
  
• You cannot add the ship to fleet if it has something in the hold
  
• Upgrades and paints will be saved if you add a ship to fleet. You can freely add precious upgraded ships to the fleets.
  
• NPC trader loot improvements - Bigger traders carry more goods
  
• You can surrender during boarding now. Press escape and surrender if you don't want to lose crew during boarding.
  
• Minimal crew requirements increased for higher level vessels. Players wont be able to sail 1^st rates with 10 men. 1^st rates will require 100 men at least to operate.
  

Fixed bugs:

• Fixed several particle bugs with demasting and mast collisions with water
  
• Several bugs with contracts fixed
  
• Fixed bugs with small/large repair kits when applied to fleet ships.
  
• Prepared perk fixed. It now works on all types of ammunition and charges.
  
• Fixed bugs with wrong rank of fleet ships when joining the instance
  
• Instance loading times increased
  
• Server technology improved.
  
• Hundreds of other bugs and technical issues fixed
  

Conclusion.
When new features are introduced they always play out differently with large number of players. Expect problems, report them and they will be fixed. Keep an open mind because the game is still in development and is not released.

Plans for next patch

• Raids
  
• Land in port battles
  
• Improvement of server events
  
• And probably a weekly pvp tournament
  
• Several things that were promised to be addressed did not get in and will be added next patch. Things like mast damage, gun loss/repairs and other combat issues.

edit

• ship colors have changed for some vessels, due to recalculation of the color of the tooltip. Stats and parameters are the same. Color indicated that there could be better ships now.
• All contracts for ship sales were fulfilled and ships bought out for system

[albert]

Last few updates before release...... Naval Action have an update, a big one. Lots of changes and an asset wipe.

If anyone wants to try this PvP and PvE age of sail game let me know I can provide lots of feedback.

It's basically like Elite Dangerous without the space and replaced by water and Caribbean islands. Yes it also has no story to drive it, but it's a team based game with up to 25 players per side in battles. It's surprisingly fast paced and precise for a game based on water. Plus it looks visually stunning (still!).

[ATTACH=CONFIG]4062[/ATTACH]

[sulky_uk]

Next time it's on sail on steam...See what I did, I'll grab my coat

Sent from my HTC One_M8 using Tapatalk

[albert]

Yeah not worth the full price. Wait for a 20 quid thingy!

[Sneakytiger]

just got naval action

[albert]

Sneaky, PM sent to you, but for everyone else's benefit as well. Don't buy this right now. The Dev's have the game in a mess totally imbalanced. If you have not played 2 hours of the game, get a refund.

[Sneakytiger]

yeah i've asked for a refund.