Hello Captains and Gentlemen

This is a first attempt at a devblog. We are planning to deploy a big content patch within next 10-14 days. We will freeze the build for the hot fixes on friday and start testing new content. Last hot fix could happen on Wednesday and will provide chat fix, in game mod colors, and port battles trolling fixes. After that no tunings and hot fixes will be possible until the big patch is out. If the patch is delayed everything is delayed.

Content patch discussion

New store interface.

We wanted to improve the store information for players making purchase/sale decisions and improve usability a bit.

In the new interface you will be able to see the amount of goods bought and sold at that price level and will be able to purchase everything in one block (no more unnecessary clicks if you wanted to buy 2000 of something – if someone is selling 2000 items you can buy it in one block). In addition to that you will be able to see top contracts and player names placing those contracts in case you want to trade with them in private.

New battle crew management – BIG CHANGE

Crew focuses have been reworked completely and became more realistic. They will now work as toggles – instead of absolute choices. Previously all tasks were fulfilled with penalties starting from zero penalty to 100% penalty in a linear progression, and you could only improve a certain task while reducing the benefits on another independently of your crew size.

In the new system:

All main tasks have a certain allocation of crew depending on ship type.

All main tasks have a minimum and optimal size of crew required.

• Optimal crew – task will be fulfilled at max speed
• Minimal crew – task will be fulfilled with penalties
• Less than minimal crew – task wont be fulfilled at all.

Sailing, Gun reloads, Repairs, Leak fixing is atomized and all of them require a min or optimal squad. The crew requirement is the sum of individual crew requirements. Switches between crew focuses take time and the bigger your crew the more time it takes to reposition the squads from task to task. If you have full crew you can toggle optimal performance for all tasks.

The main differences lie in the changes to gunnery.  We will try to explain it in simple English – if we fail please rephrase for us in comments and we will update the text.

Previously all guns were reloaded simultaneously. If you did not have enough crew it affected ALL guns. It was unrealistic and unhistorical. In the new system every gun works separately and has a gun crew allocation. All guns are loaded gun by gun if you have minimal gun crew.

How it will work. Example: You first rate have lost most of the men and has 20 men left

Current old system: Ship suffers enormous penalty depending on a crew focus. All decks are affected. If you have switched on the gunnery crew focus you never reload anyway.

New system: Penalties and reload will depend on the gun composition of cannons for this particular vessel.  If you have 20 men left and switched to a gunnery crew focus it will be enough to reload 2 heavy guns per minute allowing you to fire them individually. All guns have a minimum and optimal crew requirements and the gun composition for the vessel will become extremely important in battle.

• Equip lighter guns – you will have more flexibility in choices when you start losing crew.
• Equip heavier guns – you will have to manage the crew.

Certain ships will become impossible to sail without extra crew management.

Repairs/Survival changes

Survival will also start working differently.  If you have only 1 leak it will take only 5 men to repair and will not affect other sailor/gunner crew composition. If you have 90 leaking holes you will have to find 450 men to plug them in.

Repairs also will be affected. If you are repairing Victory you might need up to 30% of crew to repair 15% of the integrity (number is arbitrary at this stage).

These changes will also allow for interesting options in improving repairs in a realistic way.

Sailing

Sailing is simple and works similar to guns. You have a % of crew required to work sails and if you don’t do any other tasks you will not suffer any penalties to speeds of raising sails or turning yards. If you have enough crew you can work sails and man guns at the same time.

Boarding

Boarding crew has to be allocated before the boarding. And the main difference with the old system is this: if you have enough men you can shoot guns and have boarders ready at the same time. Some ships with low number of guns will shine as a result – lynx is the best example. And it will allow you to board when you are sinking (sending some men to repairs and the rest to boarding party).

In the future we add the following changes to the boarding – but they wont get in next patch.

• Only prepared boarding crew will fight in boarding for both sides
• Fire deck guns will be moved out of the boarding interface and you will be shooting actual guns with their real reloads and performance. If you don’t have crew allocated to guns you will not be able to fire during boarding.
• Disengage duration will be affected by several commands and factors. Players wont be able to disengage in certain situations unless they are pulled away from the vessel by friendly ramming.

Production buildings

Production buildings are still tentative and might not get in next patch. Please leave your feedback on how you want production buildings to work in the following topic http://forum.game-la…gs-discussions/. We will of course try hard to make them happen in Feb but not sure about it.

New ships

2-3 new ships will be delivered after the patch – as they need more time to be tested and fine tuned. Most likely candidates are improved Niagara that will be boosted in certain areas based on the player feedback and Essex Frigate.

Gameplay tuning

• Ship curves and turning adjusted to more historical levels (right now a lot of heavy vessels have excellent performance close hauled which is causing problems)
• PvP rewards for kills/assists – we will start granting additional monetary rewards for kills and assists in PVP. Current state of things is unsatisfactory for the pvp player: if you pvp solo or in a small group you are usually without money and cannot afford ships.
• BR changes for vessels
• Shorter entry timers for missions/events/ow battles to provide more control for solo/small group players.

Combat tuning

We want to increase importance of positional damage – raking and reduce importance of broadside damage slightly. Captains should tank with a broadside not with a stern/bow. This will be achieved by the following.

• Significantly increased cannon damage from raking fire
• Lower rudder HP
• Increased broadside planking and class for all vessels

Mast/Sail repair on long cooldowns

Demasting became a dominant strategy and does not give many options for the person on the receiving end. We know that many will say it is a wrong choice – but giving the player the option to recover masts in battle at least to a certain extent will bring more variability to battles.

Our proposal is this:

Bring back cool downs for hull repairs and mast repairs: Cool downs should only work when the player is on the exit timer – if you are out of combat. If enemy does not pursue you in battle actively you can disengage away wait for 10-20 mins and get another repair chance. Captains who participated in the previous repair discussions actively can bring back their ideas into the discussions here.

Cannon fire improvements.

We want to give more penetrating power to all cannons at very close range, reducing it for some cannon types at longer ranges.  After artillery rework last year some cannons became too weak or too strong, and we want to increase the tactical benefits of range control.

Planking imbalances on lower level vessels.

We want to compact the planking integrity on unrated vessels bringing them closer to each other. This will increase variability and improve ship choices for shallow water combat. The difference in hp and survivability between a Navy brig-sloop and a privateer should not be as strong as it is now (almost 2.5x).

Release plans

1. We are planning to stop the servers for the preparation for the release on Sunday morning 17th January. They should have been stopped earlier but we wanted to give a chance for a last pre-wipe “Trafalgar event”

2. Servers will be down from 17th until 19th of January for preparing the release databases. All character data will be deleted and wiped. This will be the last XP (rank) reset and in the future your XP will be saved and safe. There might be drops or increases in rank if the testing shows that xp will have to be rebalanced, but your earned XP will always stay.

3. All current owners of the game will be able to start playing before Steam early access opens. Head start date is set on 19th of January. Everyone will receive several exceptional vessels for participating in the testing of the game. To receive the exceptional vessels you must login and create a character during head start. Only created characters will receive ships.

4. There will be a long maintenance on the night between 20 and 21 January.

5. Release date is 21 January. The release date depends on the time it takes for Valve to approve the release. It usually is done in under 3 days but sometimes can take longer. It will all depend on Valve now.

Short version

1. 17th Jan – Servers stopping
2. 18th Jan – Data wipe
3. 19th Jan – Head start
4. 20th Jan – Long maintenance (approx 9pm CET till 9am CET next day)
5. 21th Jan – Several exceptional ships given to all captains who logged in from 19-21
6. 21th Jan – Release (tentative on valve timing)

Of course we know that most plans don’t survive when the meet reality. We do not discount the possibility that something might change. The riskiest date is the release date itself. If Valve is slow the date will be moved forward.

Captains

Patch #7 is a significant update that required a hard data wipe.

Important statement about the UI (User Interface).

User interface will continue to deteriorate for quite some time. We do not want to waste resource polishing something that is actively evolving and changing. Finalization and rework of the UI will happen only after all core features are added.

New features

• Crafting and trading improvements: for more information refer to the crafting topic http://forum.game-la…crafting-ships/
• Player contracts: players now can place buy/sell contracts for resources in ports (5 contracts max). Haulers selling resources will sell to the contracts with the max price. Players buying resources will buy from contracts with the lowest price.
• Reinforcements and national waters protection: for more information refer to the reinforcement topic: http://forum.game-la…ts-short-guide/
• Events: 2 types of events added to the event list – large battles (every 3 hours and small battles. Events are balanced by nations and groups (opposing sides will have red and blue flags). Groups will enter the battles on one side. Large battles start with 36 players. Small battles start with 4. Ships can be lost or captured in the events. In the future event functionality will be expanded.

Combat changes

• All combat changes from the patch #6.9
• Gun loss now depends on frame state – you will lose guns a lot less with intact planking
• Fire chances now depend on frame state – fires will start a lot more with destroyed planking
• Stern damage should be a bit more dangerous

Content tuning

• Upgrades are now split into 2 groups
  • Upgrades – can be installed and taken off the ship
  • Permanent upgrades – can only be installed once, and are destroyed if you take them off the ship
• Map has been added to the game. Visuals are temporary, final map will be based on the beautiful maps created by the community, depending on the final UI art style.
• Starting ship is now Yacht
• Resources now can drop from traders
• Weight system added
• New ship characteristics added
• Port production and consumption reworked
• Useless modules reworked or dropped
• Battle rating system rebalanced

Bug fixing

Multiple other fixes in terms of tech stability including sound improvements.

And of course: lots of new bugs and problems were introduced.

Goals for testing

• Crafting
• Events and balancer testing
• Changes to repairs
• AI behaviour