Knowing If Other Ships have Treasure.

  • Time to sink in this game is super high if the other ship is reapairing or running. Today we put 4-8 rounds in a small ship and it still got away. Whether that is a good thing or not is debatable but if it’s going to stay that way one thing must change.

    You must be able to see if enemie ships are carrying loot from a distance. It’s very anticlimactic for two ships to fight for 10 minuets only to find neither ship had anything worth stealing.

    Solution 1: Any ship with loot visually looks lower to the water.

    Solution 2: Ships with loot fly a “loot flag” that players can see via spyglass (this could be very thematic).

    Ideas: The loot flag could only fly if you have x number of chests or x rarity. Maybe one of the cursed chests marks your location to all other players large maps.

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  • @williamandbird as a general rule I find if a ship runs they are carrying some booty and as a rum fuelled pirate I love my booty lol

  • @mg-bad-lizard

    But sometimes they don’t.

  • @williamandbird The only way someone should be seen with loot is if they stole it. People just PvEing shouldn't have a target on them constantly. I brought this up in another post but I think it would be a good idea to have a ship that stole treasure be "x"ed on the ship map so that everyone in the game can have a chance to steal the stolen goods. This would also stop the PvE people from crying by giving the PvP players a clearer target.

  • @williamandbird I don't agree to any of your solutions. Don't get me wrong, but treasure is not the only thing a ship carries; resources. At times, resources can be more important than 2-3 chests.

    But, to try to answer your issue about knowing if a ship has loot, use the map. See the direction where the enemy ship is going or coming from. This way, you can speculate if it is coming from an Outpost or heading to one. This might give you a better tell if engaging the ship is worth it or not.

  • I get wear you are coming from but really it is up to you if you want to attack the ship and adding the flag would just make people look for them so having that gamble makes it more fun and tense. Also if you don't find chest better luck on the next ship just makes it and I don't think pirates would show a flag saying the have gold.

  • The problem with your ideas is Risk vs Reward.

    When you attack you don't know if the person has treasure. If they do? Awesome. If not? well that's the risk part of it. It's what drives the game. It was designed this way for that reason.

  • So, Basically you want there to be a beacon telling you someone has treasure... Like pirate ships generally tend to have??

  • @its-s****. Yeah, not sure a big arrow with "TREASURE HERE" would help :( ... There are ways to tell if people have treasure on board by there mannerisms...

  • @musicmee Yup, And how confident they look in battle, If they run, They have good loot, If they fight they may have none.
    If they are smaller and run, It's 50/50.

    The big "Attack us" arrow kinda put me off, Where's the sense of adventure when you only search for an arrow, not an opponent?

  • Maybe just have a cursed chest that gives out your location in the map.

  • @darealpastrami said in Knowing If Other Ships have Treasure.:

    Maybe just have a cursed chest that gives out your location in the map.

    Not sure about Map location, But maybe one you can hear from a distance on another ship (Line of sight etc), only when it's unearthed, Could let people use their skills to search for the ship...

  • Here's a good bit of logic, are they headed to an outpost, they've probably got loot. Are they at the outpost, they probably don't. Are they parked at an island, they're about to have loot.

  • I don't think this is a good idea. There shouldn't be a system of any sort to find out immediately if one ship is carrying loot or not.

  • The game already has a pretty good mechanic to tell if a ship has loot or not on it. If you shoot it and the crew starts yelling or immediately makes an angry forum post, it didn't have treasure. If it does, they fight back like wild beasts. this is a joke please let's keep our heads :)

  • Yes to heavy loaded ships being lower in the water.
    No to loot flags... seems odd and too gamey for some reason.

  • @scerypandas said in Knowing If Other Ships have Treasure.:

    I get wear you are coming from but really it is up to you if you want to attack the ship and adding the flag would just make people look for them so having that gamble makes it more fun and tense. Also if you don't find chest better luck on the next ship just makes it and I don't think pirates would show a flag saying the have gold.

    In pirate days you would loot at a ships flag to know if you should attack it or not. That might me more of a privateer thing but it still is on theme.

  • @mg-bad-lizard
    I find your post entertaining because I sometimes will just run for the sake of not being in the mood to fight and thus end up with the enemy's wasting materials on the crew.

  • I`ll still bord that ship if it only had rum on it..

  • @williamandbird
    I'm sorry but I'm afraid doing the above would take away from the whole point of the risk vs reward scenario.
    Not every ship you see has to be a target, if you play the long con you can even wait it out near by untill you know they have loot on board. I have literally managed to hide look it on an enemy ship because they were adamant on fighting me and when I managed to kill the players on the Deck i would run up to the crows nest jump off the top at the nearest island they arnt stopping at and respawn my ship to go and pick up the loot. It was one of the funniest situations I have experienced because they depleted their ability to fight my ship just from wasting their supplies but that was at their own risk.

  • @williamandbird
    Also if you were to have a flag that let everyone know that you had loot on board people would just play really close to outposts and hand in every chest they find if they didn't want to risk it. Would you not rather have the opportunity to walk away with a possible 7 chests or know that you may after all the effort of fighting maybe only walk away with 1.

  • @xdeiuxeeditionx

    What you describe has been my experience with the game right now. Nothing feels worse than chasing a ship for 30 minutes only to discover that there was no reward for sinking it. That's the problem I want fixed and I offered a possible solution. As a game tester I can diagnose problems easier than solutions.

  • Time to kill.....

    I like this idea. Every hole you take on can be repaired on site but will still maintain a small slow Leak. If you get say 20 repaired holes they act like a open hole. Then the only way to repair is to make port. This way the fight doea not go on forever and ever. Only draw back to this would be skeleton forts. It would be difficult to fight over those so maybe you could get better wood from forts that seals them so 40 holes makes one open hole. Obviously they would have to do testing on the numbers to see what works.

  • @williamandbird It sounds like you're asking for armored cars to start driving around with signs on them that read, "Hey, I've got money!"

  • @the-lion-turtle I agree, you could spend 20 min fighting/chasing someone for nothing or 20 min digging up a couple chest for your own.

  • I prefer to put my skulls on the edge of the boat so they light up and tempt in would be robbers. Then I usually just rob them instead.

  • Thought the whole idea
    ... this pirate thingy we are all doing
    ... is not to know.

  • I think gun powder barrels should catch the ship on fire and burn the crew alive. They should have to run and jump in water.

  • @kendoroland said in Knowing If Other Ships have Treasure.:

    @williamandbird The only way someone should be seen with loot is if they stole it. People just PvEing shouldn't have a target on them constantly. I brought this up in another post but I think it would be a good idea to have a ship that stole treasure be "x"ed on the ship map so that everyone in the game can have a chance to steal the stolen goods. This would also stop the PvE people from crying by giving the PvP players a clearer target.

    I REALLY like that idea, but they shouldn't be marked on the map. Their ship should show some indication that they've stolen the loot. Marking it on the map would just mean they will never be able to get away from whoever they stole it from. It should only be visible if you're close enough.

  • Why not make large amounts of loot slow down your ship's top speed?
    The numbers would have to be tested, but I think 10% slower every ten items sounds about right. Maxing out at 50% speed reduction with 50+ items. This wouldn't totally solve the OP's issue, but it would let you know if you're prey was loaded after you started chasing them.
    Realism married to good game mechanics!

    Ships riding lower in the water would be good too, but hard to implement at the current graphics level.

    On a separate point: I like the idea of fixed holes causing speed loss too. maybe at a similar rate of 10 fixes. You could "Repair" your ship at any dock instead of Scuttling to buff out the patches and get back to fighting shape. There could even be a cool little animation for it, where the mast comes down and there's a flurry of pounding and sanding noises coming from the ship.

  • I love how this solution is proposed to help someone that has comparatively put less effort into playing the game at a given moment.

  • Just watch ships. When they go island to island know they are getting chests.... We like to be friendly pirates on a first pass by. Than we watch them. After we see them go to a few islands or a ship wreck we go after them. We will try and board them without shooting as they are docked for quest or under water at ship wreck....which is good time to check them out. We even check their map for islands they have circled to set a ambush later....... We have boarded ships and said give us chests and you can keep chickens/life/won't sink ya ect. Works more than ya think.

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