I know it's been mentioned before, but it needs to be mentioned again and again. It's one of the only reasons I can't get other friends to play with me. There is such a commitment to play this game and when you get a friend who wants to leave or wants to join, your only option is to throw away everything you've collected for the last N hours.
I can't come up with a good reason, other than a technical one, not to provide this option.
when you get a friend who wants to leave or wants to join, your only option is to throw away everything you've collected for the last N hours.
No...You dont simpy throw away everything. You turn that stuff in.
You also could always START in a galleon. Fun fact: 2 people can manage a Galleon.
Good work around is, Plan ahead. Ask before hand "What time people gonna play?" Should you spend hours doing loot raids and hoarding them knowing a friend may join later, when your on a Sloop, and your already with another.
Its very simple process.
Your other friends could start up a new ship, you sell your current loot and join them. Not bad.
@burnbacon It's not about the loot at all, it's about the supplies. Losing a fully stocked ship is the biggest pain-point in all of this.
Yes, I've sailed a 2-man galleon before, it can be done, but it's not fun. You've given ok workarounds, but still no reason why we couldn't swap ships unless it's a technical reason.
I think they said that it's something that would be difficult to pull off
I don't really care if people downsize but going bigger is just a cheesecake factory as well as it interferes with pvp. Calling in backup to help take out a crew mid conflict isn't cool, balanced, or healthy for the environment
@xx-mirth-xx I saw once they had a ship in a bottle in the prototype. You could dump in the sea and a new ship would rise from the ocean to the surface. Would be cool if they allowed this in game. Prior ship scuttles and new size rises changing the crew size. Could work but maybe its a technical issue. Could also be that they don't want a solo sloop leaving a fort and coming back as a 4 man galleon. Not sure.
@xx-mirth-xx said in Swapping ship size mid-game:
Maybe there is a penalty for switching with a new boat. A new boat costs $100k gold to change ship size, but the longer you play, the cheaper it gets. After 30 minutes it's free to switch ship size...
I know this breaks the simplicity model that Rare uses, but I'd use it.
that doesn't address interference in organic pvp
the main issue for sure would be the bugs and server strain in an environment where bugs and server limitations and inconsistencies are already an issue
as well as whatever problems it would cause probably cause with the server algorithm
I don't really want messed up server merges or more dead servers because people are tinkering with their crew sizes actively on the server
@wolfmanbush lol, hold up, this is a suggestion/feedback forum. You're saying, "this sounds like it may cause bugs. There are already bugs and I don't want more bugs."
Shooting down an idea because you think the devs can't handle it appropriately feels too close to an ad hominem argument.
Let's criticize the concept, not whether or not Rare could actually build it correctly.
@xx-mirth-xx said in Swapping ship size mid-game:
@wolfmanbush lol, hold up, this is a suggestion/feedback forum. You're saying, "this sounds like it may cause bugs. There are already bugs and I don't want more bugs."
Shooting down an idea because you think the devs can't handle it appropriately feels too close to an ad hominem argument.
Let's criticize the concept, not whether or not Rare could actually build it correctly.
I don't really care if people downsize but going bigger is just a cheesecake factory as well as it interferes with pvp. Calling in backup to help take out a crew mid conflict isn't cool, balanced, or healthy for the environment
I did and you have ignored it.
People using this to cheese and to bring in another 2+ people mid conflict are both valid concerns. Consequences of features and health/balance of the environment should absolutely be considered. A record of bugs as well as server limitations and consistent inconsistencies are also something to consider for a major feature like this.
The new merchant voyage was a red hot mess for 3 months and that's a less complicated feature than the one you suggest
@wolfmanbush I clearly didn't choose to ignore it...I suggested an option that would make it more difficult to switch a new ship (not session) right away. If you just sunk, you'd need to wait 30 minute or pay a hefty fine ($100k was just a suggestion, it doesn't actually have to be $100k). In fact, it could just be that there is a cooldown. You can't change ship size until after 30 minutes of using a ship.
This would be no different then a sloop leaving a server and a galleon spawning in. As long as the "server" isn't full, it should be fine.
I'd even be ok with the game saying, "sorry, the seas are full, can't increase ship size". Then again, that shouldn't even be an issue. There is already a mechanic to merge your ship and supplies to a new server if the current one is too empty.
So if a team wants to increase their ship size, they have to wait 30 minutes and they may very well merge servers and lose out on returning to PVP...the cost of switching ships.
@xX-Mirth-Xx @WolfManbush @StarQuest
I was a big advocate for changing ship sizes midgame back in the day. But after much discussion and trial and error with the devs it was conculded to be not worth the effort. There a few misconceptions i see in this discussion i would like to clear up.
Frist off in the arugment of gameplay reasons as to why this feature would be "Game breaking" only 2 arguments have held any merit. These 2 are as follows:
Interfere with Pvp encounters as changing crew size and ship types mid fight dratically alters the fight with no means of countering.
Loot could be made to be freely aquired by adding more player at the end of a seesion to cash in.
While these are reasonable concerns they could easily be address by addition of limitation and/or cost/condition require meants as the Op correctly pointed out. There are many solutions to these concerns that have been debated to death. If you like to learn about in more detail you can ask or search my eairly post on this topic.
However to answer the Op intial Question The problem with switching ships in-game is purly Technical. The reason for this and for most bugs that plegue this game is due to the Limitation of the fundamental core of this game. As elements have been added that where never intended by the dev to exist. SoT from its inception was always designed to be a 4 player co-op game centered around the galleon it was only at the request of the player base to add more shiptypes and to be able to play solo is why we now have a sloop amd brig. The devs freely admit this.
As @StarQuest reference there has been many attempts by the devs to circumvent these limitations but as of today all have failed. The amount of work it would take to remove this limitations would be on the level of recoding the entire game from scratch effectively making a sequal. As much as i bet we would all like to see a SoT2 the dev have stated very clearly they have no intention of making one. But we pirates can dream.
Lastly the technical Limitation has nothing to do with server capacity. All instances of the main map are able to support 5 Galleons or 20 players at any given time oringinally that figure was set to 6 ships or 24 players. The reason for this is agian the game was specifically designed around every ship being a Galleon with a 4 player crew.
Ill try not to get to technical but from my understanding there are two major problem cause do the fact the ship models are tied to the player lobby/matchmaking system. If you tried to change ship types mid game what you effectivly be doing is resetting the player lobby this would cause the entire crew to reload on the same map if too many ships did this a once or there was only 1 other ship when this happened it would trigger a server merge as the game would temporarily register one ship left on the server.
If that was to occur the server intance would crash as it would then attempt to bring both the last ship it sees with the looby reloading both to a different on going instance this would crash the next server and the process would repeat to what is called a cascade failure.
If you tried to sperate the ship models from the player lobby then the issue becomes about spawning as the spawn points are regulated by the player lobby and is hard coded meaning you can't dynaiclly change the spwanpoint once you loaded the lobby. So a galleon lobby of 4 that change to a sloop will respwan where a galleon spwan point will be causing you to somtimes spawn off the ship or in mid air.
Vice versa for the galleon in which the spawn is super cramp making spwan killing stupid easy.
Hope this clear things up. But Agian i do hope these problem will be overcome someday. Agian if like to know more technical detials feel free to ask.
If they made it so you had to be at a port or outpost it wouldn’t mess with PvP as much - and honestly those giving reason for PvP as an excuse makes me think of the bigger crews that pick off smaller crews like mine - they seek out smaller crews for easy targeting and changing crew and ship size amidst that would ruin their fun right? Jeeeze. There are ways to do this that won’t interfere. If anything having to go to a port and vote to change ship size could work
@xx-mirth-xx I feel like guild islands would be a great way to do this. If the island existed in the sea of the damned and had all of your other ships available you could freely change ships and servers by sailing back to the base and out again.
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