Changing ships at the Shipwright

It would have to be linked to traveling through a portal and server hopping. Maybe a possibility in the future.

Why? It seems changing ship size up or down should not matter. If you have to sail to the sea dogs taven it would take time. Then you get a new ship with zero resourses on it.

Oh no. Me a lonely sloop are being chased by a another sloop. I don’t like pvp but... But wait I have 3 other friend who do!
Let’s quickly switch to a galleon and turn around to sink those nasty sloop.

Yup.

@burnbacon
Cool, but you have to sail to the ship wright. It would take time to transfer over all your resources etc. By the time you have pulled it off the other player would have killed you or you them. The number of times the scenario you describe would happen would be quite small. However, if that is the only thing stopping the devs from doing it I would happily limit upgrading ships to server hopping if it meant not losing all the resources/flag emissary levels I had gotten.

Is there somewhere we can vote on questions for the next podcast? This would be one I would want answered.

@miserenz
Small but it is possible and will be done quite often. Since the only reason people want this is because they have a list of friends that randomly pop up.

Only way to pull it off at Shipwright would to leave the server, as the portal. Lose all resources and such, even flag. To have a ship magically disappear and reappear as another ship in front of other players would be a strain. Ship sinks and players teleport to a new server with selected Ship.

BUT even with that...Why go through the trouble when you can do just that by leaving the server, main menu and start again?
And yes, if your switching ships you must lose your resources. Because what if you decide to go Galleon-Sloop? Those barrels can only hold so much on different ships.

frankly, If you can't prepare to switch ships when your friends arrive, you should just waited until everyone is available.

@burnbacon
What you just described with portals is exactly the same as starting a new game altogether. The point of upgrading/downgrading ships is to keep the resources you have gathered &/or the emissary you have earned if a friend turns up and wants to play OR has to drop out.

Currently, I play SOT with friends spread across 3 different counties and 5 different time zones. It is how we hang out. Sometimes it is only 1-2hr max when we are all free at the same time. Waiting is not always an option. Some of us have kids that need attention at inconvenient times as well.

The way it would work (if I was told I had to implement it) would be either:

Same server. You sail to the sea dogs area in the middle of the map. This would be altered to have 3 docks, one with each of the other ship sizes. The crew would then vote to change ship size, downgrading could only occur if you have excess crew (Three on a galley could downgrade to a brig but not a sloop). Vote goes ahead, your emissary flag falls and raises on the new ship, your old ship scuttles. The new ship has zero resources to prevent exploits. You then run aboard with your storage crates and sail off. That takes time to get to and transfer over. Make it a gold cost too. If you are inactive combat with someone good luck pulling the upgrade off. You could even have a 5 min timer since the last time you got hit by a cannon. Until then you can't pull off the upgrade. The only way I can see this being a 'problem" is a player getting sunk and then upgrading their ship to hunt down the other ship and get revenge. Really good luck with that.

Via server hop. If making certain it is not used for players to get revenge by upgrading your ship then ok. It could be a voyage you buy from the shipwright, you pay to buy the new ship type with gold. Sail into the portal and you appear in a location with the new ship. You see an NPC to show the dead of ownership for the new vessel. It has zero supplies on it, they say she is all yours and your old vessel drops its anchor, never to rise again. Your emissary lowers on the old ship and raises on the other. You can now invite players if you are upgrading to a larger size and manually transfer over your supplies. You then sail your new ship out of the portal.

This would be abused so bad. If you want to sail solo and do specifics, then you get attacked, you just throw on open crew and swap to a larger ship or go onto the SoT discord and throw up LFC, free loot.

The scenario of upsizing when attacked would definitely happen way more than "quite small." If you wanted it to happen in the same server, the original ship needs to "blink" out of existence and any items onboard dropped where it disappeared like when a ship is run aground for 5 minutes. It then takes 60 seconds for the new ship to spawn in (emissary flag would be restored from what it was) That would remove combat swapping capability unless the chaser was so far away it didn't matter.

Problem with this will be player joining during the change.

If player number 4 disconnects and the other three decide to change to a brigantine and when the brigantine appears and that player gets added to the crew again, you might end up with a four-crew brigantine.
Obviously also regular joining should take into account that such matchmaking on a down-sized ship should fail (or that the downgrading should fail).

Using the portals in this way could help with this as well with all the repositioning of loot on the ship; great fun if you find the two spots on a galleon that will have almost the same place on a brigantine with a keg involved. Or a chest of rage that was in a safe place ending up close to a keg &c.

Not a fan of finding the friendly sloop crew you have allied to find they now have the advantage on a Galleon, the obvious advantages for PvE alliance servers, cheesing loads of things by enlarging your ship and getting people on board while it's done or started by a smaller crew, and so forth.

@personalc0ffee said in Changing ships at the Shipwright:

@lem0n-curry Thanks for immediately finding an exploit for a feature we don't even have lol.

Those things should be thought about and handled before introducing each new feature, not when enough people start complaining that there are not enough canons on a sloop for the 4 man crew 😉.

Technically, I suspect everything is tied to the ship and the crew on it. So changing the entity and not only its properties would be quite a task.

to anyone saying it would have to be implemented through the portal…pointless then…would be faster to start a new game…i see no issue pulling up to a dock going to shipwright and selecting a new type of ship so your buddies can join. there is no fairness issue here. nothing in this game is fair! you forget we are pirates? though im sure im the friendliest pirate on the seas(i run reaper with cannons straight up; no pvp; just doing voyages for ledger rewards) this is something that should be available period but #RARE DOESN’T CARE