Sloop Improvements

If you make changes to one ship. You must do equal changes to the other ships.

Balance.

@jonipsy6008 said in Sloop Improvements:

With so many new additions to the game, the sloop needs a quality of life update to be a viable ship.

1. The sloop should continue to be the fastest ship against the wind. A brig should not be catching up against the wind. There has to be some speed advantage against ships with more than one sail.

A minor boost against the wind would be enough, but that's all.

2. The sloop mast should require 2 chainshots to take it down and require 4 planks to repair.

Not sure about this, even as a solo sloop I would be wary of making sloops too strong in that regard. A good duo is already tough to fight. Personally, I'd rather see chainshots made rarer so every shot counts and they're not spammed.

3. Move the sloop ladders down between the cannon and the start of the stairs. The field of view does not expand to see ladders while helming. With silent boarding not being removed and not being able to see mermaid's smoke, it's becoming increasingly easy to be overtaken. Also, the brig nor the gally have the ladders directly next to the wheel which is an advantage to seeing boarders first.

Not sure how viable this is. Not against it though. If silent boarding wasn't a thing, I doubt it would even be an issue, TBH.

4. Ram damage by the harpoons should not be creating 4 holes (1 tier 3, 1 tier 2 and 2 tier 1), especially when the sloop is rammed by an opposing ship.

Ram damage in general seems a bit weird to me, on any ship.

5. The blast damage and popcorn effect from opposing player cannons needs to be looked at for a sloop. Being knocked off the ship is incredibly easy and with mermaids spawning so far away, it's devastating to a solo slooper (yes, I know it's hard mode, but also should not be impossible mode).

Getting knocked off and stuck in "mermaid hell" can be frustrating but it is, as you say, mainly impacting solo sloopers and Rare don't really care to encourage our way of playing.

6. The blast back while repairing down below should not be killing you especially when the hole being repaired is not the one being hit or the hole is created on the opposite side that you are repairing on.

I can't say I've ever experienced this, I typically keep on top of my health though and usually have my health regen full before a fight.

7. Opposing players should be able to revive each other on enemy ships. This concept is leading to forced scuttles due to spawn camping. As a newer player to SoT being overtaken by a crew 2x larger than mine, opposing pirates repairing my ship and all spawn locations are covered by a blunder welding pirate is all too common and even killing one player does not matter because they are reviving each other to continue to spawn camp. By removing reviving on opposing player ships gives smaller crews a chance to stop the spawn camp and will lead to a better PvP experience.

I'm okay with the revive, it's more the spawncamping that needs to be addressed, IMO.

I want to be able to play hard mode and get better rather than feeling like solo slooping is impossible mode.

It's never felt impossible to me, certainly very tough at times. But, again, it's not a playstyle that Rare ever wanted to encourage in the first place. I'm just glad it's still at least viable, and I relish the challenge. One of my favourite challenging activities is taking on Skelly Galleons solo because it can be a total rush when you are being annihilated and manage to regain control, then sink them.

Getting better at solo slooping really comes down to attitude. You can't look at a loss as a total waste, just got to learn from it and apply those lessons next time. Sure, it can be soul crushing at times, but it's all pixels and none of it matters in the end.

@jonipsy6008 said in Sloop Improvements:

@realstyli Absolutely, solo slooping is about the attitude and it's not about the loot as much as it is about having a good fight. A few changes and I think having those awesome fights, regardless of win or lose, would make the experience 100% better.

Yeah, but the way I look at it any changes to a sloop will impact duos as well as solos. So they need to be considered in terms of how they would impact a sloop on sloop fight. While, yes, they are frustrating as a solo often those negatives can help us win a fight - getting a good chainshot, knocking a player off, killing a player repairing. If you mitigate any of those, you also make duos harder to fight... and, IMHO, I still regard a good duo as the deadliest ship I can come up against when solo.

@jonipsy6008

My point really was that duos can handle those disadvantages a lot better than a solo slooper already. It helps solos but it also helps duos who can cope much better in those scenarios as it is. A solo slooper gets popcorned, for instance, it can be game over a lot more often than if a duo loses a player to the same fate.

The ladder thing, as I said, I'm not against it. I can see the issue but I really wonder if moving the ladder would just become more frustrating than a help? For example, if you do get knocked off, you would have less chance to grab it as your ship passes you (the ladder being further forward on the boat). Or if you need to leave somewhere in a hurry, you're just that little bit further away from your sail lines and wheel when you board your own boat.

Another solution might be to allow a player on the wheel to use third person (pressing Y on a controller, for example). Players already use emotes to get a better view of boarders, so I can't see the issue with this, especially as it would be offset by their forward view being more obscured by the sails in third person.

The spawncamping issue I don't think can be addressed on a sloop by adding more spawnpoints, it's just such a small space that it won't make a difference. I'm very much in favour of introducing a very small bit of spawn protection, just enough for the player to spawn in and draw their weapon or move. Killing players before they fully spawn (on a black screen) is exploiting the limits of the game, in my mind. That has always been my feeling on that.

Speed on sloop needs a revisit for sure. This affects the likelihood of combat and creates situations in combat in which the brig can better get out ahead of the sloop in 3 of 4 directions when both ships are looking to broadside, i.e. crossing the T.

Some calculations I did previously using data from this widely cited video showed that distance gained by a sloop over 20 minutes of perfect sailing against the wind in a single direction can be undone in about 7-8 minutes by a brig with "close reach" crosswind (i.e. partially into the wind). This is assuming all ships sail correctly with their sails oriented as presented in the video. The fact that the sloop is slower in this close reach condition is unacceptable because it doesn't take much to not be able to head directly into the wind, and the brig gains ground 3x faster than it took the sloop to create that distance.

/watch?v=XaHT0ZLeMdU&ab_channel=kiwhen

I agree as well that chainshot is catastrophic on the sloop, and basically makes repairing the mast take precedent over everything else which usually means less attention paid to watching ladders. This isn't as big a problem on the larger ships because A) they have more sails, and B) have enough people to guard both ladders while one or even two people repair. This is inherently imbalanced, and so having different health for masts is not really all that taboo. After all, technically capstans have different health based on the ship already, which scales based on the number of players.

Sure, it only takes one person to raise a mast, but maybe that should be looked at as well, and it should take two to raise on larger ships. After all, larger masts more people right? It is difficult to pinpoint exactly what should be changed because it is nice when everything is "equal" across ships. But equal is not the same as equitable / balanced, and the fact is, the ships are built different for a pretty good reason. And Rare did a pretty good job at launch, but it is no longer the case. So I agree with the sentiment of your post that sloops have been in a tough spot for a while now, solo or not, though I am not sold on all of the suggestions. The two I pointed out are those I agree with.

Sloops are still pretty unsinkable in an duo so long as you don't let people board or get immobilized, but as soon as your mast is down, it is kind of gg, or at the very least, you a probably in a world of hurt which is difficult to recover from. The worst part is that you actually do more harm than good exchanging chainshot hits with larger ships because all you do is help them slow down so they can circle you.

Reviving should not occur on enemy ships. Other than that leave it alone.

The Sloop is easily my favourite ship in the game. These proposed changes you want to make are literally just removing the Sloop's weaknesses. It needs to suffer in certain scenarios for the sake of balance. It still is the fastest against the wind. A Brig can only catch up if you're not sailing properly.

I hate to do the "get good" meme, but if you're genuinely unable to survive in a Sloop, chances are you're facing players who are better than you, or you otherwise aren't good enough to win in situations where you're outnumbered.

@greatfailure82 said in Sloop Improvements:

silentboarding is already gone is it not ? and the ladder position is probably imo in the best position already for the sloop. if im on the wheel and i see/hear people board then im in the perfect position to defend. theres no need to have your hands on the wheel the entire time, infact doing so seems like an amateurish move

They said it was gone, but i can still silent board for some reason.