Brigantine Re-balancing

What's popcorning?
First time hearing the term.

@sweetsandman said in Brigantine Re-balancing:

I believe there are really two areas to touch on when it comes to re-balancing the meta-ship.

Now, the obvious imbalance is the speed of the Brig. It's absurdly fast in pretty much every wind condition regardless of how wonky their sails are. You always have to fight a brig on the brig's terms. They control the resets, the engagements, and pretty much all aspects of a fight because of their speed. I've put a thread out in the past about generally rebalancing the speed of all the ships (read about it here), and I stand by the need for that.

Patently false. The Galleon is faster than the brig in a tailwind and into a crosswind. In fact, in the pairing between the brig and the galley, the are balanced with each having two of the four points of sail where it is faster than the other. The link you shared has incorrect numbers.

The balancing needed is to increase the speed of the sloop into a crosswind to make it the fastest ship, so that the ships are balanced in terms of point of sail advantage when compared to the other ship types. That way, sailing skill actually matters in a PVP encounter and the brig isn't the META and the sloop isn't a sitting duck.

@sweetsandman Assuming you are not sailing a galleon short-handed, sails take just as much effort to manage as the brig: crew - 1. Yes, they may take longer to turn from one extreme to the other, but if you need to disengage you have one person on each sail and one on the wheel, just like a brigantine.

The absolute speed of the ships hardly matters in PvP, what matters is the relative speed compared to the other ships. That determines who is in control of the tempo of the encounter, and who is or is not allowed to disengage and reset. In that regard, the only adjustment needed is to make the sloop faster in at least one point of sail so that it isn't completely outclassed in the sailing department, as well as the action economy.

@sweetsandman Things are logical as it stands. The double-sail on a galleon takes as long to raise as the double sail on a brigantine. It takes just as long to raise a single sail on the brigantine as it does the sloop. Cannons take just as long to load and fire on every ship. That is to say, tools not rules.

I just don't understand what your goal is I guess. The only imbalance in my opinion is the sloop; making it faster into a cross wind so that each ship has two advantageous points of sail against each other ship so that in a PvP scenario each ship has equal opportunity to engage or disengage at their crew's whim. Specific. Measurable. Results driven. But it seems like you want to nerf the brigantine for... "reasons."

Now, the obvious imbalance is the speed of the Brig.

Disagree.

You always have to fight a brig on the brig's terms.

Wrong.

They control the resets, the engagements, and pretty much all aspects of a fight because of their speed.

Nope.

It sounds like you were sunk by a brig, and you don't understand why, so you just came on here asking for it to be nerfed.

@sweetsandman Shrug I guess?

Yea, bad crews are bad, but I can't assume in my 2000 hours of play every brigantine crew I've ever played against is bad. I am a sloop main with thousands and thousands of hours (one thousand and one thousand), and if I'm being chased by a brig I use things that are advantageous to me: sailing upwind, boarding and anchoring, ridiculously fast anchor turns, sailing between small gaps in rocks and islands then harpoon turning when line of sight is broken... I feel it ridiculous that I only have one recourse to disengage: headwind, but I don't think the brig's speed is broken. It's a property that needs consideration, but speed alone doesn't define the entire encounter and saying that speed is too big of an advantage really just sounds like "the tactic I want to use isn't working so I'd rather ask them to change the game than learn to do something different."

@sweetsandman Intersting, never really thought about the hole counts. I'd say adding holes would be fine especially given how easy bailing is on a brig compared to a galleon.

@sweetsandman except they didn't. A sloop is just unbalanced against a brig. With equal skill levels of the players, the sloop will lose 99% of the time. That ain't balance.

@sweetsandman I can agree with your comments with sloop vs galleon, however then the sloop should be quicker then a galleon overall. Now the galleon still has the speed advantage (not in every direction ofcourse, but on average it has). So i would think a little change in the speed between the two can be made.

But the real problem is the brigs ofcourse, wich we seem to agree on. That realy needs to be tackled.

@super87ghost said in Brigantine Re-balancing:

@sweetsandman except they didn't. A sloop is just unbalanced against a brig. With equal skill levels of the players, the sloop will lose 99% of the time. That ain't balance.

A crew of three with two cannons winning against a crew of two with one cannon is Tactics 101. The ships aren't balanced to give each ship a 50/50 chance of winning any encounter. A sloop with two people should not have a 50/50 chance against beating a fully crewed galleon—look at historical naval battles. Every game lies somewhere on the abstraction/simulation scale. If all the ships were balanced such that equally skilled crew has 1:1 odds against every other ship in the game is balanced towards abstraction. The fact that the sloop has less hands than a galleon, less cannons than a galleon, and is thus disadvantaged against a galleon means Sea of Thieves is closer to a simulation, which I absolutely adore. It really makes you think twice about fully comiting to an engagement with a larger ship.

Last night a swabbie friend and I were sailing on a sloop and noticed a brig stacking FotD. We sailed up to them and I sword lunged over and killed two of them. My friend did not open fire on the brig so they dropped sails and engaged, so we sailed away into the wind because we lost the the tactical advantage of surprise. The fact that the ships aren't balanced to give every ship 50/50 chances against any other ship adds to the drama and tension of the game; when I see a galleon or brigantine on the horizon I know I'm at a disadvantage at the action economy, and beating them becomes a matter of skill, and not just a coin toss.

Sea of Thieves is a game of skill, tactics, wits, awareness, and tactics. It's imbalance in the action economy, and the pros/cons of each ship type are what makes the tactics fun, interesting, and unique in the ocean of pirate games that exist.

@d3adst1ck The sloop should absolutely be quicker than a galleon... sometimes. There are four points of sail: headwind, into a crosswind, with a crosswind, and tailwind. The sloop should be faster than a galleon into the wind and into a headwind. A galleon should be faster than a sloop with a crosswind and at full run. That level of accuracy would enhance the tactics and not just force the sloop to head into the wind to reset.