Lock 'em up!

Invite newbie to my ship. (Form alliance?) Kill them and lock them in brig

Nothing more toxic than that.

@burnbacon

Yes. But, it's limited (2 min), and they won't make that mistake again. So, yes, you can troll, but it's not a big one...

Also, that level of skullduggery seems fitting in general with the pirate game and alliances already

@tybald sooo, essentially, you want a boarder(s) to get stuck with a 2 minute respawn time?
I want you to start a timer. watch all 120 seconds tick by. All while someone hurls insults at you.

This is a silly idea with an inherent bias towards punishing boarding. If you prefer naval you force that type of fight by keeping pressure on them and defending boards, it already has risk of leaving ship a man down and board not being easy....

Edit to add, you may suspect I'm biased but I personally am much better at naval than boarding and close quarters combat.

I always liked the idea of locking an opponent in the brig and not just your own team but it is something that has to be very well thought out so it doesn't turn in to a hated mechanic.

@pithyrumble

Notice I put in playtesting to determine timing? I assume not as you seem to be unable to grasp that the 2 min timer was a starting point not the actual suggestion.

@lordqulex This is the way i see it as well.

@tybald

If i were to tell you that boarding is already punishable, this would instead cause very defensive cycle. If you want to see what that looks like, go to fortnite and challange a good builder to a duel.

This is a typical response to a situation where someone gains the upper hand in territory they excel at, and sink you very fast though that method, but you dont blame the difference in experience, and go for blaming the tool. If boarding got more punishable, the players using it would swap to using another tool. This can be backed up by the amount of complains that arrived when chainshots were introduced.

Lets also mention that there are cursed cannonballs in the game. In adition blunderbombs are seen as a game changer in higher levels of gameplay. The gameplay loop could be far worse if the sweats result to having to use other things.

Boarding is a double edged sword, since the player is forced up a narrow ladder without measure to defend himself getting onboard often facing more people than one, he is at a disadvantage. If he dies, good players doesnt need to repair their boat before firing, so the ship being one man down will likely loose. Evident in hourglass.

The only reason this topic is here is because the free world of high seas doesnt have matchmaking. You just regulate your opponents often by how much value you put on your boat.

@wujuwarrior1375 It is punishable already but not to a point where it deters players.
-Since the beginning of SOT one of the first things players always did was board the ship to drop anchor of the opponent.

Only time a player doesn't leave his ship is when he is by himself and already has a number of holes that need immediate repair.
So unless your ship is practically sinking all other times you can afford to take a shot at boarding others since the worst thing that can happen is you are sent to the ship of the damned for the same period of time as when you die on your ship.

For me it doesn't matter if they call it punishment or whatever but i would like to see proper counter measures that would lessen that tactic, let boarding be a tactic for actually stealing treasures not the norm for sinking ships.

@eva1977

I see your point. The tactic is overused, To a point where many sink as a result of it. It has been even more used before when sword staggered less and you could silent board, low community awareness, late mermaid spawns and not close to ships++. Its not that much used anymore in comparisson, but it is a defining tool.

I only see it overused when there is a skillgap in close quarters though. I myself am quite defective in close combat, so i often get boarded alot in that scenario. It often helps me though, but only in a 1v1 encounter where it is very risky to board. In crews its different. We get boarded once, repel it and next time it happens in when we are close to sinking, which is totally what is suppose to happen.

My point being, we dont get boarded if we can repel it. Not because we are better than him i close combat, but because 3 of us are better together than the one that comes over. The strategy doesnt work when people are in somewhat equal skill. If the gap is large, i would point to what i said earlier. Its a tool, removing it wont change the outcome, you, yourself change it.

Even if we said boarding is too powerful (which it's not, outside of people using silent board exploit or tactically jumping off ship when in an orbital to surprise there is a notable difference in the cannon sound, splash on emerge) naval has only been nerfed recently so the game changes have made boarding a necessity to sink competent crews.

@wujuwarrior1375
What this does is change the calculation for boarding. It carries inherently more risk than currently. It also changes the goal with boarding. Under a scenario where getting killed on the ship means you end up a person down for extended periods, it encourages more "hit and run" tactics. You only end up in the cell if killed on the ship. So, hopping on, dropping an anchor and diving off is safer. It's now smarter to cause short term chaos and escape than it is to stay and cause as much as possible.

Plus, as noted in the OP there are multiple ways to get out of the cage. A larger crew could send a rescue party, or they could turn their ship to get the distance.

The distance angle changes strategy as well. Send a boarder from a distance, have them cause chaos, and then close the distance while they try to recover.

@ghutar said in Lock 'em up!:

With insane harpoon anim assist I would just harpoon folks, blunder them into brig and then after 1,5 min blunder again them to add respawn timer up to locked timer.

Terrible idea that will backfire widening skill gap.

Being borded outside of 1v1 combat means the other crew ship allwos them to be off 1 player. So naval preasure puted on them is to low.

No. You see, I already addressed that. Once in the cell they are essentially isolated. They can't interact with the ship, the ship can't interact with them. You aren't going to blunder them, set them on fire, etc. You aren't going to kill them in the cell to keep them in the cell. At best, you might try to abuse #5, but that is easily remedied by having a crew release act like a mermaid, and just port them back to the ship. Also, easily adjustable that if they somehow manage to die in the cell, they immediately black screen back to their ship, like a mermaid.

@lordqulex

I think there's a problem of framing. I do not see this as a punishment for boarding, I see it as a reward for stopping a boarder on your ship. It's breathing room, and it also changes the risk/reward calculation of boarding. As I said earlier. I think this would emphasize hit and run boarder tactics, as you want to minimize your exposure. You get on, cause quick chaos, and hop off, so as not to end up disadvantaging your team.

Also, I think it should be limited. That's why I suggested the use of a "Manacle" resource. It can be exauhsted. There really is an entire plan in the post, with all numbers to be adjusted in playtesting for actual viability.

Its an effective tactic insofar as the person boarding is effective at it, and insofar as the situation allows.

If it was genuinely the most effective tactic available, why doesn't everyone just board spam?

When crew size and skill levels are different, the inherent risk in boarding goes down for the larger and more skillful crew... but I don't see this as a problem that needs a solution. It's just the nature of being on a more powerful and skillful crew. Shark eats the Fish. Balance is important, but we don't need so much balance that the Fish unintuitively eats the Shark.

When crew size and skill level is equal (or close to it) the risk in boarding becomes more apparent. One crewmate off the ship is one less crewmate to perform an essential task on the ship. And that could very will result in losing the fight.

My crew uses the tactic when we should, as the situation requires.

@tybald said:

I do not see this as a punishment for boarding, I see it as a reward for stopping a boarder on your ship.

Imo, leaving the opposing crew a man down for a brief amount of time (scaled to crew size, as it currently is) is a sufficient reward.

@tybald

But the point is lost then. Only reason a board is effective is beacuse you can harass the crew by simply being there. They have to drop what they are doing to kill you. If its more beneficial to not stay on the boat, the you arent much threathened by the board either.

Do you play hourglass? Imagine players running for 2 minutes to wait for their mate to get locked out.

Now they will likely add traps as we saw on the preview, that is a much better idea. And people will be harpooning aboard with only one weapon slot to work with, so the entire pressure will change.

@ghutar said in Lock 'em up!:

@tybald still overcomplciated stuff. You cloud achive same with longer stay on ferry depending on place where you died (and it still less abusable) but still it dosent bring enything postive into gameplay.

Point is that if other crew is able to send borders they allready have uperhand in naval.

You can't be "rescued" from the ferry. You can't mitigate the time on the ferry. And, you can't wear down the other side's 'ferry resources' so you can avoid the extra ferry time all together.

@wujuwarrior1375 You really can't repel it if the player has the ability to land on your ship from a cannon shot.
And soon to be they will be using a harpoon, eliminating the need for guarding ladders altogether, so this is why countermeasures for that are needed.

Similar to explosive barrels they used to be a given that players would carry them in the crows nest but as soon as they gave us destructible masts, no one uses them anymore.
Not saying it should be an extreme change like this where boarding becomes obsolete but at least something that makes players use it as a last resort and not the first.

@eva1977 I suspect there will need to be some rebalancing before that harpoon gun comes in absolutely that has meta breaking potential.

I feel like the bone caller is intended to support defending against boarders but surely boarders can also throw them to distract and make it easier.

They will certainly favour sword users over double gunners as having to use 3 bullets compared to one sword lunge to clear them is a bit of a nerf