Friendly Ship Visual Indicator

  • Moorcrost
    Founder

    I've come up with an idea. I would like to hear some feedback.

    I think there should be a function that allows your crew to indicate your combat intentions while sailing. My thought is, you take the wind flag at the top of your ship and you can toggle the color of that flag as "White" or "Red". White flags would mean that you do not have an intention to fire on other players as you voyage. Red would indicate a PvP-minded ship. I think it would be great to have a feature where ships with "White" flags would be unable to fire cannons at another ship unless fired upon. As soon as another ship fires on them, the cannons become fully functional. There could also be a cool down timer when you toggle from white to red.
    Here's the rub... If you are flying a white flag, your cannons would not be able to be completely disabled because they are also incredibly useful against skeleton captains and forts. I don't know if the devs would be able to accommodate this kind of cannon-disabling feature only against other players but not against AI. Of course there is also the issue of boarding parties and gunpowder also.
    I agree with some who have posted that there is really no way to determine what ships are friendly and everyone's default behavior tends to be to fire on anyone and everyone. I think this would be a nice element to add because it would allow you to engage with other crews peacefully, have a chat about what they are doing, and even come to each other's aid against aggressive ships. Additionally! I have found when collecting random animal pens on islands and turning in critters that aren't on a voyage list... the rewards are pitiful. I got 41 gold for a red speckled chicken yesterday that wasn't on the list of goods for trade. Under this circumstance, if I saw another friendly merchant ship and they were on the hunt for a red speckled chicken, I would gladly trade them my chicken for a lowly seafarer's chest to help them in their efforts and gather more gold for myself. However, for this type of scenario to take place, we need a visual indicator that actually MEANS something when it comes to PvP combat to know who would be a friendly trader/adventurer.

    Do you think it could work?

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  • AJArcher21

    @moorcrost it would if people played this properly, the white flag would just be a calling for "easy prey" for most players at the moment.

  • King Brouille
    Captain
    Insider

    @moorcrost I think bad pirates would use the white flag as a decoy then change. Maybe you can buy a white flag and it provides immunity for a mandatory 5min.. Even that takes the fun/anger out of it a bit. Looking over yer shoulder is such a large part of the game

  • Bobcat3163443
    Marauder
    Insider
    Founder

    That would take away the surprise aspect of some battles though. My crew sometimes pretends to be friendly so we can come into close range.

  • Myrm

    @moorcrost said in Friendly Ship Visual Indicator:

    Do you think it could work?

    Sorry, no it wouldn't work. If I was a griefer I would put up a friendly flag, approach another ship with a friendly flag, and then blow them to the moon and back.

    I certainly see where you are coming from, but a flag system would not work.

  • Moorcrost
    Founder

    @myrm I think you may not have read the post completely or missed the part about the Cool Down period from going from white flag to red. In this hypothetical scenario, you wouldn't be able to pretend to be friendly then switch immediately and start firing. Like @King-Brouille said, the cool down could be up to five minutes before you could engage and during all that time your flag would have switched to red. I think you may have missed that part.

  • Moorcrost
    Founder

    @the-bobcat-316 I see your point in that. Trickery is certainly a part of the game.

  • Snipp3t
    Founder

    I think people would take advantage of this and a cooldown system could leave someone vulnerable to other dangers. Personally I point my cannons straight up because someone told me it was some old code they had back in the day. I wonder if educating players on some simple visual indicator like this would be best?

  • DukeWally

    It's a good idea, IF the devs wanted to allow players to be protected from PvP while engaging in their own PvE exploits. That seems to be contrary to their whole idea of the game which is unrestricted PvP pirating.

  • Myrm

    @moorcrost said in Friendly Ship Visual Indicator:

    @myrm I think you may not have read the post completely or missed the part about the Cool Down period from going from white flag to red. In this hypothetical scenario, you wouldn't be able to pretend to be friendly then switch immediately and start firing. Like @King-Brouille said, the cool down could be up to five minutes before you could engage and during all that time your flag would have switched to red. I think you may have missed that part.

    Ah, yes I didn't read the post properly. My apologies.

  • TobyOneKenobe
    Seafarer

    It's a nice idea, but too easy to exploit. As someone else said, flying a white flag is just telling people that your cannons are inoperable. They'll pull along side, drop anchor and shout "Need a red speckled chicken, mate?" and before you can answer you've got four holes in the side of your ship. In the time it takes for your cannons to kick back in you've got four more. Two of your crew are now below deck repairing the ship (and getting pummeled by cannon balls) leaving only two up top to return fire. You wouldn't stand a chance.

    It's worth bearing in mind that of the two million people playing this game, 99% of them will open fire on you as soon as you're in range, regardless of whether you're flying a white flag or have pointed your cannons skyward. In reality of course, pirates rarely engaged one another in battle. They were far more likely to work together than risk death fighting each other. In fact I can only find one account of two pirates crews fighting each other and that was a sword fight over a dispute about the fair distribution of loot. It was resolved amicably without serious injury.

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