Pretty simple, title says it all. Seems like every time a ship raid is up, they despawn before you can actually get to them. Increasing their up time by five or so minutes would help out a lot. Also, let's see some random skeleton sloops on the open ocean instead of just galleons! I'd love to see one or two sloop pop up from time to time instead of always galleons. Variety is the spice of life!
Increase the up time of ship raids please!
@killthulhu19k I completely agree with you on increasing the Fleet Cloud event to be up longer before disappearing, though for me 5 mins seems short I was thinking more like an hour, giving newly joined crews the chance to actually stock up and go. Often enough if it spawns on the other side of the map and you have a head wind, by the time even if you just head there it will disappear while clearly nobody took it out, as you have vision of the area.
I believe they implemented this after noticing forts were more often guarded by these as less people do them. However, with the new change that forts are up so often it really upped the motivation of doing fleets as they are a change of experience. My crew is often enough eager to go for them and lately have been actually trying to go for them, but only did it once out of the five times due to the distance. They also don't spawn that frequent, or it is just my luck and we aren't always in the mood to clear the forts ourselves. Sometimes we just spawned and need supplies and even when close by the time we get there... without a warning: clear skies.
The challenge feels more with actually getting there than taking them out. It might be my luck, but I think it shouldn't be based on luck whether you can even do it...
@cotu42 said in Increase the up time of ship raids please!:
@killthulhu19k I completely agree with you on increasing the Fleet Cloud event to be up longer before disappearing, though for me 5 mins seems short I was thinking more like an hour, giving newly joined crews the chance to actually stock up and go. Often enough if it spawns on the other side of the map and you have a head wind, by the time even if you just head there it will disappear while clearly nobody took it out, as you have vision of the area.
I believe they implemented this after noticing forts were more often guarded by these as less people do them. However, with the new change that forts are up so often it really upped the motivation of doing fleets as they are a change of experience. My crew is often enough eager to go for them and lately have been actually trying to go for them, but only did it once out of the five times due to the distance. They also don't spawn that frequent, or it is just my luck and we aren't always in the mood to clear the forts ourselves. Sometimes we just spawned and need supplies and even when close by the time we get there... without a warning: clear skies.
The challenge feels more with actually getting there than taking them out. It might be my luck, but I think it shouldn't be based on luck whether you can even do it...
An hour seems a bit much, IMO, though maybe five minutes is too short now that I think about it. I usually run with a brig crew, and it takes us about 20 minutes to get our ship stocked enough to where we feel comfortable (draining whatever outpost and then sailing to the nearest inactive fort to grab more + boom barrels). Maybe increasing the up time by 20-30 minutes?
I could be completely wrong here, but it seems like servers rotate between forts and fleets in either a 3:1 or 4:1 ratio. I don't think it's RNG based because I've never seen two fleets spawn back to back. Again, I could be wrong. My crew and I get on specifically with the intent of going after fleets, but we always end up having to do three or so forts to get one to spawn. Making it a 2:1 fort/fleet ratio would help a lot. Forts are a great cash grab, but frankly I've done so many of them that they've become ridiculously easy. Usually my crew will just drop me off at a fort and let me solo it while they go off and do something else just to get a fleet raid to rotate into the game. Half the time we just leave the loot there, or only take the most valuable stuff.
It also seems like your standard fort has a ridiculously long up time in comparison. I've sat at a fort in a tower for what seems like ages waiting for someone to come do the work for me when I don't have the time to solo an Athena.
@killthulhu19k keep in mind, once it is taken out forts will appear again. It is just the availability of it on the server. Skull Forts don't go down at all as far as I know, making sure no fleet comes up and actually guarding the content now (the roles have reversed).
I don't think the balance is the issue here, I think the opportunity to do it is to short. 3 or 4 to 1 seem legit as there 3 or 4 times as many people wanting to do skull forts than fleets. Just provide the 1 that does want to do it ample time to prepare and head for it. I can head for a fort with basic supplies, heading to a fleet with basic supplies is challenging, which might be an understatement.
@cotu42 I've been fleet hopping for the last few days and the only thing challenging about it is making it to the fleet before it fizzles out since you just pick up supplies on the way or take them from the ships. If you're really low you can just start the fleet and head to a fort to supply up essentially resetting the timer on it. Skull forts do despawn by the way. I just wish there was a way to look at a skull or fleet cloud and visually be able to tell that it hasn't been triggered and, if not, be able to roughly guess how much time is left before it's over.
Being required to instantly go for content when it pops up and not even always being able to make it, if you make a pit stop to sell your loot and supply up for the battle you are in for a gamble, it is just not balanced. Providing longer periods of time - like a full hour or even back to a full 3 hours total, will also make hopping far better as when you enter the server you don't know how long it has been up. You will then enable skull forts again and reduce the time it is up anyway by just being there and doing it.
Keep in mind, if people want to do a fort, they too can choose to hop servers to one that is active - which due to the 3 to 4x as many of them being up are far more servers. Therefore not reducing the ability of people to choose and do a skull fort, they o fcourse could also just do the fleet and follow up with the fort (what my crew would do).
@cotu42 They're totally doable now. I think in 3 days we've taken out 140 ships & it's just a roll of the dice to find them in the sky and make it on time. You just figure where you spawned to where the fleet is, fill your pockets and board the boat and see if you'll have wind, if you do you invite your crew, raise anchor and get moving. The rest of the crew supplies on the way and as long as you make it in time you're golden. Heck, I just posted a thought about adding a 5th fleet location in the middle of the map so when it pops up you can almost assuredly make it on time. Otherwise, I'd really like to be able to look at the cloud and be able to tell if there's time to make it or not by some sort of indicator.
1 out of 9
