4 man sloop, is it happening?

@gloog depends on th' crew but a 4 scallywag highly experienced crew can easily loot on a 2 scallywag highly experienced sloop in combat but th' sloop will evade combat easier both 'ave advantages sloops are better at runnin' galleons at fightin'

@gloog Pushing back against it? Why? A 4 man sloop would be great for those who prefer speed to power. I see no balance issues seeing as it’s hella-difficult to sink a Galleon without red barrels. The sloop is stupid-easy to sink. More people just means the ship becomes more streamlined and able to respond quicker. I see no issue here and y’all should focus more on pushing for other things instead of pushing against actual progress.

I HOPE not. Three would be OP since there would be fewer things for everyone to handle. Like it would be
TOO easy.
four would be crowded. dull most of the time and too chaotic. Plus, resources would be drained far too fast.

@vin-delanos Sloops against other sloops all you gotta do is go with the wind and use creative sailing. A solo sloop with always be on the bottom of the food chain, regardless of how many players you add, and a 2 man sloop is already just as capable as a 4-man until it comes to boarding, which as a sloop you should already be avoiding at all costs unless you are a friggin engine of destruction and can level an entire galleon crew like a fat kid eating cake at a birthday party (I can’t do it but I’ve seen it done and it’s hilarious). I think it’s totally viable and just requires a bit more creativity. As a solo sloop, I just make myself hard to catch and not worth the effort, unless I have no loot in which case I’m gonna suicide the ship for the laughs.

@gloog

Like i said bud, I understand all the shortcomings of this addition. Everyone will do some field testing and Rare will tweak it as needed. They might change it back to the way it was before or they might make new changes to it. We'll just have to wait and see.

Currently as the ships are now however, one of the biggest complaints on the forum aside from lack of ship types is that the galleon crew feels too small. A galleon only operates at peak efficiency if all 4 crew members are working diligently nonstop. The sloop operates at the same efficiency with 1 person in terms of just sailing, better so with 2 people.

My usual 3 man crew have got our galleon sailing down tight, but we still feel like were running as a skeleton crew. Even when we have a 4th hop on to help.

As for the issues of solo play, its always been a challenge to outrun other sloops. Ive been chased by duos while soloing pretty frequently and the odds are already against me in that situation. 4v1 just means that if they do catch me I'm less likely to fend them off. Solo players will just have to continue to play smart and cautiously. Biggest difference is that duos will have to be more cautious as well now.

@mattydove74 this wasn’t intended to be another 4 man sloop thread, I have read all those, I wanted clarification as to if it was actually happening or not and when.

@rockinpodunk I've encountered what you just described. We fought a sloop and galleon working together. We sank the galleon but couldn't sink the sloop because they had one on helm, one on cannons and two below deck. We ended up running out of cannonballs and gunpowder so we gave up.

@mad-jack-ketch said in 4 man sloop, is it happening?:

Hang on... so all you peeps are saying no to a 4 man sloop, yet it's alright to have a 4 man galleon and grief a 1 man sloop? Whatever happened to equality and diversity eh?

the grief would be 100x worse! those 4 man galleons will be 4 man sloops meaning there is no escape. as is you can out turn and out pace a galleon in a sloop but you cant agaisnt another sloop and esp one that can repair and shoot while also turn and adjust sails at full speed simultaneously. your equality is lost even more so i am unsure what your stance really is?

@haxxorsauruz said in 4 man sloop, is it happening?:

A Sloop with FOUR people on it is in no way OP.

If a sloop gets hit on deck with 3-4 people on it, atleast 2 of them fly off deck.

Learn to aim people, cleaning 4 players off a sloop deck is VERY easy, especially for a galleon with good aim.

Dont be whiners, clean the deck with cannonballs like you always do, only this time, you are almost guraanteed to hit someone, kill them, or throw them off deck, VERY effortlessly.

you assume the sloop is going to fight with cannons and be stupod enough to sail alongside the galleon. the sloop turns faster and can do alll jobs at full speed. you can send an endless stream of boarding parties while being 100% effective at sailing. even if you do knock off 2 or even 3 people the sloop only needs to maintain a safe angle while they spawn back in. The galleons only real hope is to use gun powder and board hoping to kill all 4 or at least keep them occupied but your still on the back foot.

A 4 man sloop is the worst idea ever and litterally a game breaker. The game is already shallow and the only systems holding it together and keeping it enjoyable are those of the sea, the storms and managing the ship across those. Remove ship management from the game which is essentially what would occurred with a 4 man sloop since it would require zero skill or coodination, and you have nothing left to make the game interesting. The 4 man sloop would make the gameplay loop more shallow than it is today. How long would servers full of rudimentary piloted 4 man ships PVPing with simple gun mechanics be enjoyable? Not long.

@twiztedkarrtoon because the people who like to solo sloop HATE the galleon. we realize its much better, but we also still want to play with friends, and we hate the galleon with a passion.

would love to see at least a 4 man sloop crew and an 8 man galleon crew to make working the ships better so your not having to do everything. would also like a PvE mode cause I absolutely cannot stand grievers attacking you for no reason. its pretty sad you get attacked by a galleon before you can even stock your ship and leave the outpost docks. jumpy screens need to be fixed. lets face it, nobody wants to play with a jumpy screen. Game also needs a story mode. There also needs to be a better and quicker way to stock your ships like a store where you can go and hit A on an option to completely stock your ship

@gloog said:

Working diligently.. hardly. Playing the game? Yeah, sure all players need to be active on deck to run a galleon - a massive part of the game should require you to play the game. Peak efficiency? Yeah we should probably need to be pretty active and constantly communicating. It's the point.

If all players need to remain constantly active that means they need to be diligent in their handling of the ship.

We don't have any problem maintaining that efficiency, in or out of combat, with just 3 people. However we personally would like the option to have a bigger crew. It also allows for larger groups of friends to play together which is another reason behind the want for larger crew sizes.

And yes, sloops can catch sloops. Like I said I already deal with that. There are ways to deal with it as well. Playing smart is pretty important in this game.

In the end, it's happening bud. Let's just see how it all works out. There's always a meta shift when things are added to the game. You wont actually know the results if you dont try it out though.

@gloog said:

@subaqueousreach what more could you possibly want 5 or 6 people for?

@subaqueousreach said:

It also allows for larger groups of friends to play together which is another reason behind the want for larger crew sizes.

Believe it or not a lot of people have more than 3 friends and would like to be able to play with them as a group. Playing games with your friends is always more fun, but when you have to break up into different groups that can't even be on the same server, it kind of takes some of the fun away.

@gloog said:

You take out 'play smart' when you allow more people. A duo can stop duos. Good luck to any duo stopping a 4man sloop.

How do you take out "play smart" when the odds are increased against you? If anything that means you need to play smarter. If duo sloops can already take on 4 man galleon crews, they should have no problem dealing with 4 man sloop crews.

Sure, they'll have a harder time outrunning them, but it's doable. That's where the "play smart" bit comes in. If I kill everyone on the 4 man sloop and drop a powder keg in their hull (as my friend and I have done many times to both sloops and galleons), they're not gonna be chasing me for very long. Or if I can't outrun them I'll just do outpost sail-bys and drop off a chest at a time.

I do agree that a 4 man sloop would be overpowered in the fact that they could have 1 man per station and keep at perfect efficiency, but that's ship combat and most people that I've encountered are not particularly good at that anyways. In terms of boarding however it's still the same odds most solo/duo players run into and survive.

@twiztedkarrtoon that's not the point four man sloop would be OP as s**t man, my friend and I sink galleons all the time in sloops, its just way too easy to manuever the sloop next to a galleon cannon them while the other is fighting off the galleons crew mates or anchoring them