It's been asked before, but it would be nice to have a place that you can change your ship type. Whenever you have a friend or two wanting to join or leave in the middle of a session, it's always a let down that you basically have to leave and restart the session or make it open crew.
Would it be that hard for Rare to make outposts or a new island in M-12 function as a place to change ships? Even if you lose your emissary flag, at least you could keep your supplies and whatever else you've collected for that session and transfer it all to the new ship.
Change ship type during session.
I'm pretty sure the issue with this is the matchmaking backend and being able to dynamically change a party size limit without introducing exploits that would allow 4 player Sloops or cause slots to be "lost" and end up limiting your ship to a smaller than designed crew count. You'd also have to account for things like the 10 minute disconnect timer which locks a player slot and would need to be checked before allowing ship size changes.
Changing ships in game is trivial.
@burnbacon said in Change ship type during session.:
As long you are forced to change servers. Sure.
This.
Being able to change ship type and stay on a server would be entirely too powerful.
I always see this argument from you people and yet you can't give one legitimate reason why swapping a ship from a sloop to a galleon or vice versa would be "too overpowered" as their swapping would still tie them to the mechanics of the new ship.
There's zero reason why it should force a server change unless the ship change is to a ship size that isn't currently available on that server, IE theres only 2 galleon slots on the server and there's already 2 on that server. Not sure thats how it sorts servers but if it does, that would obviously be a reason for a forced server hop.
If I've got an alliance going, we're all doing their thing and a friend hops on and wants to join us, theres no reason we shouldn't be able to go to a ship master, pay a reasonable fee for the ship to be swapped to another ship in our fleet.
@hitash-levat said in Change ship type during session.:
I always see this argument from you people and yet you can't give one legitimate reason why swapping a ship from a sloop to a galleon or vice versa would be "too overpowered" as their swapping would still tie them to the mechanics of the new ship.
There's zero reason why it should force a server change unless the ship change is to a ship size that isn't currently available on that server, IE theres only 2 galleon slots on the server and there's already 2 on that server. Not sure thats how it sorts servers but if it does, that would obviously be a reason for a forced server hop.
If I've got an alliance going, we're all doing their thing and a friend hops on and wants to join us, theres no reason we shouldn't be able to go to a ship master, pay a reasonable fee for the ship to be swapped to another ship in our fleet.
To use your example, joining another ship in an alliance carries a risk. The other ship knows where you are at all times, knows when you've sold (or more importantly when you haven't sold after doing for instance a profitable World Event). They might not get into an alliance if they think the other crew could defeat them when they're full of loot.
So a duo sloop enters an alliance with another solo sloop (thinking they can beat him if it comes to a fight), do some actions that give them loot and all of a sudden they see their alliance ship move closer and it turns out to be a Galleon ... they probably can kiss their loot goodbye.Other example, a sloop is fighting another sloop and it's a close fight; one crew has some friends that are very good in PvP that are just coming online; they swap their ship to a bigger one so they have more people to fight the sloop.
Other example, you are on a server as an Emissary with another crew being a Reaper, you're cautious because not every Reaper is a PvE Reaper and/or runs. You find out that the Reaper is a sloop and calculate your chances, you're ok with that chance if they come over to fight. They become grade 5 and all of a sudden it's a Galleon ... you might have decided to switch servers or expose yourself less when it had been a Galleon from the start.
LOL. Here's an example:
I'm solo. I sink a solo or duo that is doing a Fort of Fortune. That solo/duo swaps to a brig or galleon and puts up a LFC asking for some sweats to help sink someone at a FoF (streamers and discords could even recruit from their own community and fill those slots immediately). Meanwhile, I've just completed the FoF and am beginning to load out the loot. A galleon with some sweats and the crew I just sunk rolls up and decimates me. By the time I could do the same, they've already loaded out and sold the loot.
Heck, it doesn't even have to be a retaliation/revenge situation. You spot a solo/duo doing a Legend of the Veil voyage. You aren't confident in your ability to take them down and steal the loot. You create an LFC or leverage a community you're part of and bring in a galleon to guarantee the win.
Point being, you can create an unfair advantage in situations pretty easily with a ship change mechanic.
Numbers can be too powerful in SOT to allow for that.
Counter question, why wouldn't you want a forced server merge? The reason you gave just enables server alliance maxing and even more-so plays into the power in numbers notion, so I'm going to hard pass on that reason. Beyond that, if it's because a specific world event is active...well...hopping servers to find another one is so easy now with a gold hoarder dive voyage that I don't buy that as a valid reason either.
You are ignoring how vulnerable galleons really are in all your examples. A 2 man sloop has the advantage over a 4 man galleon every day of the week. A sloop is entirely soloable, put two players very capable of solo sloop play and put them together, you now have a very survivable sloop. Every person that leaves the galleon in a boarding attempt makes that galleon that much more vulnerable.
As for the making alliances simply on the assumption that you can take the other ship, thats foolish to begin with. They could get a couple crew swaps at any point and you'd be in the same situation. Also, im not opposed to the idea of needing to lower the emissary flag and raise a new one. Just tired of losing all my supplies and prep every time a new person joins or leaves.
@sweetsandman I've leveraged a LFG post to pull a sweat to deal with some d-bags that decided they wanted to use the burning blade as a pvp vessel, attacking me during the Davey Jones tall tale, as opposed to its function, so what? We went back and destroyed the group of 4 with me and that person on a sloop. Acting like pulling in more people on a bigger ship doesn't add a different type of difficulty for that team is ignoring reality.
I told you why I want to be able to do it. So many times, I've had a chill server with multiple ships hanging out in party chat and a friend joins chat and wants to join us. Now when I started on these servers, usually I'm solo, now we either tell our friend to get lost, or we leave our server, drop our alliance friends and try again elsewhere. That or when you have a galleon and you lose two people and now you're in a situation where you can't ship battle at all because you are down 2, so either you downsize (again looking for a new server, losing the alliance) or you struggle about just to stay on a peaceful server.
PvP in this game has always been bad, favoring the ganker in every instance, so if you think thats my motivation, you're sorely mistaken.
@hitash-levat said in Change ship type during session.:
You are ignoring how vulnerable galleons really are in all your examples. A 2 man sloop has the advantage over a 4 man galleon every day of the week. A sloop is entirely soloable, put two players very capable of solo sloop play and put them together, you now have a very survivable sloop. Every person that leaves the galleon in a boarding attempt makes that galleon that much more vulnerable.
The keywords are capable duo-sloop crews.
Any other time and every day of the week, as you say, is mostly false.
Besides, there are other tactics that having a larger crew will make the odds stack into the Galleon's crew favour.
And they are examples, you can change Galleon into Brigantine and if you can't or don't want to sail against the wind, they'll be on you in no time.
If people prefer fighting against larger ships than a duo, arguments still holds - when the crew of a galleon realises the sloop will (or might) win, they switch to sloop and sink you 😁 then switch back to Galleon to have the spoils for all four.
As for the making alliances simply on the assumption that you can take the other ship, thats foolish to begin with. They could get a couple crew swaps at any point and you'd be in the same situation.
While crew swaps are possible and the newer crew can be more of a challenge to fight but at least the numbers stay (about) the same.
If the allianced ship is a Galleon or Brigantine, I won't let them get too close when having much loot on board; when you expect a sloop and all of a sudden it's a larger ship, it's probbaly too late to take appropiate action (yeah, we fight against bigger ships and against sloops alike, but it's different IMHO)
The other way around will probably have to take into account the return-timer of 10 minutes; so you just had half a session gathering supplies and loot on a Brigantine - after turning in the loot one player leaves and then you want to wait 10 minutes to switch to a sloop ?
My guess is, it's way easier to spike the servers and get two sloops on one server than two galleons, what's to stop 7-8 people to try that for 10 minutes or so and switch those ships to two galleons (and/oror brigantines) and dominate the server ? Or will you win in a fight against 8 people (on 1 or two ships) as well ?
@lem0n-curry the thing is, im sure theres ship type limits to servers, I don't think ive seen more than 2 galleons on a server since year 1. If there isnt, there's probably a player limit that would prevent that type of dog piling you are talking about.
If retribution is something you are concerned about, maybe have a timeframe after pvp has happened where doing a ship change forces a server jump. That way the peaceful people who want to add to their crew arent punished by griefers.
Tbh, no answer is going to fix all the concerns you are voicing but the benefits far outweigh the possible ways someone could maybe grief you if you tried hard enough, but let's be honest, they'd figure out a way anyway.
@hitash-levat said in Change ship type during session.:
@lem0n-curry the thing is, im sure theres ship type limits to servers, I don't think ive seen more than 2 galleons on a server since year 1. If there isnt, there's probably a player limit that would prevent that type of dog piling you are talking about.
Yes there are indeed limits, 6 ships or max 16 (or 17) players, so in general max two Galleons (though I have seen 3 once).
If the two (or more) sloops land on a server with only sloops or maybe a brig or two, it's easy to change those into two Galleons.If retribution is something you are concerned about, maybe have a timeframe after pvp has happened where doing a ship change forces a server jump. That way the peaceful people who want to add to their crew arent punished by griefers.
Tbh, no answer is going to fix all the concerns you are voicing but the benefits far outweigh the possible ways someone could maybe grief you if you tried hard enough, but let's be honest, they'd figure out a way anyway.
I disagree, the benefits don't outweigh the ways people will (ab)use the system
I don't really see the issue in forcing a dive in order to facilitate swapping to a different ship? This would probably be necessary to ensure that the matchmaking system can adjust accordingly and not run into issues with the ship or player server limits. You also avoid a bunch of meta game issues.
Seems like more upside than downside to me.
@sweetsandman I understand where you're coming from and honestly I wouldn't be opposed to a server merge if we could keep supplies, etc on board that we took the time to collect. Really it's about convenience for getting friends into the game in a timely manner without them feeling like they derailed an entire session because everyone has to disband and make a new session to get simply one person in on anything bigger than a sloop.
Maybe having the shipwright master be at one location kind of far out and away from everything is the key?
But in reality you'll never solve the problem of people looking for ways to get an advantage over others.. As an example, look at streamers and players who have people scout servers for them with brigs or sloops and when they find an active server with a FotD or FoF they all jump into that server on that ship.. Isn't that the same thing you thought would happen if people could change ship types? My point is, it's good to have talks about ideas, but also realize that you can always find downsides to everything they put into the game... doesn't always mean it should or shouldn't be added.
It would be nice if they could test our ideas on Insiders though to even see if it would work and if everyone dislikes it, then they can scrap it.. That's the problem.. None of our (community) ideas get tested in Insiders and on top of that if the community doesn't like something, it's still always added XDI wouldn't be opposed to a server merge if we could keep supplies, etc on board
Thing with that is. If you're on a galleon and happen to have full barrels for whatever reason and decide to downgrade to a Sloop.
Sloop has less barrels to take all those resources, what happens?None of our (community) ideas get tested in Insiders and on top of that if the community doesn't like something, it's still always added
I can hand pick a few "community" ideas that were added, and broke the game. And the word "community" isnt correct. That would imply everyone who plays, which we can all agree...not everyone in the community plays insiders or cares what is added/taken. Rest of the majority of players, will play.
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