Commandeering Ships

  • Inbred Chimera

    So i've not actually played the game yet but as is my current understanding, you can sail off with another players ship and they can still scuttle it. This game is doing a brilliant job of employing only logical magic (the skeletons) and keeping illogical magic (being able to sink your ship with your mind) out. Unfortunately it sounds like this one is actually in there.

    Here's my suggestion. When an enemy crew takes control of your ship, the consequences for you and your crew are exactly the same as if your ship had been sunk.

    That crew cannot own two ships, and if they claim ownership of your ship whilst still possessing their own ship, their ship becomes a ghost ship (not literally), owned by no one and only persisting in the world if there are players without a ship within 200m (this distance is a guess as I don't know island dimensions). You must then find that ship and claim ownership of it. If it is not near a island (within 50m) it despawns.

    In all cases despawning should never occur in any players line of sight (i've seen a lot of footage of this happening dissapointingly.)

    If there is no ghost ship nearby, losing your ship will produce exactly the same results as it being sunk. (hopefully the increase the respawn distance of lost / sunk ships.)

    Commandeering a ship should involve holding a button on the captains desk of a ship you do not own for atleast 15 seconds. This time is increased by a multiple of the amount of players on the ship who are part of the current crew of that ship. So with 2 owning crew onboard it takes 45 seconds. This is an active modifier and the capture speed alters as soon as the number of owning crew onboard changes. Crew in the brig do not count towards this.

    Owning a ship grants control of its brig, the ability to scuttle it and designates it as that crews spawn point. Any players in the brig of a captured ship are killed.

    This system woud mean that whilst one crew can potentially take control of two vessels, only one of those vessels will ever be under their authority. To avoid abuse it may be designed so that only a captain can commandeer a ship. (to avoid a troll player switching your command to an empty damaged sloop after a battle). OR commandeering could require a vote in addition to the timed capture.

    It think it's important this is added to the game because of the freedom of tactics it offers. Here is an example I gave on another thread that might convince you.

    An enemy vessel you consider to be superiour in combat to your own is pursuing you. You sail around an island and once out of sight you jump ship with your chests and hide on the island. The hostile ship doesn't see this and continues pursuing your vessel (you didn't drop anchor so it carries on sailing) for as considerable distance. You leave two chests on a beach or somewhere in view on the island and when another crew comes to collect them, you jump on their ship with the rest of your loot and sail off.

    This is a completely fair tactic if you can pull it off, though it would require some fair degree of luck and skill. But as I currently understand it, the crew of the ship you steal could just scuttle the ship, and leave you with nothing. Not only is this a kick in the teeth to players who put all the effort into actually stealing a ship, but its also incredibly unrealistic. What method are we supposed to believe allows a pirate to telepahtically sink a vessel that they are not onboard or even near to?

    The only issue I can so far think of is that it would make it quite easy to take a ship with boarding actions rather than ranged naval combat. I guess a fix for this could be that any owning crew present on the ship actually reverse the capturing process rather than slowing it, and since one player on the attacking crew has to stand at the captains desk and not fight, this would make it very easy for a crew that is aware of a commandeering attempt and already onboard the ship to combat the attempt.

    This is more of a fix that a purely creative idea. When presented in the game it would be a very simple process and would not baffle younger players too much. Maybe an eggtime or clock could be placed on the captains deck to represent the capture progress.

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  • A Cranky Eskimo
    Master
    Insider
    Founder

    I would prefer the victors to have to take the salvaged ship to an outpost for decomissioning or sale, with a time limit to do so. This way servers don’t get clogged with ships but players don’t have to give up their own ship in a trade like you described.

    Crews that are wiped should be forced to spawn together and have maybe 3 spawns before a ship is taken, but if they clear their ship during any of these spawns for more than 30 seconds or something they go back to 3 respawns.

  • Inbred Chimera

    @a-cranky-eskimo

    The issue here would be in transporting two vessels with only a single crew, whilst one of those vessels is still acting as a spawn point for the owning team. The way i've designed this is so that there can stricly nevery be more than 1 vessel per crew on a server. Your method, if giving the shipless crew a new ship whilst their old one is being guided to an outpost, could lead to more than one ship per crew being on a server. Potentially even a method of ship farming that woud just cause havoc.

    I do like the concept of prize vessells, but i still think the 1 ship per crew rule should never be broken. Plus, there are already many great boons to stealing a ship. You get the ship, which may be in signifcantly form than your own, along with not having to tranfer the treasure onboard to another vessel as when you sink a ship.

    Your second paragraph sounds good though, as a method of commandeering. The only issue i'd have with it is that if the ship was empty, you would then have to hunt down the crew, then kill them all again 3 times back at their ship before being able to claim it, which makes no sense and completely removes the advantage of surprise. Ultimately, if a vessel is left competely unmanned, it should not be hard to steal it.

  • A Cranky Eskimo
    Master
    Insider
    Founder

    They wouldn’t own the ship but would have a short time limit to salvage and get some value, this means yes the crew needs to manage 2 ships on the way to the outpost, but it also gives reason not to just always sink ships, and you don’t even need to offload cargo if you take the ship, just sail both and turn in the treasure from both, transfer supplies and then have the shipwright “salvage” it which despawns it and pays you. I can see the worry about adding ships make sense but if they gave the losing crew a short timer of the same length, where they can’t get a new ship until the other is sold or the timer runs out it would be fine. This would also slow down the inevitable return of said losing crew with the lame spawn system they have. I think it could work if they did it this way.

  • Lucid Stew
    Founder

    The idea I came up with is that each ship would have a plaque declaring crew ownership. A marauding crew could then come aboard, and find the plaque. (perhaps you place it where you like when the game starts so they'd have to look for it). There's some hoodoo the marauders need to do at the plaque to take control. It takes long enough to provide the owner ample time to stop it. Once the ship is possessed, a new crew is formed. This couples with my thought that we need flexible crew rosters. Anyway, if the deposed crew mermaids, they then do so to a new, bare bones ship. If a ship has no crew it auto-scuttles. If a pirate has no crew, a ship spawns for them when they die or mermaid. I think the two combined offers the most interesting possibilities. You could hijack, but also offer the deposed crew the ability to remain aboard. Similarly, you could abandon vessels and team up with other pirates for as long as you like, but still be able to command your own ship. All these types of concepts are a bit of a rework, so I don't know if we'll ever see anything like that.

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