Add one advantage for sloop

Sloop is a small ship, so it is accessible for smaller groups of friends that play this game, but you also have to play 10x smarter than brigantine and galleon crews. You don't have the assurance someone won't bother you because you're a big boat, you're the smaller boat (doing PvE), you have to learn how to watch horizons, piecemeal your voyages between the outposts, and take turns tackling an activity solo to consistently watch horizons. The sloop has as many advantages as it can get, it just needs a solid and smart crew to triumph with it.

The sloop is slow, but its an absolute tank of a little ship, and has more maneuverability and individual control than any other. Just maby a week or 2 back a brig decided to give me some grief while i was solo, and even with their speed and numbers advantage, i took them down with some creativity. Solo sloopers can take on any other ship as long as you are creative and play to your strengths, and against their weaknesses, and if you are a duo, then you absolutely can deal with a brig or galleon.

My best tip, dont just run, and always use blunder bombs, guard your ladders with them, fire them out of the cannons at the enemy, and just go nuts with blunders, they will frustrate your enemy to no end and cause some grief if they are fixing or firing at you.

@peridot-gem
I hated this when it was added, I still think the sloop should be faster against the wind (because every other ship has a wind at which it is fastest).

But, with advantages such as

• Masts taking two hits
• Faster respawn times
• Easier sailing
• More manueverability

The sloop doesn't need another buff in my opinion.

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It's back to the same old saying: Only carry what you are willing to lose.

I actually had the exact thing happen to me a few months ago... I was a solo doing vaults, and after one vault, by chance I was not even Grade 3. So I did an ashen vault to try and make up the difference... and didn't get to grade 5. So I decided to do another ashen vault. I was grabbing the third vault's loot on Ashen Reaches when a Reaper 5 brig tunneled into my server. The wind turned in their favor, and they got to me before I made it to Morrow's Peak. Then I tried running just to fix the holes from their initial barrage. They caught up and sunk me.
I was rightfully mad that brigs now beat out sloops in the wind. But that wasn't the main issue, and it isn't your main issue either. I took a risk by trying to get grade 5 and spending a lot of time being vulnerable. You seriously spent 3 hours collecting vault loot? You should know that the more time you spend playing, the higher your risk of getting attacked.
Use more effort to raise your emissary grade so you can sell earlier (destroy mermaid statues, search for mermaid bottle quests, defeat emergent captains and complete their quests). Use more effort to stay hidden from would-be attackers. Keep track of the world around you so you know when you may be in danger. The brig being faster than you does change your experience, but it doesn’t mean that there’s nothing you can do to lower the chance of that situation occurring.

@grumpyw01f I do tell the "only carry what you are willing to lose" thing to many people, but i have noticed that people will still stack after they are given that tip because they dont have a very good way to gauge how much they are willing to lose, so i came up with a new way to explain it!

"If you arnt willing to log out of the game right now with the amount of treasure your carrying, you will get upset if you are sunk with it."

So basically, never haul any more than you would be willing to just exit the game with.

@goldsmen
I think I'll use that haha
I say the saying but my main idea has always been "Don't get mad at the game when you took a risk and lost a gamble. It was your decision to begin with."

I never underestimate a good sloop crew. I've seen many times a sloop dancing around a much larger ship and winning!
Easy to operate, nimble and slippery to hit being a smaller target.

Pour 3 hours into getting vault loot

Why did it take that long?

only to get dumped on by a pc brig

How do you know it was a Pc brig?

Being the fastest against the wind isn't an advantage you just burn slower.

But being the only ship that can make sharper turns does. Solo also has respawn advantage, but the biggest advantage ANY ship has it able to predict and outplay

@peridot-gem 3 hours to do a vault is on you not the games balance. A lot of buffs have been given to sloops so they're at their most powerful they've ever been.

Best turning speed
Fastest against wind (debatable with brig)
Masts take 2 hits
Less knockback so reduced chance of being knocked off ship
Crew size based ferry times
Slowest to sink, easiest to maintain

You say pc brig, if you are xbox you can choose xbox only servers

Everyone keeps saying a Brig is faster against the wind, yet I still outrun Brig's all the time on my solo Sloop so I just am not even remotely convinced that this is the case if you're sailing correctly and efficiently. I'm pretty positive that speed advantage still exists.

The margin on it is lower when dealing with a Brig - you won't put a ton of distance on them, and that means when conditions shift you have to be really quick and efficient in dealing with it or the small gain you made will be lost immediately. I think this is what convinces people that the Brig is faster.

I just outran a Brig the last time I played. Was going to do the Flameheart side of the Adventure, they decided to chase me around a bunch. Never managed to catch me - mostly sailed against the wind, and then when needed had to move quickly and efficiently to keep my lead as I hooked around rocks or islands (in these moments you need to keep catching wind as much as you can cause you have an easier time of this than other Ships to get a more efficient burst before you move back to going direct into the wind).

The only time other Ships catch me when I solo Sloop is when I am being less vigilant and they sneak up on me while I am doing stuff, or I am not on top of my game in efficient sailing. Couple that with all the other advantages that Sloops have and you're sitting pretty solid.

@ancientbeast434 said in Add one advantage for sloop:

I never underestimate a good sloop crew. I've seen many times a sloop dancing around a much larger ship and winning!
Easy to operate, nimble and slippery to hit being a smaller target.

All things being equal, the sloop is horrible to pvp with. However it's definitely the most fun (for me anyway). A good galleon of coordinated players is simply easy mode, unless you're doing competitive stuff on private servers or get the 1/1000 chance you find another good crew.

@unleet1 The sloop is very powerful in pvp, you just cant sail side by side with a galleon and do a broad side battle, you have to use your sharp turning speed to get out of their cannon range and cause grief.

@greatfailure82 said in Add one advantage for sloop:

@redeyesith unless something has changed in the past month or so the brig is faster against the wind than the sloop, period. most people in SoT aren't on the high end or even medium end skill wise so your probably just outrunning brigs who dont sail correctly

The sloop is faster directly against wind with sails squared up (barely), but a brig only needs turn just slightly and it can catch the sloop without issue.

@goldsmen said in Add one advantage for sloop:

@unleet1 The sloop is very powerful in pvp, you just cant sail side by side with a galleon and do a broad side battle, you have to use your sharp turning speed to get out of their cannon range and cause grief.

I don't think broad sides or death spiral has anything to do with it. You are talking about crews of mediocre players or bots, or open crew. A good brig or galleon will never lose to a sloop, unless the off chance of a cursed cannon spam which prevents repairing, or RNG PVE. But (again) all things equal, numbers will win.

@unleet1 A sloop can take on a good brig or galleon, its just about HOW the sloop plays. Every ship was balanced based on all other ships, a galleon might have a load of cannons and 4 players, but the galleon gets overwhelmed easier forcing more crewmates to need to deal with fire or damage since the galleon sinks fastest per hole and has the most holes of any ship, and it turns like a brick. The sloop in contrast, has a low crew count and low cannon count, but it maneuvers better than any other ship, and is the hardest to sink per hole, with the shortest distance between holes to fix.

@goldsmen said in Add one advantage for sloop:

@unleet1 A sloop can take on a good brig or galleon, its just about HOW the sloop plays. Every ship was balanced based on all other ships, a galleon might have a load of cannons and 4 players, but the galleon gets overwhelmed easier forcing more crewmates to need to deal with fire or damage since the galleon sinks fastest per hole and has the most holes of any ship, and it turns like a brick. The sloop in contrast, has a low crew count and low cannon count, but it maneuvers better than any other ship, and is the hardest to sink per hole, with the shortest distance between holes to fix.

Yeah, you are talking about a brig or gally that doesn't know how to use its strengths properly. Maybe not even a "bot" crew but one that doesn't galleon often. I am talking about excellent crews that know their roles and don't mess around. The galleon is the best ship by far, no evenly matched/skilled galleon is going to sink to a sloop. We'll agree to disagree on this one.

@unleet1 said in Add one advantage for sloop:

@goldsmen said in Add one advantage for sloop:

@unleet1 A sloop can take on a good brig or galleon, its just about HOW the sloop plays. Every ship was balanced based on all other ships, a galleon might have a load of cannons and 4 players, but the galleon gets overwhelmed easier forcing more crewmates to need to deal with fire or damage since the galleon sinks fastest per hole and has the most holes of any ship, and it turns like a brick. The sloop in contrast, has a low crew count and low cannon count, but it maneuvers better than any other ship, and is the hardest to sink per hole, with the shortest distance between holes to fix.

Yeah, you are talking about a brig or gally that doesn't know how to use its strengths properly. Maybe not even a "bot" crew but one that doesn't galleon often. I am talking about excellent crews that know their roles and don't mess around. The galleon is the best ship by far, no evenly matched/skilled galleon is going to sink to a sloop. We'll agree to disagree on this one.

A sloop can take on a brig or galley that knows how to use their strengths and weaknesses properly, its just about whos knows their ship better. If a sloop crew is better at overwhelming a ship from out of the cannon range of a galleon and preventing boarders, than that galleon is at keeping the sloop in cannon range or boarding, the sloop will win, even if the galleon is good.

Its about who is better at using the tools they have, not who has the bigger tool.

@greatfailure82 of it was just faster, period, as you say then theie sailing skill shouldn't matter because they should be going faster than me 100% of the time under all circumstances - the fact that I can put distance on them tells me otherwise. I never once remember there being a change to this since release to make the Brig just outright faster than the Sloop in all instances, just the devs originally setting it so Sloop is faster against the wind. Experience in my case lines up with this exactly. I would argue if people are being caught so often, then they are not sailing correctly with the Sloop.

Sloops is the hardest to hit.

@goldsmen
Your arguments in this ongoing sloop vs galleon debate are all reliant on the sloop player(s) being better, more skilled, more understanding of how to use the ships, than the gally players.
This actually proves the other side of the argument, not yours.
To say that the sloop crew needs to be better, is to say that their ship is worse. That's why they need to be better, to make up for the worse ship.

The comparison of ship balance is to be done under the pretense of equal players.
Equally skilled, equally knowledgable of both ships and how to use them, equally everything. You equalize all player questions to make the comparison actually about the ships, not the crew on them.

If ship balancing is done properly, then with these crews of equal players, in every matchup each ship class would win 50% of the time, with both duo sloops and solo sloops being equivalent to 4 man galleons. That is not what happens; the ships are not equivalent.
With 5 equal players, a galleon will sink a solo sloop every time.
With 6 equal players, a galleon will sink a duo sloop the vast majority of the time.
The galleon is a better ship. Mainly because how significant it is to have a larger crew, but it's still a better ship.

Sufficiently (comparitively) better players can make up for the difference in the ships via difference in skill and win on the worse ship, and sufficiently worse players can inversely make up for the difference in ships and lose on the better ship.
But neither of those statements determine whether or not the ships themselves are balanced. That is, neither can be used as justification for claiming they are balanced.

@the-old-soul800 said in Add one advantage for sloop:

@goldsmen
Your arguments in this ongoing sloop vs galleon debate are all reliant on the sloop player(s) being better, more skilled, more understanding of how to use the ships, than the gally players.
This actually proves the other side of the argument, not yours.
To say that the sloop crew needs to be better, is to say that their ship is worse. That's why they need to be better, to make up for the worse ship.

The comparison of ship balance is to be done under the pretense of equal players.
Equally skilled, equally knowledgable of both ships and how to use them, equally everything. You equalize all player questions to make the comparison actually about the ships, not the crew on them.

If ship balancing is done properly, then with these crews of equal players, in every matchup each ship class would win 50% of the time, with both duo sloops and solo sloops being equivalent to 4 man galleons. That is not what happens; the ships are not equivalent.
With 5 equal players, a galleon will sink a solo sloop every time.
With 6 equal players, a galleon will sink a duo sloop the vast majority of the time.
The galleon is a better ship. Mainly because how significant it is to have a larger crew, but it's still a better ship.

Sufficiently (comparitively) better players can make up for the difference in the ships via difference in skill and win on the worse ship, and sufficiently worse players can inversely make up for the difference in ships and lose on the better ship.
But neither of those statements determine whether or not the ships themselves are balanced. That is, neither can be used as justification for claiming they are balanced.

That doesnt prove the other side, my point was that "sure, a galleon can be better if they know their ship and how to fight a sloop better, but the same exact thing works for a sloop"

If the same thing works for a sloop and a galleon both just the same depending on who knows what they are doing better than the other, even if the opponent is still good, that means that that one ship isnt advantaged over the other, but that it boils down to how the person plays.

As for if you get players of different ships that are perfectly evenly matched in skill based on their ship... We cant know who would win because the only way to determine whos more skilled is based on who wins. Unless there comes a way to measure skill level with a specific ship type accurately, we cant pit up 2 different ships of the exact same skill level to test it.

As someone that spends a LOT of time on the sloop, I feel that everything is very well balanced across the ship types except for one component: SPEED.

I had a thread a while back that really points out the imbalances in speed and how they can go about correcting them. Feel free to read up on it here.

IMO, the biggest problem with the speed imbalance is that a Brig or Galleon NEVER have to engage with a Sloop if they don't want to. They can literally run forever and create such an immense gap that there's virtually no way that a Sloop can ever gain ground. Conversely, a Sloop can only delay the inevitable against the other ship types if they know how to sail.

As an example, a Brig with wind can literally get out of render distance from a Sloop from Galleon's Grave over to Sanctuary. Conversely, a squared sail Sloop against a squared sail Brig when it's a headwind...can't even get out of harpoon range across the same distance.

@d3adst1ck Totally agree. In situations, where I'm solo slooping, and I want to run from a bigger ship, sailing against the wind actually has worked out very well for me.