Milestone 6 Feature Discussion: Striking Colors (NPC Surrender)

[Aether]

This post describes a pending feature to be included in Milestone 6: Blood in the Water. Please use this thread to share your thoughts and ask any questions you might have.

Important: While your feedback related to this feature is important, there is a very real chance that the information shared below will be changed or moved to a future milestone as a result of testing, or to make room for priority features. It is crucial that you take that into account before becoming too attached to a specific idea presented here.

Striking Colors (NPC Surrender)
During the low levels, there’s a point where ship combat becomes very slow if you don’t board. This usually happens when you haven’t upgraded your ship, but you go from fighting minor ships to regular ships. Those regular ships are tough enough to stand up to some long-range fire from large ships, but they don’t have sufficient firepower to punch through each other’s armor in a timely manner. In 1.6, we’ve added the ability to tune the AI surrender calculations based on their level. We’re using this to smooth out the surrender rate across the board. This is most notable in low level AIs, as they surrender much more readily now. It works in a way that encourages surrender in ships that take longer to fight.

In the process, we also fixed a few issues dealing with scenarios where ships should surrender but don’t. That doesn’t mean every ship should surrender, but most lowbie battles should result in frequent surrenders. Let us know what you think – we’ll be data mining the new surrender calculations and using that with your feedback to determine if additional changes are required.

[flaknugget]

I've never heard anyone complain about the low-levels taking too long to get through.

Levels 1-15 can be passed in only a few hours, in either ship-combat or AvCom formats.



The greater problem I find, is after level 40, it's difficult to find enough single (or double) high level (45+) ships on the OS. Which is what people want, and need to progress.

Level 45-49 players often need to grind level 41 NPCs because there isn't anyplace in the burning sea where they can be guaranteed something more appropriate.

I think it's noble to try and improve the early ship-combat, but since I don't think it's in anyway broken to begin with, I'd much rather see the devs address things that actually are.

[Daeke]

It's not about the levels taking a while to progress through, it's about specific ship battles taking longer than they need to. I remember my very first time playing, it used to take me 20 minutes to defeat one ship. Granted, that's partially due to me lack of skill at video games, but once it became clear I was going to win, there was really no reason for the battle to continue. So this way, you won't need to fight it out to the bitter end, and can move onto bigger and better battles.

[flaknugget]

Perhaps I don't fully understand how this will effect all other levels, and I'm just getting hung-up on the early level thing.

Originally Posted by Aether

In 1.6, we’ve added the ability to tune the AI surrender calculations based on their level. We’re using this to smooth out the surrender rate across the board.

I fully support the above quote.

[Ged Bligh]

Originally Posted by flaknugget

The greater problem I find, is after level 40, it's difficult to find enough single (or double) high level (45+) ships on the OS. Which is what people want, and need to progress.

Level 45-49 players often need to grind level 41 NPCs because there isn't anyplace in the burning sea where they can be guaranteed something more appropriate.

I agree the amount of time to find suitable ships to attack is prohibitive, if possible FLS we need more spawns of single Npc ships for the solo player to attack particularly the lvl50 ships & Sols.

[Snap]

Originally Posted by flaknugget

Perhaps I don't fully understand how this will effect all other levels, and I'm just getting hung-up on the early level thing.

The point is that now we can scale the AI willingness to surrender based on what level range (1-10, 11-20, etc.) they're in, and we'll be looking at the statistics to determine whether AIs of some level surrender too much or not too much enough. And then we can tune it differently for each level range, whereas previously we'd have to adjust AIs of every level and couldn't tune them individually. In the case of some level ranges you may observe little or no change, or it may take a couple of iterations for us to decide on a particular tweak.

[Loktofeit]

Originally Posted by flaknugget

I've never heard anyone complain about the low-levels taking too long to get through.

...

The greater problem I find, is after level 40, it's difficult to find enough single (or double) high level (45+) ships on the OS. Which is what people want, and need to progress.

I second both those comments. Since the fleets were put in, I've had to sail my characters all the way to the east end of the map to try to find a decent concentration of single or dual 40+ ships.

[Adythiel]

The only place I've been able to grind is the Lesser Antilles and even then it is a real challenge to find ships work taking on to level. I'd like to see more 1-2 groupings of ships between 46 and 52.

[Detta Walker]

I dont really like the current abandon mechanic. Often when fighting fleets with 6 players I hardly notice any surrenders because the NPCs need to be killed gently in order to abandon ship. Hit them too hard and they fight until 0 structure.

I don't think it makes sense that a navy frigate in a Patrolling fleet surrenders to me with 60% structure because it took me 3 minutes to shoot it down from long range while the same frigate refuses to surrender at 20% after being hit by 3 devastating broadsides from point blank.

[Loktofeit]

Originally Posted by Detta Walker

I dont really like the current abandon mechanic. Often when fighting fleets with 6 players I hardly notice any surrenders because the NPCs need to be killed gently in order to abandon ship. Hit them too hard and they fight until 0 structure.

Measure your shots. If a barrage of fire brings them too far under hafl structure, they usually won't surrender... if you keep firing round shot. If you get them too far down, switch to grape or star and you can usually force an abandon that way. When fighting in a group against a fleet, I'll usually use stone while the others use round because it seems to help increase the chance of surrender getting in that extra sail/crew damage.