In Power and Prestige, we’ve done a ton of tuning and balancing to the big combat systems. This devlog is about ship tuning, and some of the more important parts of it.

The ship tuning is targeting two big goals: First, I want to re-establish the more stringent ship archetypes (Scouts, Warships, and Merchants). Second, I want to see more vanilla ships on the OS. (Many players have come to refer to the basic level 50 ships, like the Mastercraft Capricieux or the Mastercraft Tigre, as vanilla ships.)

Archetypes

So what is a ship archetype? Burlap talked about archetypes in AvCom recently, and we utilize this design philosophy all over the game. When we create ships, we place them into one of three archetype “buckets”: Scouts, Warships, and Merchants. While it’s OK to have deviation in each archetype (sleek warships, heavy scouts, etc.), they currently aren’t well-defined enough. This really shows through in cases like Scouts; they are not sufficiently weighted for how good their “advantages” (Acceleration and Turning) end up being versus the “advantages” that Warships get (DR and Armor). This is most obvious in most warships in the 38-49 range, like the Defiant. It isn’t until the really big warships (read: lineships) that the strengths of the warships start to outweigh the scouts. There aren’t any colossal scouts – if there were, we could see just how far off this dynamic is.

I’ve mostly focused tuning on Large and Huge size ships. Most Large and Huge Scouts are going to lose some accel, some turning stats, and likely some DR. Additionally, many scouts are getting tuned to make them more useful, and make sub-50 variant ships more able to compete on the Open Sea.

Now, Warships. Defensive stats, DR specifically, got much cheaper in the level calculation for warships. Most Large and Huge warships will see an increase in DR, and most ships will have more narrow-side (bow/stern) DR. In addition, I eased up the cost of volleys, meaning most warships are also going to get some extra guns.

Finally, all Large, Huge, and Colossal warships are getting a large increase in top speed. This is really where the archetypes come into their own. We establish an archetype for scouts and warships more specifically, mostly in effort to offset the large maneuverability advantage Scouts have.

• Scouts have high accel, neutral or better turning profiles, and moderate to low top speeds.
• Warships have low accel, neutral or worse turning profiles, and moderate to high top speeds.
• Merchants have different places in the warship/scout dynamic, largely dependent on their acceleration. High accel merchants will behave more like scouts (high accel, neutral or better turning profile, low top speed), low accel merchats will behave more like warships (low accel, neutral or worse turning profile, high top speed).

Previously, Merchants were largely over-weighted for their cargo capacity and hauling ability. This was a huge portion of their end level calculation, which made it difficult to value the ships in a combat sense without skewing the level in a big way. I’ve decided that merchants are going to get their capacity and hauling weights largely free, simply as a feature of merchants in general. This allows some specific ships to not simply be dead weight, and instead be a viable combat choice for Freetraders and Buccaneers.

Before everyone mentions warships going 35 knots, please remember this key fact: we’ve added Stacking Penalties on ship outfitting. We’ve tuned ships (and skills) with this in mind, as we expect ships to be outfitted more reasonably, and less to one extreme or another. The changes to all these ships are too numerous for a devlog, and they’re also still undergoing testing in the P&P beta, so if you want to help us test, sign up!

More Vanilla Ships on the OS

Now let’s talk about the second goal: more vanilla ships on the OS. Vanilla ships are affordable, fun, and effective. The problem is that, given equal pilot skill, you’re going to have a tough time beating a refit or a LSB super-frigate. I consider this a problem, and I’d like to try and nudge the balance of ships back towards vanilla 50 ships, where the affordable PvP can and should happen.

Let that sink it for a second. Now let me tell you a story to illustrate why we’re making this change. A long time ago, in a game far away, we added Lineships because Lineships were cool and awesome and they had 100 guns and wow aren’t they amazing! Then, later, in the game we have now, we realized how overpowered these ships actually were. We created super-frigates, refits, and all manner of ships with inflated power levels specifically to combat these super-colossal ships of the line.

That ship has sailed, proverbially speaking. It’s very difficult to balance these super-frigates and refits to combat against Lineships, while at the same time trying to make sure those same ships don’t absolutely stomp on vanilla ships. From this point forward, we’re going to call 3rd rate ships of the line the most powerful craftable ships, and balance things against those instead. The power gap from a vanilla ship to a 3rd rate is an order of magnitude less than to a 1st rate. This means that, as part of this expansion tuning, ships meant to combat Lineships are going to come down in power and cost, and be more manageable for fleets of vanilla ships.

This change is intentional, and yes, they’re gone for good. No, they’re not being regulated by some other mechanic, they’re simply not going to be created in the game anymore. As with other times in the past when we’ve had to remove a ship, we’re not deleting ships that you own; we’re simply removing ways to craft new ones.

Even though this is a change we’re making in the expansion, we’re also going to be removing these recipes now, in 1.26. This is to limit abuse and stockpiling of these powerful ships between now and when Power and Prestige goes live. In the future, we think the game will be much better off, and the spread of ships available to players will be much more balanced. We hope all of these changes together will make more engaging, more fun PvP out on the Burning Sea.

If you’d prefer to read this devlog in French, our friends over at JeuxOnline have translated it: Modifications des navires dans Power & Prestige.