Damaging your/others ship

[Crazyguy36]

I was messing around once and starting throwing grenades while aboard my ship and when it hit the mass, it went boom and on the top of my screen was the health of my ship and the name above it like it was an enemy ship. Just wandering if u can damage your own ship. If no one knows Im going to repair my ship set sail throw one grenade and then dock to find out. But I cant until around 1 pm pacific.

[Steely Jim]

You shouldn't be able to any real damage to yourself, or another player.

However, I would really like to use those visible effects as the basis for a make-shift, player-driven system of ship-to-ship PvP. Of course, it would be entirely unsupported officially; I still believe it could be scored consistently, with a little practice, but I still haven't figured out exactly how yet.

I think it would take at least 5 judges...3 remote, and 1 on either ship.

Although, I think that a "Seek & Destroy/First Blood" could be implemented currently, plus I think there is a viable format for 1 vs. 1 jousting (each ship gets 2 passes, 1 to each side, no stopping).

[Crazyguy36]

You sir r correct. I wish they had ship pvp already, but noooooo! Oh well.

[Steely Jim]

As soon as I've pulled together at least a small guild, then I'm going to start working on some more concepts for it, to see if it can be made compelling enough for people to enjoy something in the game that isn't officially supported.

I'll start to know more once I've had a chance to seriously experiment with the visibility of different types of damage. For now, I'm not exactly touting the 10-point must system (since I have no penalty structure yet, it'd just be either 10 or 9 unless you start adding subjective scoring), but I think that's a step in the right direction. I definitely don't think a subjective scoring method could work while entirely unsupported.

[Crazyguy36]

The ship pvp I had in mind would definelty work, its just putting it all together.

[Steely Jim]

I think anything that relies on "first blood" or comparative damage would probably be directly implementable. The southwest map corner is really wide open, but even the center of the Mar de Plata could hold some combat actions, as long as there's not many people involved.

As long as all combat are between exactly matched ships, captains, and crew, comparative damage methods should work. I'd really like to work out a complete system for relative scoring, so that different ship types and captain levels can meet. I'd like to weight for vessel size and speed, then score for shot facings compared to the weaknesses for the ship type, and then factor in the kind of shot that is landing (for 1 vs. 1 that'll mostly be just the broadsides I'm sure, but I'd like to develop crew vs. also).

For the "jousting" I figure you could use other ships to make a distance between the two ships when they pass, and shoot. It seems like that would even lend itself to adding difficulty by increasing the the passing distance.

[Crazyguy36]

U cant damage your own ship, I didnt think u couldnt. Better to be safe. And you'er right on the money for what this game needs for more good gameplay.

[League]

I had a good ship vs. ship strategy in direct side-to-side combat in my guild thread (Beg For Entrance! is the name). In ship combat, there should be a boarding facet. However, either ship could still fire as a ship is being boarded. Hence, the game is a rush to board the other ship. That would be rather great. Why rush to board the other ship? You could have a crew on your ship attack with enemy-damaging only cannonshots being fired. These would do greater damage, but could only be fired once the ship is boarded. The crew on one ship would all be forced to fight, and could not take up the cannons. Once over, people could just return to their ship once the ship has been boarded and cleared. The others can recover in jail, and repair their ship.

Just an idea.

[Chris]

i do believe there was ship PvP in the EARLY stages of BETA 1

[Angel]

I hope they bring back Ship PvP......

[DrStinglock]

I do remember something being said about pvp and being on the ocean also. But that was a while ago now, and the messages were removed.