Hello captains. Here are the notes for the patch that will be deployed today.
New ships
To celebrate the increase in the steam ratings 4 ships will be added to the game as event ships.
- Rattlesnake Heavy – event blueprint.
- L Ocean – event blueprint.
- Agamemnon – event blueprint.
- Gunboat – redeemable for existing users and event blueprint. Redeemable will be given out by end of the week.
Event ships are available from special events only – that will be available for for all users on PvP and PvE servers.
If ratings continue to grow we will try hard to add more ships before release. We need your support to make the game better. Please go to Steam and rate the game if you have not done so. Thank you for all the generous support!
Alliances
- Alliances added as the first step in the conquest rework. Alliances are a testing feature and might change the game completely. We believe that alliances should make the game play better, but we don't know if they will.
- IMPORTANT: For initial testing alliances are signed for short periods to help us run several rounds of votes and find bugs together during mass testing. Alliances between nations will change often in this testing patch. In the future alliances length will be increased to intended 3 weeks in a hot fix.
- Voting is available from third lowest rank and only if your character existed for 15 days in this nation. Number of votes increases with your rank.
- For more detailed information on the alliance mechanics please visit this topic: http://forum.game-labs.net/index.php?/topic/15577-alliances-final-design/.
To enforce alliances better we made several additional changes.
- All captains have learnt flag recognition better. As a result attacks on friendlies by intent or by mistake are no longer possible. Pirates always acted as a big brotherhood - its is the same for pirates now. Outlaw class is planned for the real pirates who are against all authorities.
- Friendly player smugglers are no longer attackable. The main reason for this change is the battle denial exploit.
- Groups can be created with alliance members.
- Alliance chats added – 1 chat for 2 nations. If your nation has 2 alliances you will have to use 2 rooms. But remember - Loose lips might sink ships: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loose_lips_sink_ships.
Other features
- Special new feature added – you will find it out by playing.
- Special new event added – you will find it out by playing.
- Ships crafted after patch have the name of the crafter added to it. 5% of all combat xp earned on that ship will also be given to a crafter directly to his XP.
Perks changes
- We are continuing to add and test systems that can be modified by perks/officer skills. These systems give us extra flexibility in the development and allow to quickly test new interesting gameplay options and features. Some perks can be unbalanced and will eventually be removed if they are hated by the players. Please ignore annoying perks - all bad designs will be removed eventually.
- Next patch month we will start actively changing perks and upgrades. To give players some flexibility perk reset becomes free until perks are stabilized.
- Storage perk becomes useless. All bonuses from the perk are removed. Use free reset to replace the perk.
- New perk Doctor – perk recovers 70% of all casualties in combat if you ship is alive by the end of the instance.
- New perk Social – battle generated by the player with this perk stay open for 30 mins for both sides. Other battles will not get affected.
- New perk Hold optimization – 20% more hold weight.
- New perk Shipyard connections - +15% to ship prices sold to NPC buyer in ports.
- We know that trading and combat should be done through separate officers and plan to add a non-combat officer as a second hire in the future.
Fixed bugs:
- Fixed bug when muskets were sometimes counted incorrectly during boarding.
- Multiple other bugs fixed.
Tunings:
- Bucentaure excessive crew loss somewhat addressed.
- 36pounder gun added. It is exclusive for only one vessel at this stage, but this limitation will be removed in the near future.
- Extra check is added during player deletion to avoid unfortunate accidents.
- Holds are finally rebalanced for all vessels, it is now closer to historical hold sizes. We will continue tuning hold sizes going forward.
- Small battles room balancer and conditions changed: http://forum.game-labs.net/index.php?/topic/15739-tournament-support-changes-to-small-battles.
- Storm sailing speed penalties lowered.
- Sealed bottle drop chance reduced.
- Sealed bottle distance brought back to old – closer distance. No more excessive long journeys.
- Copper coins added to shipwrecks.
- Area control perk radius increased to 750 meters.
- Press gang bonus lowered to 50%.
- Stiffness was buffed to give +5% to mast HP and +2cm to armor.
- Boarding tweaks were made. Boarding will be more dynamic and generally more enjoyable.
- Minor changes to some ship performances were made.
- Cannons penetrate trough water a lot less.
- Bot name tables improved thanks to several mod volunteers.
- Probably several horrible horrible bugs introduced.
After patch is stabilized we will start working on the second part of war&peace improvements in relation to port battles, war effort and conquest in general. + New sounds and AI improvements.
Discuss.
Extra requests
Groups preparing for the tournament - please test the small battles room functionality with your practice partners if it works correctly as intended. We are ready to hot fix the problems if any appear.