Captains. MEGA Patch was deployed today on 28th February!
Contents of the patch.
Localization has been officially added.
- You can change the language of the game in the options menu.
- Localization is not complete!– as new content has been added in the last 1.5 months – this will be translated soon
- Custom files for all languages has been added. They can be used by community translators or yourself to improve things you do not like to completely change language
- There are issues in some translations due to the fact that outside firm was - but they will eventually be fixed, with help of community.
Battle UI
- Battle UI has been freshened up.
- All Battle UI has been moved to one technology set (slightly increasing FPS in battles)
- Boarding is no longer showing enemy commands.
- Boarding UI might need another pass of improvements based on your general feedback.
- You can now use buttons [ ] during boarding that will allow your ship to fire point blank broadsides.
- All buttons have received informational tooltips, which you can read by putting your mouse over the buttons
Combat model
- Ships of the line will now rule the seas. No longer ships of the line will fear light corvettes.
- Damage model has been adjusted.
- Inverse DPS problems has been fixed (previously 4lb guns had higher DPS than 42lb guns)
- Reload shocks issues were fixed. You will get them regularly if you maximize damage in short periods of time.
- Lower rank NPCs turning has been adjusted (previously they turned like experienced rear admirals when they should not have).
- Additional tunings to NPC combat will be applied soon.
- Turn rates were lowered across the board for most vessels, to support the precise deliberate combat model (low level ships turned like they were on drugs)
- Additional improvements to speeds and turning will be deployed next week.
PVP and ROE changes (rules of engagement)
- To increase number of PVP opportunities the following change has been made.
- Open world battles for the weaker side (based on BR) are open for 20 minutes. You can reinforce the weaker side if you are sailing by. The mission will close and swords disappear once BR evens out (with certain % threshold)
- if you want to get help stay closer to friendly entry points.
- If you are ganked, call for help in chat, people can help you. Of course just like tracers in ww2 this feature works both ways. If you attack in force your target might get reinforcements, changing the course of the battle.
- Overall goal is to give more pvp opportunities to captains
- Combat Medals were introduced. Combat medals will be granted for PVP activities, and will give access to pvp rewards.
Port importance for clans and rare resource spawns
- Changes to rare woods spawns and access
- Rare woods resources now only have limited trading spawns in the Carribean.
- Rare woods forests can now randomly spawn somewhere in the Caribbean in limited quantities. (can be fully exhausted)
- These rare woods now can be received by clans using delivery missions
- Сlans and clans on their allies list have access to these missions
- Getting rare woods by using missions reduces their supply. One supply is fully cut down the forest will spawn elsewhere in another port.
- Rare woods are: Live oak, white oak, bermuda cedar, teak, mahogany, caguarian, sabicu.
Protected areas
- Redundant protections removed from secondary protected areas (like Louisiana or Vera Cruz and Belize)
- Additional improvements of the protected areas will be done next patch
Trading
- Trading will be more available
- Resources spawn distribution is now better and ability to place contracts on trading goods removed.
- Additional regional goods added
- Selling goods far from the purchase place will make more money (buying something in Trinidad and selling it in the gulf will make a lot of money
- This of course means that short distance routes will no longer make too much money
- Barter added (but not yet tuned properly – will be fixed in the next hotfix). It will increase supply of trading goods
Missions
- PVP hunt missions added
- Solo PVP patrol zone added
- In the solo patrol zone you can only be attacked by the ship of the same class and battle will close immediately.
- Passenger delivery missions added
- Letter delivery missions added
- Clan delivery missions added
- Mission rewards increased
Better PVE – More accessible PVE
- NPC fleet placements slightly adjusted (gulf suffered, but all other regions will generally see more NPCs – we will fix the gulf problem later)
- Missions are now based on regions (less on port type)
- For example Hispaniola is a 1-3rdrate region. It will only give missions for 1-3rdrate.
- Missions are now unlimited – if you finish your initial set of missions you can take new ones. No longer we will force you waste time on sailing to another to find additional supply of missions.
- Missions spawns are significantly improved – time is precious - you will no longer spend 20-30 mins reaching the mission. Missions will no longer spawn on other sides of large land masses.
- Group missions added (enemy types and rewards are not yet fully balanced- some missions might be very hard)
Other changes
- Sextant perk is now provided automatically by default to all new accounts
- Fleet perk for 1 ship is now added to all accounts by default (so new players can go straight to capping and looting)
- Small amount of low level NPC enemies were added around Capitals to provide additional opportunities for new players
- UI scaling options added to the game
- Additional flags added to DLC for some nations
- 1 flag was added to admiralty store for some nations, in the next couple of patches all nations will have 1 flag in the admiralty available for doubloons.
- Prices for basic resources were adjusted, blueprints for ships were adjusted to support the new damage model. Some balance issues with blueprints were fixed.
- Labor hours will be adjusted too in the next hot fix (did not get in this patch).
- NEXT HOTFIX Labor hours spent on crafting frigates and below will be significantly reduced. Labor hours generation WILL be increased 2.5times.