Hotfixes to patch 13.

06 Nov 2017Developer post

Source: Steam Community (opens in a new tab)

Captains.. Hotfixes were deployed last week.

IMPORTANT CHANGE: Victory conditions/points for captured zones

Every port battle has 3 zones (objectives) that accumulate points if captured (as before)
Zones are still captured by the side that has more ships in the zone (as before)
But the captured zone points don't accumulate if even a single ENEMY ship is present in the objective (NEW FEATURE)

Expected effects

This means that you no longer need to have all the ships in the circle to win the objective.
You no longer need to brawl in the diameter of the objective.
You can maneuver normally around them and fight without the need to enter the zones.
You only need to send 1 ship to stop the points from ticking even if enemy has a numerical advantage (which still matters but matters less)
If enemy have capped the point with many ships (and your ship is blocking the zone) they must get you out of the zone to start getting points, promoting aggressive action (and not kiting)

Other significant changes

New ship - Le Gros Ventre Refit, with swivels. The ship is available for pvp marks in the admiralty.
Outlaw battles have been removed - they were a cause of multiple exploits that unfortunately could not be fixed in a reasonable time.

Tuning

Deep water port battles now only accept ships of mortar brig and above (mb/cerberus and up)

BR limits for port battles rebalanced (mostly increased for deep water ports and decreased for shallow water ports)

Zone diameter reduced from 2km to 1.2 km to reduce efficiency of kiting on the edges the objective zones

Updated the swivel 2lb gun characteristics. It has very low damage to hull, very good penetration to represent their accuracy using current gameplay mechanics and has very good damage to crew (using ball). Basically it is only good against crew at 150 meters or less.

Minor changes for loot tables (some upgrades were dropping too much)

Temporarily, Updated the drop rates for ship notes in gold chests from epic events and increased chance for permit drops. Chests will be updated again in the next couple of days

Fixes

Fixed the bot distribution (some regions did not have enough bots)
Minor tunings for some upgrades (for example fixed bug for trim by the stern providing incorrect bonuses
Fixes of several bugs with ship trade that were not clearing the knowledge slots for the traded ships (creating confusion as they did not work if you did not have the skill yourself)
Fixed spawns for hostility missions that sometimes spawned in locations closer to other ports which granted pvp kills to other cities.