Non-Exclusive Dev Journal: Ship Tuning

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The upcoming build represents the first significant batch of changes from late beta (and into pre-boarding). This includes a couple global changes and a bunch of changes to individual ships.

Global Changes

There was a calculation error in our tuning spreadsheets that was making scouts in that range pay too much for speed, effectively lowering their max speed. I corrected that problem and increased their speed accordingly, meaning their max speed increased. Another big global change affects ships with multiple batteries that have a topdeck weight of 3 or 4lbs (Arcadia, Oliphant, etc.). Light topdecks aren’t useful on most of those ships, so they were upgunned (typically to 5lb). The Raa and Stralsund are exceptions, because they’re early two-battery ships and they’re supposed to have that extra close-range punch.

Once warships are fully fitted, they’re not performing quite the way I want. It’s too easy to keep them up to full speed and outmaneuver scouts. Most warships received increases to their deceleration multipliers and turning deceleration. SOLs also received a small reduction in DR, as they were a little too high and the DR improvement to the Navy career skill makes that worse. These changes aren’t huge, but this is an area we’ll be evaluating and I expect to make more adjustments in the future.

Individual Changes

The Arcadia gained speed and it’s now set to a close haul best point. This makes it exceptional at sailing upwind. It also gained armor, structure and a reinforced bow, which is unique to this ship. The improved bow has more armor than the usual ratio, and it also has extra DR. Last, the Arcadia gained crew, one level and lost acceleration (it’s still very high for its size).

The Mignone received changes similar to the Dromedary, in an attempt to make this into a more useful combat-tradeship hybrid for Freetraders. The changes include increased running speed, acceleration, major turning acceleration boost, increased max speed and both batteries got upgunned. Along a similar line, the Oliphant received a huge boost to armor and the Mastercraft version gained a couple topdeck guns.

Other changes include a significant overall speed increase to the Cerberus, which affects its max speed in addition to increased relative speeds at the close haul and beam reach angles. The Raa received similar changes, and both ships gained a small amount of armor and structure. And then there’s the Mystique Polacre, which received an all-around speed boost as well as armor, structure, sails and reduced level requirement. The Myrmidon is also noteworthy, as it received an armor boost but it didn’t get the deceleration penalties of the other warships. The Capricieux and Tigre gained some structure and armor.

Several other ships changed, including the Corsair, Hercules, Deliverance and Defiant. Most of the changes were minor to moderate buffs, and you can find more details about them when we release the 1.2 patch notes. Expect to see more of this in upcoming builds. There will usually be a handful of ships selected and modified to help them become more viable.

New Stuff!

And for the fun part, 1.2 is the first real chance to expand on our ship selection since beta. That means some of the newer ships have been around long enough to receive variants. The Postillionen is receiving Heavy and Mastercraft variants to help flesh out the mid 20s, arriving at 23 and 26 respectively. The Heavy Postillionen is set up to be tougher and generally difficult to kill, while the Mastercraft Postillionen has more firepower but not as much survivability as the Heavy. As we move forward, the different ship variants will probably become more distinct in their stat variation from the base ship.

There’s a new Mastercraft Arcadia. At level 45, this is our first experiment with a high-end ship that runs against the wind. We want this ship to be a solid combatant without displacing and invalidating all the smaller ships. It’s upgunned to 24×10lb and 6×6lb batteries with a 10% reload bonus.

Better yet, we have two new ship models. Both of these ships come from the same UC shipwright, and they’re two different takes on the same ship. One of them is the new Athena Frigate, a level 29 warship frigate with a high top speed and sailing characteristics similar to the Triton. As far as the Triton is concerned, it is becoming obsolete in 1.2. It’ll be replaced to the second new model, the Minerva Frigate. The new ship will mostly be the same as the current Triton, but setup in its new 36-gun model. You’ll be able to keep your old Triton for as long as you want, but it won’t be possible to produce it or capture it anymore.

That covers the bulk of the ship tuning changes in 1.2. Stay tuned for the next devlog covering the new stuff in 1.2!