Explanation: Right now there’s a noticeable problem with ship NPCs, if you’re a hero player you might have encountered it, but if you’ve ever played villain then you have definitely
encountered it.
I’ll use Navy ships/NPCs as the example here since they’re the most common variant.
When a villain player fights a Navy ship and chooses to retreat for reasons that outline other problems related to being a villain in the current game (it sucks), those Navy NPCs will swim to them no matter where they go or how far they go, and from what I can tell, no matter how long it takes.
If they must, they will swim from Redwake to Ravenna to catch the villain.
I am certain needing to check over your shoulder before stopping at an island to see how much time you have before the swarm arrives is not an intended game mechanic.
When an NPC swims, they should have their own sort of stamina bar that lasts for between 1 and 2 minutes before they sink and drown, this bar will refill when they get on land.
If too many ship NPCs die from drowning instead of combat, then there should be no rewards for “killing” them. (no XP, no chests on the ship, no galleons, ect).
Some people might think this could be a big problem for fighting tougher ships, to which I say that a solution for that would to be to add an invisible bubble around an NPC’s ship where they can swim without losing stamina.
When they leave this area, their death clock starts.
And they’d have like this boarding mechanic where they jump on the enemy ship when it’s close enough instead of being able to swim? And they’d use ranged attacks when you go in the water?
I’d rather let NPCs swim to board as they currently do since that’s already in the game but they shouldn’t be able to board you from across the entire map.
Naval battles moving to land and vice versa is also cool.
Actually, something cooler would probably be NPCs have a range for swimming. So, if you are too far away from land or a ship they won’t chase you. This would go hand in hand with your idea imo
(basically they have a stamina bar too and don’t chase if you’re too far away from them because they’ll run out of stamina)
id rather have it as a hidden timer for npcs once they touch water that can reset upon touching land instead of a whole “stamina bar system”, but thats pretty much reiterating what you just said. still want
I got a simple solution. NPCs can swim, but if you get too far away they will get back to their ship, and if extremely for they get de-aggro (they should’ve have some sort of stamina)
PLEASE I need this to be in the game. It’s so annoying angering a boat while heading to Frostmill, then always looking behind me at the swarm of navy members rushing towards me, like that one Barnyard scene with the Mailman or whatever it was called.