Recently i have been trying to customize my ships are little more, and i have taken notice of how “limited” our ship choices are right now, and how the current ship system may lead us to nearly no variety in ships.
To better explain my point, first, i’m going to bring up how ships worked back in AA, i really enjoyed how every boat (maybe except the caravel) seemed useful.
First, we had the small ships: The sailboat and the gunboat.
The sailboat was similar in design to the one that we have in AO, with one big difference in gameplay, it was actually USEFUL, despite being cheap, small, and only armed with one pair of cannons, the sailboat was extremely fast and maneuverable, being very good for those who wanted to sail around and get to certain places.
And then there was the gunboat, an slightly slower and more expensive version of the sailboat, it was much better suited for combat due to it’s mortar, but because of it’s gimmicky aim, it was never consistent in combat like the bigger ships.
Now for the only medium sized ship in AA, there was the caravel, equipped with 4 cannons, decent max hp, and an alright speed, despite being outshone in combat and sail speed by other boats, it still had good in-between stats that you could rely on.
And then we had the big ships, the ketch and the frigate:
Despite not being as good for combat as the frigate, the ketch was the second or maybe even the fastest ship in the game, but due to it’s size, it couldn’t go everywhere like the sailboat.
The frigate had a decent sailing speed and bad maneuverability around islands, but it’s main focus was combat, having many cannons, a mortar, and even a ram at it’s disposal. And you would most likely go bankrupt trying to get this ship’s HP to max.
If you have read my description of AA’s ships, you probably feel like all of them had some sort of use, even if it was a bit more specific than the rest. Now, here is how i feel about AO’s current ship system:
First, there seems to be no intended balance between the ships. Let’s take our cute little sailboat as an example, it may be better at turning speed, but it just gets outshined by the ketch in every other possible way by a huge margin, and it seems very likely that the frigate will just be a better caravel as well.
THE BIGGER THE BETTER:
Why would we want bigger ships? It’s simple, they are capable of equipping more things, more quarter-masters, more cannons, more deckhands, and even more options will surge in the future, essentialy, just turning big ships into stat sponges that can do everything, this issue and imbalance is directly mouth-fed by another feature in the game, the deckhands.
DECKHANDS:
Oh, whats this? You are saying that your frigate is a better caravel in every single way except turning speed? why don’t you simply hire a bunch of deckhands that improve that weaker stat? since your ship is already stronger than the other by design, and it has more deckhand slots, it should end up objectively better than the other option by default.
In the trello we have all of those ship ideas that could be added in the future:
Let’s take the Dhow and the Sloop as an example, google shows that both of these boats are tiny, and in-game they would most likely be used for sailing as their main thing. Now, why would i use these smalls boats, with maybe 1 deckhand slot, instead of a ketch (for example) that could easily do their purpose better than they do and much more?
In-universe, morden was capable of sailing through dark sea with just his sailboat, although it probably wasn’t the most optimal choice, it still worked. Now, gameplay-wise, you would have to keep hammering the damn thing every 10 seconds in order to not sink. So if smaller ships are gonna get less customization by default, they should get decent stats so that they are at least used for certain tasks like sailing.
ENDING TO THE WALL OF TEXT:
With all of that, i think i can get my point across. Of course, i may have jumped to many early conclusions, we haven’t had one update yet and things could be changed as time goes on. But i couldn’t help but make this post and point this flaw out (i’m not sure if YOU would consider this a flaw, but i would love to see more boat variety in the game, not just big ships), so, tweaks and balance changes would be more than welcome to avoid having players only using massive war machines.
TOO LONG DIDN’T READ:
Bigger and more expensive ships will probably render most of the other ships useless because there is next to zero balance among them, with deckhands increasing the stat difference between those ships even more.
