Steel versus bamboo....ship hull integrity suggestion

[spiritchaser28 920]

I do love the new ship damage system, however after playing around with it for a bit I noticed something. There are a few players that I play with that decided before the ship damage system was in place they would make ships out of steel (in order to take more damage when the ship damage system finally was in place)....their efforts seem to be for nothing now since the damage is only applied to the hull.

So my suggestion is (and I think this may be a bit complicated).....is there a way to add to the amount of damage a ship's hull integrity can take? For instance, bamboo would add just a slight amount to the hull integrity while steel could feasibly add more to the amount of damage the hull can take? Right now it seems it makes no difference if you have a ship made from bamboo versus a ship made of steel because the damage is only applied to the hull.....but if a system were in place that calculated how many various blocks added to the hull integrity depending on the block types I think it would be a bit more balanced......As of now a catamaran with only a few bamboo blocks can take the same amount of damage as an armored catamaran made completely of steel before it sinks.

Again this is a complicated suggestion, and I am sure it is possible....but I wonder if it would take too much effort from the Dev Team. I don't want to take away any time from all the other fantastic work they are doing....but maybe this idea could be kicked down the road for a later update?

While we are on the subject of ship repair....are there any plans for building repair and armor and weapon repair  (and even cars....think catfish oil changes ) in the future? I realize this requires a ton of programming but I do believe people have been requesting those types of systems for a while. I think it would enrich the players game experience when they have to do a bit of maintenance occasionally. I know once a year I'm up on the roof of my house in real life doing minor repairs. It's a little tedious at times but it keeps my property value high so the effort is worth the results.

Edited May 14, 2022 by spiritchaser28

[zarwil 393]

I feel like this system could easily be abused without serious restrictions in ship-building. If you were to just add a check to see which blocks are part of the ship weld (and add hp respectively), you can just place a steel block somewhere inside the ship hull (so it's not visible, and ruins your design) and duplicate that block a few houndred times until your ship is practically invincible. Of course it'd be expensive, but people are willing to grind.

[spiritchaser28 920]

11 hours ago, zarwil said:

I feel like this system could easily be abused without serious restrictions in ship-building. If you were to just add a check to see which blocks are part of the ship weld (and add hp respectively), you can just place a steel block somewhere inside the ship hull (so it's not visible, and ruins your design) and duplicate that block a few houndred times until your ship is practically invincible. Of course it'd be expensive, but people are willing to grind.

Good point but remember people would have to gather resources for their ship....It's sort of unfair that a steel catamaran with 5 thousand steel blocks has the same hit points as a catamaran with one bamboo block 

[zarwil 393]

18 hours ago, spiritchaser28 said:

Good point but remember people would have to gather resources for their ship....It's sort of unfair that a steel catamaran with 5 thousand steel blocks has the same hit points as a catamaran with one bamboo block 

I mean sure, but gathering resources isn't difficult or anything, it just takes time. It's equally ridiculous to me that you could create an invincible ship and travel around stomping everyone. I suppose you could have an upper limit to the health bonus to avoid that. Like, somewhere past 200-300% hp, additional materials won't increase hp anymore.

[Elenis 22]

Smaller hulls have the advantage of greater maneuverability and less draft. Therefore it is not good to make them as damage resistant as large hulls. Capping it at 200-300% endurance is a good idea.

Another thing that is similar to this topic is hull speed. It seems all hulls are equally fast with the same plating. Or the differences are very small. It seems illogical to me, as it tends to be easier to achieve higher speeds in small ships. For a boat with a small hull and few building blocks, a few sails should be enough to reach high speed, while a large or steel hull would need lots of masts or a strong engine.

I played around in the editor a bit, figuring out the hull's resistance with a small cannon. It really doesn't matter at all the number of building blocks. The resistance is the same as an empty hull:

Chinese junk: 5 hits.
Catamaran: 6 hits.
Small wooden hull: 6 hits.
Large wooden hull: 9 hits.
Steel hull: 18 hits.

Interestingly, there's not much difference between the wooden hulls.

[zarwil 393]

10 hours ago, Elenis said:

It seems illogical to me, as it tends to be easier to achieve higher speeds in small ships.

Actually that's pretty realistic. A ship's hull speed (the maximum speed the hull can achieve) is proportional to the length of the hull, so a longer hull can in theory reach a higher speed than a shorter one. In order to travel faster than the hull speed, the boat has to "ride" on it's own bow wave (like small motorboats), which requires exponentially higher engine power and fuel.

I'm also not a fan of changing the ship speeds in ylands depending on how many blocks you've added, as that would mean you get punished for adding blocks for design reasons. I think the game should encourage building stuff.

Edited May 18, 2022 by zarwil

[spiritchaser28 920]

19 hours ago, zarwil said:

I mean sure, but gathering resources isn't difficult or anything, it just takes time. It's equally ridiculous to me that you could create an invincible ship and travel around stomping everyone. I suppose you could have an upper limit to the health bonus to avoid that. Like, somewhere past 200-300% hp, additional materials won't increase hp anymore.

I agree there should be a cap depending on the resources. There's a speed cap with the engines and sails so it only makes sense. Ships aren't invincible but it would be a nice feature to add a certain amount of hit points. Again this may be too complex to program for the moment and I am certainly happy with all the other work the dev team is doing and don't want to distract them from all the quality of life updates they have been giving us.

[Elenis 22]

I guess I misspoke. My point is that unequally sized hulls with equally sized plating have the same speed.

My boat is built on a Chinese junk hull. With two large masts, one smaller mast, and one modern windlass, it reaches 7 knots. The large hull with the same sail reaches a speed of even 7.2 knots. And it's much bigger, so it should have more histrodynamic drag.

Plus, it's not even game-balanced. Small hulls actually only have the advantage of being cheaper (you don't care about that later in the game), having less draft, and being more maneuverable (which you also don't care about most of the time). It is much more advantageous to build only big ships. They're just as fast (or faster), more durable, and there's enough space on them to serve as a floating workshop.

I think it would be more fun to be able to reach high speeds more easily with a small hull and also have more acceleration. The top speed could be the same, but a large hull would need more sail area to achieve it. Then the player would build small ships for exploration and for fast travel, and vice versa for large ships as floating base or for battles.

Edited May 18, 2022 by Elenis