5 Ship Types for Sea of Thieves (Speculation /Graphic)

@Jedi-Jez

I know everyone here is excited for Sea of Thieves, but accept the game for what it is... not what you want it to be (within reason; it's fun to think of fitting additions).

The set up we have now works for everyone, with a slight advantage towards the 'intended' grouping of four players on a galleon.

The core foundation of this game (the 4 player coop galleon experience) works and that's great, the question is now how far can you push that in either direction. I think RARE opened up this can of worms when they introduced the solo ship, and I agree with the decision. There is a reason I held the line at 5 ships, and discouraged people when they pitched lots of different ships with all their real world differences (like splitting hairs between schooners, brigs, brogues, frigates, 5th rates, etc) To me one brig ship in the game would do well to represent all those playstyles. I really think we can have a 5 ship meta in SoT, but no more than that. I think even asking for 3 is a lot.

@casesugar401098

I absolutely agree. I thought the map was going to get 4x as big based on hearing the devs talk about the 4 seas (Blue sea of plenty, the wilds, etc.) I thought what we were seeing in the beta and scale tests was just the blue sea of plenty, However I noticed in the recent scale test that all the seas were labeled on the map and that it had not gotten any bigger. Do we know if the map in scale test was the final size for launch?

@shoothere4exp I love this, and need this

@Ben-Bosek I appreciate your input but respectfully disagree. One of the biggest complaints about adding larger ships is their ability to overwhelm smaller ships, adding small speed tradeoffs to me seems like a reasonable way of balancing. There are plenty of scenarios a Man O' War could still take on other ships, in fact it would probably find itself being swarmed by smaller ones.

Perhaps the answer is to have all ships travel at roughly the same speed, but the amount of work required to get a ship up to top speed is higher on the larger ships. Perhaps the larger ships can go faster like you've suggested but it requires all sails to be squared up with the wind.

@Striader5 Thank you, I like the 2 existing ships but for a game about pirates I find it sad to imagine that they are only going to be our ever 2 choices... that the only ships I will ever see on the horizion will be the big one or the little one. I would be happy with at least 3 (3 is a great number) but I think the game could support up to 5. I really don't think it could support any more than 5 because new ships have to justify themselves with meaningful game-play differences... any more than 5 would start to blend together. And yes 6 can play on a Galleon... but it isnt a challenge. Having a 6 player ship thats a challenge to sail but rewards that teamplay would be great.

This game thrives on its ability to generate new and unique moments... I believe having 5 UNIQUE PLAYSTYLES of ship would do much to add to the game's existing thrill. Currently taking on a Galleon in a Sloop is a thrill, but what if your Galleon found itself going up against a huge and rare Man O' War... it becomes an emergent PVP boss battle just like the Kraken is an emergent PVE one.

+Adding new ship types would help with creatinga better variety and hierarchy of shipwrecks... larger ships have chances for more loot

@LaughsManiacaly Is this less stubby? I decided to do a thorough redesign of the hull

Started a new thread for this Fan Creation Model below:

https://www.seaofthieves.com/forum/topic/33746/3d-model-6-player-ship

@laughsmaniacaly I made them myself! ButI used a lot of ingame images as reference

@sir-lancia said in [5 Ship Types for Sea of Thieves (Speculation /Graphic)]

But I thought I'd add in another problem to the really big slow ships. (Man o' war)
They kind of force you to pvp, as doing quests would be so much slower than with all other ships. I really wouldn't want to be on one and travel across half the map to find another treasure chest or chicken. Merchant quests would be especially annoying on them since you can't hoard chests. (Which would be effective since you could probably sink anyone trying to attack you.)

I don't blame you for not reading the whole thread but you do have an original point here and its a good one; having a larger crew and ship with lots of guns incentives that crew to favor PVP action...(especially when you consider the groupthink that happens in large groups, tends to favor combat) I don't think this is neccessarily a bad thing, as long as the ship is uncommon (I've suggested that matchmaking not be used to sail it, that instead you need to set sail in a 6 person party) then it should offer large crews who maybe want to focus on skeleton forts, krakens, and raiding other ships a unique almost raid level pvp experience. I can imagine lots of smaller ships both Galleons and Sloops teaming up on the ship., and it becomes a PVP boss battle for them as well.

In regards to this being more for world of warships... I get the sentiment but this is really a silly comment for so many reasons I really shouldn't have to mention... in short apples and oranges man.

I appreciate that you like my work though and that you're interested in seeing it implemented, I don't have all the answers as to how this could fit in the game, but I do think that we've learned from the popularity of this thread that having more ships is an aspiration for the community, and I would love to see Rare's take on how to satisfy this aspiration while not compromising the flow of Sea of Thieves they've worked so hard to fine tune to this point

Really really awesome and a great job on all...
Only one suggestion...
I think a fourth mast or sail on the Man O' War would be good to distinguish it from a Galleon from a distance or on the horizon....

Yes please