Worst ship type? How to buff it?

The thing about ship balance is that it has to held against balancing of crew sizes.

Which is to say that in order to say sloops and galleons are equal, something about galleon has to be bad enough that being 4v1 isn't actually an advantage. That premise extends to all matchups. A crew of 1, 2, 3, and 4 need to all be made equal via ship design.

What that means more directly, is that being able to do more things at once needs to somehow not be an advantage. A solo slooper can only do one thing at a time. A galleon crew can do all the things at the same time (repair, maneuver, board, and man cannon).

Let me take a second here to plug that I've always wanted Rare to add another ship actually designed for solo, since sloop can't simultaneously be balanced for both 1 and 2 crew members.

A lot of people say ships are very well balanced. I honestly don't see it. I've been playing on/off since beta and don't remember ever feeling like ship designs managed to cancel out the variance in crew size. I still see galleons as best and sloops as worst not because of any ship detail but because 4 beats 2, and as long as the galleon crew doesn't suck I expect them to win every fight no matter how good the opponent is. To be clear, I have sunk galleons as a solo sloop, but my response to doing that has never been "I pulled off the thing", it has been "wow they failed really hard at the thing"

It's a side note but I will say it feels weird to me that only galleon allows having the whole crew on cannons at once. I'm not sure I follow why cannon counts are 1, 2, and 4 instead of 2, 3, &4 or 1, 2, &3

@the-song42 I agree, I play sloop almost exclusively and I regularly sink all the variety in ships. However, if a well seasoned crew on a Brig or Galleon face a sloop they will win because of the difference in crew size. As long as each boat has a guy scooping water they will never sink, so you must board them and kill the scooper/repairer. This means a Galleon can potentially send over 3 boarders to a sloop which is pretty hard to defend if they are all experienced players. Not to mention if you leave your sloop while fighting them you leave a big vulnerability to your sloop.

To balance it, people have recommended making all crews have the option of having 4 crew members but this would make the sloop way too over powered given its maneuverability.

A better balance would be to adjust the amount of possible holes on ships/the rate water enters ships/the rate of fire on the cannons of a ship.

Currently, it's pretty rare to encounter a fully functional Gally/Brig crew so I don't mind the current balance. However, my opinion could change in the future if more experienced Gally/Brig crews start sailing the seas.

I believe that every ship has its pro's and con's. I also dislike the Brigantine but it's juste a matter of personal taste.

@grilledcheese10

I think a well crewed Brig is the most dangerous thing you can find on the seas...

@Glannigan

Doesn’t even have any effect on the Sloop or Brig.

The ballast ball certainly does effect the sloop and brig. It causes the small holes in the back of those ships to act like the large side holes. i.e. they constantly take on water for the duration of the ballast curse instead of spraying a bit every few seconds.

However I do agree it is a huge coffin nail for the galley. Most galley crews prioritize other tasks over upper hull repairs but a few seconds of ballast can make the upper hull hole a permanent problem.

@rtl-saint ...the only downside with a brig is that it's as clunky as a galleon to turn/move.

So buff a brig would be to ad another cannon on the sides.

Why do people keep saying Brig is the fastest ship....

Sloop is fastest headwind, Galleon is fastest tailwind, and Brig is fastest sidewind.
None can actually be labeled fastest.

@rtl-saint said in Worst ship type? How to buff it?:

@reapinglegion lol. its waaaayyyyy better at turing than the gally. i thin the gally needs one less cannon because none of the other ships can have all players firing a cannon.

I do conaider it almost equal by my experiance.
But on the other hand, i rarely do bigger ships so maybe you're right.
However, alot are using all four cannons....from what i've seen.

@the-song42
The brig with cross has a sizeable speed advantage over any ship with any other wind condition. The brig is .23m/s faster in a crosswind than the galley. While the galley is only .02m/s faster with a tail wind.

Brig with cross wind - 2.3 m/s
Galley with cross wind - 2.07m/s
Sloop with cross wind - 1.53m/s

Galley with tail wind - 1.71m/s
Brig with tail wind - 1.69m/s
Sloop with tail wind - 1.39m/s

@the-song42 said in Worst ship type? How to buff it?:

Why do people keep saying Brig is the fastest ship....

Sloop is fastest headwind, Galleon is fastest tailwind, and Brig is fastest sidewind.
None can actually be labeled fastest.

The exception is heading north west, where you are also sailing against the waves. In this scenario, a good brig crew can make significant ground up on a sloop - which only has a +0.05m/s diffence in speed into the wind with straight sails anyway (which means the sloop is only gaining 3m/min).

The advantage the sloop has is in maneuverability, and this is what good sloop sailors use to their advantage against brigs.

@galactic-geek

Actually, they can - the galleon is the fastest because it literally is the fastest moving forward in terms of top speed, but only with the wind. The brig is more versatile, as it's fastest of all 3 ships with the sidewind, but even then it doesn't overtake a galleon moving at full speed. The sloop is the slowest in virtually every category except for going against the wind, where its fewer sails create less drag. It's therefore not even a contender in regards to top speed.

This is untrue. The brig with crosswind is faster than any other ship under any wind condition. In fact all of the ships are at their fastest possible speed with the side wind. A galley with cross is faster than a galley with back wind.

When talking PvP only I think the ships are balanced but the crew size still matters a lot on its own, bigger crews SHOULD always be stronger. This said, in the actual game all the ships feels perfectly balanced for a simple reason: the sloop is veary easy to use compared to galleons that require a lot of coordination, making it harder to use; this means that since the majority of sot players aren't very skilled you don't really notice the difference as "average crews" on galleons can't play around galleon's weaknesses/strenghts nor coordinate enough to maximize its power; on the other hand even new players can operate a sloop as their mistakes are not that impactfull. In an hypothetical universe were 80% of crews are experienced and coordinated players, galleons would always have the upper hand.

Basically, as the ships are technically unbalanced it still isn't a problem because them are balanced for SoT's player base average skill level. I also think that it's still fine and make sense that defeating a big crew as a small one is harder.

This said I think the brig's problem is not the balance but its desing: the fact there's nothing behind the helm, the staircase position, the map position. It just feels vey weird, like if stuff were out of place.

@galactic-geek Laughable? I think you are missing my point. I am talking exclusively about 1-2 experienced players vs 3-4 experienced players. I highly doubt that you are regularly sinking 4 man crews of experienced players that are coordinated with one another.

Another scenario, they shoot you while you're on your single cannon and they hit your single scooper with their 3 cannons. You cant hit all 3 cannons and their scooper at the same time. Unless you can hit them and stay out of their cannon range at all times you don't stand much of a chance. Like you said its easy to predict where they are, its easier to predict where people are on a sloop given it is smaller.

Being on a sloop, your advantage is your maneuverability and that is it. You don't have the option of having someone steering, on cannons, scooping, and boarding at all times.

I know boarding isn't the best way to win but I was giving an example of a possibility on a Galleon vs a Sloop. They can send over a single boarder and force you to choose between scooping/repairing, firing cannons, steering your ship, or killing the boarder. Obviously you have to take care of the boarder which leaves you vulnerable to whatever the other 3 gally crew members are doing.

I will admit, it is highly unlikely for any of us to encounter a 4 man crew of experienced players coordinating together, that is why we find it easy to sink the larger boats while in a sloop.