Thanks for including my ship concept in your graphic! @ShootHere4EXP :)
https://www.seaofthieves.com/forum/topic/29807/single-player-ship-concept
I love the work you've been doing here, it's nice to see so much enthusiasm with conceptual work on Sea of Thieves coming from the community.
Love the concept art. I think a Man o' War should be filled with many more players, though. I'm thinking it should be an 8-10 person ship, anything lower would probably be eaten alive by a galleon. I think the galleon should be pushed out to a 5-6 person ship to also make room for the middling ships like brigantines and junks. Besides that, I really feel like the galleon is a little too undermanned as it is.
@natsu-v2 We need to trust in Rares design. The sloop and galleon are balanced as far as Rare is concerned, so we should use those as a baseline reference to other ships. Increasing galleon crew size throws Rares balance out of order.
@natsu-v2 the idea is make the ship feel a little understaffed, that way each ship has to organise its crew for each encounter. It means that you need to make spur decisions on how to act rather than have one person on each cannon one sailing and one running repairs you need to decide how best to operate, this is what drives the pvp encounter.
Following the current ship ideas i believe that these layouts actually do a good job of capturing that management control.
Some points of interest tho: the spritsail on the gallion would lend it to an additional crewman, current layout seems to follow one cannon per crew so I'd suggest maybe adding an extra cannon per side on the gallion and again on the sloop.
This would balance the meta to 1,2,3,4,5,6 crew to cannon ratio (all above ideas included gunboat to MOW, 6 ship meta)
@shoothere4exp I mean, RARE did say we would have a "variety of ships to choose from..." This only makes sense in my mind, and is hopefully close to what we will be seeing in the final release.
@shoothere4exp said in 5 Ship Types for Sea of Thieves (Speculation /Graphic):
NEW COMMUNITY WISHLIST GRAPHIC
A graph I made based on all your input, these are the most desired ships for the game! I can't please everybody, but your comments have all been very constructive!
Absolutely brilliant. Well done to all who contributed.
(I would love to sail a junk. I haven't been on one since my stint in China)
@laughsmaniacaly said in 5 Ship Types for Sea of Thieves (Speculation /Graphic):
@Deckhands
Hey guys any ideas how we could get this fed to the dev team?
@laughsmaniacaly Good Idea!
@ShadowStrider-7 Thank you! And the Junk would be pretty fun, the sails are really interesting and it could add a little aesthetic variety
@Ethnine Thats true! I have a sinking suspicion there are only 2 ships in game... but if they do at least have another one I would imagine its a Mid level Ship like a Brig
@shoothere4exp Is two a variety? I feel like when I hear that word I think more like 4 or 5. But yeah, maybe it is only 2. I sure hope its not though.
@ethnine It's been confirmed that they will be adding more ships to the game (though not said when this will be). If they're lacking ideas, this thread would be a great place to start!
@ethnine Technically it is... and maybe I'm just jaded by other developers who would misuse "variety" to imply there is more there at launch than reality. However I have come to trust that Rare really wants to make a game they and the community would want to play... so I really want to hope that "variety" means at least 3... and I would be overjoyed if it was actually 4 or 5. I'm going to be cautiously optimistic...that way I'm not let down if its only 2
But I really think the awesome response to this thread shows that the The Community Wants a REAL Variety of Ships, thats why I would love it if we could get this to the Devs @Deckhands. It will either confirm the work they've alreeady done to add more ships, or if they havent planned on it maybe help tip them in that direction for post-launch content.
@Ethnine Consider this too... For every ship they add they have to Re-Rig the Kraken and add new animations and physics specifically for that ship model.
@knightx13 Having worked in software development and dealt with customers, a lesson you learn early is to never promise them anything. If you so much as give a hint that something might be coming, the customer assumes that it is and might try to hold you accountable for whatever you said you might add. Plus, I've only dealt with individuals representing other companies, not huge pools of people like this.
If I was working at Rare as a software developer, I would never post on the forums for that very reason, because a forum is a pool of customers, and any post I make here might be seen as commitment. I would just lurk around looking at what people are saying and discussing high quality posts like this internally over lunch breaks with my colleagues. If I did post, it would be with an unofficial account to not draw attention.
Though high quality posts like this are great. Stuff like this gets the creative gears turning in the heads of designers and software developers.
@cows-n-muffins Couldn't agree more mate, even we fall under heavy scrutiny for things we like say (understandably given the position) and makes it hard to give personal accounts, opinions, or thoughts.
@ShootHere4EXP I will echo @KnightX13's sentiments that I love the thought and effort that you've put into this thread, very neat and concise and it definitely shows!
@shoothere4exp said in 5 Ship Types for Sea of Thieves (Speculation /Graphic):
NEW COMMUNITY WISHLIST GRAPHIC
A graph I made based on all your input, these are the most desired ships for the game! I can't please everybody, but your comments have all been very constructive!
This is the best iteration of all of your graphs! Love it man. I could stare at these drawings all day.
@laughsmaniacaly I understand completely that the idea is to be undermanned. I'm just saying that I think the galleon is dramatically undermanned with 4 players, and still very undermanned with 6. With 6 players you have one at the helm, 3 at cannons, and 2 on sails. That still leaves several stations that might need to be manned such as the 4th cannon, repairs and bailing, boarding another ship, long-range firing, or dropping all cannons/repairs to get the sails fixed instantly by 6 people.
Currently, the galleon is dramatically understaffed at just 4 compared to the sloop at 2. Consider that all 4 people on the galleon's anchor is still slower than just a single person raising the sloop's anchor. Or 2 people on a galleon's sail is still slower than 1 person on the sloop's sail. Or how you will eventually need 2 people on reps because you will be too slow to walk around in the lower decks when they are mostly filled with water, requiring 1 bucket guy and 1 repair guy, whereas the sloop almost never gets to that point since you can bucket from above the surface level at the mid deck window.
The galleon has been taken to an undermanned level that is far and away too ridiculous. It would still be very undermanned if you add 2 people to it.
6 people on the galleon is still undermanned? If you had eight people on a galleon that thing would be unstoppable. It would never sink unless the ship ran out of planks. No way. Four or five should be the max for that ship.
@psych0-knightro To be fair, they practically never sink as it is now with 4 people unless a boarding is involved or the players left the ship to attempt to board the enemy. But in a straight-up 4 v 4 naval only fight where no one leaves their posts or gets killed by cannonfire, sinking rarely ever occurs amongst skilled players. I would attribute that to the fact that we need more ways to damage ships.
My main concern is that the galleon is one of the largest types of ships in this era. With it being at 4, and the sloop being at 2, that doesn't leave much room for the huge amount of variety that should exist in between those ship sizes. I'm concerned about the future when Rare is trying to add more ships.
@natsu-v2 I'll be honest and say that these were things I'd hoped to test in beta but was unfortunately not able to play on many days due to technical problems. The measurement of capstan speed of 4 v 1 comparative to each ship allong with sail speeds and some other "tests" were things i never ended up seeing, it's therefore not in my ability to give an honest account to the ships balance.
I did find that whilst in the gallion i was comfortable doing my part around a crew (my luck they all had headsets and spoke) and that during combat we were more than competent to man every station as needed. Again i suppose this comes down to the crew you sail with and the intercrew communication.
Similarly when in the sloop i was able take out a gallion (3 in total but 1 hit a rock trying to chase me, the other was taken out by a nearby fort during our engagement) although was sank afew times as well.
I feel that from what I've played these two felt very balanced however I've said since day one of joining that more variety was needed. This thread really brings that feeling into perspective.
@sloshed-smurf still questionable given the meta displayed,
If a gunboat could tail the MOW it could fire forward putting some holes in low down, the hitbox for it would mean it is significantly harder to hit even with 6 cannons blazing, a small wave would straight up block any incoming fire. Adjustments to the gunboat are theoretically only 2 steps away at any point and any holes are immediately visible to act and repair. On the other hand the MOW is slow to turn, requires communication between crew would have limited visibility below deck and has multiple levels to monitor for damage, should they try to persue an attack (in a classic hit and run style) they'll have to set all three sails (+any others i can't see) raise the anchor if dropped, adjust each sail and then turn the helm to adjust heading. By this time the gunboat has patched repairs if needed and swung round for a second or third run. I'd say the encounter would be great, hell I'd even want an achievement (David Vs Goliath - sink a man o war as a gunboat)
@shoothere4exp
Amazing!!
Have them giving us a praho (the junk), and tonnerre de Brest! I'll bring to your deck a day worth of chests when we'll sail again, may I be damned and sink like a stone !!
I think you are onto something here... really like the diversity and the chance to have larger groups 5-6 crewed ships. Other than that there would be a few things I would tweak but mostly for the esthetics of the game. Since there is an obviously Chinese ship the Junk, why not add flare to the rest, British Man o' War with lots of adornments, Spanish Galleon with its broad body and large sails, change the Brig to a french Belem and give it the sleek look of one, and maybe make the Gun Boat more like a Nordic Karve. (Just some thoughts...)
@sloshed-smurf The idea to me is that The Man Of War would be a rare ship, given how many players it takes to crew it. Therefore coming across it would almost be like a PVP boss battle. We already see sloops teaming up on Galleons, I think with a Man of War we would see that even more. And the games are instanced in a way that you're never stuck on one server with more or less ships, you're constantly being moved.
@TXSpadez13 Hopefully the In-game SHip Customization will allow you to add all that flare and adornment to your liking, so we dont have to have entire ships with different styles. I do like the idea however from a standpoint of trying to keep the ship silhouettes different and reconizable.
@laughsmaniacaly @sloshed-smurf indeed, I don't think the crew would be too interested in wasting too much time after a simple sloop. Their main objectives should be larger ones, like galleons.
Not taking into account those fools carrying all those chests all over their sloops of course ;)
@shoothere4exp it's so pretty, i love the internal layout it's both open for access and yet looks confusing as hell to navigate lol.
Any digital artists wanna try and crack this out to a 3D model. Preferably with a fly through tour.
@shoothere4exp thats awesome. i like how the stairs are, because of the layout you could use them to your advantage in below deck pvp situations.
