One-person ship

@rc-boarf said in One-person ship:

This game definitely needs a one-person ship, smaller than a sloop. Here's why :

• Being solo on a sloop is like being 2 on a gallion. It will obviously be less effective than a full crew on that same ship. But while you can choose to start your 2-people crew on a sloop instead of a gallion, you can't make that choice when you're solo on a sloop. This means you're always on disadvantage when you sail solo.

• Indeed, full crews can use their ship's characteristics to have a fair chance of winning a fight against another type of ship. Sloops can escape easily against gallions, as an example. But it gets unfair when you're not completely filling the ship with your crew. It doesn't matter if you're supposed to escape easily when you're running a brig, and a gallion is coming at you, because if you're 2v4, they're going to use their ship better and catch you eventually. This will happen because you won't be turning your sails as fast as they do, just because their crew and ship are full.

• Two people can't run a gallion efficiently. It will obviously be more efficient if they run a sloop. As a consequence, 2-people crew have to reason to choose a gallion, and won't be using their ship's potential if they pick a brig. Same with 2-people crews on a brig. The game is made so a 4-people crew will be using their ship's maximum potentiel if they run a gallion, 3-people crew a brig, and 2-people crew a sloop. But solo players can't reach that maximum potential on any ship.

• 2-people sloops, 3-people brigs and 4-people gallions are balanced by ships characteristics. Sloops are easier to handle and faster when facing wind, but are also slower when the wind comes from the back. Gallions are faster when wind is fully behind, and take a lot more time to get filled by water, but are heavy and can't turn as fast as the sloops. Brigs sit in the middle of those characteristics and are balanced as a consequence. Solo players are the only ones who have no choice but to use a ship that's too big for them, without any form of compensation.

• Sailing solo on a sloop also is a problem when you're completing missions on an island. Since you can't leave a player on your ship so he escapes with it if someone approaches, you have no choice but to leave it abandoned on the beach when you go in a cave. If you hear/see another ship coming at you, either you barely escape before they reach you, because you can't make your sloop move as fast as if you were two in your crew, or they hit you before you leave and you're stuck on the beach because you can't use both sails to escape, and planks to repair at the same time. Solo players need a ship whose potentiel can be reached by a single man, just to compensate the lack of possibilities when you have to put a feet on land.

• Enough speaking about the unfairness of being solo on a sloop. Adding solo players ships would also make more ships on a server, without changing servers capacity speaking of number of players.

• More ships on the map would also mean more PvP random encounters. Reaper's mark is offering players a way to find other people, but obviously there's no mystery anymore. What was fun about Sea of Thieves was the suspense, when you didn't know if the ship coming at you was going to be friendly or not. Now, PvP players are either using the Arena mode or the Reaper's mark to find someone to fight. The game became cleary PvE-oriented and it shouldn't be this way, since this was not the game's purpose in the first place. More ships would mean more possibilities on your journey.

Since it might be difficult to make a smaller ship than the sloop, I think the 1-man ship should be just a little bit smaller in terms of size, with a smaller number of potential holes in the wood. But on the other hand, maybe this ship shouldn't be capable of taking a jolly-boat with it ? I don't know. Anyway, anchor, sails, wheel would be faster to use/turn/raise, ship would be faster facing the wind than the sloop, and slower with the wind in its back. It's quite easy to balance in my opinion, and it's really needed.

@generalbuckfoi a dit dans One-person ship :

@spiralout46and2 @RC-Boarf

I have a solution, I call it:

"The Rowboat"

Where's my golden Nobel-Neate Forum Peace Prize?

Not only do you get the luxury of easy control solo, but you can also accomodate 4 people standing up. The concept the OP fails to understand is that the problems solo sloopers have is having to do wheel, anchor, cannons and sails - you can't remove those and if you make the ship any smaller you will literally be captaining a rubber dinghy (or, as I point out here, a rowboat!), that or you remove the ability to anchor, steer, cannon and move (brave perhaps but... ill-conceived).

Speed differs. Why talking about removing sails, anchor or cannons ? It's faster to do all of these on a sloop than on a brig or a gallion. Solo players need a boat where the same actions are needed, but are accomplished faster.

@rc-boarf Wait since when was 1 manning a sloop hard? The only ship I find truly difficult to 1 man is a galleon.... Even brig is very easy to 1 man if you know what you are doing (was my first ship too, lol that was fun to solo when I was new). If you don't want to play solo, don't play solo.
This may sound like a "git gud" post, but that is literally what you have to do, or just I don't know, not play solo? Sloop is very easy to 1 man, all the vital parts of the ship are right by eachother. (aside from repairs and cannons but you should avoid having to have repairs and with cannons you should just use them normally). If you find sloop hard to 1 man then you are doing something very wrong, it is literally the optimal 1 man ship for reasons stated above. I would advise watching some guides on youtube or playing long enough to understand how the game works.