Wormerine

I can't say that because I have trouble visulizing what you are suggesting. Do you play sailors in turns? You raise hull number by using a sailor? Is it supposed to fit within existing system? If not building entirly new engine and gameplay two months before release seems like a bonkers idea. What would core gameplay revolve around? Deckbuilding? Resource management? Do you equip ship with cards and than it playout by itself? I would rather stick to traditional naval gameplay, and improve its representation in turnbased minigame, as it is now.

@DexGames It seems like they are developing minigame combat system to me. I was expecting "sea combat" to me more of a scripted scenario before boarding. I am not sure what takes more work at this stage - improving relatively simple combat system or handcrafting bunch of unique encounters. We will see. Derelict ship SI was really cool.

"Report to stations!" You can move crew members around - of someone get wounded you need to move them to be treated (bottom right corner) and replace them with someone from reserve (the same bottom right corner). You also need to use it to assign people to fix "events" like fire, loose cargo etc. which can happen upon being hit.

World map does seem to have “style” problem, like lots of different versions of wold map clashing with each other. I personally like the map look they had going on early on, but apparently it didn’t work out too well. I don’t mind the world map, but it does stick out compared to wonderful town views and scripted interactions. I still think it looks better than “Storm of Zehir” ). I wouldn’t mind a better character pointer, but a walking miniature of our character isn’t what I am looking for. I find those more abstract and fake than a pointer with your portrait on it.

I might be making things up, but won’t you be able to fund crew visit to brothel etc. to boost morale? It’s been a while since I watched streams, so I might be hallucinating. If drain on resources would turn out to be too much, food&water could be automated - ship can carry certain amounts of supplies and will get automatically replenished when visiting a city with a port. To be honest that’s what I was expecting when Josh mentioned supplies a while ago. I do like interaction between party food and crew food, and I like economies in games, so hopefully it will be balanced well and will remain as it is.

I think it depends more or marketing than what actually is in the game. It’s a bit like saying “Gwent in Wicher3 will be disappointing because there are much better card games out there”. If witcher were advertised as game card then sure. But it wasn’t, just as Deadfire isn’t advertised and pirate game. The issue is this: will ship2ship combat be as fun and addictive as Gwent? Right now, it is nowhere near it and it is not a skippable as Gwent in W3. We will see what will they show in an update couple weeks from now.

I think the system show a lot of promise, but it’s like a rule set hasn’t been implimented yet. Either way the last update stated that: “In a few weeks, we'll be back with an update that will go in-depth into the ship system, so stay tuned for Update 45!” I assume this means this is not a fully developed ship system just yet. I seem to be another spectrum. I expected throwaway scripted interaction, but we got what seems like a legit system intertwined with game economy and party resting system. There is a danger of it becoming more of a chore and waste of resources, but this new beta gave me high hopes. All the foundations are there, but the gameplay needs to be fleshed out.

You don’t get bonuses to balance not having a pet. You can summon your pet for 1 bond, and it last a while. When it dies you don’t get penalty for that, after which you can resummon it. It does have ghostly look, which can be sometime annoying - it’s easy to loose sight of it, when things get messy.

I don’t think this element of a game needs much more work - it received much more dedicated UI and systems than I ever dreamed of. I don’t think he combat needs more systems, but to give existing ones a tiny bit of depth. I think the idea is to have a bit of a chess match with your enemy - try to be outside range when enemy shoots/do a full sail for better evasion and attack him when he is vonourable. Seems legit. However here are problem and suggestions: 1) Right now, things like wind or finer degrees of movement for straining, would just add to teidiousness, rather than fun. I could see an addition of wind as a “advantage” solver. Right now “advantage” seems random, or based on your captain level. How about random wind direction in every round, and if you end up adjusting to it (having it blowing from behind - it know it’s not how it works), you get advantage bonus for the next round. 2) Right now it doesn’t matter what direction your ship is facing an enemy - chances to get hit are the same. That makes facing your enemy with bow/stern side completely useless unless you flee or charge your enemy. 3) doing a Jibe (180D turn) has not penelties and always works. With 1 turn reload, ship2ship combat comes down to hold (for accuracy), shoot, jibe, hold, shoot, jibe, hold etc. Anything else is a waste of time as you can’t avoid enemy ship, and evasion is minimal making super aggressive play the only way to go, 4) full and half sail don’t work properly. The tooltip says you get -50% for low deckhand crew, but tooltips seem also broken. Whatever the problem is: full sail and half sail are currently the same thing. They give you same evasion, they move you the same distance. I assume that’s a bug. Right now using “sail” is only useful when fleeing combat and again, it comes down to: halfsail, halfsail, stop and repeat. 5) there is no way to sail around an enemy (change his position regarding to yours). That’s a big problem - he is about to ready to fire - nothing you can do. Movement evasion bonus are minimal, no difference in how you are positioned. Full sail should allow you to move away from an enemy line of fire. 6) I don’t think we need different types of ammo - different cannon types will do - but we need more sidegrades than linear upgrades. Linear upgrades are ok, but more variety of guns is needed - differing in range, damage, reload time, possibly requires crew to operate. EDIT. That somewhat might be a case already. While currently implimented round ammo cannons seem to be atraight upgrades (bigger damage, bigger range), their minimum range also gets bigger (with min, 400m for the “best” cannon) making them useless in close range - a weapon equipped fully with “weaker” cannons could either move closer and use accuriacy bonus, or charge enemy without much fear of being hit. A mix of cannons might a good choice for versatile ranges, or dancing around preferred range for advantage - however, long range fight also makes it easier for enemy to escape. 7) automated commands for boarding and fleeing estimating your chances based on your damage and speed for quick battle resolution. I don’t think those are massive additions. Giving different evasion properties to different sides and making jibe emergency use only, should give some depth to positioning. Being able to once per round sail around enemy would give and option to get away from firing range and take a shot at harder to hit side, or opposite - you could fullsail into enemy broad side with evasion bonus and shot at him next round. Different cannons would be useful in different ranges, encouraging moving around in distance depending on your enemy equipment. I really think that would do it. Oh and I do like adding wind for “advantage” bonus resolver - it might encourage taking risky position for a better next round. If both ships are facing than its 50-50.

I don’t think that’s true. I don’t see how you could get higher maintence cost than in the beta - the ship you get is fully upgraded with full crew. I imagine you will start with only few sailors, which should lower cost significantly. While I don’t mind the money pressure, there will be a need to passively or easily generate income. Maybe “rent” unused ships? Easy to do raids, on your way to destination?

I think so. Probably also a way to indirectly direct your exploration (can’t venture to far, need to find ports for connection etc.) It has been confirmed that there is no wind. One of the players gets “advantage” every round and he starts the round and has movement bonus (+20m). What triggers this advantage (captain rank?) - have no idea.

I did it while in town (as if physically with my party in town) with "ship management view" (H). It worked without any problems. I am thinking - straight more powerful version of a gun, could be balanced by requiring two crew to operate. I am still kinda bothered that one crew member operates cannons on BOTH SIDES of the ship. Skilled chaps - running from one side of a ship to another, aiming, firing, reloading two cannons while ship constatly does wild 180Degree turns.

ah! Thank you sir. For reference here are all available cannons: Hull damaging: Sail damaging: You can equip spawned cannons when docked in Tikiwara (you can only swap ship items when docked in the port): Didn't test them in actual combat. Hull canons are indeed simple passive upgrades. Chainshot might be more of a sidegrade, but with short range, and currently no functionality to fullsail, it is rather useless.

Two new oddities to report, Captain! 1) I was fighting this chap (found right below Tikiwara): First I defeated her by boarding the ship, however after the fight I got nothing: As i remember that not being the case before, I replayed the battle using boarding autosave but with the same result. I defeated her once again, this time in ship2ship combat and this time I got the loot: 2) The second one might be a bug, or a feature. I wanted to test this issue on a next ship to see, if the same will happen. I was charging him, however I had spare actions so I took a close range shot a him - and I one shotted him. Literally, my first salve in the battle, one cannon hit for 7 damage and KABOOOOOOM: I am not sure, if the victory message is a flavour text, or I actually got a lucky roll and hit his powder reserves blewing him sky high. I got all the loot anyway, which if it was scripted would make little sense as the ship... well, exploded. PS. Yes, @IndiraLightfoot, I plagiarized your Barrage Witch build.

I... haven't realized they added exploration utility potions. ) Good catch. In that case, it would make sense to allow you to drink one, if you have it equipped, before attempting check in scripted interactions.

AddExperienceToLevel <amount>

I am hoping for a bit more energeting, adventerous take on PoE1 title theme.

Oh, did you manage to find different cannons, or did you just investigate enemies? That's disappointed to hear that they are straight upgrades. I kinda assumed they will provide different utilities. Longer range/longer reload, short range/more damage etc. 3 types of ammo are kinda a staple of ship2ship combat. I would be happy for it to come back.

It depends whenever it is group effort or single character. In scripted interactions you get to pick a single character to perform an action - in this case only his skills will be checked.

I don't think there is a way to "sail around" an enemy (change his position in relation to yours). The only thing you control right now is how close you are to the enemy (represented by [<amount>m] on "radar" on the bottom of the screen, and your position in relation to enemy (facing him with stern, bow, port side or starboard side). You can change your distance between you and enemy by facing him with stern/bow and making a full/half sail move.

A better question would be: Is this feedback taken into account for the 1.0 release. Not so long ago Josh twitted an image of passives, and those aren't available in the BB, even though they have been requested and confirmed a while ago. Overall, BB received relatively few fixes & improvements. I suspect that BB built is a seperate beast (right now, it looks like they shoved in ship mechanics, but many of it's threads are completly dangling unconnected to anything - like shop, or items) and they simply don't impliment into it things they don't want us to have a look at. It makes sense - developing and updating different built might not be the best use of resources, considering the only build which will really matter is 1.0. It is a test beta, after all, not Early Access title.

Ha. Good stuff. The first one (companions not resting on the ship) is not a bug - they don’t consume food while traveling, and you give them food when manually resting. Companions injury system is different than crew members injuries. Being able to rest while on a go might be a worthy addition, but I wonder how it could be implimented - maybe an upgradable “rest in cabin” option, like in PoE1 stronghold. Feeding them food with crew seems like a bad idea, as that would mean replacing resting bonuses outside our influence. Unless, we could assign seperate food/resting place for our companions while on the ship, but it seems like more hassle than it is worth it. After one full playthrough I might be wrong, but I don’t think moral goes down passively. It is tied to food quality, so if you feed them with water (0 moral) and hardtracks (-1 to moral) you end up loosing -<amount of crew members> per day. You can loose moral by getting your butt kicked in combat, gain moral by winning and even further by splitting cash with your crew. You can also raise moral by giving better quality food&drink to your mates - a nice supply of rum will boost your moral significantly.

Ha! Good. Deadfire will need some serious optimisation before release, but that extreme performance did seem rather odd. I am running much weaker machine and it’s semi serviceable.

Yes, please. Proficency screen assumes you know all weapons by heart, which is a problem as it is one of the first things new players will have to decide upon.

I didnt notice anything odd with it. Keep in mind that hardtracks give -1 morale. I didn't double check it, but I think that means -11 morale per day, if you feed everyone with hardtracks. I don't think there is "nothing is happening" penalty as there was in Pirates!. Yes, you need to move food from your stash to ship - that way you can prevent sailors to eat food you keep for your own. EDIT: I think it might be more useful if they also show for how many more days you can travel, aside food/water stats.