The combat system is in a terrible state at the moment. Not only do we have a major problem where we are unable to parent our boats, aircraft, ect thanks to the outdated combat system, we also have a lot of issues relating simply to how things work. For example: The current prices of weapons are all over the place and do not benefit boat vs boat combat, at all. Below is my own suggestions to redoing the current prices in order to bring boat vs boat combat to the forefront, and I'll try to explain why it needs to be done. Current Prices will be this color Revision Prices will be this color Cannons - 40 | 10 Flak Gun - 150 | 20 .50 Caliber Gun - 75 | 50 Bomb - 75 | 50 Aircraft Turret - 30 | 20 As stated before, the prices are redone to benefit ship vs ship combat. At the current prices, spawning a ship with ten cannons, will inevitably cost the user roughly 400 gold. This sets the bar far to high for players to have any reasonable fun with going against other ships in the ocean, and thanks to how most builders are not 5+ year veterans like some of our SGC members, most do not know how to make a boat which can take some punishment. What you get is a system which punishes new players far to much, and doesn't give them a chance to explore and go into combat with more experienced players. We are killing ducklings as soon as they exit their egg. By reducing the prices of cannons to 10 gold per, we allow players, old and new alike, to have more fun in simply going out with whatever boat they have and doing combat with other players, without such a huge risk caused by initial gold input to use a vessel. Same thing goes with all of the other weapons, hell the current price of Flak is directly responsible for why their are so many aircraft on the server.
I actually agree, you could even justify in the lack of technological complexity that a cannon has in front of a flak gun, or a turret with out going that far. And it'll probably benefit a lot boat v boat combat. But id' not lower any other prices than cannons and flaks ( to 100 ). Then 50's should be WAY more cheap than a flak gun.
Well, I would love the cannons to be dropped to that price, as I would only be paying 160 Gold for a fully armed warship, which means I could grind oil once and then fight for hours. However in spite of how alluring that is, and as much as Locko's point about the technology difference between 1700s tech vs 1900s tech makes sense; we need to remember that the ship cannons are currently the strongest per hit weapons available, which I think justifies their price. Joey has a good point about the high price of Flak Turrets being detrimental to anti-aircraft warfare. I do believe that the price of the Flak Turrets need to be reduced, in fact I believe that the Flak Turrets should cost slightly less than the 50cal MGs due to the fact that the later are all-purpose weapons while the former are only effective against aeroplanes (unless we want to change the Flak Turrets to also be all-purpose weapons). Of course granted, the Flak Turrets have unlimited ammunition, while 50cal MGs are limited to what, 200 rounds? And cannot be reloaded at sea. Another thing we can do to promote ship use, is we could also change the turret control rule and allow a ship captain to control a Flak Turret in addition to their broadsides/cannon turret (I admit I bend the rules and already do this myself, and have allowed the Regulars to do so, but just 1 Flak Turret only).
The change of the rule would produce the same results without having to enter the games coding and changing the numbers. I'm in support of that.
