Steel feedback.

Sunless Sea
41

My thoughts about Steel:

  • It’s sooo much better than the old combat system[/li][li]The firing arcs should change colour to indicate how far along the firing solution is (red->yellow->green, where green is 100% hit)[/li][li]The firing arcs could (in my opinion) be a lot more subtle/transparent[/li][li]An indication of when the enemy has seen you/combat has actually started would be very useful[/li][li]At the moment, my combat tactic is always to sail backwards, keeping the enemy in range of my forward gun. This feels very strange, and it would be nice to have the combat feel more ‘proper’. Perhaps don’t have forward guns, but only port/starboard (or have the forward guns be very weak, but fire quickly, so they are good for weak enemies only). I don’t really have a good solution for this one though[/li][li]Some indication of where enemies are at in their firing solution would be nice, but not vital.[/li][li]More possibilities for staying out of enemy firing arcs and other strategic maneuvering would be very nice. The maneuvering feels quite arcade/strange at the moment[/li][li]The fact that many enemies can one or two shot kill you has been mentioned several times in this thread, and I agree that it shouldn’t be like that. Perhaps methods of dodging shots just as/before they are fired? E.g. putting on a burst of speed, which may damage your engines in the long run, but avoids certain death right now.[/li][li]Not Steel specific, but waiting for the RNG to spit out a specific random event is painful, and in my opinion the one worst thing about this game. For example, I only need one item for the curator, but getting it requires the same (very rare) event to pop up twice. I’ve been sitting at the port for ages, just waiting for Sometime Awaits You to pop up and going back into the port over and over. Perhaps, each time SAY happens, events that AREN’T triggered become slightly more likely, so over the course of 10-20 SAY events you are almost guaranteed to get the rarer events?[/li][li]For terror, in my opinion you should return to the old terror increase speed, to make exploration properly terrifying, but then stop terror increase entirely during combat - who has time to be terrified in the heat of battle?
42

Oh yes, also, when a shot is fired:

  • Please add a proper ‘cannon-ish’ sound effect. The whistle sounds is odd[/li][li]Please fire at the point where the enemy will be when the shot lands (or as close as you can calculate), not at where the enemy is when the shot launches. If feels odd to damage the enemy when the graphics appear to show a miss
43

I haven’t played the Steel yet. However, I see the terror has been tuned down and I find it a bit of a pity… in the Emerald is was pretty good, manageable without being a walk in the park.
Tuning it down too much subtracts part of the experience of the darkness of the Neath.
I agree with Infinitemonkey that it should be stopped during combat though.

44

The terror reduction’s for testing purposes rather than a permanent feature at this point.

45

Yup. All I’m meaning is that when they return it to ‘normal’, I think that a good behaviour would be to reduce it during combat, rather than have a single rate both in and out of combat :)

46

It would be nice to have a “sharper” difference in damage for specialized weapons.

As now (Iron 107), my heartender does 63 damage against ship and 65 damage agains beasties, for a 5% difference, more or less. I do not find it to be a really appreciable difference.

Perhaps having something like 80%-90% damage while hitting things you are not specialized against (beasties for cannons, ships for harpoons) and 110 - 120% damage agains those who are specialized against may help to feel difference between “Admiralty/pirate ships” and “Monster Hunter ships.”

47

Has anyone encountered Mt Nomad since Steel? It doesn’t spawn in my games now.

48

[quote=Owen Wulf]I believe the tactic of boarding wasn’t really a part of naval warfare by the time steamships were par for the course. Boarding a fully manned enemy ship is a bloody and messy affair, and a huge risk. I’m pretty sure that steamships were also produced quickly enough that the rewards of such a tactic (a captured ship) did not justify the costs in lives lost. Better to sink a ship and move on I would think. The game already allows us to try and salvage a defeated ship for a bounty - after the crew has been dealt with of course.
[/quote]

I just tried to research this and unfortunately it seems like there just aren’t many historical examples of steamship battles period, so I’m not sure if this question has an answer. I did find a neat list of naval actions in the time period, though:

http://www.cityofart.net/bship/great_battles.html

49

[quote=Dr. Hieronymous Alloy][quote=Owen Wulf]I believe the tactic of boarding wasn’t really a part of naval warfare by the time steamships were par for the course. Boarding a fully manned enemy ship is a bloody and messy affair, and a huge risk. I’m pretty sure that steamships were also produced quickly enough that the rewards of such a tactic (a captured ship) did not justify the costs in lives lost. Better to sink a ship and move on I would think. The game already allows us to try and salvage a defeated ship for a bounty - after the crew has been dealt with of course.
[/quote]

I just tried to research this and unfortunately it seems like there just aren’t many historical examples of steamship battles period, so I’m not sure if this question has an answer. I did find a neat list of naval actions in the time period, though:[/quote]

better armor led to better guns.

the old-school muzzle-loading cannon from the Age of Sail weren’t very effective. ranges were short, the shots underpowered (relative to the target they faced), and wood doesn’t like to sink. so ‘kills’ by gunfire in combat were unusual. that limited your options. you could either shoot the target’s rigging and leave them adrift (French) or blast the hull & decks in hopes of crippling the crew and easing the way for seizure by boarding or outright surrender. most naval ‘victories’ from the era came from these seizures and it was the most effective way to decide battle. it was also insanely profitable.

the introduction of iron plate just made things worse, rendering the already lame guns of that day near worthless. but science being science, engineers quickly moved to develop the precursors of modern naval guns: high-explosive, conical shells fired from super-accurate high velocity guns using advanced optics and mathematics for targeting.

by the late 19th century, you could reliably dead-eye &quotdistant&quot targets with shots that not only busted through heavy armor but also had the capacity to blow everything around the impact point straight to hell in a blaze of flaming glory. for the first time in naval history, getting sunk at range was a real possibility, which meant &quotgetting close&quot was now akin to suicide. the introduction of early torpedoes only aggravated the situation.

so boarding became extremely dangerous and largely unnecessary.

P.S. the ships themselves were ‘meh’ on the cash scale. pricey, but whatevs. the real prize were the guns they carried. iron wasn’t cheap back then, especially in those quantities and in the qualities necessary for naval gun builds. building a man o’war was national pocket change. ARMING it could bankrupt the treasury, a fact that bedeviled Britain, France, Spain, and the Netherlands for over three centuries. (the Dutch especially; they had the cash to build man-o’-wars big enough to carry a hundred guns, but they never floated more than 68 because the cost of the other 32 was too much to bear.) the rate of exchange was roughly &quotone large world-class warfleet = 100 guns = one large Dutchy and/or small city-state in fee, for the use of the buyer and his heirs for now and into all perpetuity to do with and tax as he and his heirs shall please & by profit&quot.

EDIT: that is, the cost to build ONE first-rate warship was roughly equal to just a couple of the 100+ guns it might have carried.
[li]
edited by Psst! on 10/6/2014[/li][li]
edited by Psst! on 10/6/2014

50

I’m not actually sure how easy it would be to include broadsides in-setting. With the light-level of the Neath being what it is (i.e. pitch-black), you can only really have guns pointing in the same direction as your illumination via glim-lamp. If you haven’t idled with the lights on, you may not have noticed, but the lights consume a huge amount of fuel (heating glim to the temperature at which it produces light is not easy.), making it difficult to practicably include more lamps on a zee-ship. You obviously need a lamp facing the primary direction of travel, so there we are.

51

Do not worry. It still there, in the NORTH, waiting to crush your juicy bones and soul.
This said, what about a keyboard shortcut for firing?[li]
edited by Mizr. Edlaine Saphburgh on 10/7/2014

52

I almost feel like what combat really needs is a time dilation/ zoom in effect. Just make manuevering, travelling distance, burning fuel, etc., all take twice as long, so you have time to maneuver and zoom and aim and click the &quotFULL POWER&quot button and so forth while still fighting.

53

Unfortunately it seems to be possible to exploit terrain to get melee creatures hung up and unable to attack. Just killed a colossal fluke-core, a bound shark, and a few other beasts that way.[li][/li][li]
[/li][li]Overall I really like the framework but it needs some more depth added.[/li][li]
edited by Dr. Hieronymous Alloy on 10/8/2014

54

I like the new combat, for the most part; where the old system felt like busy work, the new combat actually feels fairly dynamic and engaging. I have had some issues with enemy behavior, though; sometimes, zee beasts (those pesky auroral megalops mostly, but it’s happened once with bats too) will follow me all the way into London’s port when they used to avoid that area before the update. Even if I dock, the beast in question will just mill about in front of the port (or even rub up against my docked ship like an affectionate cat), effectively trapping me until I manage to force my way out onto open waters (usually at the cost of a not-insignificant portion of my Hull) where I can actually turn around and fire on the offending beast. This definitely feels like something that shouldn’t be happening, so I checked the change notes to see what could be causing the problem and found this in the &quotKnown Issues&quot section:

Yeah, I’d say &quoterratic&quot is a pretty good way to describe it. Hopefully it gets fixed soon; those wimpy little (giant) crabs probably weren’t intended to be quite so troublesome.

55

Are there any significant changes between the Steel Beta Branch and the official Steel release?

56

Wandered into Steam to get the Steel update, hoping we get the Mac Humble issue fixed soon.

Two items of immediate feedback.
(i) Why is the activation range for weapons so close? I have to be basically touching an enemy for combat to begin, despite a much longer effective range - or am I missing something?

(ii) Is the D____nation cannon actually available yet? It’s not active for me.

57

Actually, none of the Aft guns appear purchasable…?

Edit: they are, but only after selling off all existing guns - not just emptying the Aft slot. Then I can buy an Aft gun - which prevent purchase of either Deck or Forward guns until it’s equipped, but buying-and-installing one at a time permits all three. Very odd. That secure storage didn’t seem important anyway, though…
edited by Ewan C. on 10/9/2014

58

Beware Jillyfish. My first hit from one took 80 hull, and they apparently leave NO reward behind when killed… :(

59

Well, that was a bit annoying. I hadn’t seen the video of the new battle look before playing today, so my initial reaction was, “Huh? What? How? AAAAAAHHHH!”

Then I died.

60

Only had one quick game - impressions so far:
Too easy to die - ship turns too slowly; other ships seem to be more maneuverable than you.
Not intuitive enough to figure out how to fire/whether you’re locked on etc. By the time I’d figured out what was going on, I’d taken a hit.

As per other contributors, I’d like to see
ship armour
adjusted maneuvering
How about auto fire a-la FTL combat? So long as you can keep the enemy in the fire arc, your gunnery crew fires at will.
I haven’t checked elsewhere in the forums, but what about the idea of combat instances, instead of doing it on the main map? Surely the main map is not all to scale.

I’ve found it awkward and frustrating so far, but will persist.