Devlog: The Road to v1.1--Ships and Ship Combat

Now that PotBS has been gold for a couple of weeks it's time for a patch. Version 1.1 shows to fix things that didn't get changed in beta. A new Devlog has been published showing all the changes that will be made to ships and ship combat in version 1.1.

NPC AI Fixes
NPC ships had a hard time changing targets even when somebody was really pounding at them. You could really tick off an NPC ship and get it to follow you while your allies trailed behind peppering it with volleys. We've made them smarter about who they should be angriest at, so now they'll change targets in a way that better reflects where the real threat is.

NPC ships will surrender under certain circumstances. The way the surrender math worked, an NPC could suddenly surrender even though you hadn't fired on it recently. This is because it's evaluating damage over time and other factors that don't necessarily correspond to having just been shot at. While the math was reasonable, it was very strange for the NPC to suddenly surrender if you hadn't fired at them for a bit. We've modified how NPC surrender works so that even if they want to surrender, they won't do so until the next time they get shot at. This feels much better.

Finally, there were rare/elite ships out there who wouldn't attack you. We fixed those so they'll actually be elite, instead of being elite-crippled.

Outfitting Fixes
Due to a code issue, several outfitting items (such as Grappling Ladders, Superior) would show one number in their tooltip, but a different one in your ship character sheet. We found the source of this bug and fixed it.

Some outfitting that improved your guns' max range was overpowered. For example, you could set up a Lancer Cutter to have a max range of 850y, which is just crazy. To address this, we slightly reduced how much outfitting can affect max range. We also made some adjustments to the Long Guns item, greatly reducing its max range bonus. To compensate, Long Guns now has less of a reload penalty and has a new accuracy bonus. We also made it so you can't equip multiple Long Guns items on a single ship. These changes mean that in the example of the Lancer Cutter, the max range with outfitting is now about 650y. That's still a good boost but it's not nearly as crazy as it was.

Ship Fixes
The Arcadia had one gundeck of 13 9lb guns. This was an oversight, so the Arcadia now has a gundeck of 11 9lb guns and a topdeck of 2 4lb guns.

Many civilian ships were higher level than they really should have been and a couple were lower level. Civilian ships are the el cheapo, somewhat nerfed ships you can buy from the ship deed merchant in shops. In v1.1, the following civilian ships dropped levels:

Civilian Ketch: From level 9 to level 8
Civilian Curieuse: From 15 to 14
Civilian Packetboat: From 17 to 16
Civilian Lexington: From 20 to 18
Civilian Dromedary: From 23 to 22
Civilian Mignone: From 43 to 40

And these civilian ships gained levels:

Civilian Xebec: From 16 to 17
Civilian Cerberus: From 28 to 29

The Packet-Boat gained speed, cargo capacity, and target tracking bonuses, and also had its level increased. The Intrepid privateer refit gained two guns, since the refit isn't supposed to have fewer guns than the base ship. And the Hellbrand West Indiaman got smaller guns, since we recently changed it from a large ship to a medium one.

Conclusion
That wraps up this installment! As you can see, we are making careful, targeted changes to ship combat to address specific issues. More improvements to NPC ship AI and of course more tuning will be included in v1.2.

Stay tuned for our next devlog on the cool stuff in v1.1. And don't forget to go try the new changes out for yourself on the Testbed server!

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