corbs

[Ekcin 2,406]

Thing is you had not just to balance the knarr but destroy it. As long as a knarr is able to hold a wagon and four creature cages, it will be used even if you cut all else down (which would be cruel enough). Reason is that much of the internal infra of most servers has adapted to knarr, and dual use canals for internal communication ways. That is true for Xanadu in particular. So far it is in no way astonishing that the demand to destroy the knarr comes from NFI.

 

And I fail to see anything positive in such destruction. It would cause grief and pain, and players leaving. Generally spoken, I agree that in case of a full redesign on plain ground, the ship types might be designed differently. But mind that Wurm changed a lot. Ocean going large cargo ships were a thing when there were ways more inter server deliveries, bulk in particular, Freedom to Chaos, and Epic home servers to Elevation, but also inter Freedom. Knarr served a lot as raid vessels, and their maybe bit oversized hold adapted to the need of carrying combat needs, and lifting loot.

 

Also, Knarr were crucial in developping large continents like Xanadu, but also not few of the smaller servers. This may be bit different on NFI where the servers were designed so that everybody and my dog had a coastal spot. Thus many did not concentrate a lot on training their ship building skills, and now complain about the evil knarr, and that all the rest has to adapt.

 

Edit: And nobody even thought about nerfing terraforming or deed planning to make bridges more attractive.

 

edit2: Just a word about slayings. If my sailboats (even rowboats ) were as fast as a knarr, I would use them instead to attend slayings. Admittedly I love my cart "Rift Runner" and the team hitched to, as well as the battle mount. But I could well do without. So slayings are not an argument about knarr being OP. For knarr rendered unattractive for slayings it needed them rendered unable to carry a cart and 2-3 creature cages. I don't think that even Zue, much less you, are so insane.

Edited April 29, 2022 by Ekcin
addendum

[kordethbludscythe 762]

lessee i own 4 rowboats 6 sailboats 2 corbitas and 2 knarrs of which i am usually using each type several times a week depending on what i am trying to accomplish, sure i really like using my knarr, for hunting and sometimes to make a quick delivery...it is simply amazing how much hunting i can do with my knarr and rarely do i even load a cart or wagon in it i just go around the coastline dragging one of my horses on lead in case i need to jump out and kill something then bring its carcass back to the ship for processing when i get home. that is usually how i utilize my knarr on both north and south servers, however on the south servers i really go overbaord on hunting because of the plethora of aquatic critters  that dont seem to be on most northern servers

my sailboats are usually used for exploring or quick trips for singular alts, rowboats are used to navigate small waterways while the corbitas are my heavy haulers for deliveries to coastal areas

i have built all but 1 knarr myself and when the time comes i expect i will also be building at least 1 caravel just cause i think it would look awesome moored in the marinas harborage of the deed i live on. there are uses for all the ships (although i am not sure how i would use a cog i think they are kinda ugly) so lets not talk about nerfing any of them and get down more to the topic of DREDGING your Waterways! stop being lazy if you cant get your ship through it means others cant get through(yes i mean you cadence) this is really what is making people go more for the knarr versus other ships in the north because people simply cant be bothered to dredge the waterways that they build. and yes i know there are individuals on cadence that are trying to fix some of the rough spots but seriously whenever i make a waterway i try to make it so all boats can use it not just the shallow ones, and with that said i am currently making a shallow waterway for a landscape design that isnt intended for large draft boats  *it is called a creek for a reason*

[TheTrickster 2,284]

To be fair, there should be a greater cargo disparity between the corbita and the knarr, but also a greater speed disparity between the knarr and the corbita.  

 

Corbita:  greater cargo, wider, deeper draft, slower

Knarr; lesser cargo, narrower, shallower draft, faster.

 

Realistically, ease of construction is skewed in Wurm.  In fact, it could well be reversed - but that would surely set the cat among the pigeons.

[Ekcin 2,406]

To repeat: For an extraordinarily simple to craft merchant ship, the corbita is already seriously overpowered in terms of both cargo hold, and speed. This has mainly historical reasons, as there was ways more, especially bulk traffic, in the past between Epic home servers and Elevation, as well as Chaos and Freedom, also inter Freedom servers, and it took some time until players were able to craft the more complex ships.

 

Bulk traders in particular held whole inexpensive and easy to craft corbita fleets. Caravels look nice, but have you ever steered a Caravel squarely against a gale? I was unable to enter Fogshore tunnel area twice under such conditions (maybe higher ql would have fixed it). Also, the relatively low board at stern gives corbitas an edge over caravels and cogs as captain's clipping through the ceiling is much less likely.

 

So it seems bit frivolous to demand further buffs to an already overpowered vehicle. And sure, the knarr is advantaged in terms of hold. But, as I already wrote, seriously destroying that advantage would disrupt communications on many SFI servers, Xanadu in particular. And nerfing below destruction would just cause grief but make no sense.

 

Many features in Wurm are not "real world like", some annoying, others not so much, at least not for all (for example, I appreciate the liberal collision management, others complain about).

Edited April 29, 2022 by Ekcin

[TheTrickster 2,284]

We should definitely also remember that Wurm is fantasy.  These things are fantasy analogues of real world namesakes.  

[DaletheGood 1,073]

We should also remember that balance is not something we have or strive for in so many parts of Wurm. I don't think you could call weapons balanced. Sure there's lots of choices in weapons, but only like 4-5 are used by the majority of players. Same with Fighting, most players stick with Aggressive unless they're skilling up Defensive for tanking, and Weaponless isn't even a consideration for the vast majority of players. I mean if you're striving for balance then maybe we should nerf Aggressive fighting to force everyone to choose Weaponless. Or nerf the 2-handed weapons that everyone uses so wooden staff or short sword become more popular. And no, I'm not advocating either of those, just pointing out that balance is not the end-all/be-all of gameplay.

[Nomadikhan 2,196]

I don’t always have time to play wurm, but when I do, I still sail my corbita.

[Rishy 102]

Au contraire, we need bigger ships, that cannot pass through cave canals. Like cutters, clippers, modular ships where sails can be adjusted to weather; basically anything that has more sails than a caravel.

[Yggdrasil 231]

52 minutes ago, Rishy said:

Au contraire, we need bigger ships, that cannot pass through cave canals. Like cutters, clippers, modular ships where sails can be adjusted to weather; basically anything that has more sails than a caravel.

Make this man a dev right now

[Sheffie 1,120]

I don't think it would be good for the community to nerf knarrs dramatically. I do feel that their cargo capacity is too high, given their profile, so a small reduction might be in order. However, the knarr is likely to remain the most popular choice — and this is a good thing in terms of player retention.

 

I don't feel that corbitas really need to be buffed. As has been pointed out, they already offer a lot of "bang for the buck" in terms of ease of construction, cargo capacity, and speed. 

 

Arguably the caravel should be buffed in order to make it more desirable. I would think that a boost in cargo capacity, speed, or both, would easily be justified in terms of realism and in the interests of game balance (this ship ought to be better than a knarr in every respect, in deep water).

 

Once again, I'd like to humbly suggest that either a new vessel like the Wherry ought to be considered (a shallow water vessel with the same carrying capacity as a wagon) or the existing sailing boat could be upgraded to allow it to carry a couple of crates.

 

Either one of these would give us an easy to make, cheap, shallow water boat with some practical carrying capacity.

Edited April 30, 2022 by Sheffie

[Ekcin 2,406]

I agree that another, smaller shallow water vessel (the wherry proposal was interesting), or an upgrade of sailboat, and maybe also rowboat and raft (making it sittable) would be not bad. Nerfing the knarr just makes no sense. It would harm dwellers on inland lakes, boatmine owners, and workers on large infrastructure projects, adding grief and chores without any benefit. 

 

Admittedly, caravels are beautiful. prestigious, but not overly useful. Main reason is not lack of speed, much less of hold, but the fact that the days of large inter server bulk traffic are widely gone. Even when it flourished, fleets of corbitas were more useful in terms of cost efficiency, and hard to beat.

[Zuelatak 235]

  

On 4/28/2022 at 4:07 PM, Ekcin said:

Thing is you had not just to balance the knarr but destroy it

Extreme language. The goal is to make them equally used for their own unique situations.

On 4/28/2022 at 4:07 PM, Ekcin said:

And I fail to see anything positive in such destruction. It would cause grief and pain, and players leaving.

As I stated before when you said this,

On 4/27/2022 at 7:22 PM, Zuelatak said:

This unfortunately is just how balancing works. If you're going to criticize how poor it is then please also followup with your good design work solution and why you consider it poor, so that we may learn from you and do better. Otherwise, you're just holding us all back with no reasoning. 

If we are to balance knarrs and corbs so that corbs are used more. How would you do it? Anytime something is nerfed people will be mad and possibly quit. I exclusively use a knarr and would def be saddened if it got worse, but that feeling is trumped by my happiness that future players will not be as pressured as I was to use a knarr, because their choices will be more balanced. Why must we always discourage change and have new players suffer as much as we did.

On 4/30/2022 at 10:15 AM, Ekcin said:

without any benefit. 

Again the benefit is balance for the future. A sacrifice made by those in the present.

 

 

On 4/29/2022 at 12:27 AM, TheTrickster said:

Corbita:  greater cargo, wider, deeper draft, slower

Knarr; lesser cargo, narrower, shallower draft, faster.

Would love to see the corb and up get more carry capacity or for the knarr to be reduced.

 

 

On 4/29/2022 at 8:43 AM, DaletheGood said:

We should also remember that balance is not something we have or strive for in so many parts of Wurm. I don't think you could call weapons balanced. Sure there's lots of choices in weapons, but only like 4-5 are used by the majority of players. Same with Fighting, most players stick with Aggressive unless they're skilling up Defensive for tanking, and Weaponless isn't even a consideration for the vast majority of players. I mean if you're striving for balance then maybe we should nerf Aggressive fighting to force everyone to choose Weaponless. Or nerf the 2-handed weapons that everyone uses so wooden staff or short sword become more popular. And no, I'm not advocating either of those, just pointing out that balance is not the end-all/be-all of gameplay.

I'm not calling anything balanced in this thread. Just that knarrs are for sure the META and I think we should strive to fix it so that each boat has its strong use case. If you want other areas of Wurm to be balanced then start another thread cause we're talking about boats here. Balance is not the end-all/be-all, but neither is the opposite. None of this really adds to the conversation of how to balance boats or if people feel that boats are already balaned. 

 

 

 

On 4/30/2022 at 9:28 AM, Sheffie said:

knarr is likely to remain the most popular choice — and this is a good thing in terms of player retention.

Wait how is the knarr being used keeping players around? Sorry very confused.

On 4/30/2022 at 9:28 AM, Sheffie said:

Arguably the caravel should be buffed in order to make it more desirable. I would think that a boost in cargo capacity, speed, or both, would easily be justified in terms of realism and in the interests of game balance (this ship ought to be better than a knarr in every respect, in deep water).

All for it! I don't see those monsters enough.

[Sheffie 1,120]

A lot of people have built or bought knarrs, dug canals, mined out canal tunnels, and planned extensive deeds, all on the assumption that a knarr can be used to transport bulk cargo including animals and wagons.

Vast areas of Xanadu, for example, are really only viable because they can be quickly reached from server borders by knarr.

 

Pulling this rug out from under them — by making an arbitrary decision "in the interests of game balance" — would be bad for player retention. Not doing so, conversely, is a good thing.

 

Edited May 2, 2022 by Sheffie

[Yggdrasil 231]

22 minutes ago, Sheffie said:

A lot of people have built or bought knarrs, dug canals, mined out canal tunnels, and planned extensive deeds, all on the assumption that a knarr can be used to transport bulk cargo including animals and wagons.

Vast areas of Xanadu, for example, are really only viable because they can be quickly reached from server borders by knarr.

 

Pulling this rug out from under them — by making an arbitrary decision "in the interests of game balance" — would be bad for player retention. Not doing so, conversely, is a good thing.

 

yeah but the suggestion is to buff corbitas

 

[Zuelatak 235]

17 minutes ago, Yggdrasil said:

yeah but the suggestion is to buff corbitas

True, and that may have been my fault that derailed the conversation into nerfs. I'm just surprised by everyone's extreme takes that nerfs should never happen. 

 

41 minutes ago, Sheffie said:

A lot of people have built or bought knarrs, dug canals, mined out canal tunnels, and planned extensive deeds, all on the assumption that a knarr can be used to transport bulk cargo including animals and wagons.

Vast areas of Xanadu, for example, are really only viable because they can be quickly reached from server borders by knarr.

 

Pulling this rug out from under them — by making an arbitrary decision "in the interests of game balance" — would be bad for player retention. Not doing so, conversely, is a good thing.

I agree that people have built things around knarrs. Specifically it being a solid boat that can travel in shallow water. I'm pretty sure the devs could get away with lowering its base speed or lowering its carry capacity without too much uproar. This isn't some arbitrary decision as we're discussing it here right now. Is there anytime you'd be okay with a nerf happening to the game? If it was the minority of players that got effected? If you didn't? Lots of people want to nerf private slayings for example, but that would be bad for player retention too. Where does the line get drawn that suddenly makes it okay to pull the rug out from under people?

 

The reason I have an express interest in balancing the game is because if the game is more balanced than I would imagine new player retention would be improved. So I guess I picture there being a net positive of retention from new players over old, but I also can't imagine a large quantity of people quitting the game if knarrs were nerfed slightly. And when I say nerf I don't mean make them unusable as some people seem to think. It just means we don't see a majority of knarrs throughout the world. If anything I would hope to see everyone using Caravels most of the time.

[Ekcin 2,406]

2 hours ago, Yggdrasil said:

yeah but the suggestion is to buff corbitas

Corbitas are already more overpowered than knarr, and more than any other vessel. Making them navigable in shallow water just makes no sense. Look at the vessel, it is a cargo ship, with 85% hold capacity of a caravel, 167% of a cog, and 113% of a knarr. Even base speed is 104% of knarr, and dead easy to craft. There would not be a point to craft any other vessel when it were navigable everywhere.

 

Edit: And minding the still fairly high stern board, corbitas would be useless in caves with 2 tile high ceilings. The captain would still clip through the rock layer.

Edited May 2, 2022 by Ekcin

[Zuelatak 235]

1 hour ago, Ekcin said:

Corbitas are already more overpowered than knarr, and more than any other vessel. Making them navigable in shallow water just makes no sense. Look at the vessel, it is a cargo ship, with 85% hold capacity of a caravel, 167% of a cog, and 113% of a knarr. Even base speed is 104% of knarr, and dead easy to craft. There would not be a point to craft any other vessel when it were navigable everywhere.

I def don't think a corb should navigate shallow water, but maybe it being 115% faster, and 125% of a cargo hold would do it some help. Obviously though as I mentioned before if the corb gets buffed instead of the knarr being nerfed then everything else will probably need to be buffed too. So alternatively we could have the knarr be 85% speed and 75% hold capacity of a corb.

[Ekcin 2,406]

I would not be against making any of our ships faster, or at least scrap light breeze. And well, we know that the laws of physics only loosely apply to Wurm.

 

But: maximum speed of displacement vessels (hull speed) linearly depends on length of the water line, with the formula max_speed=4.5*sqrt(length_of:_waterline)*km/h . For 10m of waterline, this is approximately 14km/h. A corbita is 5 tiles (20m) long, but much of the board, nose more than stern, is above waterline, so at most around 4 tiles and a bit apply. Of the 4 tile knarr, waterline is nearly equal to length. Both would have a max speed of ca. 22km/h at max propulsion. Only the caravel with 7 tiles length seems underrated, with a max speed of 39.2 according to the laws of fluid dynamics. And planing was not introduced to sail (later motor) ships any earlier than 1898.

 

But mind you, those are fun facts, nothing serious. 😎

 

[TheTrickster 2,284]

1 hour ago, Ekcin said:

I would not be against making any of our ships faster, or at least scrap light breeze. And well, we know that the laws of physics only loosely apply to Wurm.

 

But: maximum speed of displacement vessels (hull speed) linearly depends on length of the water line, with the formula max_speed=4.5*sqrt(length_of:_waterline)*km/h . For 10m of waterline, this is approximately 14km/h. A corbita is 5 tiles (20m) long, but much of the board, nose more than stern, is above waterline, so at most around 4 tiles and a bit apply. Of the 4 tile knarr, waterline is nearly equal to length. Both would have a max speed of ca. 22km/h at max propulsion. Only the caravel with 7 tiles length seems underrated, with a max speed of 39.2 according to the laws of fluid dynamics. And planing was not introduced to sail (later motor) ships any earlier than 1898.

 

But mind you, those are fun facts, nothing serious. 😎

 

Factor in the 8x time for Wurm, and you get some serious speed for ships.  Movement speed is always a bit bodgy in "real time" simulated environments because they aren't real time at all but streamed-time or continuous-time, but greatly accelerated.

 

It is worth remembering that any speed given in Wurm is in fact only 1/8 of the nominated speed, simply because the world is on 8x fast forward.  All ships should be sped up, while the current sailing mechanic can still give very slow speeds with less sail.

 

 

[DaletheGood 1,073]

12 hours ago, Zuelatak said:

if the game is more balanced than I would imagine new player retention would be improved

You have no idea if that is true or not.

10 hours ago, Zuelatak said:

we could have the knarr be 85% speed and 75% hold capacity of a corb

You're just intent on nerfing knarrs aren't you?

12 hours ago, Zuelatak said:

I'm pretty sure the devs could get away with lowering its base speed or lowering its carry capacity without too much uproar

As evidenced by the reactions on this thread, you should be able to see that this is NOT the case.

 

22 hours ago, Zuelatak said:

if people feel that boats are already balaned [sic]

They're balanced just fine, as Ekcin pointed out so well

[Zuelatak 235]

On 4/28/2022 at 11:15 AM, Cecci said:

Eh... I don't collect snow, I have 12 snowmen in my freezer room. Why are you bumping such an old topic?

I was just looking for a post that you had started. Didn't pick it for any other reason. How old it is shouldn't change my point.

[Zuelatak 235]

12 hours ago, DaletheGood said:

You're just intent on nerfing knarrs aren't you?

You're just casually going to ignore the previous sentence where I alternatively buffed corbitas instead? Alright. I provided a buff solution AND a nerf solution. I'm intent on providing solutions to problems people present.

 

12 hours ago, DaletheGood said:

You have no idea if that is true or not.

And you also have no idea how the current player retention will be effected. Just that people will be unhappy about a nerf.

 

12 hours ago, DaletheGood said:

As evidenced by the reactions on this thread, you should be able to see that this is NOT the case.

Based on those who are contributing to the discussion (excluding myself) about balancing and not just saying -1, +1, being neutral, or talking about adding new boats to the game I've counted it to be
comments
5 for buffs or nerfs - 3 against buffs or nerfs
likes
4 for buffs or nerfs - 3 against buffs or nerfs

Obviously you won't agree with my tallying, but my point is just that it isn't a clear cut no on this topic. Even it was we should still challenge ourselves and encourage people to oppose our ideas as that's how we figure out the best way forward.

 

 

 

Additional idea in all of this: Prevent non-premium accounts from providing a speed bonus to your ship. At least then people can't make their knarr faster than a corbita using an email and have to actually pay for that luxury. 

Edited May 3, 2022 by Zuelatak

[Ekcin 2,406]

Lol. How did Yggdrasil write:

Quote

Because majority rule is terrible and it's a level of survivorship bias. 

 

But interpreting a few posts and reactions determining "majority rule" from is fine. Sure.

There is no point in reducing knarr hold, as long as it does not turn her non viable, which would do a lot of damage. Therefore best is to follow the hippocratian motto "primum nil nocere" instead of following preoccupation, prejudice, and envy.

 

As to speed bonus, this is some of the spiteful proposals. In fact, I am travelling mostly on knarr for the last over 4 years, have met lots of other captains, but never saw any vessel stuffed with f2p for speed gain. So the possible use would be zero, except probable bugs arising from such a change.

 

As to a speed buff for corbitas, that would not harm the knarr but the cog, and reduce or remove the only advantage (other than holding one more creature cage) these ships have. The original proposal was to allow a corbita to shallow waters, and I don't think that this is a good idea.

 

If changes in ships, I would advocate

- loadable rowboats for all three big ships (not the knarr, would destroy the atmosphere, look terrible, and be useless)

- towing, in the following order: caravel - all ; cog, corbita - knarr, sailboat, rowboat ; knarr - sailboat, rowboat ; sailboat - rowboat (?)

- maybe some intermediate shallow water ship (see Sheffie's proposal)

- buff of the smaller ships:

• rowboat: make small crate loadable (possible as volume is 756, maybe a slight increase to 800 or so)
• sailboat: raise volume by 50% ca. to about 1100 or 1200 from 756 now, thus make large crate loadable. 
• sailboat: raise speed: allow planing in strong breeze and gale in main direction so speed close to knarr (that would significantly reduce knarr usage for slayings )

Edited May 3, 2022 by Ekcin
addendum

[Zuelatak 235]

42 minutes ago, Ekcin said:

But interpreting a few posts and reactions determining "majority rule" from is fine. Sure.

While I agree, I was referring to this post, not the whole community. If this discussion leads somewhere than we can create a poll to get more weigh in, but even that is still survivor bias. I don't think there's anyway to not have that bias without asking every individual. 

46 minutes ago, Ekcin said:

Therefore best is to follow the hippocratian motto "primum nil nocere" instead of following preoccupation, prejudice, and envy.

Can you provide meaning to whatever non-english you reference please >.<

47 minutes ago, Ekcin said:

As to speed bonus, this is some of the spiteful proposals. In fact, I am travelling mostly on knarr for the last over 4 years, have met lots of other captains, but never saw any vessel stuffed with f2p for speed gain. So the possible use would be zero, except probable bugs arising from such a change.

Whether or not the use of f2p is often or not has no bearing on whether or not it should be prevented. I'd rather have 0 than possibly close to 0. If the mechanic bugs and allows people to use f2p alts then it's just undoing itself. There's no additional harm and as a bug it would still happen less than if the feature wasn't created.

49 minutes ago, Ekcin said:

The original proposal was to allow a corbita to shallow waters, and I don't think that this is a good idea.

Agreed, but I do believe boats could use some more tweaking.

50 minutes ago, Ekcin said:

- loadable rowboats for all three big ships (not the knarr, would destroy the atmosphere, look terrible, and be useless)

- towing, in the following order: caravel - all ; cog, corbita - knarr, sailboat, rowboat ; knarr - sailboat, rowboat ; sailboat - rowboat (?)

- maybe some intermediate shallow water ship (see Sheffie's proposal)

- buff of the smaller ships:

• rowboat: make small crate loadable (possible as volume is 756, maybe a slight increase to 800 or so)
• sailboat: raise volume by 50% ca. to about 1100 or 1200 from 756 now, thus make large crate loadable. 
• sailboat: raise speed: allow planing in strong breeze and gale in main direction so speed close to knarr (that would significantly reduce knarr usage for slayings )

All these changes sound great! Although the first 3 require new assets whereas your last 3 are tweakable. If we do the last 3 and you are correct about the knarr usage dropping I think that would be pretty close to balanced. I still think the knarr is used in everyday travel and I think it would be great to see bigger boats, at least the caravel, get more uses to compete. Perhaps that's less of a problem of the boats and more the systems outside them. Like hunting requiring more crates than bsbs?

[DaletheGood 1,073]

A very quick look at google: Primum nil nocere is Latin for "First, do no harm." You don't seem to follow that rule. I don't care what you do to the big boats, give them more speed, more cargo space, whatever. just don't allow them into the shallow waters, and don't mess with the knarr. There is no argument, discussion or pleading that will move me off my rock. You've thoroughly annoyed me, and I'm done with you and your suggestions.

Edited May 3, 2022 by DaletheGood
Removed "idiotic" from last sentence