Messages

16

World / Re: alpha lore

« on: September 08, 2016, 04:56:49 pm »

there are only two issues with your analysis, wich i otherwise agree with

teh first is that the arashi dont control nalm or sylka, they are far far to the north, despite what it would appear from the duel at dawn description, neither faction is controlled by the arashi league. perhaps it is unaffiliated desert people, but those cities are up in the middle, while arashi territory is down in the corner

the second is that the yeshans arent xenophobic...at all. they are explicitly expansionistic and obsessed with spreading their meritocratic ideals to everyone else. they are modeled after a confucian chinese meritoratic framework, so you are pretty close to exactly right, except with a evangelizing bent to them

17

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Retrieve Mode is too easy to blitz...

« on: September 04, 2016, 11:52:48 am »

I've sort of always wished that retrieve mode was more like a tug of war than a race against time, where you had to get it back to the starting base. maybe capturing different bases along the route would change their allegiance so they would shoot at the bad guys instead of you, but either way, you gotta get the balloons back to the starting base. like... those refineries are under fire in a war-zone... who is at work to do the refining once you drop off the cargo?

18

World / Re: alpha lore

« on: August 23, 2016, 07:18:54 pm »

teh warrenty idea is an interesting one, but i was under the impression that the mercantile guild fleets weren't run as private security companies, but as governmental agencies, but now that you mention it, it would make a LOT of sense to have the navy be a company hired by the government. if everyone has something to sell, why not this as well?

by that same reasoning, it would make total sense that the handcrafted lenses might be incredibly devastating but also incredibly expensive, and the various military companies would be trying to cut costs and use factory made lenses rather than the hand crafted ones. by extension i would imagine that to exhibit some control over the military it wouldn't be so surprising to discover that the leaders of the mercantile guilds through either explicit stock ownership or merely to guarantee the continued good standing employment by the state, they would do as the guild leaders want, military campaign-wise.

19

World / alpha lore

« on: August 23, 2016, 12:39:05 pm »

So there's going to be some lore derived from the successes of each faction, in case you havnt heard. my questions i would put ot the public are these:

1) where are the arashi and yeshans? why do we think they werent involved, lore-wise?

2)how do we explain the incredible territorial gains made by the mercantile guild? in-game im pretty sure people were flocking to the MG because their boss ship was absolutely devastating, and people were like 'if you cant beat em...' or they just kept trying to beat em, and couldn't.

3) if, as i feel like it might behoove the dev team to do, the MG boss ships laser lens array is nerfed during what appears to be a generalized lens ray nerf, should we take that into consideration? should we try to incorperate somehow the decrease in lens ray power into the lore?

my two cents for the questions, in order are these:

1) the arashi sinply aren't confederated quite yet, its the movings of the other great powers that are going to pull the independent minded arashi into a single organization.
The yeshans are fighting someone else. they are trying to stay out of the eastern war, hoping the mountain range will keep them safe until they are ready to turn their huge armada and shipyards against the east. their expansionist ethic and complicated government suggests that they cant spring out of nowhere overnight, but they cant sit still either, so they have to be both complete and expandign like crazy, just... somewhere else

2&3) i think the MG incredible success due to their sophisticated lens arrays is really fun, but in game terms needed a balance. In the lore i suggest something like 'the best and most precisely calibrated and maintained Dedalo ships cut great swathes out of the central world, gaining the MG huge amounts of natural resources and new markets. as attrition claimed more and more of these great flagships, however, the shipyards became more hurried as the quotas for new ships rose too quickly for them to put as much loving attention into every replacement ship as they had into the first wave. as such, the new ships lacked the precise, time consuming, optical calibration that the first wave had. even worse, the best engineers available, neccicarily on the great ships to take the precise measurements, and for constantly recalibrating and retuneing the precision devices, had flown in the great first fleet of ships, and had been lost. Even as territory as being gobbled up with victory after victory, the proud, perfect, expertly calibrated and maintained ships gave way to rushed work, and rushed training.  the Mercantile guild fleets over spent the cream of their fleet, and despite great successes would have to fight fiercely to maintain it; making up for their less powerful weapons with more ruthless tactics.'

20

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: The End is inevitable, you will not survive

« on: August 08, 2016, 01:17:40 am »

i was thinking it would be fun that you would ALWAYS spawn in the building, so you could change your crew members depending on who jumped on your boat before you leave. if you empty your base to field a ton of huge airships, ok, but you might regret leaving the huge guns on your base silent. problem is you cant break their base from yours, there's something in between, a mountain or something....

21

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: The End is inevitable, you will not survive

« on: August 05, 2016, 08:53:57 pm »

there has been some discussion of defending a static building, but it was a long time ago, and i feel like if they were gonna do it, they would have mentioned it by now

i was thinking that if you really wanted to do the base thing, it might afford an oppertunity for a combination of a few thigns people havfe been asking for, namely ships with variable numbers of crew on them and a walk around area that you could walk around to choose your ships. imagine a base with a number of ships in it, lets say a few premade ones that captains have supplied the specs for, and people walk up to the  ship and when the appropritae number fo people get on, you lift off. who knows if any of this is even ossible, but it woudl be fun!

22

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Heavy weapon: Flywheel

« on: August 05, 2016, 05:29:45 pm »

for goldfish, corsair, and maybe a spire?

23

World / Re: The Anglean Republic

« on: August 04, 2016, 02:13:35 am »

people keep equating raiding with slaving... Given what we know about the scarcity of resources in the anglean cities, whether they be above or below ground, and that we know they have some kind of clockwork automotons to do labor and the fact that they already HAVE the most advanced archeotech, and the people who best understand it, it would be absurd to steal people that they would then have to feed... livestock: yes. people: no point.

24

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: The Case for Falloff Damage and a Third Damage Type

« on: August 03, 2016, 12:49:25 pm »

the idea of arming time i was led to believe was that you didn't want the shells to blow up in your face, so you added a mechanism to prevent the shell from blowing up in the barrel or when you were nearby. if you shot a shell into a ship where it stopped, lodged itself in a wooden timber or something and then when the arming time was over, exploded. the ensuing damage would then cause shatter damage back on your ship, as the flying spars and whatnot flew everywhere, including back at you, if you were too close. the mine launcher is of course not powerful enough to lodge the mine into the side of a warship, and it would do its unarmed damage as usual, but then bounce off into the intervening space, perhaps arming after the time limit is over, to deleterious effect, if the ships are very close together

rockets don't have to be fired from a shell and therefore don't need to have this precaution. the point blank vs long range distinction might be one of speed therefore, as the rocket thruster accelerates the missile it speeds up over time. the explosive payload might be unaffected, but shatter damage might be reduced as the actual impact speed of the rocket would be much less at close range than at distance.

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Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Various suggestions I put together over the last few weeks

« on: August 03, 2016, 12:37:57 pm »

i think the devs have said that the point of the information not begin readily apparent all the time is so that communication and teamwork are more required. if you could just see everything all the time, you wouldn't have to talk to your crew as much, reducing the intended point of the game.

26

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: On Alliance and Making Tools Feel Unique

« on: August 03, 2016, 12:28:56 pm »

thers a lot here, and by and large i'm for a lot of your suggestions vis a vis creating new effects rather than just amplifying existing ones.

two issues:

firstly adding different damage types in an ammo is not a good idea. you may or may not remember when the heavy flak did piercing and explosive damage, but it wasn't pretty... well it actually was gorgeous, but like icarus himself it was too amazing, and had to come down to earth eventually. adding explosive damage to piercing weapons and you have the same problem. if you didn't think the gas gun was OP now, wait till it does a little bit of explosive damage just to add some 'death' to your 'miserable day'

i agree that the kerosene/moonshine distinction is a valid one, and some extra flavor should be instituted to differentiate them. my first thought was that kerosene should be variably powerful based on how much health the engines had, so during a long haul, its very easy to keep them at full health, and so was a much larger benefit at ideal conditions, whereas the moonshine would be perhaps even the reverse, making it even better for an escape from getting-fuckeds-ville. that was my first idea, some concerted brainstorming might be better.

the greased ammo upgrades are clearly inappropriate, what i think happened was that the -20% reductions were supposed to go to upgrade to -10% from -20% reductions by instituting a +10% bonus, but in fact it just replaced the -20% penalty  WITH the 10% bonus. having it have a damage buff and a flight speed buff in addition to all that greased already does is bananas. I'm not against the extra clip size though, it makes it more of what it already was, so i think its perfectly fine.

the armor kit im sort of in love with, but i was talking to Nietzsche's mustache about it and he made a really good point: if you are really committed to buffing the armor over and over, that means that effectively you are on a 2 crew ship. having a hull that is HUGELY more survivable might be nice, but it comes at a pretty serious price of crew time.

the point about the failsafe kit is still true, its not a worthwhile thing to put on. maybe if it lasted longer and rebuilt at an ASTOUNDING rate, then MAYBE i would use it. the problem with rebuilding is that it takes a long time even if you AND the kit are rebuilding at the same time. if you armor buff your heavy flak, it doesnt die, and you can keep shooting/reloading etc. it takes too long to buff everything you dont have time to maintain. the time you spend isnt worth the time you save. tweaking the numbers might be the answer, but when there are other buff kids floating around, it becomes pretty precious, and failsafe just isnt worth it right now

27

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: [Alliance] I hate the Crusader, #removethebeam

« on: August 03, 2016, 12:00:19 pm »

used to be those big white beams that hold up the stained glass window were lower, and to get to the hull you had to thread a needle between the open stairwell and the supports. now you can just run down without worrying about it. give them time, they are streamlining the new ships. it's only been in the open for two days....

28

World / Re: The Anglean Republic

« on: July 01, 2016, 01:05:52 pm »

nobody is really well fed in anglea though, everyone is just barely holding on, suffering is very common (without suffering is the closest translation in anglean for our word 'happy') so its not like they are finding miracles under there, they are holding on barely at all times. the raiding is what allows them to survive. even if they managed to keep their greenhouses warm, it still doesnt mean that the sun is going to come down directly enough to grow very much, especially if you have to be underground to grow it

29

World / Re: Food of the Factions

« on: June 21, 2016, 04:05:49 pm »

i imagine them like the femen, so i imagine they eat spice coffee and spice bread, etc

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World / Re: what makes stable borders 'stable'?

« on: June 21, 2016, 04:03:37 pm »

that might have been tue before teh flight of the icarus changed everything. the advent of airfleets means that control can be WAY better maintained than everyone walking or even riding horses or cars. we know that the chaledonians for example have a contract keeping hanat safe, and its on the other saide fo the map. i think its not abtou as much distance eating away loyalty, but so many powerful nations who will be leery and scared if one nation starts eating up neutral territory. also some of the neutral cities are incredibly well fortified. anvala for example is on top of a mountain with huge walls with the best gunners in the world protecting them