I've been jotting down my thoughts while playing, this is my way of giving back for the free game. I hope this is helpful. If not, please disregard, I'm not trying to give you work, just help
First, what a great game!
Second, a couple bugs I noticed in the latest version:
- On the seize ship page, the ship mods for the captured ship shows the mods for my ship, and on my ship shows the mods for the captured ship
- In the high scores, under "True Pirate" (the only one I've played) the scores all show "0" and Reputation "null" on all the games I've played. All were on Swashbuckler level.
- Sometimes chasers fire at a friendly ship I "Distance" and don't want to engage. Although it doesn't seem to register in the game that I've fired on a friendly ship - I don't lose respect or my letter of marque or anything. (This happened in the previous version too, not just this one)
- There's a typo on the tavern screen, "were your men are sitting" Should be "where"
- Not exactly a bug, but in the latest version, notifications seem to go much faster than before. Sometimes I miss them.
Thoughts and ideas:
Improvements:
- Ship improvements seem to be harder to come by in this version. Is it just my imagination? Or because time passes slower so there are more turns between available improvements?
- I'd really love if there was a way to choose which improvements I could add. Sometimes I can't afford an improvement that's available, and then I don't see it available for a long time, if at all.
- I'd like to be able to take the improvements of a captured ship for my own. Some improvements may not be compatible between ships, like cotton sails, but could be sold
- Since we can capture cannons to replace our own, would it be possible to capture cannons as loot to sell?
- To add realism and a bit of game balance, perhaps improvements and a lot of cargo could affect the weight and therefore speed and maneuverability of our ship?
Food:
- Fully aware that you've taken many pains to explain to us the necessity of feeding our crew, and built in notifications about food and all, after some experimentation, I never feed my crew, and they're always very happy (10). I understand that capturing ships (which I do a lot of) adds to moral, but I thought I'd let you know.
Gameplay:
- Enemy ships seem to surrender whenever cannon, rigging, or sails are destroyed. I'd think if only the cannon are destroyed, they might still try to get away or board. And if rigging or sails are destroyed, they'd still try to board or resist a boarding (which would need to happen to loot the ship). Seems odd that a big ship with 200 surviving crew surrenders to my sloop with 50 surviving crew.
- To balance things out and perhaps give people a real challenge, perhaps allow the ai ship captains to have ratings of over 10 for various skills? If so, perhaps warn the players, ie, "watching the way this captain pilots the ship, you can see he's very skilled at sailing."
Ideas:
- How about an option of talking with the captain of a captured ship, perhaps getting rumors?
- How about making "Ramming" a battle option? It would damage your own ship (and possibly sink it), but possibly sink theirs. Possibly a last resort option?
- Do pirates find romance? What about a parrot? Perhaps in taverns or on another ship?
- How about a "Bust" on the bow as a ship improvement for good luck? In game effects could be +1 in battle or searching or something.
- What if my actions affected the game? Like there are rumors of pirate activity in places where I've captured ships, and warships are sent to the area?
- Speaking of warships, what if you could capture a warship captain for ransom?
- Could we earn extra recognition or money for capturing or sinking a warship of an enemy nation? Perhaps paid by a governor upon returning to port?
- This would open up another available career path as a privateer fighting on behalf of the nation. I suppose this can be done now, but it offers no financial rewards (warships never have loot other than food that I've seen) and would need to be financed by trading and/or pirating.
Interface:
- Fully aware that you can't please everyone, I preferred the previous interface with the "Leave" buttons rather than needing to press the "back" button on the phone.
Question about how the game works:
- During battle, which rigging rating is used, the current one (possibly lower from battle damage) or the full rating?
- Just out of curiosity, can the treasure gallion only be found outside the port it leaves from, or can it be found as it makes its way across the map?
- On a humorous note, I lost a battle with a privateer, and he let my one surviving crew member (me?) go. My one crew member sailed the large frigate back to port all by himself in very high spirits (10). There were no crew members to be found at that port, so my crew member (still very happy) sailed the large frigate to another port to find a crew. Should there be a minimum crew for sailing various ships? Perhaps that would be too complicated. Anyway, I found it funny picturing my happy captain on the bridge, alone on the ship.
Those are my thoughts. Hopefully you find them helpful. Thanks again for a great game!
Greg
