You could tie it to tech though... make tech unlocks for ships up the unit cost
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Johan twitter poll: remove sailors?
- Thread starter Koramei
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Personally I am against deleting, as it removes another choice from the game, it is is lacking, it should be improved. I am not big fan of last changes regarding combat width, especially for naval combat which IMO became dumber. Removing another variable makes it dumber again. I am against trend that at the end everyone will hire gadzillions of mercenary ships and attrition will become useless.
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Whole naval game needs to be revamped. MN had potential to do it but failed, introducing wacky concepts like combat width and stuff instead. Would be great if they didn't just give up on navies and instead tried to actually fix the naval aspect of a game set during the COLONIAL PERIOD.
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I'd rather sailors represented the "officers" specifically trained for sailing, and so be far lower in number, suffer losses in battle without sinking, and overall be a more "tight" resource.
The rest of the crew in this time period - at least from a European perspective - were people who were either slaves, press ganged or just desperate enough to sign up. If anything they should come from the manpower pool.
Certainly shouldn't be removed though.
The rest of the crew in this time period - at least from a European perspective - were people who were either slaves, press ganged or just desperate enough to sign up. If anything they should come from the manpower pool.
Certainly shouldn't be removed though.
I'd like to see sailors folded into the naval force-limit mechanic. You'd have a pool of sailors as you do now, but it'd work as a fraction (active sailors/total sailors). The active sailors would be on your ships, and act as a variable ship limit; you can have fewer heavy ships (which cost more active sailors) or more light ships (fewer active sailors). You could never have more ships than the total number of sailors, and if you lose a ton of your sailors (say a bunch of your ships go down), the total sailor pool slowly replenishes over time. To balance the need for civilians vs navy sailors, there should be a trade modifier which goes down as the fraction of active sailors/total sailors goes up; so you have to choose between having a powerful navy, but no trade, or more trade but a weaker navy. You'd also need to make naval combat more interesting than "building 25 heavies, then SMASH!" to make building smaller ships a viable choice.
Actually, the same system would also work to combine army force limit and manpower (though probably the modifier would be on tax/production rather than trade).
Actually, the same system would also work to combine army force limit and manpower (though probably the modifier would be on tax/production rather than trade).
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Another binary choice Twitter Poll?!
I'm starting to get fed up with this trend, they never run official polls here but run them on Twitter instead, directed at random people. Then adding insult to injury the staff never publicize the twitter poll on PDX official forums, it's up to a forum user to look it up and create a thread...
And I'm not about to open a twitter account just to follow the PDX team.
Sailors should be overhauled not removed. Mare Nostrum is the most underwhelming DLC for sure, but for a game set in the age of discovery, the age of sail, the age of global colonization navies are poorly modelled and represented.
Damn shame.
I'm starting to get fed up with this trend, they never run official polls here but run them on Twitter instead, directed at random people. Then adding insult to injury the staff never publicize the twitter poll on PDX official forums, it's up to a forum user to look it up and create a thread...
And I'm not about to open a twitter account just to follow the PDX team.
Sailors should be overhauled not removed. Mare Nostrum is the most underwhelming DLC for sure, but for a game set in the age of discovery, the age of sail, the age of global colonization navies are poorly modelled and represented.
Damn shame.
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The problem with this is that its not actually that common for a ship to sink in combat, and the way sailors worked, often on the international market meant that they didn't really have much issue being pressed into service by another navy or serving under a foreign flag, recently I was trying to research about the Venetian Sailors that were fighting for the British Royal Navy in the American War of Independence, Venice had around 10,000 sailors during this time period, around 2,500 of which were serving under the Royal navy.
Realistically Sailors need to be untied from ship damage, the current system where its 1% damage = 1% crew damage is just nasty, this needs to change. There is horrible oversimplification of the naval system which takes away the benefits that Sailors can potentially offer as a system.
With the risk of dragging this off topic a bit the way you work the system we have is to set sailors to 0 in the defines then add an individual crew number to each ship, we still have a flat cost for ships in terms of ducats though, mainly due to the fact that we already increase naval maintenance by 100% over the time period of the campaign. I believe you could do a similar thing with costs as I have with sailors where you set the initial ship cost to 0 in the defines then individually go through all the different ships and give them an individual cost value in ducats too but I'm not a serious modder myself so this may or may not work. My place on the VeF team is much more play testing, historical advice and basic projects, the complex stuff is almost all done by Gollodan Treksdot and Rivaltdm.
Going back on topic and away from answering quotes, Here are 4 suggestions I have made to improve the naval gameplay that you may or may not agree with. These are options that are fairly simple additions, that make more sense and add depth to the gameplay, especially the supply for sieges and condottieri system. I could come up with some more that benefit sailors individually but I think the main issue here is the lack of uselessness and poor integration of systems that sailors offer.
Naval supply for Seiges: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/naval-supply-for-sieges.937202/#post-21284787
Condottieri System for Navies: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...aval-condottieri-system.975072/#post-21967078
Naval Looting: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/naval-looting-coastal-provinces.987184/
Ship Combat working on Broadside Weight: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...ips-work-on-broadside-weight-not-guns.981588/
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You could tie it to tech though... make tech unlocks for ships up the unit cost
I haven't seen an option to add cost in the unit file, and in the dip tech file I'm not sure what value I could add to change sailors / buy cost (separate from maintenance cost.)
If you happen to know, I'd appreciate it. If not, well, this can definitely wait until I finish testing other modded things.
On topic - the addition of sailors was an exciting idea, that unfortunately fails to excite at all in practice. I'd hate to see it go, since as this thread shows, there is so much that can be done with it, except simply "replace with general manpower."
Sailors were specialized manpower - akin to pilots in the 20th. century.
The idea that you hire the same crew for a ship for its entire service (be it 1 year or 100 years) contributes to the current situation, where sailors are never scarce.
Life at sea was hazardous. Men died outside combat. Attrition to sailors that would be separate from attrition to the hulls of ship might help better represent that.
In other words, you'd need to be able to replace sailors while your fleets are active, even when not in war. Think of them as "human fuel" for your fleets - and while every nation might be rich, not every nation might have enough fuel to rule the waves.
Just my two cents.
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I have never had too little sailors for my navy. I wouldn't notice a thing if they were removed. I am not against them, but right now they probably only hinder minors who cannot build a fleet from it.
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As said, they are currently worthless and the idea/building slots they take up are worthless and feel like a waste.
If they were revised to be more valuable or if the naval aspect of the game had more impact, they would be worth keeping. But for now, I would prefer them removed if not simply to change some national ideas to something worthwhile
If they were revised to be more valuable or if the naval aspect of the game had more impact, they would be worth keeping. But for now, I would prefer them removed if not simply to change some national ideas to something worthwhile
I'd much rather see sailors rebalanced or redesigned rather than simply removed. Some ideas I've had on the topic:
- Part of the problem is that sailors are so plentiful that unless you're an OPM you almost never run out of them. Manpower, on the other hand, is typically a resource you watch much more closely. When manpower runs out you still have your regiments, you just can't use them. Imagine if naval combat worked similarly, you still have all or most of your ships, but they're sitting uselessly in port because you don't have enough sailors to man them (this ties in with the point below about uncoupling hull and sailor damage). Drop the amount of sailors from provinces a bit, and make docks actually worth getting if you want to have a navy.
- I don't think mercenary sailors make much sense, but having some way to increase them when you run out at the cost of unrest or something similar might be nice; maybe give the merchant guilds estate an option to impress sailors like the noble estate has the option to raise levies for more manpower. That way it couldn't be used too often, but is still there as an emergency sailor reserve if you need it.
- Possibly shuffle the bonuses naval buildings give around a bit too: right now, shipyards give three good bonuses, and docks give one bonus to a resource that you never need more of, making it an absolute no-brainer which to build. Maybe give docks the increased naval force limit ability, since they could represent more space to actually berth ships, while shipyards could be focused on building and repairing ships faster.
- I've love to see naval combat changed so sailor damage is untied from a direct one-to-one ratio with ship hull damage, which makes no sense.
- Naval combat uses fire and shock phases, so maybe make the shock phase more likely to kill sailors and less likely to damage hulls. Make ships with low sailors more likely to be captured; I'd love to see more back-and-forth in naval combats, where both sides kill a bunch of sailors on the other side, maybe capture a few ships, but don't really sink that many. I'd imagine most of the time during this time period capturing ships rather than sinking them would be a high priority. High shock admirals could be better for capturing ships (and preventing your own from being captured), while high fire admirals could be better at just sinking enemy ships.
- Ship attrition at sea should be changed from hull damage (which makes no sense, at least not on the scale of a few months at sea) to losing sailors. It should be possible to lose all the sailors on a ship and have it become a ghost ship that could be found and claimed by anyone. No more "We sent a newly-built ship out to sea for a few months and its hull mysteriously melted away until it sank!" (What are we building the hulls out of, sugar?) Then Dip tech 23 (or whatever it is) could realistically stop the sailor attrition from scurvy. (Sure a little hull damage should happen from being out at sea, but realistically all the sailors would be dead long before a ship would sink from deterioration. Maybe like, 5% hull damage per year without repair, or something.)
- Navies still have very little impact on wars, unless it's a special case like England defending its islands from invasion. What if fleets could, in addition to merely blockading provinces, occupy coastal provinces? That would give them the ability to give more warscore, occupy enemy land (and the benefits that gives), make it much easier to occupy isolated islands, and make it actually worthwhile defending your coasts during a war. (This is definitely a more "experimental" idea on my part; I'm sure there are ramifications to allowing this that I haven't thought of.)
- I also like the idea other people have given of making ships gradually require more sailors as time goes by. If late-game heavy ships are requiring 500-800 sailors each that might solve the problem of having too many without needing to rebalance the amount of sailors received.
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If it's a choice between go or keep and stay the same, I vote go. The English idea of +10% sailor recovery speed is 110% useless.
I understand that Paradox needs to make a profit to pay their rent and put food on their tables, and that involves putting out new DLC for us to buy. However introducing broken concepts and not fixing them results in less people willing to trust them, which results in less people willing to buy their next game and DLC. The vast number of people complaining about them has gone unnoticed till recently when people have been beating their chests. There are ideas out there to fix them and the fact there have been from the beginning of their introduction is what is making people aggravated.
I understand that Paradox needs to make a profit to pay their rent and put food on their tables, and that involves putting out new DLC for us to buy. However introducing broken concepts and not fixing them results in less people willing to trust them, which results in less people willing to buy their next game and DLC. The vast number of people complaining about them has gone unnoticed till recently when people have been beating their chests. There are ideas out there to fix them and the fact there have been from the beginning of their introduction is what is making people aggravated.
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Likely add a few lines in some different files, but should be able to at least learn the code of unit cost from defines or elsewhere... But since you could tie it to tech, like getting "state +5", it would be something in line with "sailor_cost = 1.5"... Haven´t checked it yet, but could do so tomorrow if you wish
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Likely add a few lines in some different files, but should be able to at least learn the code of unit cost from defines or elsewhere... But since you could tie it to tech, like getting "state +5", it would be something in line with "sailor_cost = 1.5"... Haven´t checked it yet, but could do so tomorrow if you wish
Well, turns out sailors was easy. Just add "sailors=X" in the actual unit file (i.e threedecker.txt)
Unfortunately, I tried every combination for cost, gold, ducats, and price that I could think of. Doesn't affect the base price.
Oh well! 1 out of 2 isn't bad. Thanks for the assist.
Now to use it before PDX takes sailors out of the game.
There are a lot of gameplay discussions here, but not much reference to history outside of Fluffy_Fishy's posts. I can't help, unfortunately, as I know little about naval history in any period. But IMO the first question in EU should be "What are we trying to model?" rather than "What system is interesting?" EU is fun because of the ways the various models in the game intersect naturally with one another, not because it's engineered for "fun gameplay". That kind of engineering is why I gave up on Civ.
Any implementation of "Sailors" similar to what we have now is a limiting factor, just as manpower limits army recruitment. So, historically, what were the limiting factors on nations fielding strong navies? Did countries ever "run out of sailors"? I don't have historical evidence at hand, but maybe Fluffy or others can elaborate. My impression is that filling boats with people was not the issue - as noted above, most of the men on a ship were a rough lot, sometimes pressed into service. Certainly the raw cost in materials and time to build ships mattered, and we've got that in the game already. But officer quality may well have been a factor too, not in the sense of individually brilliant admirals with tactical insights, but in having a small cadre of well-trained officers to handle the more skilled tasks on ships. That might be modeled with a system somewhat like Naval Tradition, with a point value that increases over time as your navy gains experience and less skilled sailors develop into more skilled veterans. That value might limit the maximum number of ships that can operate at full strength - beyond that, a sovereign might build ships but lack skilled officers to command them, incurring a combat/trade penalty. But again, I don't know the history here. Maybe personnel really wasn't the issue compared to the material investment of building the ships themselves. In that case, just drop the idea entirely and make it purely about money and time.
Any implementation of "Sailors" similar to what we have now is a limiting factor, just as manpower limits army recruitment. So, historically, what were the limiting factors on nations fielding strong navies? Did countries ever "run out of sailors"? I don't have historical evidence at hand, but maybe Fluffy or others can elaborate. My impression is that filling boats with people was not the issue - as noted above, most of the men on a ship were a rough lot, sometimes pressed into service. Certainly the raw cost in materials and time to build ships mattered, and we've got that in the game already. But officer quality may well have been a factor too, not in the sense of individually brilliant admirals with tactical insights, but in having a small cadre of well-trained officers to handle the more skilled tasks on ships. That might be modeled with a system somewhat like Naval Tradition, with a point value that increases over time as your navy gains experience and less skilled sailors develop into more skilled veterans. That value might limit the maximum number of ships that can operate at full strength - beyond that, a sovereign might build ships but lack skilled officers to command them, incurring a combat/trade penalty. But again, I don't know the history here. Maybe personnel really wasn't the issue compared to the material investment of building the ships themselves. In that case, just drop the idea entirely and make it purely about money and time.
I have never liked the idea of sailors from a gameplay standpoint. What are they good for? Navies. How do you get them? Sea provinces. So you get more sailors by conquering more provinces. In other words, you get sailors by doing what you almost 100% for sure would have done anyways. Meaning that this mechanic does not force the player to change how they play at all, they dont need to use a specific strategy to get sailors. So it ends up having no effect on decision making.
Another example: one purpose of sailors was to encourage players to not lose their ships. The problem is that every single player already tries to do this, so once again it doesn't change behavior. One way to fix this might be to make sailors be used for bonuses instead of shipbuilding. For example, maybe having sailors would make your army disembark 50% faster or make blockading ships more effective. Or perhaps you could spend a certain number of sailors to make ships like galleys or heavies into trade protectors (far fetched I know but just an idea.) This would encourage the player to get sailors, but only in some cases when they know that the bonuses will be helpful to their specific play style thus forcing them to make tough decisions.
Another example: one purpose of sailors was to encourage players to not lose their ships. The problem is that every single player already tries to do this, so once again it doesn't change behavior. One way to fix this might be to make sailors be used for bonuses instead of shipbuilding. For example, maybe having sailors would make your army disembark 50% faster or make blockading ships more effective. Or perhaps you could spend a certain number of sailors to make ships like galleys or heavies into trade protectors (far fetched I know but just an idea.) This would encourage the player to get sailors, but only in some cases when they know that the bonuses will be helpful to their specific play style thus forcing them to make tough decisions.
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Sailors are not this bad really, but whole purpose of navy should be revamped.
1. Ships should cost MUCH more sailors to be at least little accurate - earlier posts covered this. Heavy ship should cost like 300 sailors in early times and like 900 in late times. During peace time crews were much smaller of course (maintenance bar?)
2. Sailors and ship damage should be different thing from the first place.
3. Using ships should maybe create a little attrition all the time? Patrolling trade would have rather minimal loss as they visit ports often. You know, diseases und stuff. Being a sailor in this times was not really a healthy job.
4. Navy should start to matter, for example:
4.1. Colonial growth depending of trade power in colonial area. Because colonists were mostly from different nations, and they would rather choose colonies with better trade routes and better possibilities, than wasteland that nobody cares about.
4.2. Port blocking should create serious economic damage and maybe even burghers disloyalty. They want to keep their business running, but because this stupid king and his wars they are stuck at ports with food that will soon rot. Just think how pleased they must have been. Same thing should be with privateering - it should hurt, hurt badly enough to build fleet to hunt pirates. But also privateering should mean some risks - you know, corsairs get caught by hunters sometimes. But hunting ships can suffer from corsairs too.
4.3. Fleets should be able to occupy and siege coastal provinces just like land armies can. And using identical mechanics - they should have summaric "battle ready" crew (for example transport ships rather would not have soldiers on board, but heavies are like 80% soldiers) big enough to overpower fort population. And they should suffer attrition too, but they should also loot. I'm not sure if this is historical for Europe, but caribbean fights were mostly like that.
5. Naval forcelimit should be doubled and ship costs halved.
Just let's make fleets actually matter, and then let's think about sailors once again to make them useful mechanics.
1. Ships should cost MUCH more sailors to be at least little accurate - earlier posts covered this. Heavy ship should cost like 300 sailors in early times and like 900 in late times. During peace time crews were much smaller of course (maintenance bar?)
2. Sailors and ship damage should be different thing from the first place.
3. Using ships should maybe create a little attrition all the time? Patrolling trade would have rather minimal loss as they visit ports often. You know, diseases und stuff. Being a sailor in this times was not really a healthy job.
4. Navy should start to matter, for example:
4.1. Colonial growth depending of trade power in colonial area. Because colonists were mostly from different nations, and they would rather choose colonies with better trade routes and better possibilities, than wasteland that nobody cares about.
4.2. Port blocking should create serious economic damage and maybe even burghers disloyalty. They want to keep their business running, but because this stupid king and his wars they are stuck at ports with food that will soon rot. Just think how pleased they must have been. Same thing should be with privateering - it should hurt, hurt badly enough to build fleet to hunt pirates. But also privateering should mean some risks - you know, corsairs get caught by hunters sometimes. But hunting ships can suffer from corsairs too.
4.3. Fleets should be able to occupy and siege coastal provinces just like land armies can. And using identical mechanics - they should have summaric "battle ready" crew (for example transport ships rather would not have soldiers on board, but heavies are like 80% soldiers) big enough to overpower fort population. And they should suffer attrition too, but they should also loot. I'm not sure if this is historical for Europe, but caribbean fights were mostly like that.
5. Naval forcelimit should be doubled and ship costs halved.
Just let's make fleets actually matter, and then let's think about sailors once again to make them useful mechanics.
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As long as they don't remove stuff from DLCs, features which were paid for for being a feature. I mean you can't sell a product and then remove parts of it.
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Super frustrating that this method of eliciting community feedback is done purely on Twitter... it's a little insulting. Are you reading this @Johan ?
When are you guys moving to 140 character dev diaries then?
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