Achaean News
Ships and bribes
Written by: Makarios, the Meticulous
Date: Friday, January 4th, 2019
Addressed to: Everyone
Many people have purchased ships for storage, whether that be for mechanical reasons (cures and such) or for thematic ones (such as libraries). This is a big reason why ship invasion has always been a very problematic mechanic, and one we don't intend to implement. The other reason is that the amount of damage a player can do if they gain access to a ship is extreme, and the recourse of the ship owner is fairly limited in such a scenario.
With that in mind. Given the nature of Achaea it's very important to us that all avenues of conflict have satisfactory avenues for resolution. The current entirely safe nature of docked ships has been a long standing issue, but given that we are unwilling to implement ship invasion, this was always a tough problem to solve.
We have decided that a middle ground is the best way to move forward. Rather than players being able to invade ships, we have just added a new ability to Seafaring: BRIBE. This is a rank five Deckhand ability and permits you to bribe dockworkers at a harbour to pull a target off of a ship, with some caveats:
- This is expensive, and significantly more so if trying to bribe dockworkers at the home city of your target. It is not something you will be able to do continuously, even as a rich player.
- The target is not pulled to your room: they'll be dropped off in a random location within a radius of the harbour. This is to avoid the ability to camp at the disembark room upon a bribe and force someone into a no-win scenario.
- The target ship must remain at harbour for the bribe to succeed. If they are undocked when the windup ends, it will fail, given in this situation they are exposing themselves to other avenues of attack.
- Ships with high crew morale will also be much more expensive to bribe. The inverse of this is also true.
This is experimental and we'll be closely monitoring it going forward. We are optimistic that this compromise will solve most of the issues while allowing ship owners peace of mind that they can safely use their ships without having people break in.
Penned by My hand on the 18th of Daedalan, in the year 790 AF.
Ships and bribes
Written by: Makarios, the Meticulous
Date: Friday, January 4th, 2019
Addressed to: Everyone
Many people have purchased ships for storage, whether that be for mechanical reasons (cures and such) or for thematic ones (such as libraries). This is a big reason why ship invasion has always been a very problematic mechanic, and one we don't intend to implement. The other reason is that the amount of damage a player can do if they gain access to a ship is extreme, and the recourse of the ship owner is fairly limited in such a scenario.
With that in mind. Given the nature of Achaea it's very important to us that all avenues of conflict have satisfactory avenues for resolution. The current entirely safe nature of docked ships has been a long standing issue, but given that we are unwilling to implement ship invasion, this was always a tough problem to solve.
We have decided that a middle ground is the best way to move forward. Rather than players being able to invade ships, we have just added a new ability to Seafaring: BRIBE. This is a rank five Deckhand ability and permits you to bribe dockworkers at a harbour to pull a target off of a ship, with some caveats:
- This is expensive, and significantly more so if trying to bribe dockworkers at the home city of your target. It is not something you will be able to do continuously, even as a rich player.
- The target is not pulled to your room: they'll be dropped off in a random location within a radius of the harbour. This is to avoid the ability to camp at the disembark room upon a bribe and force someone into a no-win scenario.
- The target ship must remain at harbour for the bribe to succeed. If they are undocked when the windup ends, it will fail, given in this situation they are exposing themselves to other avenues of attack.
- Ships with high crew morale will also be much more expensive to bribe. The inverse of this is also true.
This is experimental and we'll be closely monitoring it going forward. We are optimistic that this compromise will solve most of the issues while allowing ship owners peace of mind that they can safely use their ships without having people break in.
Penned by My hand on the 18th of Daedalan, in the year 790 AF.