Darkfall’s Ships
November 29, 2010 
Resfelm 
From pirate ships to fishing boats, sea vessels have played an extremely important role throughout human history.
Boats in Darkfall serve many purposes. Safe(er) travel in kraken infested waters, naval battles, naval attacks to land targets, it’s all in a days work for a boat. Different sizes and shapes also ensure a perfect fit for whatever endeavor you have in mind.
When it comes to ships, or vehicles in general for that matter, Darkfall has opted for a design that one does not often come across in mmo’s. Usually vehicles come with predetermined “seats” where a player model is attached, thus becoming one with the vehicle for the purposes of movement, physics or even damage. In Darkfall players are free to board a ship just by walking on it and move around on it freely while the ship it’s self moves.
This of course increases game play possibilities, making ships in Darkfall quite unique and interesting for an mmo. It does however make the implementation a lot more complex as well. Determining collisions, player movement, areas of effect and all the other parameters becomes quite challenging when the action takes place on a non scripted, freely moving platform.
Even so, the team at Aventurine is always looking to bring new elements into naval endeavors as it is apparent by the addition of Sea towers, new ship types, ship strongboxes and the like. A brief discussion with a developer revealed that ships and their mechanics are regularly being discussed. While no specifics where disclosed, the team is playing around with some ideas that if implemented will introduce more… recreational aspects to ships as well as improved defensive capabilities.
What sort of features would you like to have added to the sea vessels of Agon?
Tags: 
I would like to see a boarding technique to bring a enemy ship on ethier side of the ship closer. Plus be able to fight on both boats as a battle field.
Have a skilled called bilging so a player or players have to go to the hull and bilge like it was harvesting something.
Ships should be a bit faster
Well the Launch was a great mid range ship for a small group of people, that was awesome. More variety would be nice, even if the only variety is in the art. Kind of like the upcoming armor, stats are the same, just looks different.
Also, if clan emblems are ever made, being able to stick that on a sail is a must.
Fishing boats that were mentioned would be really great.
And yes, some boats should be made a bit faster. I wonder if a ramming ship is possible, like a trireme, or slowing ships down by tearing into their sails. This would involve multiple hitboxes, but I’m just tossing out ideas.
Different types of cannon fire? The regular cannon balls for the ships, balls coupled on chains for sails, and a bunch of smaller bullet sized shots for anti-personnel?
yeah customizable crafting would be nice
Reduce the cost of the launch by a LOT. Add things to the more expensive ships that make them more worth while other than more cannons and health.
Material coast is fine.
What i want to see is the ability to enable/disable the nets. Higher speed for EVERY ship so it is impossible to follow them with movement spells on water. So if you bring out a ship it will end in a ship vs. ship battle
Few things I’d like to be added to ships:
A net that could be pulled up or dropped on the sides of ships
Ships only to be repairable at a harbor
Ships only to be spawnable/despawnable at a harbor
Weather to play a more active role in sailing
Ahoy!
Captain of the Bloodmoon Brigands here, just saying that ship are the whole reason we’re all here.
I have to say that one of the things that we wish was implemented is the ability to raise/lower the nets. The reasoning for this is so that we can’t be boarded by someone without a ship at all, just using magic to catch up, climb up, and completely wipe our our crew.
At this moment we’re afraid to take out a ship as new’ish players because we know one maxed out vet could easily overcome us, even if he doesn’t have a ship himself. Anything that could help the ship combat turn more towards ship to ship battles would be great, instead of ship to one guy using magic.
I love the ships in this game, and like I said, the Bloodmoon Brigands wouldn’t be playing if they weren’t here. You allow us to be the pirates we’ve always wanted to be, and every MMORPG, even those BASED on you being a pirate don’t even come close.
Well done,
Captain Bashur
Oh, something I forgot; The ability to put custom flags on a ship would be quite awesome and immersive. (Granted, I know we’ll start seeing ships with moronic Hello Kitty flags, or some things that are beyond disturbing… involving the Kraken and Oprah Winfrey… *shudder*)
- by ship trade route should be
- ships need to spawnable/despawnable at a harbor
(if Harbor is destroyed the ship can be transfered to a auther harbor)
- By the Wind the ship will Sail
- a fishing boat with the possibility of dredging the seabed to find treasures and fish
I would like ships to have doors, that only opens when a ship is at 50% hitpooints(or if someone in clan or allied with the captain opens the doors).
Furthermore id like the repairskill to level up, and implement that there is a chance of being interruptet during repair if the ship is hit by cannons – which either prolongs repairtime.
The higher repair skill the less risk of /prolonging, but even at skill 100 some disruptions should happen.
This should create more focus in ship vs ship, as well as solve the issue of outrepairing all dammage during combat.
I would like to see debris left over from sunken ships that contain some of the resources used to make ships.
Roll up ladders.
Realistic ship damage. The ability to take out masts, the rudder, or flood the lower decks with water would be a huge boon. In addition, realistic cargo would be fun. Cargo crates that tumble about in the hold if not secured, or wash out of a hole in the hull would add an additional layer of depth to piracy.
+ Retractable nets
+ Ship Trade Routes
+ Capturable NPC Ships that can’t be repaired (possibly not despawnable?)
+ Anti-personel weaponry
As it is now, boarders are the main problem in ship combat because they have the advantage on almost every front. Not only can they catch up to ships, but once they board it’s practically impossible to stop them without nearly killing your own crew!
The deck sizes of the most commonly used ships are too small to accomodate a melee scramble, which is what always results when a single enemy is able to board a ship.
The victors of what few pure ship vs. ship fights happen are usually determined by how many more repair shards they have. How about a limit to how many repairs can be made to a ship within a certain period of time? Larger ships = more allowable repairs.
Players can still can catch up and board ships using Begone, Explosion, and Wall of Force, especially if a ship is anywhere close to land. Let us raise those nets! Ship vs. ship combat rarely ends with a sinking vessel, it’s just a matter of who can board the other first. Raising nets and preventing boarders will keep crews on their respective ships. To keep the pirate side of Darkfall alive, drop the nets automatically as soon as the ship’s health get below 25%.
Also, damaging boarders before they get onto the ship is difficult considering all they have to do is dip underwater to avoid magic, arrow, and cannon fire. How about some anti-personel weapons or some releasable Sharks/Mayatins (with laser beams attached to their heads)?
I would like to see a crows nest that you can climb up.
Also i would like to see boarding planks. both ships would have to be side by side then you would launch grapples and it would slow them down and reel them in.one close enough you would have toe option to deploy a plank but make it possible for players to detach the plank kinda like despawning it but make it take a reasonable amount of time.
Destructible sails, the more damage a sail take the slower a ship moves,sail could be completely destroyed leaving a ship disabled and unable to move until sumone climbs up to the crows nest and repairs them.
Lastly i would like to see different kinds of ammunition. grapeshots,ball and chains and possibly flaming ammunition would be interesting.
grape shots would be used to damage the crew aboard the ship but would have a reduced affect against the sails of the ship and the hull, ball and chains would be for tearing the sails and slowing the ship and would have reduced affect against the hull and crew. flaming ammunition would have a strong affect on the hull of the ship and would have reduced damage against the sails and crew of the ship.
Different states for a ship depending on it’s HP. Have it just like city walls where parts start to fall as HP get’s lower. Currently the driver has no way to see the HP, they could at least have an idea if they started to see masts and sails start falling over. Perhaps even have the ship start to ride lower in the water.
Forgot to add this. Ships controled by mobs! Would be awesome to be at sea and come across a ship filled with Bonecrew.
Peoples concerns about the ease of boarding a ship are valid. However I think balancing this should be approached careful. Making them too hard to board risks turning them into invulnerable floating fortresses and battles will be determined too heavily by how many repairers and how much supplies you have on board. Retractable nets are a possibility, however they should be able to be deployed quickly, but should take some time to draw back up. In this way, if your ship is successfully boarded, the boarder can deploy the nets for his team-mates easily, but it will take some time to undeploy the nets.
As for extra additions for ship, attachments such as fishing nets, harpoon guns, anchors and longer lasting strongboxes would be great.
Fishing nets could be applied to some ships and used to quickly fish out an area. Nets would have to be pulled up periodically to empty them into the players inventory. The net would slow down the ship as it got full, and would be a craftable (tailoring perhaps), undeployable attachment with durability which wears down over time.
Harpoon guns would allow players to fire shots which would breach the waters surface enabling them to attack players and mobs in the water. New mobs could be added to utilise these harpoon guns, such as whales which could be harvested for a variety of resources.
Anchors would allow players to secure their ships in position so boarders couldn’t simply jump on a ship and take off. Time would be required to undeploy the anchor to allow the ship to move around again.
Finally, strongboxes need to last longer and ships need to be slightly faster, especially the pinnace.
2 hours simply isn’t long enough. Even just farming the kraken a few times can take a few hours and travelling around on ships is quite slow. With only 2 hours on ship strongboxes, it severely limits the range of ships before a new strongbox is needed.