Architecture for ship feature
I came up with various ship types. With previous research on medieval ships, I chose to use the following ship types from low price to high price ships with different stats.
- Ship Type : 0 ( Knarr )
- Ship Type : 1 ( Sloop )
- Ship Type : 2 ( Cutter )
- Ship Type : 3 ( Caravel )
- Ship Type : 4 ( Galleon )
Ship Types
Ship types give a general range for the stats that the ship can possibly have and each type has its own specific features.
This allows us to easily set a range of stats for the ship types but also allows for distinction between all the ships and which ones are better than others in their own respective statistics.
It creates a sense of diversity and allows for players to choose between boats that are more average in all stats or a ship that specializes in a specific stat/stat group which makes it better compared to other ships in one area but worse than others in a different area. For example, a ship that has a high speed stat might have a lower durability stat and a boat that has a higher durability stat would have a lower speed stat.
As shown in the photo above, ships are categorized into different tiers/types and this gives a general basis of the strength of the boat all around. Boats with a ship type of 0 have considerably lower stats in almost all categories compared to a boat with a ship type of 2.
Pricing
Ship creation and purchasing will not be entirely free and will cost the player a large amount of money.
Players are able to buy their own ship from the shipyard or create one by providing materials and paying a small creation fee.
The price of buying a ship is much greater than the creation cost because the player is not providing the materials required for the build and this makes it possible for players to either buy the ships or collect the materials themselves.
Price range for ships(X 100 Gold for game money)
- Ship Type : 0 ( Knarr ) $10,000 - $100,000
- Ship Type : 1 ( Sloop ) $100,000 - $500,000
- Ship Type : 2 ( Cutter ) $500,000 - $3,000,000
- Ship Type : 3 ( Caravel ) $3,000,000 - $15,000,000
- Ship Type : 4 ( Galleon ) $10,000,000 - $99,000,000
We set very distinct ranges of pricing for the ships based on their type because the ship type largely categorizes their stats and the capability of the ship.
The prices increase exponentially to match the progress that a player may make while playing the game and the ranges gradually increase to accommodate for the large differences in stats within a ship type as the tiers increase.
Stats
When thinking about the stats that we would create for each boat, we came up with 5 main stats that would generalize the capability of a boat easily. Movement Speed, Weight Capacity, Cannon Slot Count, Durability, Return Distance.
Movement speed refers to the overall speed of the boat in the map. It is a tier out of 8, with 8 being the fastest and 1 being the slowest.
Weight capacity refers to the amount of weight in in-game items that the boat can transfer at a time. Each item either has a given weight or contributes a set integer value to the weight capacity and the player can only transfer a certain amount of items via boat at a time.
Cannon Slot Count is the number of cannons the player can attach to the boat. Cannons are a feature that relate to the combat aspect of boats and the number of cannons correlates to the players win percentage.
Durability is the health of the boat as it travels along. It's a stat that dwindles down over time and can be affected by other events which requires the player to travel carefully and use money to be able to repair their boats when needed.
Return Distance is the distance on the map that the player is able to travel using that boat. On the main map, the player will only be able to travel a certain distance via boat until the game resets them in the place they set off from because they couldn’t reach a destination before exhausting their return distance.
Each ship type will have varying stats for these categories and within those ship types there will be different ranges of what the boats may have depending on the other stats.
The Shipyard
The shipyard is an interactable area that will be located in every city on the map in regards to your ship. The player is able to interact with an NPC at the shipyard that gives the player many different options.
The player is able to buy a ship, sell a ship, build a ship, repair their ship, or disassemble their ship.
Building a Ship
When building a ship, players need to have the corresponding materials in their inventory to be able to build the ship. On top of needing specific resources, the player needs to have a blueprint for that specific ship. Blueprints appear in shops across the world and can come at quite a hefty price. This makes sure that the player must work to build stronger and better ships and can’t opt to just buying ships. Although, there is a feature that allows the player to buy ships at the shipyard.
The resources in building a ship vary largely by ship and gradually increase depending on the ship type. Some ships in similar tiers will require more of one specific resource depending on a specific stat, such as speed or durability. Boats of lower tiers require only the lower quality materials and a lower amount while boats of higher tiers require higher quality materials and a larger amount of materials overall.
Buying a Ship
In the shipyard, players are able to buy ships from the NPC for in-game currency. This, however, has its downsides as players are only given a small list of boats they can buy that only refresh once every real life month. These boats also come at a hefty price and result in the player having to pay more money to obtain the boat than someone who bought the blueprint and brought all the materials for the boat. By making the feature of buying a boat less advantageous for the player, we are able to stop players from opting to only buy boats rather than travel around the map to collect the necessary materials for the boats and actually utilise both features.
Selling a Ship
In the shipyard, the player is given an option to sell their boat for in-game currency. This feature exists for players who are looking for a quick cash grab and are planning to build a new boat. Although, when selling their boat, the player is not rewarded with the same amount of currency that it is originally worth. This is because the boat is now “used” and has lost its original value which is more accurate to a real life scenario.
Ship Repair
Ship repair is for the player to repair their boat after it loses durability but is also used for when the player wants to attach cannons to their boat, which was previously mentioned.
Ship Disassemble
Ship disassembling is similar to the selling ship function but rather than exchanging their boat for coins, they exchange it for the resources that the boat was originally made from. This feature is only available to those who have ships that were not bought from a shipyard to avoid any loopholes that players may find in resource gathering. When disassembling the boat, the player will not receive all the materials of the boat but rather a portion of it. This is because the player needs to pay a fee for the shipyard's services in disassembling the boat and they take materials for their work.
Battle and Natural Disasters
Battles and natural disasters act as random events that occur when the player is travelling via boat on the main map.They act as events to wear down the durability of a boat to give a sense of randomness and unpredictability and also have additional features that give the game a sense of RNG which many players look for and enjoy in games. This also makes it so players would work towards creating better boats for the purpose of winning more battles and surviving through natural disasters.
Battle
Battles are randomly occurring events that are completely randomized. The stats for battle correlate to the original stats of the boat and the ship type in general. The stats affect the win chance for the player and the ship type affects the level of rewards the player may receive upon winning and how much they lose if they lose.
When creating the equations for the battle stats in the game, we put extra thought into the gold gain and the battle win percentage. The gold gain utilises an exponential equation relative to the attack damage of the users ship. This is because of the fact that the player would have progressed quite far as their attack damage reaches the max possible stat. At this point of the game, they wouldn’t be benefiting in any way from battles and find the concept to be annoying and a hindrance to gameplay. But if we were to have an exponential growth in gold gain, then the player would still feel rewarded for every battle, no matter the progression into the game at that point.
Similarly to the gold gain equation, the battle win percentage uses a special type of equation that gives the player a higher chance of winning at a lower stage and makes it so the player has a 100% win percentage after reaching an attack value of 2000 and above.
We also connected the item gain chance percentage to these values because we wanted to have a similar outcome with this value. The item gain percentage of the player gradually increases from 2% at the lowest attack value to a max of 30% when the player has an attack value of 2000 and above. This is to ensure that the game has a sense of RNG, as through this feature, players are able to obtain any material in the game no matter the stage they are in in the game. This is also in an attempt to make the feature more appealing to players because without the item feature, I thought it would be too dull and act as more of a hindrance and annoyance to players rather than an interesting feature.
Natural Disasters
Natural disasters are a randomly occurring event that can happen during travel across the oceans from city to city.
It acts as a small event that focuses on wearing down the durability of the player's boat to make it more difficult to travel and also nudges players to invest in stronger boats.
Along with the feature of battles, natural disasters give the game a sense of randomness as they are both randomly occurring events when the player is travelling.
Natural disasters will randomly decrease the current durability of the boat by 1%~50% and will only show up as an immediate pop up warning that informs the player of a natural disaster and what has resulted from it.
Battle Result
As a result of battles, there will be gold gains/losses and possible item gains/losses. When the player wins the battle, they gain gold from a random range depending on the stats of their current boat. Similarly to gold gain, the player has a chance to gain items from a battle as well. They have a chance of gaining up to 4 different items with every battle as shown in the percentage stat below.
Trade Item Drop Chance by type
1-4 item drop by chance
1: 80%
2: 50%
3: 20%
4: 10%
To avoid any random occurrences which may completely offset the course of the player's progress, we limit the max number of the item that the player is able to gain from a battle. They are given random materials as a result of the battle and they can gain a random amount of that material from a range of 1~99 of the material.
Similarly to when the player wins the battle, when the player loses the battle they will lose a certain amount of gold from a specified range which correlates to the stats of the boat the player is currently using. In the case that the player does not have enough gold to pay for their loss/they have no gold, the game will resort to taking items from the player. The items that they take will be randomized.
Calculating from item price, pirates will take randomly from the most expensive item to the median price item. Random from one to six item types, and also a random # of items per each will be taken. This is limited to a range of 1~50 items lost. This is to make it so players cannot avoid losing in battles by completely banking all of their money and also make players think more carefully of how much money they carry around as they explore the world.
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