Fight on Boat needs a major rework.

[goatt]

Fighting on boat is so bad that the only reliable method is tanking in most cases. It needs a major rework.

 

Fighting on land has so many different kinds of strategies, for example:

1. can dodge by kiting melee.

2. wall/statues setup for dragon, frog, hounds, or spiders

3. followers fight with you

4. hostile mobs fighting each other

5. other methods such as fire farms, cannons, tooth trap, caltpults, etc.

Those are the normal DST fighting experience.

 

But fighting on boat can do none of that because players have to compromise for boat's tiny space.

The limited boat space is typically filled with life-quality related structure for the main purpose of that sail. And the ocasional fighting will be mostly just be tanking. For example, you can't kite 3 spiders or 3 monkeys or 3 cookie cutters reliably on boat, even if you want to. How about kiting seaweed?, no you can't, you better body block the projectile to protect the boat. That's why hound waves are non-existent when you are on boat, because it sucks. you can't even place a flingomatic on boat and make the boat not crowded.

If you build pots or mast or flingomatic or catapults on boats, they block you. If you have friends or followers on boat, they block you too, making fights even harder.

And it's really visually clustered if you build too many traps on boats.

 

So in conclusion, tanking is the only reliable way of fighting on boat in most cases currently. All the other fun strategies are either not usable or not preferred because of the limited space of boats. I think the game needs a major rework around that problem.

 

What has the game done to address this problem?

Mainly, the game has only introduced (near) stationary enemies.

Cookies, seaweeds, sharks, gnarwail horns, ck, are all stationary.

Maltroboss, green spiders have slow movement, and come in small quantity.

Those designs are good for making boat fighting less miserable, but they do nothing to improve. They feel like bandages rather than positive designs.

Oh they also tried the boat magnets to bring more boat space. Unfortunately, that didn't go very well.

 

What can the game do to actually improve life on boat?

My suggestions will be more radical than Klei's current approach.

 

1. More boat space, or more boat floors.

Allow boats have to 2 floors, and give boats a switch to switch between them, in seconds. The switch is a new structure which automatically give the boat a second floor, where you can place traps, walls, fences, or drying racks, or night lights and bring them back when needed.

This suggestion is made specifically to enable strategies involving traps, catapults, fences, statues, etc. (Switching floors won't remove other debris on the floor, they stay on the floor all time.)

For example, upon encounting sharks or monkeys, you can turn on the floor that's full of tooth traps, wormwood traps, bee mines, or catapults. It will make boat fights so much more interesting than spaming panflutes.

 

2. Remove most structure's collision body on boats.

Exception is the structures that serves as roadblocks, such as fences and statues. But all other structures should have 0 collision body, including lureplants. How many times have I drowned because lureplants push me off the boats?

This suggestions is specifically for better kiting experience on boat. Does cannons have a collision body? Remove it.

 

3. Create a new weapon feature to make kiting on boat possible.

Because we can't walk to create space from enemies for kiting, we can instead push enemies away from us in order to make kiting possible. We can even give enemies a small stun animation similar to Daywalker's punch.

Recently, the trending topic of CK rework, such weapon can also push claws away rather than get boats stuck and sunk.

We can add such a feature to existing weapons, such as the trident. Trident should push every enemies nearby away from you, possibly off the boat. For a weaker version, we can introduce a new weapon made of a single gnarwail's horn which only works for a single target.

This suggestion is made specifically to create space for kiting and dodging. Since players can't walk on boats, enemies must walk.

I also suggest that frequency of gnarwail should increase.

 

 

And please please please, let players float (with debuff) after boat sinking, instead of drowning and teleporting players.

[arubaro]

Darts, canons and strident trident are funny to use on boats and marble suits become way more important

[Mike23Ua]

To me fighting on a boat in DST is an Illusion more than it is ANYTHING else.. technically your moving on a tiny little land platform with no room to dodge or kite anything.

I mean don’t get me wrong, it works… but at the exact same time, it makes me angry that the flat cookie shaped boat design has to exist at all… Klei has done absolutely nothing to validate us needing these flat boat (& in my opinion incredibly ugly..) boat designs.

Ive drawn concepts of how this could be improved.. by making the ocean mobs actually interact with the player and the players boat-

The intention here is quite simple, the boat space that the player has should be used in clever ways to dodge and fend off enemy attacks, rather than just throwing on marble armors and tanking mobs till they’re dead.

[Mortalbane]

I like the idea with pushing mobs, i totally don't like idea with more floors and building things like walls and traps.

My suggestion is
a) make boat connectors, which would allow stacking up multiple cookie platforms into a bigger area, while doing so with minimal gaps between them, and remove the animation of jumping between those connected boats

b) make cookie platforms bigger

c) introduce regular solo-boats, like in shipwrecked. They were basically walking with increased speed, so all the dodging is present. Also they look way cooler and have fixed slots for equipment, which i prefer over the cookie free-build system

d) add sea walls and sea traps

[Theukon-dos]

For once, I think Mike has the right idea here. Mobs you fight on the ocean should be designed to make use of the limited space the players have instead of trying to completely rework boats so that kiting is tolerable on them.

 

Removing structure collision on boats would definitly be a good idea for that too though. Actually, it would be nice in general. UM does this already and it makes sailing so much nicer. But I digress. 

[goatt]

4 hours ago, Mortalbane said:

make cookie platforms bigger

I think it could be like the suicide deck, but extending in the opposite direction.

 

27 minutes ago, Theukon-dos said:

Mobs you fight on the ocean should be designed to make use of the limited space the players have instead of trying to completely rework boats so that kiting is tolerable on them.

Yes, theoretically, that would be unique and fun. But in reality, as we have experienced so far, it's tanking tanking and tanking. We've had own experience after trial and error, I think I want to move on from tanking.

An alternative, if we have to utilize limited space, would be to design something like bullet hell, but on a boat. For examples, fish monsters shoots water at you without boarding the boat, and you have to dodge and hit them back, assuming they are within melee range of the boat. That way, tanking is unnecessary but armors will still be helpful.

But anything that's getting on boat chasing you, or having a limited attack window (such as rockjaw and cookie cutters), I dont think they will work well.

And I dont want another mob that will poke a hole in my boat or damage my boat, like not every mob, pls.

[Littlefat1213]

would it be better if mobs just bite your boat not jump on your boat then hit you

[goatt]

3 hours ago, Littlefat1213 said:

would it be better if mobs just bite your boat not jump on your boat then hit you

Like Terrorclaws? Do you like terrorclaws, or do you find them a fun enemy?

[CuteC]

On 5/6/2024 at 1:04 PM, Mike23Ua said:

To me fighting on a boat in DST is an Illusion more than it is ANYTHING else.. technically your moving on a tiny little land platform with no room to dodge or kite anything.

I mean don’t get me wrong, it works… but at the exact same time, it makes me angry that the flat cookie shaped boat design has to exist at all… Klei has done absolutely nothing to validate us needing these flat boat (& in my opinion incredibly ugly..) boat designs.

Ive drawn concepts of how this could be improved.. by making the ocean mobs actually interact with the player and the players boat-

The boat is designed that way to accommodate multiple players, also for the reworked sailing, since the shipwrecked "sailing" was walking with extra steps.

Concepts look fine and I am all for the ocean having... anything really, more life in it would be nice, though the sting ray one could have issues with the shadow not being visible with the clutter boats usually have.

[Well-met]

sorry but all I'm reading here is you find boats unplayable because you can't abuse every monster with walls

 

[goatt]

31 minutes ago, Well-met said:

sorry but all I'm reading here is you find boats unplayable because you can't abuse every monster with walls

My only main point is that fighting on boat should be more than tanking as a reliable method. The rest of my op is solutions to that problem. I hope this summary helps.

[KvltBear]

The clutter is a real problem, the low health is a problem, the terrible bumpers is a problem, solo players having 1 slow way of sailing and no maneuverability is a problem.

I doubt they'll implement z levels for boats. I think just making the magnets useful would be an easy fix. Let me combine multiple pancakes so I can fight on one that doesn't have a lightning rod, a fire pit, a Pinchin' Winch, etc. The magnets don't do anything useful right now, I say we start making throwaway items useful.

But why not go further, let the pancakes be a mobile ocean base and have the combat done on Shipwrecked style ships so we can actually move around again. We could get the iron wind back, we could park the individual ships at docks on the pancake superstructure. Of course that would be insanely board intensive, so I doubt many would enjoy it.

Also agree on the drowning. It just makes sailing something I don't want to do more than I already don't. The Trident pushing enemies away or off the boat is also interesting.

[Theukon-dos]

On 5/9/2024 at 8:02 PM, goatt said:

Yes, theoretically, that would be unique and fun. But in reality, as we have experienced so far, it's tanking tanking and tanking. We've had own experience after trial and error, I think I want to move on from tanking.

An alternative, if we have to utilize limited space, would be to design something like bullet hell, but on a boat. For examples, fish monsters shoots water at you without boarding the boat, and you have to dodge and hit them back, assuming they are within melee range of the boat. That way, tanking is unnecessary but armors will still be helpful.

But anything that's getting on boat chasing you, or having a limited attack window (such as rockjaw and cookie cutters), I dont think they will work well.

And I dont want another mob that will poke a hole in my boat or damage my boat, like not every mob, pls.

I mean, the bullet hell idea is what we both meant, so yeah I agree there.

And honestly? Rockjaws are actually really close to being a good creature to fight. They just need to have a longer and more telegraphed stun state after biting so you know to go in and give it hell.

[Cassielu]

17 hours ago, goatt said:

Like Terrorclaws? Do you like terrorclaws, or do you find them a fun enemy?

Of all ocean mobs it does have a nice combat.

It would be perfect if it only teleport when attacked like other shadow creatures.