PotBS devlog: adjusting ship speeds according to size

If you happen to be doing a lot of sailing on the Open Sea of Sony Online Entertainment’s Pirates of the Burning Sea, then you may or may not be one of those salty seadogs who aren’t quite satisfied with speed of their ships. In a recent devlog post by Taelorn on the PotBS website, the developers are planning to adjust the speed at how some of the ships will be sailing.

Read more about it in the full article!

If you happen to be doing a lot of sailing on the Open Sea of Sony Online Entertainment’s Pirates of the Burning Sea, then you may or may not be one of those salty seadogs who aren’t quite satisfied with speed of their ships. In a recent devlog post by Taelorn on the PotBS website, the developers are planning to adjust the ships’ speed.

Currently, ship speeds vary from 45 to 75 knots – with the fastest ships running like speed boats. To balance out this unrealistic aspect, the devs will be slowing down the smaller ships down to around 10% (which includes the default “Halifax” Mastercraft Schooner ship for new players).

However, slower ships such as frigates and Ships of the Line will be getting a small increase in speed. While they mentioned that turn rates won’t be reduced, this also means that the slower ships will now be able to turn a lot tighter than their more agile counterparts.

Here are some more important points raised by the developers at Flying Lab Software about the adjusted ship speeds:

1. We think Open Sea speeds on the medium and larger ships feel pretty good. ItÂ’s the little speedboats that need trimming.
2. We want it to take a little longer to get through a PvP hotspot when in a fast ship.
3. Lowering those highest speed values has a multiplicative effect when you stack speed modifiers. So while some ships are getting a 10% change to base speed, the change is effectively larger at the stacked-modifier high end. Absolute maximum speed for a fully tricked-out small ship will be up to 16 knots slower than it is now, although it will still be very, very fast.
4. We absolutely donÂ’t want to make the slow ships any slower.
5. Now that the starting ships are not used for PvP, we want you to upgrade from your starting ship ASAP. Upgrading your starting ship should not always make you slower.
6. Players who optimize their ships for Open Sea speed will be able to achieve fast travel through careful modification and skill use, but it will start with less of a speedboat feeling. ItÂ’ll take more customization through skills and outfitting to turn a ship into a speedboat.