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 http://store.steampowered.com/app/764050/Maelstrom/ https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2006538134/maelstrom-monstrous-fantasy-naval-combat  Maelstrom is an arcadey Battle Royale game where you control a sailboat of your choice and sail around a dense map blasting the hell out of everybody else. Unlike some other games of this genre it's quite fast-paced, with a focus on actively seeking out and engaging the other players rather than circling around looting stuff forever, which means that rounds generally don't take much longer than 15-20 minutes each. Between games, you can unlock new ships and upgrade your existing ones with new parts and a variety of captains and crewmen. Maelstrom is currently in Early Access and available on Steam for about 20 bucks. https://i.imgur.com/s7iJf9O.mp4  In each round, you start out together with 16 other players on the same map, and your goal is to be the last ship floating. You can play either solo against other solo players, or in duos as and against teams of two. In addition to the players, small NPC ships are also sailing around the map and will drop powerups that increase your firepower, armour, or maneuverability when picked up. Any time you sink a player, they will also drop all the powerups they've collected so far, in addition to a repair-powerup that'll allow you to recover some of the damage that you've suffered in the fight. The maps are dense with rocks and caves, meaning there are lots of ways to make use of terrain to maneuver and outflank your opponents. https://i.imgur.com/c5egHOR.mp4 You can kill other players in a variety of ways. Each ship has four stats that can be individually attacked: Armour - Armour is divided into four facings for each side of the ship, and can be reduced by ramming  and good old cannonball fire. Once the armour of a facing is broken through, any further damage to that side will deplete the Hull integrity of the ship.Hull - Hull integrity is essentially your HP pool. Once it's down to 0, you're dead. You can destroy your enemies' hulls either by just shooting or ramming them once their armour is down, or you can board them and attack it directly, completely circumventing armour. Sails - Sails are what makes your ship go fast (unless you're a dwarf). You can destroy sails by shooting them with chainshot, which will make your prey that much slower and less maneuverable. Crew - Your crew size determines how quickly your cannons reload, and how well you do in boarding actions. You can decimate enemy crew with grapeshot or through boarding, and boarding a ship with no crew left will cause horrendous hull damage that often immediately sinks them. https://i.imgur.com/PTf9Yc4.mp4 As the game progresses and players are killed, the safe parts of map become progressively smaller and dangerous monsters start to roam the outskirts. You can attempt to sail through these dark waters for short stretches at a time, but if you stay there too long things will end badly. https://i.imgur.com/CrVO634.mp4  There are currently three factions in the game (with a fourth one planned): Humans, Dwarves, and Orcs. Each faction has a small, medium, and large ship each, making for a total of 9 different ships to play at this time. Apart from differences in stats, each ship has a unique ability to set it apart from the others. https://i.imgur.com/FQleoCf.mp4  Humans are, as usual, the "standard" faction that plays most conventionally. They offer good speed and punishing broadsides, but at the downside of being vulnerable to their fore and aft. Also, their ships look like floating castles, which owns. Their three ships are: Cinder - A tiny little corvette with long-ranged cannon. It offers a surprisingly decent firepower for its size, and its unique ability gives it a speed boost when out of combat, making it the fastest ship in the game. Of course, in return it's very fragile both against return fire and boarding attempts. Great when you've got the room and skill to kite your opponent at long range, vulnerable when cornered at short range. Ashborne - A maneuverable frigate with one of the most powerful broadsides in the game. Its unique ability is a damage boost to its guns for a short time after they've been fully reloaded, giving it great sustained firepower. This ship likes to trade one broadside after another, but is vulnerable to being outflanked and attacked from fore and aft. Fury's Hold - A big old Man O' War with a frankly silly amount of cannons. Its cannons actually cause more damage the further away the target is, turning it into the closest thing this game has to a sniper. Best when pouring shot after shot into your enemy from long range, but less capable up close.  Dwarves fight in floating bricks of steel and armour. Their ships are the toughest around and have guns pointing in all directions, but at the expense of being fairly slow and vulnerable to being boarded. Uniquely, their ships are steam-powered and don't use sails, making them immune to chainshot and even allowing them to go backwards. Tidebreaker - A small, zippy little ship with solid firepower and surprisingly good armour for its size. It can go backwards almost as fast as forwards, and can reverse directions incredibly quickly. Together with its small size, that can make it really annoying to put down as it zooms and weaves through incoming fire. However, its small crew complement makes it incredibly vulnerable to being boarded. Thunderhead - A collection of absolutely giant cannons strapped together in a floating cube. Its oversized cannonballs will actually push their targets around on a hit, allowing you to shove them into dangerous terrain or to push a ramming attempt off-course. Stormanchor - A floating fortress with the greatest armour and resilience in the game, and the ability to repair even during combat. However, it's also incredibly slow, and its firepower is actually rather mediocre, with no more cannons than the much smaller Tidebreaker.  Orcs are all about getting up close and personal. Their ships are very maneuverable and decently fast, and focus a lot of firepower directly to their front. They also boast the strongest boarding in the game, making for a pretty straightforward preferred tactic of "see enemy -> go right at them -> WAAAAAAGH!!!". In return, their cannons are incredibly inaccurate and not particularly powerful, leading to poor firepower unless you're fairly close already. Also, their ships are pulled by giant sharks. Which owns. Cleaver - A quick and highly maneuverable ship with a surprisingly powerful crew for its size. Its shrapnel-loaded cannon have a higher chance for critical hits the closer you get, but in return the ship is very fragile with poor armour. It prefers to stick to the blind spots of larger ships and decimate their crew with short-range grapeshot before launching a devastating boarding party. Bloodfin - A fast ship with lots of guns and a massive fuckoff ramming spike up front. Getting shot at only makes this ship angrier, causing it to go even faster any time it's hit. It's all about ramming all the time, but is vulnerable to having its sails shot off and being kited about. Gorger - A massive hulk full of very angry orcs who would very much like to pay the enemy crew a visit or three. It can launch its grappling hooks much farther and more frequently than other ships, turning it into an excellent boarder. The downside is that it's actually fairly fat and not all that quick, so actually getting into boarding range can be a struggle.   In each match, you earn gold that can be spent on improving your ships. Each ship can be increased in rank up to 10 times, with each rank unlocking a new piece of equipment that improves it in some way. That does mean that higher-ranked ships are overall more powerful than lower-ranked ones, but matchmaking will generally put you together with ships of your own rank. Additionally, each rank past 5 only unlocks mutually exclusive side-grades, where you have to decide between e.g. picking the improved rudder for better turn rates or the improved sails for better top speed. So once you've reached at least rank five (which can currently be done in less than 10 games) with a ship, it's generally roughly competitive even against higher-ranked ones. Additionally, each game has the chance of rewarding you with a Captain or a Mate, with each ship being able to carry one captain and up to three mates. Each Captain offers a unique activated ability, such as forward-firing torpedoes for the dwarves or a massive but short-lived burst of speed for the orks, while the Mates passively improve its stats such as reload rate or armour resilience. Captains and Mates are unlocked per faction and can be freely switched around between ships of that faction.   As mentioned, the game is currently in Early Access. That said, it's already at a very decent stage with fully functional gameplay, where I'd personally say it's already worth the money in terms of fun you'd get out of it. The main issues currently are somewhat unstable servers where it can take a while to get into a game at certain times, and slightly wonky balance in some situations. For example, small ships are currently a bit meh in the duo gamemode, particularly towards the endgame where everybody's forced into a tiny area. The devs seem on the ball and push out fixes quite quickly and regularly (for example, the matchmaking servers got hosed up yesterday, but the whole thing was fixed within like two hours), and overall I'm pretty optimistic for this game. Note that the devs stated that the buying price will increase as the game nears release. Gameplay Tips
Perestroika fucked around with this message at 04:48 on Apr 16, 2018 |
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Apr 15, 2018 11:01
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Been playing this for a bit and I'm really enjoying the arcadey nature of the ship controls. I've been using Fury's Hold and just ramming the crap out of people. Then just turning, hooking, and broadsiding from point blank range. Good times.
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Apr 16, 2018 02:41
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I was just about to make a thread for this. Glad I checked. Overall I've been having a lot of fun. People swear up and down the balance is fine, but honestly I find it to be pretty hosed. There's already some nutty builds for ships. The game is careening towards unplayable because ramming is just that good right now, but they've already said they're nerfing low-speed ramming damage. My personal favorite ship is the Cinder. It's fast as fuk boi. Fresh Shesh Besh fucked around with this message at 06:14 on Apr 19, 2018 |
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Apr 19, 2018 05:57
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Fresh Shesh Besh posted:I was just about to make a thread for this. Glad I checked. Overall I've been having a lot of fun. People swear up and down the balance is fine, but honestly I find it to be pretty hosed. There's already some nutty builds for ships. The game is careening towards unplayable because ramming is just that good right now, but they've already said they're nerfing low-speed ramming damage. Yeah, the ramming meta is strong, and Orcs in particular tend to profit from it. The devs also mentioned that the loving Bloodfin is about to get nerfed a bit, which should mix things up a bit. I've been rolling around with the Ashborne lately, and while the drat thing's made of glass and is not nearly fast enough to reliably avoid return fire, it sure is satisfying when things line up just right and you manage to just blast a guy to pieces in two volleys flat. 
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Apr 19, 2018 08:21
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I was eyeing this, it looks lile what the Man O War game should have ended up being. I love the idea of orcs using angry sharks to pull their ships, its pretty cool.
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Apr 19, 2018 11:55
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Very nice thread. I bought this a few days ago and have been enjoying it.
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Apr 19, 2018 12:30
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I've been giving the Orcs a try but man is the game being stingy on Orc captains.
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Apr 21, 2018 18:18
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Notes for the upcoming patch:https://steamcommunity.com/app/764050/discussions/0/3211505894126299251/ posted:Patch VII - coming soon Basically ramming and boarding gets less crazy, which should probably stymie the orc supremacy a bit.
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Apr 21, 2018 19:40
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I'm happy with this. Low-speed ramming was the main issue with ramming. You'd just sort of get humped to death and that was a bummer. People on the forums are doomsaying with regards to the boarding changes though. I haven't played a lot of Orc yet so I'm interested to know how that plays out.
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Apr 22, 2018 05:44
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Fresh Shesh Besh posted:I'm happy with this. Low-speed ramming was the main issue with ramming. You'd just sort of get humped to death and that was a bummer. Yeah I dunno about that, in the current state you can build Gorgers which can outright murder another ship from full health in a single boarding session. Hell, even an Ashborne can kill many ships solely through boarding damage in two attacks, provided you grapeshot the crew beforehand (which incidentally is a decent counter against dorfs). I guess the question is whether boarding should be an equally viable alternative to cannonfire for sinking ships, or if it should just be a supplementary measure to give you a bit of an edge while primarily duking it out with the guns.
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Apr 22, 2018 11:42
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I'm liking the ramming changes. Keeps the orcs from just whittling you by just poking you in blindspots from two feet away. I do have to say that I think the Phoenix cannons are a little OP. On a Fury's Hold, I can basically just sit in place and spin so that my cannons are always facing weak points and just crit the poo poo out of them. Currently leveling up an Ashborne to see if it's even more broken on them.
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Apr 29, 2018 15:23
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Been messing with the dwarves more. The tidebreaker is so good. Getting crew that increase turning speed and acceleration makes hitting the same spots a lot easier. Torpedos are also fun.
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May 9, 2018 12:27
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I want to get into this but I'm worried about the lack of players. Is the playerbase healthy and is it possible to get a match at any time of day? Also do we have a discord?
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May 16, 2018 10:57
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Evenings are generally okay on the US server but during the day you might have trouble enough people for a full game. But the lobbies are timed and if the room doesn't fill completely the game starts anyway with missing slots being filled by bots. But the bots are easy pickings so it still comes down to the human players.
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May 16, 2018 11:26
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This looks cool as hell but I’m not paying twenty bucks for a multiplayer only game that can barely break triple digit player numbers. Not sure what they should do about that.
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May 16, 2018 20:49
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I'm more concerned about forced, unavoidable bots, really. They kind of change the objective, with bots on the table have to avoid pvp for as long as you can in order to stomp more mushrooms, if that makes sense in English.
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May 17, 2018 14:34
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You level up your ships to get stronger? Seems like a bad idea to have to sit through a one two punch of playing against better people who also have better stats for new players.
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May 17, 2018 17:41
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How Disgusting posted:I'm more concerned about forced, unavoidable bots, really. They kind of change the objective, with bots on the table have to avoid pvp for as long as you can in order to stomp more mushrooms, if that makes sense in English. Mushrooms as in goombas from Mario? If that's the kind of thing you mean, the usual English parlance would be something like "mooks" or "creeps" if they're significantly weaker than the player, or just "bots" if they're roughly on the same level. (And I'm also curious what language is your first!)
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May 17, 2018 17:45
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It feels like the bloodfin is really underpowered. It feels like every enemy ship is faster/stronger/tougher than me every game. I have like 5 speed upgrades and am getting chased and murdered by the big ships without any chance for escape. Maybe I am just bad? edit: It also seems like EVERY SINGLE npc ship spawns in the same small section of the map. I spend almost all of the game sailing around the map looking for npc ships to spawn except and they never do except for 1 specific section in the top right of the map. twig1919 fucked around with this message at 02:53 on May 18, 2018 |
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May 18, 2018 02:35
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Perestroika posted:Yeah I dunno about that, in the current state you can build Gorgers which can outright murder another ship from full health in a single boarding session. Hell, even an Ashborne can kill many ships solely through boarding damage in two attacks, provided you grapeshot the crew beforehand (which incidentally is a decent counter against dorfs). I guess the question is whether boarding should be an equally viable alternative to cannonfire for sinking ships, or if it should just be a supplementary measure to give you a bit of an edge while primarily duking it out with the guns. Is this still true? It was taking me 5-6 boards to kill ships with the gorger even with constant grapeshotting. Is the level/crew advantage that bad that it just makes it instant win for one player?
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May 18, 2018 03:41
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How Disgusting posted:I'm more concerned about forced, unavoidable bots, really. They kind of change the objective, with bots on the table have to avoid pvp for as long as you can in order to stomp more mushrooms, if that makes sense in English. I thought it would be like that too but honestly the bots die so quickly and to so many things that if anything it speeds up those matches as it ends up being just the players anyway. The bots will die to everything so you might only pick up off one or two before you're forced to pvp. Also the map tends to constrict faster in those games. Comrayn posted:You level up your ships to get stronger? Seems like a bad idea to have to sit through a one two punch of playing against better people who also have better stats for new players. The game has two tiers: guppies and sharks. New players get put into guppies until they make 45000 gold. Ships don't take very long to level up honestly. Also a lot of the later upgrades for ships are very circumstantial and require building for a strategy. For instance, humans tend to get highly accurate long range guns later in their teirs but those cannons are only useful if you build for that sort of fighting. If you do something like a Fury can wreck people from miles out. In most cases the shorter range guns have a better overall damage output though so if you don't spec for range those long range guns are underpowered. Orcs are built around the ramming and boarding but can be specced for crit damage and Bloodfins are incredibly annoying with this spec as they're very good at staying in blind spots. The only things that puts a fully leveled ship above the rest is their X tier which is usually something goofy (for instance Furys get the ability to just start sniping the crew off ships when they're close enough, Ashborns get a periodic buff that just causes their cannon shots to light people on fire, and Cinders get a permanent wall hack on their radars that can see through walls). Those can be annoying but don't really tip things in their favour (unless you're a Fury who wins through boarding, then those snipers are really useful). twig1919 posted:Is this still true? It was taking me 5-6 boards to kill ships with the gorger even with constant grapeshotting. Is the level/crew advantage that bad that it just makes it instant win for one player? Gorgers are really slow so if you widdle their crew down from afar they basically become useless. Their advantage comes from being able to shoot from 3 directions and their massive crew. Bloodfins are actually really nasty at higher tiers. They are really fast and can fire a lot. They're great at sinking the heavy ships because they're just speedy enough to usually out pace the enemies ability to turn. Also, if specced for it, their ramming is obnoxious as well.
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May 19, 2018 21:41
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