Ships

Introduction

Ships can be purchased from NPC Shipwrights at most city's docks. They very in price according to the type and size of vessel. These are the only means to travel the seas and for fisherman, the only way to fish in the deep sea.

Sailing Commands

These are used to sail your boat once it is placed on the water (to be spoken outloud):

Command	Description
Raise Anchor	Raises the anchor and readies the ship to move
Lower Anchor	Drops to anchor and stops the ship from moving anymore
Forward	Moves the ship forward at full speed, until you tell it to stop
Forward One	Moves the ship forward one square
Forward Slow	Moves the ship forward, except slowly
Forward Right	Moves the ship forward and right diagonally
Forward Left	Moves the ship back and right diagonally
Back	Moves the ship backward at full speed
Back One	Moves the ship back one square
Back Slowly	Moves the ship backward, slowly
Back Right	Moves the ship backward and right diagonally
Back Left	Moves the ship backward and left diagonally
Right	Moves the boat to the right
Left	Moves the boat to the left
Stop	Stops the boat from moving, until you tell it which way to go
Turn around	Makes the boat turn around to face the opposite direction
Turn Left	Turns the boat to face the left of your current direction
Turn Right	Turns the boat to the fact right of your current direction
Remove Name	Removes the name off the boat

Blessed

Ship deeds and Dry-docked ships are blessed. This is due to the very high cost of the boats, and the fact that boats are sinkable (see below), so we believe the risk of using a ship should not involve the risk of the deed or dry-docked ship being stolen.

Ship Combat and Notoriety

If there are ANY aggressor (i.e. grey to a particular player), criminal or murderer players on board a ship, then firing on that ship is NOT considered a criminal action. Otherwise (even if no player is on-board) it is considered a criminal action. Firing back at a ship without any aggressors on it (from the point of view of the person firing) will be considered a criminal action and killing the blue players on board will result in murder counts... BUT the criminals can sink the ship (not killing the players) without getting any murder counts. i.e. Murderers can only defend themselves against the players attacking them directly if those players attack them first directly--e.g. by casting spells on them. BUT if players are only firing cannons, the only way to defend yourself as a Murderer or criminal without getting murder counts is by fighting with cannons.

Repairing Ships

The repair kit will work like the cannons--a gump that involves the player having to specifically pick out the right repair tiles. It will not be possible to repair a boat faster than it takes damage given equal numbers on both sides (i.e. repairing will be slightly slower than cannon damage).

When a ship is severely damaged (~30% health left), the ropes will turn red (or the planks will pop out in the older ships) and anybody can board the ship. This means you could lose anything in the hold or your corpse could get looted.

When a ship sinks, a gump will pop up to everybody on that ship, explaining what happens with the sunken boat (as described below) and offering a chance to be booted to a "stranded" position based on where the ship sank. Players can always use the help-stuck option through the Help button on paper-doll if they are dead and on a boat.

Sunken Ships

When a boat is sunken, the owner of the boat receives a blessed ransom note in their backpack. They have 15 minutes to use the note and decide between 2 courses of action:

• ! They can pay a ransom of 10% the boat cost to those who sunk their ship. 80% of this ransom money is split between all players who damaged the boat (scaled by how much damage they did), the other 20% disappears into a gold sink

• ! They can attempt to rescue their boat. If they decide this route, everybody who damaged the boat is informed of it. They then have 1 hour to sail out and fully repair the boat. Only the owner of the boat (the original placer) can use the repair toolkit on the sunken boat at this point in order to reclaim the ship, and they must repair it fully (i.e. back to 100 hit points). The boat cannot be re-damaged during this time (which means the owner may venture several attempts at rescue, each time getting closer to repairing it to full). After the hour is up, anybody can attempt to repair the boat--whoever performs the final repair "captures" the boat--i.e. gets the boat model in their backpack. Thus, the inital owner has the opportunity to venture out to "win" the boat back, but if they fail, the enemy can COMPLETELY capture the boat themselves.

Boats that are fully sunk can't be freely walked around on (or recalled to)... this means access to the hold or corpses on the boat could be limited.

You cannot dry-dock a damaged boat (it must be fully repaired first). When a sunken boat is repaired (placing a dry-docked boat in the last person to repair it's backpack), everything in that boat's hold is lost.

Initially, there will be no resource required for using cannons, though we may reconsider this. For those of you who missed the first boat event and testing, when you use a cannon, there is a (?) button that explains how it works. BEWARE that when there are more than 1 powder tiles stacked on each other, the BOTTOM tile is the one that is selected (so be careful when there is a black tile underneath a gold one or something like that).

We will likely run a couple "King of the Hill" type events during this time to encourage players to venture out to a particular area and engage in boat combat in an effort to stay in the area longer than your competitors.