I’ve been doing some hard thinking on the sea, and i think ive come to some conclusions and had some good ideas on how to “fix” sailing in DST.
firstly, we need to “pick a lane”. What do i mean by that? I mean do we want sailing to be a major gameplay feature, or do we want sailing to be a minor “get resources and dont touch again except for fun” system.
basically is sailing about the journey or the destination?
right now at least, sailing has boats that would be especially good for long term ocean survival, and absolutely no reason to do anything more than the bare minimum to get your sea resources and get back to base. What i’m saying by this is that the style of boats, and the gameplay that is encouraged is at odds with one another.
okay so what should we choose?
well that’s entirely up to klei, but to me at least, id say that everything currently circles around getting what you want and leaving.
SPEEDRUNNING THE OCEAN
Its all about the destination currently, so we need a focus on tools that make discovering and reaching locations fast easier. Spyglass from shipwrecked is obvious and good, but personally i think its a bit unimaginative.
tools that would be good for rushing ocean content:
small maneuverable boats that can move fast even if you just use oars, but provides little space for “basebuilding” and is very cramped if a fight happens on it.
spyglass
upgraded spyglass
Maps buried in graveyards showing POI on the ocean (salt stacks, waterlogged biome, possibly even the moon quay)
a boss that when killed reveals the lunar island for a more natural way to discover it rather than exploiting a map generation bug. (Also make it give material for upgraded spyglass)
small sail: for the aforementioned small boat, gives little acceleration for large boats but turns extremely fast. Is comparable to a regular sail when placed on a small boat.
personal flotation device: basically a inner tube that a player can wear to swim for a few minutes. Primarily used to cross small patches of water AND to mine and gather stuff not worth getting the boat close for.
And of course more can be imagined, but the point of all these addons would be to encourage and enable “rushing” the ocean content. Show players where the good stuff is and let them run out and grab it easily. You can still use the bigger boats for extended trips on the water though.
now all that is only one side of this proverbial coin. Some ideas can go both ways so to speak and would be nice even if added with none of the rest, but those are the speedboating tools.
some of you may be going “well this is just a whole list of suggestions” and you wouldn’t be entirely wrong, but i promise theres a philosophy behind what i’m suggesting and why i’m saying what i’m saying. It will be explained later with examples from both sides. Also a reason will be given as to why we should pick a side and not just implement everything.
OCEANBASING:
Lets talk about the other side of the coin.
if we want sailing to be a major feature. Then we need a sailing gameplay loop outside of reaching destination. We would also need sustainability so we no longer are tied to our bases quite so heavily (i.e ocean sources for typical resources) this to me feels like what klei wanted boating to be eventually, but we are just not there yet.
This would require the most changes, but i’m sure a lot of people would greatly enjoy boating if treated right.
For major feature boating we need:
A primary and secondary method of obtaining enough food for players while on the ocean.
examples include {
2x2 buildable farmplot for ocean farming, with included rain barrel for an ocean water source (and also for watering crops at base without a nearby pond)
An easy source of small fish e.g. fishing net.
Something to kill for food
a source of filler that doesn’t require you to ram the boat into a single kelp and let go of the steering wheel and either drop the anchor or hope that you can collect it before its pushed out of your reach.
}
a source of basic crafting materials like sticks and grass and wood.
(Probably a biome with small ocean trees that can be harvested like regular trees, with fish in it that are attracted to sticks as bait specifically, and give 2 sticks and 2 grass for every fish caught)
a better portable light source than building a fire on your boat, that is entirely accessible from the ocean.
It would be nice to have a bigger slower boat for mobile basing on the ocean, you wouldn’t want to fight anything that causes leaks using this boat, but it would allow players to have a functional small base on the ocean. Basically we should be able to start our boat moving and not even worry about collisions because unless we strap 2 or more sails we wont even hit leak speeds.
A new ocean threat: hounds aren’t well suited to situations inwhich you cant run away, they come in numbers too high to reasonably fight off in a confined area, its why hound tooth traps are a thing. Instead maybe we could have something that circles the boat like a bat, and climbs on the boat 2 at a time per player currently on board.
then, most importantly, we need a good reason to be out on the water.
i’m not exactly sure what this could be. I mean your base being mobile is a huge step foward on that front, because you can just move it wherever would be convenient for your current task, but thats more a good reason to have a mobile base.
i think making there be a good source of healing and armor would be helpful, maybe the ocean threat has a 25% chance of dropping a pigskin(?) would be nice. More islands also helps, but runs the risk of the current “harvest then leave” mentality.
i think a good candidate is to revive the ocean chest loot system. Make it more easily obtained (pinching winch sucks sorry klei) and make them always spawn within a certain relatively long distance. About half the map is reasonable. They should spawn pretty frequently too.
all of thats purpose is to give players a good reason to spend a lot of time out on the water, ideally they could spend time making a nice boat, then set sail and almost never be forced to land again. (They will land again eventually to explore the inner map)
THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE CHOICE:
Now we can talk arguably the most important point: why pick a side, you could just enable both playstyles.
and you COULD, in theory, just add all of that, and players will pick the playstyle they prefer. And that COULD work, and it could be fun too. But too much choice is a problem that exists.
let me explain:
when we were talking about features, it seemed like i was primarily highlighting things that would be nice to add to the ocean, and you’d be right in thinking that, because i WAS.
but theres a topic involved that i specifically steered away from because its a bit controversial.
things that would be nice to be removed from the ocean:
a shocking thought, just deleting content, but one gameplay styles boon is often another ones pain.
if we want speedrunning the ocean to be the playstyle, the random ocean stacks are ideal, they provide an obstacle that you need to steer around or you’ll be smashed against them. You have to pay attention or you can smash your ship, its good design.
but if we want a slow moving ocean base? The ocean stacks being randomly placed is a huge hinderance basically requiring you to stop and mine them out repeatedly. Itd be antithetical to the experience of chillin on your ocean base if every half day you had to stop what your doing and break a sea stack that you bumped into. Even if it doesnt damage the boat its a pain. In essense, its bad design.
essentially, gameplay mechanics that work well for one design style doesnt work for all styles.
In a fast moving boat, the hounds as they exist now are a great threat. They force you to get to land quickly and fight them in a safe manner. It adds a lot of danger needing to rush back to solid land or your small boat would be swarmed quickly. The new threat i reccomended for large boats would take away that urgency and possible “i’d rather crash my cheap boat than be caught out on the ocean like this” moments
in a large slow boat however, you cant possibly get to land in time before the hounds reach you, so instead of forcing you to deal with an unreasonable amount of hounds in a still relatively small area, we add a new more considerate enemy who is themed around the ocean.
a placeable farmplot for ocean farming is cool for mobile bases, but useless if you arent going to be on your tiny raft long.
Revealing all the POI before you ever sail would be spoilers if boating was slow.
no one would ever spend the time to gather grass and sticks and logs on the water if they could just rush back to their base and do it in bulk.
The point i’m making is that they need to make a decision so that way they can intelligently plan out future gameplay mechanics.
some of the current mechanics are already suffering from a lack of understanding of where they wanna go.
crabking is a terrible boss, but all of his mechanics are good. What gives? Well the boats are too big and slow to actually dodge any of his cool attacks, so instead players are forced to tank through them. This leads to boats being rapidly smashed through, and people having to bring 10 or more boat kits so they can make and throw away enough boats to widdle him down. Its bad implementation of good design.
crab king could be redesigned, keep all of his current mechanics, and become good, but thats not what this post is about.
the ocean content needs a direction, and it needs to be stuck to. We could have really cool boating one way or another, but it needs to be one way or another. Boats as they are just dont work, they clash with how the ocean is currently designed. So we either need to redesign boats to benefit the ocean (its more than just movement speed thats the problem) or we need to redesign the ocean so that a slow big boat is the way to go.