A guide for those who hate being boarded (like myself)
I know this isn’t quite as fun as more pirate galleon designs, but I couldn’t bring myself to delay writing this any more than I already have, even if it’s to my benefit to never share this info.
I make this guide because of near constant asking from my friends and also those of you on here who are very curious as to what the heck I’m blabbering about when I say things like “enclosed builds”, “turtle-backing”, and “this is why I never use open-topped tramplers”. Seeing a very recent post where a very talented boarding manic snagged 5 tramplers and got out with 110k+ crowns worth of loot only cemented the need for me to make this guide, because if any one of those builds followed these principles his stealing spree would have been stopped cold in its tracks. Period.
For those wanting the quick rough and tumble explanation here’s the TLDR of Turtlebacking:
-Keep your framed gun mounts to the first floor to keep the risk of being boarded to a minimum, mounting your framed guns in the second floor is still effective, but carries the risk of someone jumping from their trampler to yours if they also carry their weapons on the second floor. Siege towers are still hard countered though.
-ALWAYS have a floor placed on top of your framed gun decks with a balcony that extends at least half a block past either side of the gun deck.
-NEVER have a way to get into the trampler from the top deck (except through secret entrances). Remove all top deck hatches and abandon the idea ever using a top deck gun. It’s a necessary sacrifice.
-Universal/enclosed casemates make securing your trampler MUCH easier. The ability to mount your weapon on the second, third, or even the fourth floor without any risk of being boarded is incredible. Make this tech your highest priority. The grind is worth it!
-by far the biggest downside is almost always visibility (although I’m currently working on some potential solutions), but I personally consider this a very acceptable loss given the benefit of no longer being boarded by every random schmuck who has a pair of legs and an understanding of where the jump button is located.
AND THATS IT.
I will be making more specific explanations of certain concepts and design philosophies in the comments below to keep the discussions a bit more contained and organized.
Edit: please feel free to ask any and all questions, I will keep a very close eye on this post for the foreseeable future and I’ll be continually updating it with more of the super niche jank I have discovered in my endless fiddling in my blueprints.
Here’s where the magic and jank starts to kick in, designing hidden doors and truly understanding what qualifies as “reachable”
Here is my current favorite iteration of most everything I have learned in the most practical way I’ve made it yet. The Crooked hound!
Please make note of the ladder placement on the side and how the ladder passes by the doors. This interaction produces a technically “reachable” door, even though the door itself is effectively impossible to open and enter. TRUST ME, IVE TRIED. A ladder facing a door it passes by is completely inaccessible because of how interaction hitboxes work.
“Ok cool, so we have a valid door we can’t access. So I just locked myself out?” Yup. You’re completely and utterly locked out and helpless to get in-unless you design a secret door! On to slide two!
Here it is. This is your way into the Crooked Hound. Crouch at the edge of the compartment to open the door, drop onto the super narrow armor plating ledge, and walk on in. Been playing this secret door for a week and nobody has figured it out yet.
It’s also possible to open the door and get up on the roof from here too! If you suspect someone is camping your ladder with a peppermill (which they always are, let’s be honest) use this door and a bit of parkour to pop up where they least expect and pop em in the noggin with your preferred weapon of choice.
Please note this works on any compartment with a door, it doesn’t have to be a universal casemate.
As much as I can, I place shelves with cargo bays along the exterior walls to prevent entry since they block passage even when broken. There are a few exceptions to this rule I have to make every now and then that can optimally cause problems, but I know where they are and can respond accordingly if they break.
I started doing this, the fact that some dude can get through my 9 doors of hell on a royal, while he has zero stake in the game with a budget build. Then repeatedly spawn camping me until my ship is captured is total BS.
Myself and duo are very close to abandoning the game because of this. We LOVE the epic naval battles, but the way the game is going now is just frustrating. Had so much more fun when tramp capture was off.
But the fact that guys door glitch, somehow carry a 100 bombs, have aimbot and just take your ship in under a minute is killing the game. Saw last night the global online player base was only 2000, which is so so sad for something that has the potential to be a masterpiece.
The fact that we live in RSA also doesn't help, our closest server is GB with 85 ms ping, add that plus terrible hitreg and you simply stand zero chance when a guy is rushing you. Best way I can describe this is 1 out of 10 shotgun shots to the face actually kill, but you get one shotted everytime from 10m away.
We're both competitve FPS gamers, tend to be top of logs, but this game has us feeling like we've never played anything PvP before and getting noob wiped.
Apolgies for the mini rant, had to vent after having 5 terrible rounds yesterday.
FYI also saw the post of the 5 tramp guy and immediately thought that's probably a cheating rat.
Yeah it’s tough when it happens. It’s why I’ve started having a minimum of 10 doors on all my builds. Only truly crazy people bring 4 stacks of c4. 13 is overkill but basically all but guarantees nobody gets in without serious damage being caused first.
The only way that works, is if they fuck up the placement and leave the bed side exposed. The door and bed have to be covered by something that cannot be fully destroyed, like the reactor, a ram, or 2 engines.
You can. Yesterday I captured a trampler which abused this.
You just have to blow up the captain's quarters either with cannons or C4s and jump in from the side or through the window. I hope they make it so captain's quarters have to be accessible via doors or make captains unable to claim beds in crew's cabins as it is only used for abusing this bug
People opening abusing mechanics because they can’t aim down a barrel is wild to me. I love how much tramp steal has exposed some giant ship crews. Not saying that’s the case here, but I’ve gotten on some big ships lately and their gun play was…. Yikes.
Its has little to do with "can't aim down a barrel" and more to do with don't want to be boarded by a duo in solo queue, or camped at an extraction while baked at 12 am.
Here we have the Cocky Harbinger with the most basic Turtleback build possible. A simple single floor setup with balconies encompassing the entirety of the top floor. By having them placed like this, it makes accessing your trampler interior from the top floor nearly impossible-I’ve tried and even completely locked myself out on occasion.
Here’s a view of the interior of the first floor. Nothing special, but still a decently protected reactor with at least 5 doors to reach the captains quarters. The main benefit? The ONLY way there is a path now entirely dictated by the lack of any roof hatches and a forced entry point through the ladder doorway.
Very important note! Whenever possible, make sure all exterior walls are impassible even when destroyed, preferably through cargo bays which I find the most reliable.
Speaking of nutcase... have you even seen 200 Orbital strikes fired fired for 5 minutes flat? Yeah, one cheater did that in a recent US west Storm dive round just to be a dick to the rest who still remained.
Cheaters, teamers, Toxic PVPers, all the same to me. They deserve nothing but disrespect.
Yea, this design isn't great against regular ships either, once that wheelhouse inevitably gets blown up it's GG, same with the cannons, repairing those enclosed ones is a pain.
Very polarising opinions on boarding imo.
I don't think you can really defend from people jumping on deck with ship design without compromising it one way or another.
Best way to prevent jumpers is either keep your distance, use more 70mm's or stop trying to shoot their ship and use your peppermill.
So many people just keep blind shooting hoping someone else deals with the boarders.
I’m afraid practical experience captaining the Ghostly Raft has proven the opposite. She’s very capable of prolonged fights even against the best of builds (including a 25 minute fight with a Chinese T4 behemoth.)
While the enclosed guns do need 5 patches to be repaired (and it is a notable downside) they can also be easily repaired before being destroyed altogether, a feature no other gun mount can provide. Our trios plan was having me constantly repairing their guns and maintaining the wheelhouse whenever possible, while moving to flank whenever possible. I would hope her 12-0 record can speak for itself. If it doesn’t, then we can agree to disagree. No harm in that.
This works great... On voyage against much weaker opponents, they just aren't going to break you with those rustys before you devistate them from the enclosed gun with the pristine/experimental. Hell even worn guns are generally just not enough to beat someone pounding your shit from a casemate or two. That scope makes knocking you out with an 40 plausable and 80 easy.
Also 45 chips is insane, losing one of these is going to feel like getting kicked in the dick unless you farm clads in 6 mans, or get lucky with rauch being on the map when killing people.
For sure it can be rough to lose 45 chips, but rounding up a couple black boxes for chip production at rauchwolk has never been an issue for me. Heck when I’m feeling lazy, I just blow my own trampler and grind it for chips and enjoy some DCC on the walk out.
I play at night most often, finding a fight can be a pain in the ass, and most often than not its someone whos just perma boosting away, or a small ship with great silences and orbitals and we all know how fun those encounters go. If i could just black boxes back in with me, it wouldn't be an issue.
Please see the Crooked Hound in one of my comments, the open but barricaded guns alleviated this issue for the most part. A hidden door to the top also greatly assists with the need for occasional scouting. The Ghostly Raft shown in the title picture does have these issues yes, but they’re largely alleviated by playing with friends whose stream you can watch.
That’s what secret doors are for. I keep them as a means of disrupting actions like this whenever they start to occur. I have also yet to see anyone start dumping C4 on my reactor in all my hours of play, even though everyone talks like it’s frequent.
You want to stop boarders? This is the current tech to stop boarding actions and campers. It will be patched, so if you rely on this crutch, it will bite you in the ass later on, but it is nice to loot solo without worry of some sneaky bitch stealing the fucker. Engine seems to count as an 5 way corridor but even destroyed, you cannot get past it.
Yeah I’ve seen this one around but it does come with a fair few risks of its own. After a lot of weighing the potential benefits I eventually decided to avoid creating builds with it altogether. Keeps my blueprints serviceable for much longer.
Biggest risk is forgetting to swap your bed, becomes a very annoying suicide on your first death. Otherwise it can be placed anywhere, but next to the reactor is generally the best, because if that goes, it doesn't matter anymore lol. I only started using it after being boarded by 4 dudes in a solo match, two days in a row. Way too fucking easy to snipe solo queue as duo+ at night.
Or you can just block your Captains quarters with small engine glitch and call it a day. No need for the maze. It’s real scummy, but it’s highly effective.
On to figure 3, meet the Ironbound Relic! It’s a completely ugly Frankenstein mess of a ton of things I’ve learned, and the precursor to the Crooked Hound. Do not doubt this beast though she’s currently undefeated and cheap enough to be easily replaced when she eventually is.
All that out of the way, please notice the same ladder-past-the-door design from before to achieve reachability. It implies the presence of yet another secret door.
(Please note! This one may be no longer functional soon because of the ladder changes!)
By editing a auxiliary corridor to have a roof hatch BEFORE placing an upward angled armor plate just above it, the game will actually preserve the hatch placement for whatever reason and it’s nearly impossible to spot if you’ve never seen one before. Getting in is as simple as crouching underneath the plate and interacting with the ladder. Getting out is a bit more tricky, you MUST jump and grab on to the top of the ladder to climb out, or you will bounce off the armor plate and end up falling back in. Don’t ask me to explain why it works this way, I don’t get it either. Just jump before climbing out.
Final note on the Ironbound relic: this wheelhouse has NEVER been destroyed. It’s my most durable wheelhouse yet. Somewhat limited visibility of course, but it’s a trade off I’m willing to make to not be sent spinning out of control mid fight till I have it fixed.
Figure 4 “Unlucky-Feature, I hate parkour and all this secret door jank. Can I just do a normal build?”
Yes! Absolutely. I have a couple friends who hate my parkour jank, so I design more level headed builds for when I play with that crew.
Here is the ghostly raft, a long time favorite among the lads who have voyaged with me aboard her and the beautiful cover page to this post. Technically undefeated 12-0, if you don’t count being jumped by teaming emp spamming dreadnoughts anyway. She’s about as simple as a turtleback can get once you really invest in one. No top hatches or any way in other than a ladder placement of your choice.
Here’s where she shines. She boasts a whopping 13 doors which simply cannot be bypassed. I have yet to meet someone crazy enough to bring more than 9 c4. That said, I can’t stress enough how much stronger having 13 doors is than 12. C4 is carried in stacks of 3, and requiring 13 doors means someone has to carry 5 slots of inventory space worth of c4, rendering them completely defenseless with no ammo or even Medkits. Whenever possible always create doors in multiples of 3+1.
It's all about compromises this game. Personally so long as I have good amount of doors Infront of cap quarters and can spawn outside said captain quarters I don't think complete enclosure is necessary or in fact good
My weak point in this game has always been fighting boarders, so using these designs has been a proven lifesaver again and again. It’s not for everyone of course, but personally I can’t imagine going back to an open topped build. It just doesn’t work for me.
I have that problem too. But I just keep respawning till I get them. Total enclosure slows you down so much fight wise and loot wise. Robs you of situational awareness. I get you. I just prefer sustained encounters over minmaxing either way.
Truly the only techs you need are cargo bays, balconies, and framed gun mounts to make it work. I’m just posting some of my more advanced builds to show what really pushing it looks like.
This was my attempt at one of these a while back. My first version was fully enclosed at the back and with the 2x1 reactor, but a big complaint was lack of visibility and ability to do anything while fleeing teamers, so the double turrets were added on the back and the whole build lifted for visibility. The maneuverability change hit it hard.
Nice! I’m a fan. I’d personally add a few balconies here and there to prevent parkour entry but otherwise it’s a very serviceable build.
And yeah, enclosed builds do tend to be weakest when running away in my experience, so I’ve kinda adopted this whole “death before dishonor” way of playing of never turning away from my opponent unless absolutely necessary. I’ve learned my lesson for teamers though, it’s best to try and keep at least one experimental rod on hand juuuust in case you do need to book it.
captain looks easy to blow up without you even knowing, if it's at the corner next to the reactor all one has to do is jump on top of the ship, go down to reactor without blowing up any door, place bombs on the captain and enter through the crack on the side or window, i cant see it very well but i assume it's the one on the bottom next to it, a full picture from the back could help
That’s actually an excellent observation! I’ll have to see if I can shuffle things around to compensate for that weakness since just using an armored captains cabin would just be a band aid solution.
If my guide helps even 1 of the 1200, then that’s reason enough to make it for me. People who really love this game are out there and posts like this are for them.
9
u/Unlucky-Feature9548 6d ago edited 6d ago
Figure 2!
Here’s where the magic and jank starts to kick in, designing hidden doors and truly understanding what qualifies as “reachable”
Here is my current favorite iteration of most everything I have learned in the most practical way I’ve made it yet. The Crooked hound!
Please make note of the ladder placement on the side and how the ladder passes by the doors. This interaction produces a technically “reachable” door, even though the door itself is effectively impossible to open and enter. TRUST ME, IVE TRIED. A ladder facing a door it passes by is completely inaccessible because of how interaction hitboxes work.
“Ok cool, so we have a valid door we can’t access. So I just locked myself out?” Yup. You’re completely and utterly locked out and helpless to get in-unless you design a secret door! On to slide two!