Let's Talk Leedsichthys and Rafts

[🦊 Hermit]

Ok, this topic has been somewhat lost in the chaos over the flyer nerf, however now that things are calming down a little perhaps it's time to address another of the elephants in the room. Or in this case, the whale in the sea.

I do like the idea of the raft having some kind of threat, something which has the chance of causing you some pain and risk for using one. I don't object to that concept at all. However as with a number of dinos that have been added of late, it's initial concept seems to me to be a little overpowered. So this discussion is to give the team a bit of feedback about the leedsichthys, and what could be done to improve it.

Please try to keep all comments constructive.

I haven't fully tested out the raft destruction aspect myself yet, however I have seen how fast the whale is when chasing a raft - I know there is no escape from one once it has you in it's sights. I've also heard from others who have done tests that there is no real defense against it...any structure built below the raft to try and block the thing from getting to it is ignored, and the leedsichthys can phase right through it to attack the boat itself, even if the raft is stationary with nobody at the helm.

It's this inevitabillity, this lack of any recourse at all, which rather annoys me about this game mechanic. I don't mind having the danger there, but I would like some kind of way to protect or defend against said danger, even if that protection costs a lot of resources to acchive. And said protection would have to be available in the lower-medium tier of the game, because once a tribe get higher level tames their use of rafts tends to be superceeded by dinos so rafts are an early game tool.

So what options could we have to balance the mechanic a little better? One option could simply be removing the abillity of the leedy to ignore underwater structures surrounding a raft. If the thing had to break through a number of pillars and walls before it was able to damage the raft behind, it would give a little bit of extra time for the raft occupants to make their way into shallow water where they would be able to escape the thing. I don't even mind if the leedy was given the abillity to damage stone (although at a reduced rate to the dunkie), so long as wood or stone structures were able to slow down it's advance on a raft ever so slightly.

Another option is some kind of construction or item that acts as a 'whale repellant' for a limited time, kinda like the bug repellant for spiders. One can activate it on a raft, and it gives temporary immunity to the leedy's vision or attacks, although if it runs out while you're on the open water and you don't have more available, you'll be sunk quickly. Again, I don't mind if such an item cost a lot to produce, so long as it was available in the early-midgame, not a tek item.

Does anybody else have any other ideas on this matter? Discuss.

[eugee]

On my server we built a taming boat; it's got a pair of 2x2 drop bins on the sides, and a high-mounted ballista over the center of the raft. We live in one of the bays of the redwoods, and make a lot of trips to the jungle for caving or capturing.

The first outing we stayed in shallow water. Nearing the huge waterfall a leedsichthys saw us and started chasing. Our man on the ballista slammed missiles into the whale as I beelined away with a third tribemate on standby with materials to repair the boat as soon as it would let him.

The seventh ballista bolt killed it--after hitting the boat twice (6 hits to kill our boat so far). We cheered. We laughed. We talked about mounting a flag on the side of the boat and importing a paint-picture of leedsichthys silhouettes showing our kills. We got to the opposite shore, having killed two of them, skirting shallow water. While they lured raptors to the boat's drop-pins I was on the other screen making our flag up. By the time we set sail again with a hold filled with raptors literally bouncing off each other (and very unhappy, as we wanted to take them home before taming) I had our flag up and it was amazing.

We decided to cut across deep water to hit skull island for obsidian, then another hop to the redwood shore.

When we got back to base, we needed to add TEN more silhouettes to the flag.

The next day, we went over to the north to get a mammoth (with all this raptor kibble) and sticking to the shoreline there and back... we killed EIGHT leedsichthys. Eight of them, sailing across VERY shallow water. By this point, we've gotten exceptionally good at scraping them off on rocks.

We love the idea of the leedsichthys--but we hate the implementation. They spawn WAY too often, and in WAY too shallow of water. If you cross deep water, we're fine with a scary sea-monster coming to the surface. We're not fine with it killing a metal boat. That's fine though, because my metal boat with a vulcan turret on the top isn't terribly scared of leedsichthys. We got rid of the flag because we killed 20 of them in two days; it was retarded.

So to take more drastic steps, I lowered the max spawn amount to 0.1 in the hopes that would make them rarer. After the server was up for 24 hours I checked and there were 49 leedsichthys spawned. I killed them off and waited another day, and it was back up to 49 of them. So I changed the spawn limit override to 0.02, hoping to get the max alive at any given time to 10ish. After 24 hours, there were still 39 of them up.

We live in the first bay by the big waterfall. Just east on the redwood shore is a huge cliff, topped with tons of metal. We built a giant megaramp to get up there, and we frequently sail along the coast, take our Ankylo up there with a Dire Bear or two escorting, and clear off the metal then come back. We get about 2500 metal this way (we're really just starting to use metal regularly). Then we sail back. In shallow water, always right next to the shore.

If we don't have to ballista a leedsichthys going EACH DIRECTION, I'm surprised.

I'm about to just turn them off on our server, because of the shore spawning, and seeing three at once if you touch deep water. They are so common that it's just frustrating anymore.

[MISFITSWITCH]

Originally posted by eugee:

On my server we built a taming boat; it's got a pair of 2x2 drop bins on the sides, and a high-mounted ballista over the center of the raft. We live in one of the bays of the redwoods, and make a lot of trips to the jungle for caving or capturing.

The first outing we stayed in shallow water. Nearing the huge waterfall a leedsichthys saw us and started chasing. Our man on the ballista slammed missiles into the whale as I beelined away with a third tribemate on standby with materials to repair the boat as soon as it would let him.

The seventh ballista bolt killed it--after hitting the boat twice (6 hits to kill our boat so far). We cheered. We laughed. We talked about mounting a flag on the side of the boat and importing a paint-picture of leedsichthys silhouettes showing our kills. We got to the opposite shore, having killed two of them, skirting shallow water. While they lured raptors to the boat's drop-pins I was on the other screen making our flag up. By the time we set sail again with a hold filled with raptors literally bouncing off each other (and very unhappy, as we wanted to take them home before taming) I had our flag up and it was amazing.

We decided to cut across deep water to hit skull island for obsidian, then another hop to the redwood shore.

When we got back to base, we needed to add TEN more silhouettes to the flag.

The next day, we went over to the north to get a mammoth (with all this raptor kibble) and sticking to the shoreline there and back... we killed EIGHT leedsichthys. Eight of them, sailing across VERY shallow water. By this point, we've gotten exceptionally good at scraping them off on rocks.

We love the idea of the leedsichthys--but we hate the implementation. They spawn WAY too often, and in WAY too shallow of water. If you cross deep water, we're fine with a scary sea-monster coming to the surface. We're not fine with it killing a metal boat. That's fine though, because my metal boat with a vulcan turret on the top isn't terribly scared of leedsichthys. We got rid of the flag because we killed 20 of them in two days; it was retarded.

So to take more drastic steps, I lowered the max spawn amount to 0.1 in the hopes that would make them rarer. After the server was up for 24 hours I checked and there were 49 leedsichthys spawned. I killed them off and waited another day, and it was back up to 49 of them. So I changed the spawn limit override to 0.02, hoping to get the max alive at any given time to 10ish. After 24 hours, there were still 39 of them up.

We live in the first bay by the big waterfall. Just east on the redwood shore is a huge cliff, topped with tons of metal. We built a giant megaramp to get up there, and we frequently sail along the coast, take our Ankylo up there with a Dire Bear or two escorting, and clear off the metal then come back. We get about 2500 metal this way (we're really just starting to use metal regularly). Then we sail back. In shallow water, always right next to the shore.

If we don't have to ballista a leedsichthys going EACH DIRECTION, I'm surprised.

I'm about to just turn them off on our server, because of the shore spawning, and seeing three at once if you touch deep water. They are so common that it's just frustrating anymore.

I was thinking of truning them off on our servers also.

[🦊 Hermit]

Rather than turn them off altogether, Ertosi has made a mod that stops them attacking boats. I've started using that for my single player game, I'd suggest it to you guys too. It allows you to keep them in the game, but without their crazy overpowered mechanics.

However this is another case of modders filling in the gaps that the dev team have yet to address. We need some kind of vanilla functionallity to make them more balanced before Ark is released.

[Chip Patton]

Originally posted by Hermit:

Rather than turn them off altogether, Ertosi has made a mod that stops them attacking boats. I've started using that for my single player game, I'd suggest it to you guys too. It allows you to keep them in the game, but without their crazy overpowered mechanics.

However this is another case of modders filling in the gaps that the dev team have yet to address. We need some kind of vanilla functionallity to make them more balanced before Ark is released.

Right as of the moment I have some 18 mods just to address game balance issues like this, including the flier de-nerf, boats, etc. Maybe this is all part of the design, maybe if private servers, that don't run like crap, make people wait 5 minutes to load in 200+ mods to fix the game, maybe people will just grin and bear all of the official server lags, glitches, wipes, etc.

[Stormtempter]

Eugee covered what is important - there are way way way too many Leeds spawning, they are spawning in way too shallow of water, and they circumvent all passive defense (walls, etc).

[HippoStoned]

I escaped the leeds

[Stormtempter]

for now

[Windwalker82]

Is there a way to see how many are alive in single player?

[🦊 Hermit]

Press TAB twice to bring up the full screen console, then type

getallstate Leedsichthys_Character_BP_C

The number of entries you get, each on it's own line, corresponds to how many there are on the map.

[Stormtempter]

be prepared for many many lines XD

[Scuba]

I like the idea of different levels of raft and repellents. One thought I had was maybe the whale could be attracted to something like electricity! So if you are scooting around on a basic wood or stone boat with nothing more than a smithy and forge you would be fairly safe! But when you have a boat buzzing with the sound of a generator, fridge, turrets and other electrical stuff the whale could take a little more interest in you. This would give the raft a little more freedom on the open waters whilst challenging the more superior tribes that want to raid or grief using boats. Just a thought, what do you think WildCard?

[Tachyon]

Originally posted by MortVent:

single player, it's tricky....

Single player - just edit the beastie out by changing the spawn to something else.

Mutiplayer - who sets out without dino/swimmer/flyer escorts on ANY trip, be it land, air (you have to land more often these days) or water?

Out of curiosity, does the leeds try to attack platforms on plessys or mosas? I mean, rafts are not a feature I have ever really used... too constricting and slow.

[Stormtempter]

Leeds will only ever attack rafts. Dinos with saddles or platforms will be ignored. The advantage of the raft over dinos was that you could construct on it, and while slow to travel, could serve as a mobile base or resource storage on long trips since weight is not an issue. It also has the advantage of being available to low level players.

The fact the the Leeds only attacks rafts, on the Center spawn in great number and in shallow water means that low level players on the Center are severely crippled in their ability to make forays around the map, given that half the Center is water. The fact that no matter what you build on the raft, nor the material it is made from will stop a Leeds from destroying your raft is a bone of contention amongst many players. You can literally encase the entire raft in metal and the Leed will blow right through it and destroy the entire assembly in a few hits.

[Tachyon]

Ah, bit of a shame. Glad I have a couple of plessys and a mosa with platforms in that case.

[Rockatansky]

you basically always need a group of dinos/players to back you up in the ocean now. For rafting I keep some sharks on follow for Leed defense. Even at that thought im repairing my raft all the time. I think the devs should make the Leed drop something that is more useful to the player, so each time your attacked by an annoying whale you have the posssibility of getting something good out of it