[2019] CAPTAIN’S LOG 25: TEST AHOY!

Ahoy Pathfinders!

It’s here! Our Public Test Realm is now live and ready for all of you to dive into. This Captain’s Log will cut straight to it and provide more detail on our new claiming systems along with some information on our PTR.

We appreciate your patience as we prepared this megapatch to go out on the PTR: ATLAS 1.5 is an ambitious new chapter and we recognize that it has taken us some time, but as we’ve said before, we’re hardened adventurers and we’re looking forward to the fun and challenges that we’ll experience alongside you!

Claim Systems Overview
First, we will revisit the three modes which will be implemented for ATLAS 1.5 and their respective claim systems in a brief overview:

Colonies PvP: Freeform building, with more progress-protecting and time-enforced PvP rules creating a cooperative atmosphere, and limits to ensure the game is more oriented towards single players and small to mid-sized groups.

Empires PvP: This is our previous PvP mode with which our PvP players are familiar. Some changes have been made to the declaim timers to mitigate griefing and water claims have been eliminated. Companies have a high member limit of 250 members. Alliances are limited to four.

PvE: A modified version of our Colonies system. There will be a limit on the amount of Islands one Company can claim via a points system.

Public Test Realm
Our Public Test Realm will run the Colonies system on a full 15x15 grid. This is the most important mode for us to have players test currently and we’re excited to see how players interact with it.

THE COLONIES SYSTEM

Please bear in mind that the values described below may be subject to change pending our observations and player feedback during the PTR.

• Islands will be delineated and ranked through a points system predominantly based on size. A Company will have a total of 200 accumulative points to “spend” on claiming and settling islands.
  
• One claim flag per island (claim flag owner is the Owner of the island)
  
• An owned island is called a Settlement
  
• An Island can be claimed by placing the claim flag skill which has a cost equal to the island's initial base upkeep.
  
• Claim flags are no longer mergeable
  
• There will be no sea claims.
  
• Upkeep scales based on:
  Size of island and its rank (summarised by an Island’s point value)
  How many different Companies are on the island (more Companies = lower cost)
  
• To steal an Island, you must unclaim an enemies’ flag by placing your own flag within range of theirs. It is a smaller radius that can be visualized by pressing the “H” key.
  
• A Settlement’s upkeep cost will scale in relation to its points ie: the upkeep cost of a 30 point island will be significantly less than that of a 100 point island.
  
• Upkeep costs will be deposited in the island’s Claim Flag.
  
• Tax rates and taxes themselves will be collected within the Claim Flag.
  
• The tax bank is utilized to transport taxes that will be used in the Claim Flag from different locations on the same Island.
  
• Other companies may build on a Settlement. The company holding ownership of the island can attack others built upon their island at all times. The Settlement owner can only be attacked during combat or war.
  
• A claimed Island/Settlement can be in one of three different states: Peace, Combat and At War.
  
• The World Map will display an Islands: point value, current ownership, the tax rate on the island, and its current war status along with its raidable hours. An Island’s standing will also be displayed ie: Own/Ally/Enemy.
  
• The Settlement Owner can select building options as follows:
  Cannons can only be built during combat/war phase
  Allies can build cannons freely
  
• Everyone can build cannons
  
• Other tribes can build defense structures (puckle) any time.
  
• Ships will now receive invulnerability when docked at their companies’ settlement for 15 minutes during peace phase.
  
• The Settlement owner chooses a non-optional 9-hour window of vulnerability from a 24-hour cycle in which their Island is raidable. This window can be changed once a week, but for PTR will be able to be changed once every 2 days.
  
• A War Declaration can be purchased during PTR for 50k gold (100k when ATLAS 1.5 releases) plus some uncommon items in order to circumvent raiding windows altogether. An item is given upon purchase. To declare war this item is dragged from the hotbar onto the island upon which you want to declare war.
  
• Once a War Declaration is made against an enemy Island, the attacker must set a time that is at least 2 days (12 hours on PTR) and as far as 4 days (24 hours in PTR) to commence the war and the duration of the war period is 24 hours, but for the duration of PTR will be 12 hours.
  
• Cannons now have an initializing timer which will vary dependent on the cannon type.
  
• An island has a 5 day (1 day for PTR) cooldown before another War Declaration can be made on it. 
  
• A War Declaration is per-island, so it is possible to declare war against multiple Settlements simultaneously.

How to join the PTR

The ATLAS Public Test Realm is available to all players by opting into the Steam Beta branch. You can join the PTR by checking out these steps:

https://www.playatlas.com/index.php?/forums/topic/66444-how-to-join-the-ptr/

You may need to restart your Steam Clients to make sure you see the publictestrealm branch as a beta option.

Upcoming Patch notes

If you haven’t checked out all of the content, features and QoL changes we have coming to the PTR (and the ATLAS 1.5 launch) jump into the patch notes below:

New Features and Content

- Redesign: ATLAS World - 40% more islands/landmass & new world map layout.
- Redesign: Claim System - Colonies: Freeform building, with more progress-protecting and time-enforced PvP rules creating a cooperative atmosphere, and limits to ensure the game is more oriented towards single players or smaller groups. Previous mode now known as Empires and PvE will be a modified version of colonies.
- New Environment: Deep Ocean Trench. A new area to explore, guarded by powerful underwater creatures and home to the new Giant Crab
- New Environment: Eastern Tundra now has its own visual design, no longer using the Western Tundra style
- New Weather: 'Snow' weather systems for Polar and Tundra
- New World Phenomenon: Aurora Borealis light display which will result in a harvesting bonus, visible in particular regions.
- New Vehicle: Submarine. Explore the depths of the ocean in this small scouting submarine. Use the claw arms to help harvest the ocean floor and explore (demolish) player shipwrecks. Also equipped with a harpoon (uses ballista bolts) as a new underwater weapon which will ramp up oceanic combat.
- New Creature: Giant Crab. It can carry heavy loads, along with players, tames and wild creatures
- New Item: "Guillotine". Hanging your foes in a noose taking too long? Off with their heads!
- New Item: "Large Wall". Equipped with parapets and ladder snaps so you can now build a proper defensive perimeter!
- New Item: "Small Gates". 2-wall high gate structures for wood and stone.
- New Item: "Player Shops". Players can set up automated shops, listing loot for sale and naming their own gold coin prices.
- New Item: "Settlement War Declaration". Tied to the War System. Drag over a settlement on the ATLAS map to declare war on them!
- New Item: More tame tokens for more mythical creatures! Allowing players to have limited-time tames of the Fire Elemental, Rock Elemental, and Gorgon. BONUS: Rock Elemental and Cyclops are rideable!
- New Feature: War System - Declare war on your enemies!
- New Feature: 1 'Mainline Quest' involving gathering 9 trench stones and defeating the hardmode Kraken!
- New Feature: 7 more ‘Quests’ which upon successful completion will provide their own unique Skill unlock
- New Feature: Curses. Tied to the execution of players
- New Feature: Player-to-Player secure trading system
- New Feature: Procedurally Generated Shipwrecks which players can explore for items and blueprints. They can be found by diving deep into the ocean, or looking out for their visual indicator on the surface of the water, or successfully completing the sextant mini-game which will point you in the direction of nearby shipwrecks.
- New Feature: Human Catapult. Player characters can now be deployed into battle using a catapult.
- New Cosmetics: Peg Legs, Hook Hands, and Multiple Armor sets to customize the look of your company and crew! Can be purchased at the cosmetics vendor.
- Redesign: Squads (Ship) of the Damned will now come in multiple size variations with different stats and difficulty levels.
- Redesign: Grappling Hook has been revamped, better physics & rappelling mechanics, and players will be able to realistically swing using them.
- Redesign: Explosive Barrels. Can now be carried in hand, thrown overboard to sink and will explode when they collide with anything underwater (Depth Charge!).

Balance Changes

- The higher quality shipyard used when building a ship, the more level ups a ship will be able to obtain.
- Ships can now level up their total damage output (which effects all cannons on a ship) and their total resistance, as new upgradable stats.
- All tamable creatures made breedable, with no exceptions except for Mythical Creatures.
- Various spawner adjustments & fixes across all islands
- Reloading now changed to have the mini-game appear back to back, rather than through various points of the animation.
- Vitamin debuffs have been removed and will only cause health loss when a player has a vitamin surplus or deficiency.
- Increased smithy inventory slots to 130.
- Increased weight of catapult from 12 to 84.
- Adjusted the crafting quantities on higher tier blueprints so they don't require as many resources as before.

QOL Changes

- Territory map will now display allies as teal-coloured
- Character creator now has a Height slider to make it easier to set your character's desired height
- Any dead ships (shipwrecks) from your Company appear with a unique icon on your map now, so you can find the wrecks
- Global territory message updating
- Currently contested claims will be indicated on the minimap
- Players can now mount a sail to directly control the sail's open/close amount and rotation settings in a more intuitive way.
- Toggle ladders button for ship captain, defaults to L key.
- Company Groups have been increased to 10
- Players cannot accept alliance invites unless they're an admin
- Company Log can now be sorted
- New group permission which acts as an effective 'company owner'. Only the true company owner can set/unset that specific group rank.

Misc

- Improved Server and Client performance
- Visual feedback for players being unable to board unallied boats on PvE
- Full body animations for harvesting
- More realistic old age wrinkles
- Additional face sliders for character customization
- Dive suit overlay has been adjusted so it's easier to see when underwater
- Commodities trader can only be found on the Merchant Ship on PvP servers
- Respec potion has been moved to the Crew Recruiter on Freeports



Server Grid Editor

New Server Grid Editor, JSON, and Unofficial Servers are already available on GitHub. Unofficial Server files will be made available later this weekend once we've confirmed there are no critical issues we need to deal with. Linux hosts will have to wait until early next week. We'd recommend folks play on our test servers as we won't be providing direct support to any servers hosting their own version of the branch, though we'll look into issues you report.

PTR Feedback and Bug Reports

Please note that we have opened Public Test Realm-related subforums on the playATLAS forums along with new specific channels on the Discord. We look forward to your thoughts, experiences and feedback. The Discord channels can be accessed by assigning yourself the PTR role in the #role-assignment channel and links to the PTR subforums are below.

General Public Test Realm Subforum[www.playatlas.com]

PTR Bug Reports[www.playatlas.com]

Discord Webhook Notifications
This updates comes with Discord Notifcations which you can set up pretty easily! All you have to do is grab your webhook URL and copy it into your Company's Manage Notifications UI.

For more info on how to get your webhook URL, check out Discord's how to guide here: https://support.discordapp.com/hc/en-us/articles/228383668-Intro-to-Webhooks

Alrighty, that ’s it for this log! Thank you so much for becoming a part of our crew and we can't wait to show all you scallywags, landlubbers, captains, and seadogs what lies ahead!

Happy Sailing,

Grapeshot Games

🏴‍☠️For the latest dispatch on #playATLAS keep yer one good eye trained on this here information🏴‍☠️


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