To Conquer The Sea...

[Logan96]

Disclaimer: This post has information about my tribe and our future plans, but this is not a recruitment thread and it contains no information on how to contact, or join us...

So when the leeds hit ark, it caused a huge controversy with ocean players, with most players (including myself) complaining that ocean living was no longer possible, however i plan to attempt it once again. After a recent raid my tribe and i retreated to multiple base locations and began a week long cycle of being discovered and raided over and over. in a last desperate attempt we took the risk and put all of our remaining gear on three rafts and moved out into the sea as far as we could go (island). We ran into a few leeds here and there, but we eventually got to the worlds end and we parked our rafts.

To our surprise he next morning the ships were untouched, not only that but there was not a single megalodon or any fish for that matter near us. My theory is that we are out in stasis territory, so when everyone is logged off we dont really need to worry about leeds coming in. Obviously this is not a good long term solution so that morning we built two more rafts which held four compost bins, a phiomia and two wall high sloped roofs, providing 4 plant x on each side that are angled to the water. After testing it on a few megalodons establishing confidence in its ability to shoot leeds. We decided that four more would be sufficient(for a start), giving us a total a 6 plant x rafts, and we would put them in a formation that surrounds our 3 important rafts, to provide a safe zone. Hopefully having a efficient design and formation eliminates the blind spots under the others.

Now that the defence was established our next task was to figure out a low profile/semi efficient method of gathering resources. Our biggest fear was taking a raft to land and having someone follow it back to our fleet. so we revamped our three main rafts into 3 different roles. The very center is now our crafting raft, holding all of the essentials. The raft on the right is now a landing pad to allow us to bring our flyers to sea and the left is a...frog storage. By using frogs we are able to swim to the island and back to our rafts under the cover of the ocean and they are fast/tanky enough to stay out of harms way as long as we are aware of our surroundings. For metal runs we used argys on our landing pad. We dont have the luxury of a harvesting dinos anymore and metal is hard to come by (thankfully this type of lifestyle does not demand too much) but we  have managed to live in relative peace like this for about a month. In that time we have not experienced a single leed or raider, but sadly life hit and my small three man tribe and I were forced to abandon our project...but we are back!

Starting with fresh characters we want to actually spend some points on oxygen with high fortitude and master this playstyle. We plan to do our rafts the exact same way and then we have a few goals in mind in the following order:

1. Underwater raft pen-we thought about just making a underwater pen on the floor below us, but the risk is too great as someone oil or pearl farming could see it and rise to the surface, spotting our fleet, but having a few megas would make food so much easier for us and we go through so much of it while swimming.

2. War rafts-We want another three rafts for raiding and defending. We were thinking of one projectile raft with a centered cannon, with a catapult on top extended back and having a cargo hold for the loot. One assaulting raft that follows our dino pen design, but long and narrow, with species x...this would ressemble a viking warship that would go right up on the shore and storm the beach with mid size dinos. The last raft would be a simple turret raft design, angled to the sky, and sea to defend the other two war ships. I thought about a flyer raft too, then just decided we would have a dedicated air force that will just hover over our rafts and land when needed. 

3. Capture Herb Island-While having a fleet is cool, the reality is that having more rafts than what i described will start leading to serious lag. Additionally we have stayed hidden for a long time before, but someone will eventually find us, and i feel as though rafts are very vulnerable to attacks from below. We thought hard about base locations and it just makes the most sense to use herb island, but given the popularity of this spot we will most likely need to fight for it after building up the fleet.

4. Underwater Cave Safehouse-This one is just a fun project I want to do after we are established on herb island. The idea is to use the cave  below herb island as a fallback point in the event of a raid. I know that caves have increased structure damage, but since  we are ocean based, the idea is that whoever raids us on herb island will probably do it with a mixed army. Once they start to move in to the cave we will hopefully have the advantage of sea dinos and be able to keep them from even reaching the cave.

5. Expansion-numbers 3 and 4 are very late game and they may never come should we fail, but if we did succeed then the final task would be to expand our fleet, maybe putting bases on surrounding land marks, each with some warships and turret rafts of their own. Eventually surrounding the island. I can imagine a long term war happening with someone deep within the island, both sides struggling to advance on eachother, but now im just fantasizing... 

Anyways I don't really know why i posted this...(boredom?) and i dont expect anyone to actually read this whole beast, unless you like the ocean as much as I do lol. Just wanted to share with other players who enjoy the same thing and give hope to those who feel that rafts are obsolete. I'm very optomistic for my tribes chances at being able to conquer the ocean this time around! If you guys have any experiences, concerns or ideas that relate to the ocean in ark feel free to share, I love to read what other players have been through!

 

[Onimusha759]

The sea cave safehouse has been an idea of mine for a long time.  Its easy to defend, put metal walls up at the edge of the water and defenses aimed at the water, big dinos cant get in so they are forced to try and c4 the walls while being shot at lol

[AngryChris73]

On ragnorak leeds dont spawn anymore (temporarily) so it'd be viable on rag

[Logan96]

8 hours ago, Onimusha759 said:

The sea cave safehouse has been an idea of mine for a long time.  Its easy to defend, put metal walls up at the edge of the water and defenses aimed at the water, big dinos cant get in so they are forced to try and c4 the walls while being shot at lol

Sounds like a great idea, what good is c4 if they cant reach he walls eh? I like it!

 

8 hours ago, AngryChris73 said:

On ragnorak leeds dont spawn anymore (temporarily) so it'd be viable on rag

ooh that is very interesting. Ty for the info, we may just startup on rag. (although it is sort of fun fighting these massive beasts lol

[Pipinghot]

On 4/18/2018 at 1:06 PM, Logan96 said:

Anyways I don't really know why i posted this...(boredom?) and i dont expect anyone to actually read this whole beast, unless you like the ocean as much as I do lol. Just wanted to share with other players who enjoy the same thing and give hope to those who feel that rafts are obsolete.

I've never particularly liked the ocean, but this was a great read. It's always interesting to see the ideas people come up with to approach the game differently. Honestly, I've thought that the deep water was pretty much a death zone since the introduction of alpha leeds, now i'm going to have to rethink that approach.

Thanks for the good read.