A short pause between catches, now for ships too
Update, 31 October: the ship pause was a temporary measure while the fair play checks were being built, and it has been removed. Ships have no wait again; aircraft keep one catch a minute. Details in ships are back to no pause between catches.
Update, 6 November: the aircraft minute is gone as well, so nothing in flight waits any more. Details in no more waiting between aircraft catches in flight.
Aircraft have had a one-minute pause between catches since August. Ships never had one, so a pilot parked over a busy harbour could take a new hull every few seconds, all day long. From today the two follow one clock.
The rule
After you catch anything, ship or aircraft:
- the next ship can be caught 20 seconds later;
- the next aircraft can be caught 60 seconds later.
The clock starts at your last catch of either kind. A plane right after a ship still waits the full minute, so switching between the sea and the sky does not double the pace.
Ships get the shorter wait on purpose. A harbour often puts four or five hulls in one frame, and working through them is how most people play the sea. Twenty seconds is enough to look at the card you just got before lining up the next one. When we went through last week's catches, most ship catches came less than a minute after the previous one, for almost every player. A full minute would have cut that part of the game by four or five times.
What you see
Both reticles, the ship one and the aircraft one, now draw the wait as an amber ring on the lock circle. It starts full and empties clockwise from the top. When it is gone, the lock starts building again as usual. Under the ring the reticle still prints the seconds left.
While the ring is running the lock does not build, and pressing the shutter sends nothing. You get a short note with the seconds instead of a card that flips over and misses. On a phone or tablet the Spot button shows the same countdown for whatever is in the crosshair: 20 seconds for a ship, 60 for a plane.
Nothing changes in what a catch pays, and the one catch per ship per day rule stays as it was. Ships you have already caught today are still marked in the reticle before any wait applies.
Why now
Ship catches were the one place in the game where the pace had no limit at all, and in a big port that showed up quickly in the season table. A pause per catch keeps the table closer to what people actually spot. If a refusal ever looks wrong to you, tell us in Discord with the time of the shot and we will check it against the server log.
Your catches are in your collection. How far away an aircraft can be caught is in catch the jet overhead.