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*****G'day. I now have enough time in-game to offer advice. Here's a substantial list of suggestion topics. Points to raise as suggestions- batch 1 *Manual target selection options; I want to be able to launch just one launcher at a given target. I'd like to be able to fire each *tube* individually, but I'll settle for each launcher. I don't need my destroyers emptying their entire stockpile into a transport that only needs one or two. Ties into another idea; where mouse-overing a weapon icon would bring up a separate simplified ship display that only displays that weapon type, say two inch single mounts (current display is too busy to easily read; look at World of Warships for inspiration). To complete implementation, I want to be able to click that weapon icon, locking open the simplified display screen, and then assign a target to each of those weapons by clicking them and then a target. Applies to guns too. For double points, make the individual weapons display individually show reload status for each mount (I suggest green colouration for ready to fire, fading from red through yellow when freshly discharged and reloading, and have them blink purple when they're currently bearing on a target they can reach, or blink pink when they can't bear on their selected target). I can never remember, in a heated battle, which torpedo launchers have fired and which are ready to engage, and the current display only displays the *longest* cooldown for that weapon type which is very unhelpful. *I also want a manual firing solution order to fire torpedoes on your personal command- select a bearing, watch the torpedo aiming reticule appear telling you were the AI would fire if it was commanding them, and you can manually fire with a "fire now!" button once the launchers train, roughly when those torpedoes line up with the targeting line (this allows targeting the AI ships doing the incredibly effective steady slow turn tactic to avoid all AI-fired torpedoes by firing them inside the AI commander's targeting line, thus predicting where that curve will take them). in general, the launchers will work better if selecting a torpedo target pre-trains the tubes in that direction, as I wouldn't need to have an agonising wait between authorising torpedo release and those launchers having to turn from travel positions to firing positions, which often causes me to lose my destroyer unnecessarily. The alternative is to let those destroyer miss wildly if left to their own suicidal devices. Seriously, around a quarter of my fleet at most will have launch authority at any given time as they don't anticipate friendly vessels occluding their path or backlighting the target. *The underwater tubes are often unresponsive even when presented a perfect target at point-blank range, and have no 'having to traverse into position" excuse. Widen their firing arcs to correct this for gameplay reasons. At least thirty degrees for all mounts, but I'd prefer fourty, twenty either direction. *Display torpedo launcher current orientation with green shadows on battlefield when each launcher icon is mouse-overed (so we can tell where the damn things are pointing) and have them show red as they traverse through parts of their firing arc when they can't fire without landing a live torpedo on your deck. Again, to reduce frustratedly yelling "Fire, damn you!" at our captains as we all so often do when there's no explanation for why they're not doing so. *Allow avoid torpedoes button for ships not in a division. If the AI gets torpedo evasion hacks I want them too, while controlling all other ship functions. I'm going to use manual control almost all the time but mate sometimes the battle winds up in three or more places and I can't be everywhere at once. Effectively, as a fold-out menu from the AI Control button we have now, I want the full "AI Control" button, and I want an"AI Helm Control" only button, in addition to an "AI Guns Control" button and finally an "AI Torpedo Control" button, in case one feels suicidal. Two of the latter three buttons should be able to be turned on simultaneously, but selecting all three just flicks the ship over to the first full ship command button. *Have a button for detach all ships from divisions (to save pointless micro at start of every battle). Better yet have an option in the pre-battle screen to detach all or even better create your own formations and place them in the positions you want. *All weapons should be capable of independent firing- if a ship has secondaries (or spare primaries) on it's other side, I want them to fire on any targets of opportunity they see, instead of being only able to target one thing per entire type. I see my cruisers and battleships just ignoring free targets because they're focusing all the secondaries (which I remind you ring the ship's superstructure) on something else of their other side. It's even possible for the ship to be locked onto a craft it can't bear on, leaving them silenced entirely, when other valid targets existed. Effectively, I want a behaviour coded to take guns currently out of axis of engagement to engage whatever it can reach, unless under player direction. *Unrestrict barbettes. Entirely. I want to place them wherever they'll fit. Screw whatever dumb idea it was to implement them in current form. *Unrestrict number of main guns placeable on early ships. *Allow use of outdated techs, weapons, towers and hulls. I want to use 200 tonne torpedo boats late-game. Also I may have reason to use old hulls for other things, and I certainly can want to use cheaper components for some vessels to save costs. Furthermore I *hate* being forced to use only one of each tower module simply because the devs decided to tie a noose around my creativity's neck- this game has strong creativity tool elements, *don't* restrict them. It's counterproductive and indefensible from a design perspective to remove older options that either look better or better suit my current design needs. On a related note: *I'd like non-barbeted options for all towers that have built-in barbettes with the same stats excepting lower weight. Keep the secondary mounts- I would like more of those actually. But I have to go many towers back in the quality list (assuming you even left me that option) to get weaker towers to mount my heavier guns without having a mixed main armament. Of course, having those towers open a fold-out menu that offers different barbette sizes including none would be just perfect.. *Build times should be affected by cost. My five million dollar escort-type destroyers should not take as long to build as my thirty million or fifty million dollar super-specialised destroyers. *RADAR and hydrophones should be modules, not a modifier to towers. Adding RADAR to a destroyer still leaves it essentially legally blind for spotting purposes, and that's not how that worked historically. Further, it shouldn't cost a thousand tonnes plus to add RADAR to larger ships. Have them be attachable modules that fit into specialised slots on towers and under hulls instead- with towers limited by modernity and size to mount larger RADAR systems, often with a spare on the back with less range and maybe some side ones to aid fire control or short-range spotting, and hydrophones and SONAR being mounted under the hull- again, with at least two slots please, so hydrophones can be combined with SONAR to get maximal short range detection and overall better close range coverage but also keep the wide search value from a SONAR, the same way I envisage multiple RADARS of different sizes all acting together to increase detection chance for each RADAR spotting and how close they are versus their detection profile. No graphics needed for hydrophones but spinning receiver dishes would be appreciated. *Would like to be able to armour magazines in addition to current options, to reduce flash-fire and detonation chances, and effectively permit the use of increased shell and torpedo complements and heavier shells without being a particularly impressive firecracker. Sometimes, the weight would be very worth it... *Would like modern torpedo boat hulls, please. They'd be a lot easier to add than subs... *Would like to advise caution in sub and carrier implementation; sub encounters are shockingly boring most of the time in other comparable games. Carriers could trash all balance very quickly too. I was enjoying just having surface combatants sans carriers, y'know... *Would like to alter how transports are implemented. Instead of them being "universal" and auto-generating at each encounter, I'd like to be able to build them myself (with adjustable hull sizes and preferably several different hull options), so I can personally choose to arm every transport in the dang fleet to the teeth, and/or give them RADAR and underwater detection. Further I want to control them- start them as they are, already retreating, just let me over-ride their orders as needed- I'm meant to be the ultimate admiral, after all. I can make use of some armed transports in some of those battles. Would also like to be able to build dedicated Q-ships and use them either offensively or defensively. To implement, have a second fleet tab for merchant ships under the fleet menu. When a convoy is created, each route should pull ships from this pool as needed, selecting either the cheapest ships by operating costs, the most defensible ships, the fastest, or can be manually swapped out with whatever the AI selected to make mixed fleets before being created. With each merchant ship being tracked individually- Q-ships (or normal transports, if one desires) should be able to be transferred into use as normal warships, albeit poor ones, and presumably in desperation or for ploys. Conversely, warships can be sent to be transports which gives them medium combat penalties for being overloaded, but allow the warships to serve as emergency transports as needed. This would allow fine control over which convoys are prioritised in times of shipping shortages too, by taking ships on or off convoy routes. This would also allow the dedication of warships to specific convoys as escorts- from each convoy route that needs filling, you could have a button labelled "assign escorts" that allows the selection of ships either by name or by map selection. This would make for a nice jumping-off point for: *Invasion fleets. Selecting some suitable port should have an option for "Create invasion fleet" that allows packing troops into merchant ships, preferably landing craft and passenger transports (with the merchant ships, they should be specialisable into cargo, fuel or passenger transports during creation, see above, with either being able to perform the other tasks at reduced efficiency) and assigning an escort of warships. These fleets could then go attempt to occupy an enemy province, making it far cheaper in the peace deal and providing some of that province's income to the occupier in the meantime. Would also like to include landing ships, which though being military ships are sent to the merchant pool on completion of their construction, so they can be stuffed with troops as aforementioned. They'd mainly serve as targets to destroy before their arrival that improve invasion efficiency if they get to land. I don't necessarily want to include modeled ground combat- that *sucks* in Ultimate Admiral: Age of Sail- but I do want to launch and repel naval invasions, modeled simply as troops, munitions, military equipment, fuel and supplies depleting each others local stockpiles until one side loses-the remainder of the invasion fleet would then have to go home, providing another chance to attack it. Provinces that directly neighbour others should be able to use their troops, munitions and military equipment (modeled together for simplicity), supplies and fuel to invade that province without the use of ships. See War at Sea for inspiration- I never want to see an actual person modeled in this game, please. *Would like light machinegun and other AA mounts, but assume they're on the way. A simple M2 Browning can seriously hurt a destroyer, especially if there's lots of them, and I want more light ship options that would make good targets for them. All AA mounts should be able to engage surface targets too. *Would like fleet tenders and support ships. Refueling ships can add range to task forces once implemented, munitions transports can rearm ships at sea, hospital ships recover lost crew and return it to the crew pool (whilst also being a source of major opinion maluses if you sink them), seaplanes tenders can scout an area, increasing favourable encounter rates in a given sea region, etcetera... *Would like to be able to demand more money from my government when in dire straights, possibly at cost to naval prestige and unrest. More economy decisions in general would be a good thing, too. *Would like to fight port strike battles in sight of land, both blocking some avenues of running away from the cowardly AI and allowing ships to engage shore defences, which is something they did a lot of in reality. Such defences should be simple; for each port map (and you won't need *that* many; re-use them as needed, we understand dev-hours are finite) there should be a grid to place defences: gun batteries, essentially a concrete platform that you mount extant naval turrets to; torpedo launchers that must be on the shoreline but work the same way; breakwaters and quays to make safer harbours for your ships; AA positions for the upcoming carriers; RADAR installations to increase port readiness if attacked and provide better interception near shore; minefields and sub nets to help make it dangerous to approach or enter a port. These would be built like ships- you place a simple template and then after sufficient time the structure completes construction and becomes a usable defensive work, and its costs reduce from the higher building cost per turn to their relatively minimal operating costs. They should naturally consume upkeep, but be cheap both to build and maintain compared to warships. Similarly, they should be mothball-capable, so unneeded defences can be abandoned. Some basic civilian structures can be modeled as well, providing opinion maluses if destroyed-raid an old SimCity-esque game who's license expired or were never filed for models if required. Related note: *Would like to be able to build naval academies in provinces. They can stay unmodeled, but provide more crew per turn if built or captured, in exchange for upkeep. Alternately, you could make a structure model for placement on your port maps that can be shot up if desired. Naturally, I would like to be able to mothball them. As a possible extension of this, I'd like to be able to invest in arms factories that make more cash over time, essentially obviating the need to spend cash on civilian-made guns, armour and munitions. You could also add drydocks, armour smithing facilities, heavy gun foundries, and other things required to make heavy ships, with losing them seriously hampering your ability to use tech upgrades- better Krupp technology is useless if you don't make the factory to produce it, and the armour thicknesses available could be gated by the armour smithing facilities being too underdeveloped to actually make the dozen-plus-inches of plating you want on that super battleship. Similarly, guns could be limited by factories being large enough to make them, and carrier planes could require factories to replace- even torpedoes need to be made, and that factory could be either a province upgrade or a port model. Ground-based airfields can be included the same way. *Would like mothballing to have a slider that goes between unmanned but completely maintained (no deterioration) and completely abandoned, where they would slowly lose integrity until they eventually become completely unsalvageable and are scrapped for a pittance. The rate for that deterioration should be slightly randomised, to reflect how some ships and defence structures simply last better than others when abandoned. *Need to be able to upgrade port capacity. Presume that's coming. Would like to be able to make my own ports from scratch, too. *Would like to be able to interact with neutral ships. Even if they use extant and planned merchant hulls, it'd add some life to the empty expanses that are sea battles now. Also, sinking them will tick off the owner. *I want to add smoksecreen generators to whatever ship I please. They're cheap, weigh very little in naval terms, and the Germans proved they work well to protect heavy warships time and again. They could also be a port structure that provides protection to the gun batteries present to defend the port, and any ships anchored within. Gun batteries on land are already notoriously hard targets, adding smoke would make a well-defended port capable of holding off a decent force even if empty of ships. Ground RADAR would also be nice, where it'd serve to warn the port an attack is coming- modeled by having the defences already fully manned and functional upon enemy arrival, instead of needing some time to reach full effectiveness. *Depth charges should have a manual launch now button too. If I can sink surface ships in War Thunder using them, I bet I can manage it in this game too... *Would like to be able to sell ships for profit, or get or make your own orders for ships to be made by other powers that are friendly enough. Half-built ships can then be realistically seized if war breaks out unexpectedly. *Would like smoke warnings to continue for unspotted ships even if one or more is currently visible. I often run into the convoy escort without ever seeing the transports because a battlecruiser or heavy cruiser is spotted early and then all warnings stop. Smoke warnings should only stop when all active hostile craft on the map are visible. *Would like to see the introduction of structures to place on hulls. Simple boxes, cylinders and other geometric shapes that we can both intersect with other components like towers to change their appearance and install casemate weapons into and turrets atop them. Provided the R and T keys rotate function sticks after mouse movement, which has to happen regardless for quality of life complex configurations of these structures could be built on our ships almost freely. More complicated structures with multiple mounting points that can function as additions to the towers (possibly providing another rangefinder, torpedo spotter and damage control station for the ship for the big ones) and compatibility with extant barbettes could allow more faithful recreations of historical ships and offer more variety than just picking the two towers that currently serve as our only choice for ship design both aesthetically and mechanically- which is boring. Add connective components to link separated towers, raised funnel mounts so we can make our towers not look idiotic when only one (if we're lucky) mounting point is offered by a tower combination, outcroppings we can mesh into the towers to add a second tier of raised secondaries so they can superfire over the beam or connect barbettes to the towers, simple wave shields and rings to surround turrets (save making those aggravating designs with "fixed" mounting points where placing guns effectively would look stupid or worse be impossible... Make the base hull in a realistic shape, but leave placement of wave shields, coloured rings, national decals, etcetera to us, please. This simple thing can solve many problems. For the dev-time needed to make a few new hull and tower combinations we could have near-total creative freedom to design ships- these thing are boxes and other simple shapes with decking and ladders and such. Make them weigh virtually nothing unless they're mechanically functional (say, they have a turret mount on them) in which case make them weigh what that size barbette should plus a little but make their weight scale barbette and superstructure armour. I especially want to connect my barbettes to my towers so they look like single structures- then painstakingly arrange neat rings of AA mounts all over the top of them. So long as sufficient clearance is given we should be able to build directly over our extant turrets and add more things still- ruining our pitch and roll values but looking spectacular. Furthermore a list or nurnies and greebles would be nice too, even if they don't add anything mechanical, though I'd like to add say air intakes to slightly improve engine efficiency, hull hatches that increase crew survivability in the water (see later regarding hospital ships and rescue craft), my own casements to hulls with enough freeboard for it, and lots more. A structure I particularly want is the whole upper deck on battleships and battlecruisers so I can make versions of them that don't guarantee a huge forward offset if filled uniformly by lengthening the nose sections so the casemates are more evenly spread, using several sliders if need be. Which brings me to: *So many ships just have intractable forward weight offset due entirely to their build- like those battleships and cruisers with raised casemate decks which build historically have 30% fore offsets. Also, side underwater torpedoes also seem to favour the front weight-wise, worsening the issue substantially. This loves happening with early designs where your options to fix it are giving the ship a non-uniform main gun load or just wear the huge offset penalties. More options in general for these many hulls of all eras up to 1930 (later if you keep using them to make cheaper battleships) ships is a huge desire of mine, as in making the latest ones as customisable as possible *I want light torpedo boats and motor gun boats. All the way through history. Use the extant models for now by never obsoleting them but please make a few later models too please- they are cheap and cheerful and great at responding to air threats due to their natural speed. Two hulls per nation should be enough and they're tiny and won't take long. And yes, I *would* like to put a RADAR module with a fixed and decent ten-twelve kilometres range on them, because, y'know, they did that. *Would like quad, quintuple, hextuple and octuple mounts for secondaries, with the octuples having two layers of four each, one stack atop the other (or other arrangements- surprise me). Ever seen an octuple pom-pom? That's nearly an octuple 2-inch gun. Would like quintuples and hexruples for mains too. Just because it *wasn't* done doesn't mean it *couldn't* have been; plans were drawn using such things if never completed. *Otherwise uniform main guns in different sized turrets (like the Pensacola class) can both share ammo and not take an aiming penalty for mixed main armament seeing as they aren't mixed at all, and the game doesn't accommodate that. I'd like it to. If my three different sizes of two inch guns all use the same shell they should be able to pull from the same pool. *Light cruisers should be able to be use four and five inch guns as either mains or secondaries. Mogamis, Brooklyns, and more all were light cruisers, were built during this game's active period, and mounted five-inch secondaries. Of course, for these weapons to show up secondaries you'd need a main gun larger than the ones you want as secondaries. Destroyers with five-inch or six-inch guns should consider everything beneath that secondaries too, and the Germans proved you can make a six-inch armed destroyer and it works fine too, so I'd like destroyer to have access to six-inch primaries in addition to secondaries up to five inches. Cruisers should be able to consider all guns smaller than their mains as secondaries. Worst case scenarios these ships should be able to use guns two sizes smaller than their mains secondaries. But a destroyer with one 2-inch gun on either side but a primary battery of five inch guns shouldn't be penalised with reduced aiming times for them- also I want more fine control over said destroyers' munitions choices; their fives can engage a cruiser with AP while the twos engage transports with HE. ***** If you made it this far, good work. You still understand the value of reading :) More ideas will likely come. Some will be awesome, some may suck and be ignored or even ridiculed, some will just be basic improvements, but I feel most of this is useful. Thanks for reading,

Hi, Apologies if this was covered some place else. What is the requisite to build a labor office? I am attempting to build one in my nation capital at KPR, and it doesn't show up as an option under buildings - just coal mine and lignum vitae forest. Any ideas?

In face of the fact that NA has very limited resources for development and the visual update of ports taking quite some time when we consider that there are hundreds of them, I wonder if it will ever be one of the top priorities, potentially leaving us with the dull and out of scale cookie cutter 5 building ports we currently have. I'd like to propose the idea that the devs create a large amount of elements ( churches, warehouses, random buildings, civilians, soldiers, different forts etc. ) and maybe somehow give the community the tools to create very different towns / cities in very high detail with these elements from the devs that they then could upload in the steam workshop or somewhere else, where the devs could choose the best. Maybe this could save developer time somehow and outsource the work to the community who might even very much enjoy creating a part of the OW and helping to improve the game. As I already discussed with admin, the current placeholders do just fine for now and there is a very small amount of variation like buildings towering on a cliffside at the mythical island of Bensalem ( one of my favourite ports in the game albeit fictional, as I love unique ports and easter eggs like this ) or some small huts in the forest etc. but in general all ports somewhat look the same, except for the 2 different architectural styles we have and I really think NA deserves and can do better. I also know many do not care at all and I can understand their POV and how there are other priorities and more pressing issues ( maybe always will be so ) and hence my suggestion. I think proper ports visualization is only thing still missing in NA in terms of visuals and since they are the port UI background now aswell, I would really appreciate an update on them some time in the future. Thus I will remain a fool waiting and hoping... This is actually from the NA WIP thread in this very forum and I sincerely hope it is in fact still work in progress, as it is how I would like ports to look with other ships, civilians and maybe even ambient noise.

THE PROBLEM: One of the structural problems in the current economy appears to be the constraint the Euro Trader mechanic places on the growth of a nominally healthy contract market. Changes to the ET have been previously mentioned by @admin in the context of adjusting taxation: In order of priority the ET mechanic ought to be addressed first. At the present the ET places an effective boundary to price rises in core commodities used to craft ships and cannons. As the as the price of a contract to sell approaches 4x production costs the length of time to complete the contract increases. This is to be expected. But the result unfortunately appears to be that the maximum that a seller can charge and have the contract complete in a reasonable amount of time appears to range between 2x and 2.5x the production cost. This does not allow the merchant to factor in labor hours as a cost, and is not competitive vs the money to be made in the transport of dropped trade goods. It seems possible to consistently maximize hold values of trade goods at approximately 3x purchase price. This decreases the incentive for new entrants into contract markets where the ET is active. Why invest in production capacity to sell at contract when better money can be made elsewhere that does not require labor hours? There have been exceptions. There was a player who seemed to be consistently placing stone contracts Charleston at 8x production cost. I've concluded this was intended to exploit the ignorance of new players. Not all seal-clubbing occurs at sea. But then again, stone is a market with very little contract activity to begin with, which is what makes that sort of nonsense possible. The ET also appears to exacerbate price collapses in those resources where a healthy production capacity exists. As an example, the iron market is currently in overproduction in US ports and seems to consistently price below 2x production cost. But as the ET limits the price rises elsewhere there is not a lot of money to be made transporting iron out of the US reinforcement zones. The iron market is saturated and is likely to stay that way for a while as a result. Inventory appears to be getting dumped into port stocks, further depressing the possible contract price. A PROPOSAL: 1) The ET should automatically suspend operation in any port where the total sold count over time for all resource contracts reaches a set threshold. Reaching the threshold signals the existence of healthy contract markets and the ET is no longer necessary. Price rises in in production resources will then be mitigated by the entrance of new producers into the markets as the returns become competitive with dropped trade goods. Some server-side data collection will be necessary to establish the threshold, but one possible set-point might be an average of current sales contract volumes in from all capital ports on the Caribbean server. This might not work, however, on PvE, where the player population is probably too low for the average to have any meaning. 2) The ET should resume operation in any port where the total sold volume falls below the threshold. This provides a safety net in the event of a regional population collapse, allowing players to obtain resources, and limiting exploitation in markets with a limited number of sellers. 3) The UI should signal the presence of an active ET mechanic, with the appearance of some sort of flag in the shop screen. 4) Once the ET threshold has been successfully set the stamp tax can then be applied in the reinforcement zones to activate in concert with it. When this threshold is reached a healthy regional economy exists that will support taxation. The tax will now generate an outward pressure on player production toward ports outside of the reinforcement zones where applying the tax in the absence of a healthy economy would merely hasten implosion. AN OBSTACLE: There are not currently enough types of necessary or desirable production buildings. My thinking on this has shifted somewhat since posting here: At that point I thought it was possible for a non-alt player to compete in the economy against a player using one or more alts. I have since concluded that this is in reality quite difficult. Alts have an effect on the economy that reaches beyond direct competition against another player. They enable a player to opt out of contract markets, or exploit them without fulling participating. They can sell in a market, and in some cases manipulate it, but do not actually have to buy anything from it. Some players with alts might buy at contract but there is no inherent need to do so. Having (briefly) been the resource manager in one of the newer clans I am also not convinced that players with alts have any inherent incentive to cooperate in stocking a clan warehouse. But that is a separate issue. This ought to have been blindingly obvious at the time. But the effect wasn't completely clear until after I purchased the Admiralty DLC and discovered I could do something similar. The difference being the DLC provides a slight brake on this in the form of labor hours and outpost permits, but as a practical matter there is no difference between the two when considering the actual effect on the economy. Alts and the Admiralty DLC become weeds on the hull. The economy can tolerate a small amount of this but at some point, the drag created will cancel out any meaningful forward motion. Any sort of adjustments to the contract markets are unlikely to have a visible positive effect, as long as a players have a way to sell resources without being obligated to buy any. The number of types of useful player production buildings needs to be radically expanded. It probably ought to be at least double what can be controlled by a player using the Admiralty DLC, or a player using a single alt. The only other alternative to radically expanding the number buildings appears to be abandoning the contract system altogether. But this removes an entire tier of player-generated content from the game and seems to me to increase the onus on the developers to develop more.

Based on community feedback, this idea is no longer being considered. Please continue to provide constructive feedback on ideas that are being presented to assist Game-Labs with thinking through new ideas for the game. Thank you. - H. Darby Hello Captains. Some of you might remember "such is a lord" topic To make conquest bear more importance on release the number of buildings slots in port will be limited. This means that the city governor will be able to only allocate 25 land plots for construction of mines, manufactures and shipyards. This means only 25 Captains can own something in the city. (number is arbitrary and currently is equal to the number of port battle winners) The system will work like this. Once you conquer the port you will receive land grants from the new governor in all cities in that region. These land grants will be required to build buildings in the cities If the port is captured by an enemy nation - enemy nation will of course takeover the land and destroy your buildings. To be able to build anything in this city you will have to recapture it. Those who don't need buildings can of course sell those land grants to adventurous businessmen. If you win the port battle alone you will get all the permits to yourself. This system main goals are Control resource supply to avoid inflation in the future Provide huge incentive to conquer and participate in conquest (ps. that's why night flips are no longer viable and tolerable)

As of now, shallow water ports have 3 towers, and deep water have 5 towers. When you take the port, whoever bought the flag becomes "lord protector". My idea is to dig further with the lord protector, and ideas on port battles. The lord protector after taking the port, can go into the port and build certain defenses. The lord protector does not have to build defenses, and if he does not there will be 3 or 5 towers depending on the port as normal. The ideas for the lord protector on what types of defenses he can by are... - Extra tower, this will either make it 4, or 6 towers depending on the port, along with increasing the towers need to capture/destroy, to +1 (deep water you'd have to destroy 4 for ex). - NPC fleet, this will add 3 ships based on the port, if it is shallow 6th rates, if it is deep 4th rates. If more than 15 players for defense are in the battle, the npcs will retreat so more players can join (best have it at 15 and not 25 so they can get out before others try to get in). If it is on the 5 minute timer, and at least 15 players join they will despawn before the battle starts. - Upgrade towers to a fort, this will require the extra tower upgrade to be bought, seeing as they plan to add land to port battles, hopefully the towers will be along the coast. Instead of having the towers, a fort will be placed based on the port, if it is shallow or deep. The forts will be similar to towers, with a flag on the walls/points(possible star fort), if all 5 flags(deep) or 3 flags(shallow) surrender (they'll turn white once destroyed), the fort surrenders. Of course only the walls based on the coast will have these. Rough draft of the idea of the fort: http://i.imgur.com/z4kJGMD.png Shallow water fort: http://i.imgur.com/G3bDUgg.png The red lines are to indicate that the forts will have limited range such as the towers, but slightly more range. - Protectors can upgrade the fort one more time, adding mortars on them. The mortars will be placed at the points of the fort (3 for deep, 2 for shallow). Let me know if you have any further ideas on this, which ideas you like and dislike along with why. Any changes you think to this idea too.