Wesreidau

@charognard666 This is how Naval Action will die.

No, it changes things. Provisions require iron, planks and tar in addition to food. The question is free fish meat versus sugar when we talk about provisions and rum. However, the price of rum is iron, planks, tar, and sugar. The price of food supplies themselves are just fish meat and salt, both of which are "free" from open-world sailing and can be farmed from certain ports. It is also interesting to think food supply ports may become valuable as a source of crew replenishment. As we start moving and losing 10,000 crew members in lineship port battles, there could be some strategic value to food supplies. Doubly so if the crew replacement cost from ports rises. Its expensive rum for the premium ability to return crew mid-battle, or inexpensive food supplies for the less urgent crew replenishment after the battle. Rum crafting will still have meaning, but food supply harvesting will have meaning to everyone too.

Food supplies are presently a rather low-utility commodity, while rum is very important for players both for in-combat and out-of-combat crew repairs through the surgeon. As players can literally fish for food supplies, time spent in the open world and a little crafting can alleviate crew replacement costs by using food supplies to replace crew at sea. The player pulls into a harbor to convert their fish meat and salt into food, sets out, has a string of battles, and then uses up the stored food supplies to maintain his crew levels after the fight is over. Since rum is used as the combat crew restoration it maintains a crucial role in battle. This will move food supplies from being a useless 1 gold dump commodity to being a useful economic good, although very accessible by players. This also keeps rum as a useful good for healing a ship's crew in combat. This adds meaningful choices for the captain. If you take fifty casualties in a fight, do you use the surgeon and replace those casualties with fifty expensive units of rum now, or do you hope to win the battle and use fifty inexpensive food supplies in the open world? Do you load up with mostly rum, or mostly food supplies? What about weight? What amount of speed do you want to sacrifice for endurance when you get out fighting the enemy? Counter Argument: It isn't realistic. Neither is rum healing in battle or replacing a mast while trading broadsides. The utility of a game decision is how much fun is created by giving up some simulation, and this makes provisioning part of play. Counter Argument: Its cheaper or easier to just pull into port. The point is to make players plan out how long they'll keep their ship at sea and store enough food supplies and repairs to keep their vessel active. Counter Argument: You're just saying this because rum is too expensive. And food supplies are worthless, so... yes?

Always been for paying off a pirate, including an item called "gentleman's agreement" which prevents the two players from participating in combat against one another for an hour or so.

TP to nearest friendly port remains the solution to these problems and its removal is foolish. They had fixed battlescreen camping and then proceeded to bring it back with the same pitiful "invisibility" gimmick that failed us a year ago. 1. When the battle is over, start a five minute timer but continue to sail the ships. 2. Ships can conduct repairs, board and loot, and do whatever during those five minutes. Players can get a beer. 3. At the end of that five minute timer, captains are teleported to a friendly port. Players can go to dinner. 4. At any time before five minutes, captains can exit to the open world. Players can go back to playing. 5. When returning to the open world, captains are invisible so they can get their sails up and a course selected. Players no longer have a reason to sit and camp longer than five minutes. The only exception? if you got into a battle with exclusively AI, mission over otherwise, there's no teleport option. Teleporting to friendly ports is only for PvP engagements. If you tag an enemy AI fleet, and enemy players join to fight you, you can teleport.

So there's a widespread spirit of broad and sweeping changes to the game. Will ship to ship musketry be included in these changes?

Small battles. Missions caused a lot of harm at various phases when the gold payout was astronomical. It also gets players in a grinding mindset by rewarding solo PvE play just outside Kingston Harbor. I also expect leveling up in this game will be a lot slower on release, and look forward to it.

To be fair the main goal of gaming is to waste your own time.

Problem; why fight for a second port that produces a crucial resource when ten or ten billion labor hours spent at that port produce a resource at precisely the same rate per hour. Solution; diminishing returns. Each resource has a multiplier tracked for how many labor hours (and perhaps also the gold cost) are required to produce the resource recipe. The multiplier is displayed in the crafting menu, and warned as a little blurb in the general port view. IE, "The sugar fields are normal." and the multiplier is "1.0" in the crafting menu. Any given resource at a port could keep track of how many labor hours were invested into it that week, with another figure to track how much "capacity" the port has. Example: Sugar, normal, 9,000 / 10,000. Multiplier 1.0 So 9,000 out of 10,000 hours have been spent in this port. That's everyone's hours, not just yours. You spend another 1,000 hours and the field becomes 10,000. Uh oh, it was tapped out on the 'normal' level. Its now in the "poor" level, the multiplier is 1.25, and harvesting sugar now requires 20% more labor hours. The port's capacity is now, Sugar, poor, 0 / 15,000. Multiplier 1.25 Still, another 15,000 hours get spent at this poor sugar port and now... Sugar, failing, 0 / 20,000. Multiplier 1.5 The insatiable European appetite could continue to.. Sugar, barren, 0 / 25,000. Multiplier 2.0 Of course, players have a limited number of labor hours per RL day and will eventually catch on that other sources of sugar can be had at a lower labor hour cost. You will note that each step downward becomes twice as painful for the producer, and the capacity of poorer yields increases. This is to make it harder to go down to the bottom of the abundance scale. And as players grow tired of barren yields at a convenient port, they'll move their outposts to a more distant port, alleviating the problem. However a resource will never be tapped out. Some nations may only have one source of X or Y, and can't depend on foreign imports. On the other side, at the start of the weekend, the ports automatically tick up one rank. This includes going into abundance ranks. Sugar, abundant, 0 / 5,000. Multiplier 0.8 Sugar, rich, 0 / 3,000. Multiplier 0.7 Sugar, pristine, 0 / 1,000. Multiplier 0.6. This creates a strong incentive to find untapped resources, and the "gold rush" will occur at the start of the weekend.

Each resource has a multiplier tracked for how many labor hours (and perhaps also the gold cost) are required to produce the resource recipe. The multiplier is displayed in the crafting menu, and warned as a little blurb in the general port view. IE, "The sugar fields are normal." and the multiplier is "1.0" in the crafting menu. Any given resource at a port could keep track of how many labor hours were invested into it that week, with another figure to track how much "capacity" the port has. Example: Sugar, normal, 9,000 / 10,000. Multiplier 1.0 So 9,000 out of 10,000 hours have been spent in this port. That's everyone's hours, not just yours. You spend another 1,000 hours and the field becomes 10,000. Uh oh, it was tapped out on the 'normal' level. Its now in the "poor" level, the multiplier is 1.25, and harvesting sugar now requires 20% more labor hours. The port's capacity is now, Sugar, poor, 0 / 15,000. Multiplier 1.25 Still, another 15,000 hours get spent at this poor sugar port and now... Sugar, failing, 0 / 20,000. Multiplier 1.5 The insatiable European appetite could continue to.. Sugar, barren, 0 / 25,000. Multiplier 2.0 Of course, players have a limited number of labor hours per RL day and will eventually catch on that other sources of sugar can be had at a lower labor hour cost. You will note that each step downward becomes twice as painful for the producer, and the capacity of poorer yields increases. This is to make it harder to go down to the bottom of the abundance scale. And as players grow tired of barren yields at a convenient port, they'll move their outposts to a more distant port, alleviating the problem. However a resource will never be tapped out. Some nations may only have one source of X or Y, and can't depend on foreign imports. On the other side, at the start of the weekend, the ports automatically tick up one rank. This includes going into abundance ranks. Sugar, abundant, 0 / 5,000. Multiplier 0.8 Sugar, rich, 0 / 3,000. Multiplier 0.7 Sugar, pristine, 0 / 1,000. Multiplier 0.6. This creates a strong incentive to find untapped resources, and the "gold rush" will occur at the start of the weekend.

Some further reflection. First off, people in the PvE community are voicing a lot of concern about both being stuck in a PvE zone and not having the full Carribean, and PvPers are also concerned that PvP players will use the PvE zone as one big shipyard to fuel their war efforts, and lose interest in actually capturing resource-producing ports in more dangerous waters. These two reasons are why I'm against the PvE zone. Secondly, I see little to no argument against a neutral faction operating out of free ports and attacking various fleets and AI's and contraband-smugglers. Nobody seems to think the PvE players scooping up PvE targets will be a concern. Third, economic concerns do exist, and I think they can be mitigated. 1. PvE players should only be allowed to build outposts in free ports. Thus they cannot harvest resources, and so factional ownership of resources remains relevant. 2. PvE players should not be allowed to conduct player-to-player trades outside of free ports. Thus they have to operate through the commodities market to buy or sell resources, and by operating through the market, a player using a neutral alt as a mule will pay the contract placement prices. After that point, the alt is no different than an actual other player. 3. PvE players MAY, if need be, be forbidden from placing buy and/or sell contracts in foreign ports, or foreign ports other than regional and national capitals. This depends on if buy and sell contracts by Neutral players interfere with the local economy in a way I'm not foreseeing. Fourth, many players are fond of certain national identities. As such, neutral players can select their own national colors to display inside of battle (neutral PvE player selects an American flag to fly in battle, then sees it when fighting an AI British ship. If an American-flagged neutral fights American AI, the AI become Pirates). Other players (if there ever are other players in battle with a PvE player) will see the ordinary flag for whichever team that PvE player was on (ie, red or blue from a Small Battle).

1-3 seem untenable. 4 is the only option that makes sense, so we'll see plenty of spies offer to escort a merchant out of PvE territory and only lead them into an ambush they conveniently run from.

I would like to harness the power of modern American political memes to solve this problem. American Trump supporters: US faction American Trump opposition: Spanish faction Florida will be awash in blood.

I'm just going to reiterate that a neutral-to-all faction for the PvE players and traders will have... 1. Net economic benefits for all factions thanks to cross-factional trade by a neutral party. 2. No interference in our port battles by keeping all regions in play. 3. Not create unassailable bases for friends or enemies off the Spanish capital. 4. Avoid high-sec / low-sec and no-tagging area rule shenanigans and confusion. 5. Keep the full map open for both PvP and PvE play.

I am simultaneously concerned how this might distort the Spanish war machine with unassailable supply lines.