The Geth

Ayyy, G502 club!

I know exactly what you mean. In either case, your mistake is refusing to address the points at hand.

Not really. A good Snow captain can make sudden, completely unpredictable moves at will. If you predict and move to counter, they can simply change their tactics instantly to put you on the defensive again. Against other 6th rates, the only true defense against a Snow is running.

Seconded. Just tried it for the first time yesterday, and it is beyond broken. Makes every other 6th rate look like a bad joke.

The ability to redeem DLC ships with seasoned woods.

Strange, the few times I've done this result in no bonuses. I don't know, could've been a fluke I suppose.

As far as I can tell, the port bonuses are in fact connected to the port in which you redeem the ship: redeeming a ship in a port with no investments will always result in no bonuses.

Just disallow port bonuses on redeemable ships. Let them keep their seasoned woods, but leave port bonuses exclusively to crafted ships. It makes sense, too: the DLC ships have the in-game moniker of "imported". Why would an imported ship (sailed from Europe, presumably) get a port bonus for a Caribbean port if it wasn't built there?

Superb overall! I think you may have given the wrong impression when you said 'incoherence' though. That would be different from understanding-but-dismissing something.

If that's incoherent, I shudder to think of what you'd find comprehensible. Is English not your first language?

Peaceful collaboration in certain things. But it works plenty of the time in certain other things. Just because we can't agree on everything doesn't mean we can't agree on anything. In-game diplomacy is already practiced; it's just that we're forced to use third-party methods of communication, and nothing is enforced by hard-coded, in-game mechanics. Leaving decisions up to players diplomatically would work just fine. If a nation has so-called troublemakers, let them vote for what they want. If they complain when they don't get their way, f**k 'em. If they do get their way, that's democracy at work; what's the problem? There is a broadly acceptable average of aggregate viewpoints. It can, and will, be found for each and every nation. You can never please everyone, and you should never try to; dissenters will always exist.

I don't know about other PvPers, but all I really care about are the doubloons and the combat medals. If I still get those for being in the battle/looting the corpse, I'm happy; I'd just end up sinking the other ship anyway, most likely.

Yep, that's really not how you should play it. You can only do that effectively if the other player is at a much lower prep than you anyway; the time they're given to change their mind becomes basically nonexistent as their prep lowers, but that's also true for you as the attacker. That last-second fake-out meta is borne of people who want a quick victory to shorten the combat and reduce their losses. The real challenge is to make your opponent waste their prep, while simultaneously causing more casualties than you take. That's not nearly as easy as it sounds, and it's certainly not as simple as 'change your selection at the last moment,' which will win you only one or two rounds at most before putting you at a significant prep disadvantage. It's as much a psychological game as one of numbers. Be as unpredictable in your boarding actions as you are in your sailing. Pick ranged options early with the intention of following through, rather than changing your selection in the final second of the round. If he decides to counterattack your deck guns at the last second, who cares? Laugh as his prep dives into the gutter and you both go into crew shock, while yours climbs even higher. Next round you can just straight-up attack him, and he won't be able to wait until the last second, which gives you a comfortable margin to work with should he choose to defend. Either way, you'll decimate him while taking practically no casualties in the round. Have a prep and crew advantage. Have marines 15. You won't succeed otherwise.

Can't speak for the devs, but this one has actually been a running joke in global for quite some time now. Been wondering when -- or if -- they'd finally notice.

This isn't the case for every nation, though. Smaller nations have a damned hard time of trading in bulk without being targeted. If your nation is large enough to own ports on both sides of the Gulf of Mexico, and populous enough to provide impromptu escorts aplenty in those waters, how could that possibly compare to some poor, lonely fellow trying to run a gauntlet of 3-4 enemy nations in the Windward Passage?