[PvP Global] Political Situation and Port Battles

[Loco Bandito]

Hence the battle circle would get smaller as the battle progressed if you escape before the circle goes smaller well done but if they keep you tagged in sooner or later you can't run and forced to fight.

Fleeing maybe seen as treason. Keyword maybe for the trolls.

[Skully]

1 hour ago, Loco Bandito said:

Hence the battle circle would get smaller as the battle progressed if you escape before the circle goes smaller well done but if they keep you tagged in sooner or later you can't run and forced to fight.

Fleeing maybe seen as treason. Keyword maybe for the trolls.

Let me rephrase, an enemy Surprise tags my Privateer. After some passes the circle hits us and either one of us turns to run. We each have very different profiles so no more battle will happen. Who still has the option to leave?

[Hodo]

2 hours ago, Loco Bandito said:

Hence the battle circle would get smaller as the battle progressed if you escape before the circle goes smaller well done but if they keep you tagged in sooner or later you can't run and forced to fight.

Fleeing maybe seen as treason. Keyword maybe for the trolls.

 

Fleeing wasnt seen as treason.  Loss of a vessel due to incompetence or due to cowardice in the face of the enemy.  (striking colors without a fight against an equal or lesser opponent)

There would be a tribunal of peers, they would go over the logs of the fight, listen to the senior enlisted and junior officer accounts.   And any letters written by the opposing captain.   

Nelson himself surrendered a vessel once.  

[Hethwill]

Fleeing from perceived equal match, a 32 guns versus a 40 guns could be seen as equal, could lead to court by RN rules of engagement.

But in a nutshell you said it correct.

[Loco Bandito]

12 hours ago, Skully said:

Let me rephrase, an enemy Surprise tags my Privateer. After some passes the circle hits us and either one of us turns to run. We each have very different profiles so no more battle will happen. Who still has the option to leave?

Ok I think you missed the concept of a Battle Royale style. Have you played Player Unknown Battlegrounds? 100 players slug it out till one victor.

So the attacker attacks with his intention to attack and kill not run and grief like a girl. So the guy defending can still escape as the circle will still be big at the start. But if they both fight and decide to run well the first to leave loses and the other is victories. The defending ship could put damage the attacker forcing him to die or surrender. 

For this to work ships of similar BR would need to implemented for attacking.

The old days we used to buy a flag with the intention of a battle without even planting it, we had numerous open world battles because the screen fleet would try to sink the flag. Some of those open world battles were a lot of fun. 

[Loco Bandito]

Current meta is PB fleet on there way. 

Defender attacks fleet.

Kites enemy.

Enemy escapes defender attacks and kites again.

No port battle happens no Naval Action happens.

People go to bed. Waste of time. People start to leave the game.

A different system is needed. All the work goes into grinding to setup a PB and then it doesn't happen. Is piss poor game mechanics. 

If the defenders didn't counter grind hostility then there next chance is the PB not out side playing kite the enemy. 

People want action not wasted time. I rather win or lose in the game field not on the side line.

[Rhodry Heidenrich]

Can someone please translate what Loco Bandito is saying? I don't speak Penal Colony. 

J/k, HI BUDDY. 

[Skully]

5 hours ago, Loco Bandito said:

For this to work ships of similar BR would need to implemented for attacking.

Hence I am saying it won't work for ships with different performance profiles.

[Tenet]

Concise analysis of contemporary port battle meta:

[Skully]

First a "summary" of why we need the hostility system.

TL;DR Original flags made time slot barriers.

Current hostility mechanism is however badly implemented as contribution must be tied to time slot.

For the PB we never gave thought on how this could be abused.

But now it shows clearly. Defender needs to stall (not fight), attacker needs to be there on time (not fight).

I think the actual opening of the PB needs to go back to the flag mechanic, while time needs to come from the hostility mechanic.

What kind of abuse can we see then?

Edited July 19, 2017 by Skully

[Vllad]

10 hours ago, Skully said:

I think the actual opening of the PB needs to go back to the flag mechanic, while time needs to come from the hostility mechanic.

What kind of abuse can we see then?

The flag system was horrible. Do we really need to revisit all the old arguments of why it went away? Can't you just go back and read old post rather than open that old wound? I get it, we need a new system but there are plenty of good suggestions out there about port battles that would be better ways to do it than what currently exist and what crap used to exist.

[Hethwill]

10 hours ago, Skully said:

I think the actual opening of the PB needs to go back to the flag mechanic, while time needs to come from the hostility mechanic.

What kind of abuse can we see then?

You mean the "flag" being the Battle Fleet ?

[Hodo]

15 hours ago, Loco Bandito said:

Current meta is PB fleet on there way. 

Defender attacks fleet.

Kites enemy.

Enemy escapes defender attacks and kites again.

No port battle happens no Naval Action happens.

People go to bed. Waste of time. People start to leave the game.

A different system is needed. All the work goes into grinding to setup a PB and then it doesn't happen. Is piss poor game mechanics. 

If the defenders didn't counter grind hostility then there next chance is the PB not out side playing kite the enemy. 

People want action not wasted time. I rather win or lose in the game field not on the side line.

People need to research real fleet sailing tactics to prevent this from happening.  

If you used screeners of your own, that were at the edge of visual range (20km) away.   And they tag the screeners, keeping them from tagging your main fleet this would not be an issue.  

 

Just saying... sometimes use of sailing tactics, works.   

[Skully]

2 minutes ago, The Red Duke said:

You mean the "flag" being the Battle Fleet ?

Yes. Once a time slot is unlocked through hostility, you are free to create a Flag ship with PB fleet. Should the flag be planted in time, PB opens.

[Hethwill]

2 minutes ago, Skully said:

Yes. Once a time slot is unlocked through hostility, you are free to create a Flag ship with PB fleet. Should the flag be planted in time, PB opens.

I was thinking of the Battle Group itself being created as a flag to a PB, Fleet IS the flag, hence the Fleet having to sail to the PB. But who could form the "flag fleet" ? Highest hostility scorer ?

[Khyron]

10 hours ago, Tenet said:

Concise analysis of contemporary port battle meta:

WHOOHOOOO look at me in the upper right being brave! lol

[Skully]

1 hour ago, The Red Duke said:

I was thinking of the Battle Group itself being created as a flag to a PB, Fleet IS the flag, hence the Fleet having to sail to the PB. But who could form the "flag fleet" ? Highest hostility scorer ?

We already have a minimal score for instant PB entry based on top 25. We could say the top 10 or 25 is allowed to purchase a Flag  (potentially with hostility points). Multiple flags would then be possible. Alt abuse would be tricky to pull off.

[Teutonic]

Port Battle - Santa Marta
Outcome: Brits defend

the OW PvP outcome

Needless to say the French got exactly what they wanted. Captured Ships were mainly Aggies with Latron capturing and then using the Pavel we took from the Dutch.
 

Edited July 20, 2017 by Teutonic

[Loco Bandito]

On 17/07/2017 at 11:35 PM, Hodo said:

No offense but wars are often won by the one with the most numbers. 

 

I dont like the cowardly act of hiding in a battle before a port battle, exploiting a broken mechanic.   Yes it is an exploit.  

You abuse a known issue, there is no timer from joining a port battle from any battle.  Thus bypassing the chance at an OW fight with anyone.  

 

That's ok for a large nation but what about smaller nations who can just field 25 players. How do you propose they send out screeners? Vs a nation with a larger pop who can afford screeners. 

[Souvlaki]

4 minutes ago, Loco Bandito said:

That's ok for a large nation but what about smaller nations who can just field 25 players. How do you propose they send out screeners? Vs a nation with a larger pop who can afford screeners. 

The same way the Dutch will take all of your territory. Oh wait, they won't, because they don't have enough players.

Obviously every nation is going to be limited by the number of active and willing players they have. No mechanic will fix that.

Edited July 20, 2017 by Souvlaki

[Loco Bandito]

Just now, Souvlaki said:

The same way the Dutch will take all of your territory. Oh wait, they won't, because they don't have enough players.

I'm not talking us vs them attitude. This is a mere nation A has small pop of say 20 - 30 players vs nation B with 150 players. 

Would be good to see small nations be able to have a go at times. 

[Souvlaki]

Just now, Loco Bandito said:

I'm not talking us vs them attitude. This is a mere nation A has small pop of say 20 - 30 players vs nation B with 150 players. 

Would be good to see small nations be able to have a go at times. 

Agreed, but small nations will have to fight other small nations, or ally to take on bigger nations, or hit bigger nations in outlying areas that may not draw as many defenders. They still have options.

[Loco Bandito]

5 hours ago, Wraith said:

The flag system itself wasn't bad, it was the port battle windows that were set around when you could pull a flag, and the resulting false flag/alt purchase scenarios created that made it undesirable.  The waiting around, babysitting ports whose windows were open sucked, but the fact that we had player-generated PvP zones was far, *far* preferable to grinding up PvE hostility. PvE hostility generation to create a port battle is pure and utter horse hockey. I honestly can't believe it survived this long, and especially now where we are reliant on RNG fleets and the mechanics to farm them instead of region-specific missions... it borders on dev incompetence.

The fact is we need RAIDS NOW.  Some kind of player-generated PvP-generating content should be the hostility generating mechanism of choice.  They should be used to concentrate action on a port, not a region (regions are too large)... and perhaps they could come in different flavors (port raids vs. war supply drops, etc.). 

Flag system was abused but good too as well. Maybe they could have had a system where a nation could only have one active flag per hour or every hour. That way people from different time zones could do port battles.

[Axel]

41 minutes ago, Teutonic said:

Port Battle - Santa Marta
Outcome: Brits defend

the OW PvP outcome

Needless to say the French got exactly what they wanted. Captured Ships were mainly Aggies with Latron capturing and then using the Pavel we took from the Dutch.
 

 

 

I believe the total count of players sunk and captured starting at the time of the PB was around 31 Brits and Dutch

[Slamz]

43 minutes ago, Loco Bandito said:

That's ok for a large nation but what about smaller nations who can just field 25 players. How do you propose they send out screeners? Vs a nation with a larger pop who can afford screeners. 

Well I think France answered that question tonight: we ignored the port battle and killed the screeners. Then when the port battle was over we caught a number of Aggies headed away from the port, going home after winning the port defense (because we never went in) and we killed them outside where we could use heavier ships (and presumably some of the aggies just stayed at port so we caught the ones who didn't live there, basically splitting their fleet).

I think a lot of people hugely overemphasize port battles. It's really not about the ports. It's about killing ships.

Start a contention grind and then ambush whoever comes to counter-grind it.
Schedule a 4th rate port battle and then show up in Bellonas and just blow up everyone you can find outside of the port. Take that, screener fleet.
Go setup outposts, bring a spare warship or two using fleet perk, loaded with extra repairs and go hunt their back lanes for a couple days or until they sink your ships.

Size can be important but bringing the right force to bear in the right place at the right time and being aggressive matters more. A small team can sink a lot of ships if they're just aggressive about it and that actually hurts your enemy more than taking their ports does.

 

A lot of people are fixated over 1st rates and victory marks but the real game as I see it involves going out and sinking enemy ships every day, anywhere you can find them, in whatever you can afford to sail (...rigged for speed).

Edited July 20, 2017 by Slamz