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Next big patches: Real currency and Open world user interface update


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38 minutes ago, Sento de Benimaclet said:

Jim, On the one hand, what you say is true. In Age of Pirates II you bought the type and amount of ammunition and gunpowder in the port stores. Sometimes you came to a port and it did not fit. That forced you to be more careful when firing cannons. On the other hand it seems that some people forget that an MMO game to survive must have the most players better. Either you give people fun or they go, and I do not think Naval Action would survive with 40 online players around the world. On the other hand there are people who have not sufficiently practiced their skills because the vast majority of players already have an age and other obligations: work, family, etc. You can not blame anyone. So let's keep hitting guns and enjoy the game.

If it was done right it could be very cool and realistic. Ball production shouldn't rely on player crafting. It should be done on the most part by AI in ports, same with gunpowder. It's not like the people IN the port aren't producing all that stuff already.

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3 hours ago, Slim McSauce said:

Of course you can always still sell to the port marketplace as apposed to admiralty. Not sure how that would be balanced (maybe your ship is delivered 1x hour after buying?) if that's too much then limit this way to only buy orders that way it doesn't completely eclipse the regular market.

A nice little side bonus to this is that you could potentially be selling your ships directly for admiralty marks (whatever the devs call it come eco patch) saving you the asspain of trading for them, expanding your market a bit.

As an addition I could actually go for something like that.

The ship I specialize in would still go in the market.  It's a cash-flow generator and a core element of the structure of my trading operation.  It's one of the ways I've adapted to the game without using an alt.

But being able to fill an admiralty order for marks as well would solve a huge problem.  If someone is going to be a serious trader in this game, plan on being chronically short of marks.  Which you need for blueprints and permits for certain ships.   Right now I have to buy them on a contract in the market.  They don't show up that often and the sellers tend to want rather a lot.  At 6K each, 100 marks for a permit to build a fixed quantity of certain ships blows up the economics of building them.

I also have found I periodically need to adjust the mix of perks I use.  Right now that's rather expensive to execute.

On the matter of serious trading, I am getting the distinct impression there aren't many of us.  At least I have yet to meet any.  It's one of the reason you all are looking at AI ships in the OW.  The amateurs hide in the reinforcement zones.  But doing this for real requires a mixed operation with the risks that entails.  Like runs for specialized woods.

Stuff like this might actually encourage more of that.

Edited by Marcus Corvus
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4 minutes ago, Marcus Corvus said:

On the matter of serious trading, I am getting the distinct impression there aren't many of us.  At least I have yet to meet any.  It's one of the reason you all are looking at AI ships in the OW.  The amateurs hide in the reinforcement zones.  But doing this for real requires a mixed operation with the risks that entails.

Stuff like this might actually encourage more of that.

That will change when economy is redone with physical coins and marks. Trading, even basic hauling of various items that you pick up will become a larger part of the game, and hunting for those items will become the prize-y motive for PvPers. Maybe we'll see more dispersion of players on the map improving pvp elsewhere? So much happens around capitals, there are many things you'll only find in capitals and nowhere else and it's in big part the problem NA has as a whole.

 

 

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1 hour ago, Slim McSauce said:

That will change when economy is redone with physical coins and marks. Trading, even basic hauling of various items that you pick up will become a larger part of the game, and hunting for those items will become the prize-y motive for PvPers. Maybe we'll see more dispersion of players on the map improving pvp elsewhere? So much happens around capitals, there are many things you'll only find in capitals and nowhere else and it's in big part the problem NA has as a whole.

 

Agreed.  At least in the US, the capital is the only port with a truly functional market.  I do some resource contracts in others but it's pretty limited.  Markets other than the capital are mostly dead air.

Regarding dispersion of players, I could very easily go into the contract money-transport business.  As I've said above physical currency needs to also have a substitute available in the the form of a demand instrument that can be carried in it's place.  Which is how merchants got around transportation bottlenecks caused by physical coinage before the advent of modern banking.

But both would be in motion.  Ships stuffed with coin, and protected by lumbering well-armed escorts.  And sneaky little runners moving paper from one side of the map to the other. 

My avatar should give a pretty good indication which one I would be.

The outpost count would need to go up, however, to support the greater distances.  In another topic admin mentioned the possibility of a future DLC to expand outposts.  Non-alt traders would be all over that.  I am maxed out right now at eight permits.  Like to keep one unused which makes them easier to shift around.  If you are making money the cost of opening and closing them is just something you absorb.

But the trader tool also needs fixing to make this work, as well.  And that needs to be addressed before physical coin/paper is implemented, or the whole thing will just collapse.

In order for delivery contracts for coin and paper to get filled in any meaningful volume, traders need to have some way of knowing about contract activity without visiting a port.  I've sailed to enough dead spaces to get very particular about where and what I scout for.  Time is money and sailing distance is money.  Traders won't keep trying to pump water out of dry holes.

Contracts need to be on the same footing as port stock currently is.  Don't need to have a lot of detail.  Just need to know they exist.  Right now, if I am am short a particular resource, I'll watch the trader tool for a couple days to see if it's consistently available somewhere.  Need that kind of visibility for contracts.

Without that, coin and paper movement will bottleneck in the economy the same way everything else does.  I am guessing this may require separation from the map, however, and probably a bunch of coding that two programmers might not have time for.

Edited by Marcus Corvus
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2 hours ago, Slim McSauce said:

If it was done right it could be very cool and realistic.

Yes.

289363083_2044368290_o.jpg

 

Age of pirates 2. 

This list is of the products that could be bought and sold in the different ports of the game. At the top, the first products were cannon balls, chains, grapes and gunpowder. you buy the quantity you want from these products, there is no ammunition and unlimited powder. I remember more than once arriving at port to hire crew in the tavern and replenish ammunition and gunpowder in the store and not having any of it. You had to look for another port where there was or there was something left. It would be very fun if they could implement something similar in the Naval. Regards!!

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2 hours ago, Marcus Corvus said:

But the trader tool also needs fixing to make this work, as well.  And that needs to be addressed before physical coin/paper is implemented, or the whole thing will just collapse.

As I think about this, contract (in)visiblity, by the way, is likely the single biggest factor in why the folks you all deride as Care Bears are on this server rather than over on PvE.

If you think markets outside the capital are quiet here, on PvE they are pretty much all nothing but crypts.  The inability to see contract activity without visiting the port concentrates virtually all of the meaningful player econ in the capital.  Other than hauling stuff back to the capital to craft or attempt to sell.

Which means it doesn't take PvE-only folks very long to run out of interesting things to do.  And so here they are, fussing about being ganked and being mocked by you.

Physical coin/paper might possibly be kludged into functionality on the Caribbean server.  But given my prior experience, good luck with that on PvE without addressing the contract system.

Fix the contract system FIRST so the economy works on both servers.  Physical coin/paper will then work AND the PvE-only folks will be happy on the PvE server.  And you all can leave off arguing with each other over the size of the Green Zones.

Edited by Marcus Corvus
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2 minutes ago, Graf Bernadotte said:

Sorry Admin, you make the same mistakes like the French did at the beginning of the nineties in the 20th century. A good working and strong currency is the result of a good working and strong economy. French thought a good working economy is the result of a good working currency. And as soon as they would get control over Deutsche Mark they would be able to compete with Germanys economy.

That's why the entire Southern Europe never reformed their economic system. Result was a collapse of their economy after 2010.

Same will happen in Naval Action soon. If you think reforming the currency system of the game will heal broken mechanic of economy you are completely mistaken. It will lead to a collapse of economy. Fix economy or you better have a look for someone who is stupid enough to bail you out, when the game is heading south. 🤔

Do think it just is a question on time before, ppl stop pay for ports. Summer is comming. If you ask me personally, we just dropped almost all ports. Just keep Those close to home for new and casual players. 

Right now we are allready on stand-by mode. Hoping for a change.

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3 hours ago, Graf Bernadotte said:

If you think reforming the currency system of the game will heal broken mechanic of economy you are completely mistaken. It will lead to a collapse of economy. Fix economy or you better have a look for someone who is stupid enough to bail you out, when the game is heading south. 🤔

I'm  not sure the devs are trying to use the currency to fix the economy.  The re-denomination (whether or not it ends in physical coin) looks to be more about anchoring the aesthetics of the game to the period.  But I am in complete agreement with your underlying point.

The medium of exchange can hinder or enhance economic activity.  But it can't create the activity where it is fundamentally choked off by something else.

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Fixing the economy in this game will not be a quick fix, but it is necessary.  The need for money is directly or indirectly guiding most of the decisions we make as single players, clans and even nations.

The gold earning possibilities in this game need to be balanced compared to the risk involved and the time they consume. Low risk = low profit, high risk = high profit. 
Profit rating high to low: PvP in RvR (inside PB), PvP in OW, trading, epic events, attacking OW fleets and PvE missions. So PvP is high income, trading in the middle and PvE is at the low end. Doing missions should be the least effective way to earn gold, because the XP should be the main reward here. And stuff that is risky can potentially provide content for other players, and this should be highly rewarded!!!  

Trading goods (not used for crafting): Right now the player base is low and there is just to much profitable trade goods dropping/spawning regularly, often way to close close to buying capitals/free ports. These trade goods are mostly bought up by a few players who basically have a monopoly on buying these trade goods on contracts. If they keep on doing it indefinitely they can become extremely rich. They sell these goods in the closest buying capital, if this port is an enemy port they just use and alt from that nation to sail it in and sell it. So the risk involved in this trading is basically = 0. I know this, because I'm doing it.. This broken trading econ enable us to generate huge amount of money with very low risk. This is unbalancing for the economy and does not provide the game with any content. And even with more players the broken economy is still there, there just a bit more players to share the wealth between so this need some TLC.

Less extreme option and decent temp fix would be to make the drop/spawn location of at the most profitable trade goods random!That way traders/players who are out and about in OW are rewarded when they enter a port and find some good trade stuff. And using contracts to buy up these trade goods would not be very effective anymore. We all love random drop when we get some good stuff ;)  

Personally I think all these trade goods that are not used for crafting should be removed until the devs have time to develop a deeper meaning for the trading aspect of the game. The trade goods we supply to capitals and free ports could be used for for generating increased production of national goods, better fortifications, etc. So then if I as a Russian nation player would be supporting the US nation economy when I sell trading goods in their capital. We should just focus on trading resources and materials and balance this out, then when it is working then you could add the trading goods again with a purpose other than just printing money.

But it would still need some serious thought. The profits the different goods yield needs to be more balanced considering the sailing time involved sailing it to a buying port. High profitt goods should be far away from the buying capitals and freeports. Short sails should not provide huge profits and that would require rethinking of the spawn locations..
When two nation capitals are as close to each other as Christiansted and Gustavia are, it is just stupid that the profit levels of the goods between these nations are so high.

It should also be profitable to own ports, period. Only when you add defence timers should it be expensive to own a port. That way you can capture 5 ports and have no timer on them to support the cost of owning 1 port with a timer. For a port to be profitable now it needs to either spawn a lot of high profitt trade goods, wood for resources for ships, resources/materials for upgrades or be a base for PvP/RvR. All the ports that do not have this are not profitable and then basically useless.

The mark system works from my point of view. So changing the different marks name to something more historically sounds good to me, but it will not in anyway fix the economy in this game. 

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1 hour ago, Tiedemann said:

Trading goods (not used for crafting): Right now the player base is low and there is just to much profitable trade goods dropping/spawning regularly, often way to close close to buying capitals/free ports. These trade goods are mostly bought up by a few players who basically have a monopoly on buying these trade goods on contracts. If they keep on doing it indefinitely they can become extremely rich. They sell these goods in the closest buying capital, if this port is an enemy port they just use and alt from that nation to sail it in and sell it. So the risk involved in this trading is basically = 0. I know this, because I'm doing it.. This broken trading econ enable us to generate huge amount of money with very low risk. This is unbalancing for the economy and does not provide the game with any content. And even with more players the broken economy is still there, there just a bit more players to share the wealth between so this need some TLC.

Generally I agree except on the underlying mechanic itself.  I've scouted a lot of ports in the Bahamas and I'm seeing extremely low levels of contract activity, except in Little Harbor, where the driver is the copper ingot craft material.   What happens instead is that once an outpost is in place a national (or anybody in an open port) can camp on a profitable source and lock it up.  You might be seeing that kind of contract activity but my suspicion is that it is possibly something that is likely to be specific to the source (like Little Harbor).

That's the downside of the teleport function.  That downside is something we're just stuck with because without the teleport the game would be unplayable by anybody who needs to at least occasionally interact with the real world.

A more fundamental problem, is that a trader cannot see contract activity without visiting a port.  If they could, trading activity would start flowing in the direction of favorable contract activity and away from ports without it.  And a lot of the economy bottlenecks would sort themselves out.  My personal solution to the contract problem was buying 8 outpost permits.  Which was expensive and a very difficult ramp to climb starting from flat broke as an Econ player.

I absolutely DO think you are on to something here:

Quote

Personally I think all these trade goods that are not used for crafting should be removed until the devs have time to develop a deeper meaning for the trading aspect of the game. The trade goods we supply to capitals and free ports could be used for for generating increased production of national goods, better fortifications, etc. So then if I as a Russian nation player would be supporting the US nation economy when I sell trading goods in their capital. We should just focus on trading resources and materials and balance this out, then when it is working then you could add the trading goods again with a purpose other than just printing money.

The beauty of this is that it actually could be implemented one resource, or material at a time, without burning down what players are already doing.  Probably starting with the existing shipbuilding process, and then moving on to what you suggest, until everything that is needed for the process including upgrades comes out of production buildings, the way cotton does now.  The building limit would force diversification and specialization.

Before my time special shipbuilding woods all came out of forests, but if the contract activity was invisible outside of the ports like it is now that process would simply collapse.  Or develop huge wobbles because a forest owner gets away with charging huge prices because the buyer has no idea better prices are available only 200 miles away.

This MIGHT actually encourage clans to engage actual traders, rather than the play money thing that happens now.  Where you sweep up a bunch of gold courtesy of cannon fire, and use that to swallow trade goods when you feel like it, and regurgitate them on short runs for huge profits.  I cannot imagine that anybody actually did that during the period in which this game is set.

Which was how I had to jump start my trading operation.  Really no way to do that starting from flat broke without running combat missions.  I'm patient, but not patient enough to do it all fishing.  Which is not a bad thing at that level as even a trader really does need to learn to handle the guns.  But if it's possible to run an entire game that way all the way up to Rear Admiral there's pretty much no reason for a clan to cultivate any actual traders.

No serious traders, no serious economy.  Which I suppose is fine, but serious Econ is way more interesting.

I'm chewing on your other thoughts.  We might find we disagree on some of them but it is a breath of fresh air to get some actual discussion on the economy.

Edited by Marcus Corvus
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1 hour ago, Marcus Corvus said:

The beauty of this is that it actually could be implemented one resource, or material at a time, without burning down what players are already doing.  Probably starting with the existing shipbuilding process, and then moving on to what you suggest, until everything that is needed for the process including upgrades comes out of production buildings, the way cotton does now.  The building limit would force diversification and specialization.

A live example of this is what I currently do in the cotton market.

Once I got to where I could get all the core resources at the prices I needed I shut down one of the buildings and started up in cotton.  Because there is no silly AI x4 limiter I can actually make money on the resource.  

And then I discovered that a couple players were selling cotton sails in the capital market.  At 175k plus.  It costs about 21K to make cotton sails, before factoring in the labor hours, and amortizing a L3 facility and having to buy combat marks at market for the blueprint.  Wow.  So I undercut them and I am STILL making a pile of money because I am selling them at a price someone is actually willing to buy at.  THAT folks, is what something is worth.  What an actual buyer is willing to pay.  Not what I think it ought list at.

Until someone else figures that they can open a cotton facility and start producing the sails.  And we will have a price race to the bottom and the best Econ player(s) will dominate the market.  Is there likely to be price collusion?  You bet.  But someone else will start producing sails which puts the brakes on THAT.

And the combat players will be able to buy cotton sails at reasonable prices.

Yes, I did just give away a trade secret for anyone that wants to try to compete.

The same thing ought to happen in the copper market.  Oops.  Did I just jiggle somone's gravy bowl?

Edited by Marcus Corvus
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so, what will happen to large stockpiles of gold that certain players may have? will all or some of it be converted into the new currency?

clan warehouse gold can't be wiped, or all the ports would go neutral in a day. So will clan warehouse gold be converted into the new currency?

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 One thought i had to improve wider use of ports is to respawn rare goods each month,  such as cartagena tar and other "upgrade" mats within the area they originate to another random port in area.   Basically representing new resource pools being found and the old ones waning.

This would mean nobody has total monopoly on a resource type  beyond a month, and would promote more RvR as a result.

Edited by Dibbler
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41 minutes ago, --Privateer-- said:

so, what will happen to large stockpiles of gold that certain players may have? will all or some of it be converted into the new currency?

clan warehouse gold can't be wiped, or all the ports would go neutral in a day. So will clan warehouse gold be converted into the new currency?

im intrested in this as well.

im buying ships i normaly do not use so if i lose gold i at least can sell ships

 

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Hi. I have a question. If u have the rewards into your ship after a PvP batle this will makes your ship slower? Because the speed is the only chance that we have to scape of the revange fleets. I dont want to go inside of yours ports but is the only way to find PvP fights. 

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19 hours ago, Rex Maris said:

Hi. I have a question. If u have the rewards into your ship after a PvP batle this will makes your ship slower? Because the speed is the only chance that we have to scape of the revange fleets. I dont want to go inside of yours ports but is the only way to find PvP fights. 

Yes please implement this Pvp reward in your hold makes you slower. If you have revenge fleet issue it means you are doing something wrong

Edited by Lovec1990
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On 5/5/2018 at 9:05 PM, Rex Maris said:

Hi. I have a question. If u have the rewards into your ship after a PvP batle this will makes your ship slower? Because the speed is the only chance that we have to scape of the revange fleets. I dont want to go inside of yours ports but is the only way to find PvP fights. 

Marks to hold idea is still under review. Those are gold coins and will not affect your speed much. 

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On 5/1/2018 at 12:11 PM, --Privateer-- said:

so, what will happen to large stockpiles of gold that certain players may have? will all or some of it be converted into the new currency?

clan warehouse gold can't be wiped, or all the ports would go neutral in a day. So will clan warehouse gold be converted into the new currency?

All currency will be converted (denominated) all prices will denominate as well. So if the price of the timer was 500k it will also reduce according to denomination rates.

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On 4/23/2018 at 10:43 AM, admin said:

Improve crafting components.
We will adjust the blueprints for ships and goods removing unnecessary friction from the system. Some of the blueprints are just fake work and could just use raw material as the main source.  For example ship blueprints will require just logs and will not require the captain to mill the planks (as shipyard can do it on their own). This might require a resource/material wipe. If it happens we will announce some time before it happens.

So will crafting ships become cheaper, more expensive or stay the same in terms of actual cost?

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Sounds great, there is only one slight problem with reward distributions. It seems to be based off hull damage but when teamwork is employed that's not the only thing matters. Are you planning on improving the reward distribution system at all?

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1 hour ago, Le Raf Boom said:

Sounds great, there is only one slight problem with reward distributions. It seems to be based off hull damage but when teamwork is employed that's not the only thing matters. Are you planning on improving the reward distribution system at all?

Include Crew damage. If possible.

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I feel like crafting big ships will cost much more.

I also need to loudly voice. Some crafter and traders I know which are one of the best and most experienced, are not optimistic about incoming changes, which are the economy changes and magic wallet disappearance. So I know they are considering quiting this game, they started to look for a candidate already.

I do understand developers ambition about all for PVP, I like pvp. But some traders, crafters are backbone of this game, they make the limited economy of this game “keep going”.

I trust in developers, they are still able to unleash the full potential of this game. I feel current state is only about %30.

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