Lytse Pier

Welcome back!

There is a distinct difference between thinking and knowing, good sir.

My guns will be silent for one entire evening out of respect for the victims and their families. My prayers will go to them today.

As much we love our cozy virtual reality and the escapism it gives, they never take away the horrors of the day. To my Belgian friends out there, I will stand with you in both of our beloved realities of freedom and solidarity. My ingame guns will be silent this evening.

Ofcourse, I'm Dutch! We sell to anyone!

As part of a nationwide initiative to support recognized Dutch shipbuilders, I have set up a production chain of small, medium and large carriages. These items need a lot of labour hours and are in high demand for any shipbuilder as large quantities are required. All products are offered at a fixed pricing, cheapest you can find, with the quality you desire. Selling prices to guild approved Dutch shipbuilders: Small carriages @419 Medium carriages @963 Large carriages @2691 Selling prices to non guild approved shipbuilders: Small carriages @1000 Medium carriages @2000 Large carriages @4000 I will buy at the following prices: Coal @22 Iron ore @81 Hemp @60 Oak log @38 Customers that sell to me at these prices have a privilege in receiving their products first. ** FAQ ** What are guild approved Dutch shipbuilders? A nationwide program is launched to ensure the Dutch shipbuilding to be the cheapest and best of them all. Contact Hugo van Groijt of the Hugo Republic Shipyards for more information on how to get your guild approval to profit from our cheap pricing. Who get the products first? We are a small production facility and orders are handled on the principles of first come first served and out of stock is out of stock. Orders of Guild Approved Dutch shipbuilders always have priority over other orders. Orders of customers that sell me raw resources for keeping my production alive have priority over other orders, How to order? You can post your order here in this thread or contact me ingame. Deliveries All orders are delivered in Willemstad or a Freeport of your choice. Delivering at a Freeport will incur extra costs for delivery and require time to organize.

I agree Hethwill. Best thing would be to eleminate timers all together, hence the itteration I made in a post above whilst you were typing your post, no doubt! ;-)

In itteration on my former post it would make port timers obsolete, because a Port Raid of one nation would cancel out the effect of a Port Raid of another nation. Make it one raid per day per nation per port and you are good to go without port timers.

You guys need to think more of what makes a port vulnerable to attack now and what the consequences are of a port battle. I think it is the wrong mechanic for a port to switch sides using solely the port battle mechanics and I would like to introduce something called Port Loyalty. Port Loyalty is the measure of which you can swing a port's governor into your favor and towards your faction. The more you can convince the port to leave its Neutral Stance the better it will be for your faction. Port Loyalty convincing is done by: - Number of people of your faction getting docked each day (raises money to man the forts and buys their gatling gun cannonballs). - Supply the demands of the ports that are being met (happy people will like you). - Winning a port battle (or rather call it a port raid) significantly contributes to the ports loyalty. So it will not become a simple Port Battle that swings the loyalty of a port towards a threshold to join your faction (or leave your faction). An effort on more than one front, using several game mechanics that are now in place to convince a port to join your side, so to speak. Hope you like this direction of idea. P.S. ofcourse Port Loyalty should deteriorate if supply demands are not met and hardly any of a faction is docking at its ports.

Thnx to all for a great evening yesterday! Cannonballs were exchanged and new friendships were made. This is what an ingame "war" should be. Bringing people closer to each other and have some fun, even if they might be on opposite sides of the fence sometimes!

My suggestion: Captured ports need supplies. If one cannot maintain its empire, one should not have its empire. If you cannot supply your ports with your traderfleet, they should be more vulnerable to attack then fully supplied cities. This will create a zone of player maintained core ports and outer-rim ports of an empire naturally. Gives industrialists reasons to move supplies for their productionchain maintenance, gives pirates reasons to hunt stuff moving, gives hardcore PVP-ers reasons to protect their cheap-ship delivering carebears, gives meaning to expansion of ones empire and attack other empires that leave weak spots in their port network by not maintaining. Add in some interesting exploration for roaming casuals, and voila, you have a game. Just my two cents.

We're still waiting "to eat" a first female Prime Minister.

I think we all know that having the "wrong" port timers are a drain to the enjoyment of many in this game, and I greatly sympathize with anyone speaking up for change in that area of this game. The forums are all filled already with these discussions. If the HRE/Swedes chooses to play the game like this, they do. Their tactics are pretty solid and show they are coming from a small tight knit group that have experience to fight against all odds. Are those tactics effective for a smaller group of fanatical PvP-ers? Yes. Are they honorable? Probably not in many players eyes. Are they enjoyable? Depends on your level of self masochism and alarmclock skills, but I'm sure most don't enjoy it to have to take those ports back. Can we do anything about it? Yes, but it requires some more patience and resolve on our side. I like a Port Ping-Pong much better myself also, with proper chaotic screening fleet action. We are certainly challenged by their way of playing this game, but we do not go Spanish on the forums for them doing that, right? A lot of our members (and I know you did too) have put in many hours in the defense against superior French numbers and prevailed. We had to figure out how to do proper screening on the French fleets, we had to work out how to minimize their numerical advantages in the defense by spreading out our forces timely, figuring out where we were going to make our stand. All that figuring out together what worked and what didn't whilst people in Dutch chat were moaning about the attacks and we didn't defend properly, about BOAT being elitist in their behavior, about DAS spinning politics instead of taking enjoyment out of other peoples game and "winning" this game. These Swedes are another cup of tea entirely. If there are people or clans within the Dutch Nation not willing to figure this all out again with this new threat and new set of challenges, so be it. Let them leave, re-roll or ride with the game on "Easy mode" and join up a larger nation for roflstomp sensations. I choose otherwise. These Swedes choose otherwise. This war is going to be "meaner" to us all than the former, that is for sure. P.S.: Please don't start implying things about the nature of our adversaries. For all we know they might be beautiful blondes straight from the Swedish Saunas sailing ships naked and trying to virtually spank us, because they adore our wooden shoes! (See, much better imagination!)

Ouch Monkey, I guess gunship diplomacy only works if one actually knows which part of the cannon the ball comes from, eh? However, I for one welcome the professional attitude of the Swedish fleet. Again we have an opportunity to learn and improve ourselves as a clan, just as we have learned a great deal from the French. Their tactics and doctrines are quite different and we even might have to develop one of those ourselves now soon.

I loved it that one of your Swedish guys was named Jebediah Kerman, made me spin up Kerbal Space Program again!

You first have to fatten the pig, before you bring it to the slaughter. So who is doing this wrong?

Bah, two days of illness and you guys get all the fun.

Very nice writeup indeed!

Never, I only write them.

As a proud grunt within the glorious Dutch Nation, I eagerly await the second official statement of the Dutch Consortium after the totally unprovoked attack of the Swedes at Saint George's. Most likely not all in the Consortium will agree with each other, but I hope our wise clan leaders weigh in their decisions that working together is not a one-way-street. Its like in my marriage. To keep having hot steamin' sxx, you sometimes have to stop objecting and just do the dishes, iron the laundry and mow the lawn. We grunts know that better than anyone! Lead us! ... my lawnmowers are fully tanked up!

Opinions are only worth something if they can be enforced through might, power, excellence or cunning; otherwise it's just howling in te wind. And the winds are strong today.

Still going strong!