ajffighter86

A few points: I'm one of the reinforcements/turncoats/traders (or whatever else we've been called) and I would like to say that I would never have considered flipping to the French if not for the fact that they held on to Pedernales, onslaught after onslaught. When a small minority of players can hold their ground so fiercely that their stronger opponents have to come onto the forums to complain that the game is broken, man! That really puts a smile on my face. The French earned my respect, and believe me it was not easy to move all that stuff from Mortimer town to join a side that I knew was weaker and had no idea how it would play out. (we still don't know the fate of the French in the long-run) The French are people determined to survive and will not be swayed by faction population. Pirates had the population, but did not seem interested in survival. (exception made for the small minority of the pirate faction who remain in the Bahamas squeezed between the Brits and US, the two largest factions on PVP US) Attrition is very achievable in the game. Sink enough frigates using brigs and eventually people stop wanting to bring their frigates into battle and losing them to 'weaker' opponents. That puts them on equal footing with you, and that's when they're really screwed. Battling NPCs whose ships are bigger, by grinding in missions, does not always prepare you for combat with lower ranked captains who have taken the time to get to know their ships, even if those ships are smaller than yours. Sure, NPC's get a boost in ship performance, which makes them unnecessarily tough opponents at first, but they do not think like human opponents and are fairly easy to manipulate into screwing up maneuvers.

Actually eulogy, I think this is progress. I like the part about lurking by the shores and nightmares and such. I'd almost have him confused with a real pirate.

That is true. I hope the developers can come up with something refreshingly different for the pirate 'faction' in terms of play style.

LOL. I believe it was most of the SE pirates who said, "Good, we're better off without OMG anyway." How many hundreds of pirates were sailing around in the lesser Antilles last week? At most, maybe 20 players from OMG went French, and the next thing you know, some of those same smack-talking pirates jumped ship and ran to the next largest faction. That's humility for you. The lesser Antilles pirates didn't really want to play like pirates. They wanted to be 'nationals with a black flag' all along. They'll fit in better with Britain or US anyway, it matches their play styles.

Well, we're more like privateers, but in any case, the French are actually quite fun to play with. They're smaller but after hearing them during battle, you can tell they're almost always having a blast, even if outnumbered. Not all of the pirates are push-overs. I look forward to fighting those folks who do decide to remain in the SE. But speaking as a Bahama-pirate-turned-French-privateer, I would like to say that those who are dedicated to continue playing pirate are probably better off now. The French resistance thinned out the SE pirate herd by chasing off most of the steamroll zergs. Some even went British, lol, as if the Brits 2nd largest faction on PVP 2 US even needs the help.

http://www.grapheine.com/bombaytv/art-en-03bed6c14dff39dc3be1ae1aba9d4890.html

Any pirates in the southeast who claim to be "PVP players" and want to get their stuff out of Aves will have a chance to do both today.

I don't think OMG cause drama, and I don't think they are going to be the last to leave. I think a lot of pirates in the Bahamas want to prove that they're more PVP-oriented than the pirates in the South— those who only want to attack concrete towers in empty ports and get mad when defenders show up, much like the USS clan did when it steamrolled in the Bahamas. I see very little difference. As a Bahamas-based pirate, I'm beginning to realize that I have much more in common with the resistance spirit of the French than I do with the pirate zerg in the south. We should be in Mimbres or Bimini, hitting US traders off the coast of Florida like the French are doing to the pirates in Pedernales. Someone said it best, the French are better at pirate tactics than the pirates.

The capital doesn't matter. It's the new guys in pirate faction that matter. The ones who pop their heads out of Mortimer and get it smashed and say 'hmm, maybe I'll join USA.' +1 zerg, -1 pirates That, my fellow rat, is what you should "give a shit about". And before you say, 'just come south'. No one new in the game is gonna want to sail 20 in-game days to go put cannonballs in a tower and occasionally see an opposing player they can PVP with every other day. (But if they're very quiet and try not to spook them, they might catch a glimpse of the endangered French species before a horde of pirates descend upon it and kill it.)

Pirates are having that flamefest/discussion right now on PVP US. I swear there's gonna be a civil war between the Bahama pirates and the Lesser Antilles pirates before it's over. Half of us want to help newbies PVP in Mortimer, the other half wants to shoot at towers in undefended southern ports and beat up the 5 French players until they go play some other game.

Why 12? lol. It only takes one to earn you a hanging. But I get where you're coming from, and agree.

This situation is exactly why I think there should be a privateer mechanic in the game. The whole 'pirate nation' gameplay doesn't really appeal to me. What little interest I had in it to begin with has grown stale. I'd like to play the role of more of a mercenary. I want to be the guy who helps turn the tide. Plus I'd get to meet some people from other factions without them feeling the need to kill me or run away, which is typically what happens when we pirates try to make such arrangements. Furthermore, once you go back to pirating, if you ever meet these former comrades in battle as enemies, it'll probably be a more respectful, mature fight, rather than this nearly-vitriolic teenie bopper garbage I'm starting to see in the game. With pirates being one of the largest factions in the game, it would be nice to be able to help with the balancing through privateering. Smaller nations that wouldn't be able to field large navies of their own would be able to issue letters of marque. Once the fighting is over, you can either take a commission as an officer with one of the nations, start trading, or return to piracy. The U.S.A used Letters of Marque a lot during the time period of the game. Of course, the U.S.A didn't have the largest navy in the world at the time, either. It could be a viable mechanic for a smaller nation like France or Spain on PVP US to be able to hire privateers.

It definitely wasn't as unique and challenging as I thought it would be. I wasn't expecting a million fellow pirates either. I think difficulty should be a major factor in pirate faction gameplay, so we can thin out the herd a bit. Once upon a time, there were as many pirates as British sailors in the Caribbean. — . . .said no history book ever.

I like the previously-mentioned idea of jury rigging a mast,*if* this change absolutely has to be implemented at all. It just makes no sense that you would be able to restore a mast to manufacturer specifications when you are out in the middle of the ocean. But again, I think sail repairing is too generous as it is. To be able to repair a ship's sails by 20-25% in a matter of minutes means you'd have every crew member somehow climbing up a sail while it is unfurled and moving around, sewing up a hole every second, while being shot at. That's pretty damned impressive, but apparently we need repairs to be even better,lol. Might as well make it so sails and masts can't be damaged at all. But then people would spend more time shooting at hulls so we'd have to buff those as well. Then we'd realize that the crew were still vulnerable to grapeshot so we need surgeons/necromancers to bring dead crew back to life. And then the game is broken and the developers have to remove all of those features from the game again. Then 3 months later someone will say we need better repairs again. Rinse, repeat.

I think single firing has a dreadfully slow rate of fire. You can spam the spacebar and you're not going to fire off any faster than if you press the spacebar every 2 seconds (I think that's roughly how fast you can fire 'ranging shots'). Say I want to fire 5 or 6 shots in a half-broadside with my cerberus. I can't really do that. I can fire a few, slow ranging shots, and get a few hits, but after that I'm either committed to completely hold my fire or let the rest of the guns loose before the target leaves my 'cone' of fire. It's not so much of a problem with multi-deck ships, since you can split your broadsides up by decks, and using the function keys you can save another deck for another target.

I always thought that the reason the bow takes on more water than the stern is due to forward motion of the ship. You're basically 'scooping' up water when your bow is full of holes and you're moving forward.. The stern should leak more when you are sitting still or moving backwards. --------------------------- Overall I like the patch proposals. Not so sure how I'm going to like the mast repair. It's already fairly generous that you can repair so much of your sails in the game as it is now. A ) Someone who is keen on running will typically do so before the fighting really starts, and won't need multiple repairs (if even one). B ) Someone who cannot physically outrun their opponents will just be prolonging the inevitable by continuously repairing sails. Are we anticipating that someone who sails off and waits for the cool-down is going to jump back in the fight? If so, what was the point of sailing away to begin with? From what I've seen, anyone who gets that far enough away from the fight is gonna be spamming the esc key—not the repair key, and it's already a test of patience to chase someone down and see them go from 80% to 100% sail and realize they just added another 40 minutes to the chase. I just don't see this change as necessary. Not to mention with the buffing of repairs, it's like having a dry-dock at sea, unless it was common for a captain to keep a spare mast in his cabin, just in case.

If we are to continue to have missions in the game (which I find incredibly dull as they currently exist), they need to be reworked to encourage PVP on the PVP servers. There have been some great suggestions such as 'engage other players on the front lines', 'escort a fellow player's trade ships', 'smuggling', etc. These missions could be generated by the players themselves instead of someone just clicking on an admiralty mission over and over and never really interacting with other players.

They are talking about minor cosmetic microtransactions to keep the game going. I'd be fully supportive of things like (realistic) custom flags, sail colors, and paint jobs. There is no need for monthly subscriptions at this point, and I believe that the developers of the game mentioned in an interview about a week ago that they will try to avoid that means of revenue if at all possible.

Wait, so it is against the rules to do as much damage as possible to a ship before ending the engagement? One quote: "Damage farming is ok" But farming too much damage is against the rules? How much is too much? Could you tell us exactly how much xp they were getting per day? I'm not trying to be argumentative, or troll, but I honestly don't want to share the same fate as these captains because I'm doing something that I think is the most rewarding use of time (in terms of leveling up) only to find out that I was on some watch list for a potential ban or xp reset. Were they at least warned? They must have really, really done something impossible. (I hear tales of people who have been able to sweep through a whole rank in a day of gameplay, but I've been at it for over a week and only just now made it to level 5 I think). Nevermind. I gotta stop posting on here when I first wake up. 100,000-150,000 damage for sinking a single ship is pretty obvious, lol. I panicked. I started sweating. Gonna go make coffee now.

Start a third type of mission: example: "Large battle" "Small battle" "free cutter battle" (or whatever) limited to basic cutters Sorry I read it again and realize you're talking about open world PVP and not the missions that are entered from ports. That's a tough one. I don't want to do anything that would discourage new players from giving the game enough time to get into it before putting it back down. But yeah once you can afford to get out of the free cutter, and have the rank, you really should. The only reason they're in the game is so that you don't get stranded without a ship and no money and have to start all over. What was supposed to be used as a dire resort is now being abused as a matter of convenience. If you really like the cutter then buy the non-basic one and assume the risk like everyone else. That way we'll separate the players who honestly like the cutter from the ones who just want to keep harassing people with a free ship.

Yarrh, if you take me ability to craft 1st rates then I want to be able to craft permanent upgrades that ye nationals can't get, like upgrades that increase the speed or firepower of my tugboats. But seriously, if you guys want to make this about cat & mouse, pirates have every right to ask for a mouse-hole in the wall. It goes both ways. I like the idea of raids, but if you take away capping ports for pirates out-right, then what inevitably happens is that pirates will lose their ports and basically there was no point in giving them ports to begin with. Maybe make port-capping much more expensive for pirates, but make raiding a cheaper option. Keep it so assault fleets can only be launched from another pirate port, but raids could be launched from any port. It'll influence one option the over (since pirates were more likely to raid than capture) and it won't be a guaranteed game-over for pirates. Pirates are supposed to be more of an annoyance to nations than a threat (sayin' as a pirate). Gameplay ought to reflect that, but that means the developers will need to make major changes to create mechanics that apply to the pirate 'nation'.

This was discussed in alpha and if I recall the conclusion was that it's just not possible to have different time compression being calculated for thousands of players and hundreds of ports across the game world. And if it takes me less than a day (game time) to make it from some islands to others, it would mean it would take me another day just to sail to the dock. It won't work. (keep in mind the rest of the world still turns while you'd be trying to go in-and-out of ports) Next thing you know, it's August in Charleston and February in Brunswick. If you're asking because you're trying to blockade a port, for now you'll have to move a bit farther out and intercept them before they can enter the port

If pirates are to be an enjoyable playable faction while being limited by the constraints of what was possible for the time period, then you are right, there needs to be a total revamping of the 'play style' of pirates. It's not exactly the same as making it 'more difficult', but the style of play necessary should be different so that if you don't know what you're doing you'll end up dead quickly (which I guess would make it more difficult). Just one example would be to actually have tiered water depth on the open world map, so pirates in small ships (that almost every national player here wants them to use) can use the shallows to escape from those larger ships. If people want a 'cat and mouse' play style then it has to go both ways for both nationals and pirates. As a pirate, I'd be game. You could have individual pirate 'clans' be able to take commissions from national admiralties and have limited privileges in their ports but maybe limit it to one nation at a time. It would introduce privateering into the game (realistic for the time period). But somehow make it so pirates wouldn't have access to nation's chats so there wouldn't be a big problem with spying. They would be limited to simply chatting with individual players of that nation so that anything in the nation chat would still be classified info.

It would be a server option, is what he is suggesting. If you didn't want to do that then you could play on another server. It wouldn't be for everyone's liking, but there are some of us here who like the challenge. I don't really know that I like the xp penalties suggested though. if anything playing on the hardcore server should give u a bonus. oh he means for small battles

I'd like to modify it a bit as well, take it a step further. Pirate captains have to pay their own crews out of their own pockets. National players would get a substantial discount or possibly even free crew, since it is the governments who pay wages for the crews of commissioned ships. That puts realism back into it without having to actually reprogram the game bar anyone from physically using a ship. I mean if really really really want to sail that SOL as a pirate, I'll have to sail to a ton of pirate ports to obtain the number of crew i'll need, plus i'll have to be paying people along the way as I make my recruitment drive. I'd probably go broke. But it could be done if I were a very rich pirate. Just not for long.