ajffighter86

Blah blah blah. I'm gonna have to bring my US fleet of decoy ships in tow with cardboard cut-out "sailors" positioned on the decks and telephone pole "cannons" sticking out of the gun ports. I'll show all of you who the weakest faction is!

Welcome back. Might be helpful to state what server you are on.

I see. I've thought about your post. Those are valid points. Some teammates of mine in TS were discussing a potentially devastating problem with there being no tutorial for boarding, and no real way to train people how to board if we took it upon ourselves to 'tutor'. Boarding is a potential game-breaker, being probably the quickest way to lose a ship, second only to being run over by a first rate. I do feel bad for folks who will just be getting into a brig and be boarded by more experienced players and have it end in one or two rounds. If we aren't going to have proper tutorials, I'd definitely recommend a 'training room' where no risk/no rewards are given, so we can take the new guys and show them advanced things like manual sails or how boarding works. They probably don't even know you can board a ship. Right now we're basically reduced to murdering the crap out of every AI in a fleet mission, dismasting it to hell and back, de-crewing it a bit . . . ok now it's safe, sail back here new guy and we'll show you how this works. I do feel pretty good today though. Had a guy who found a the game too tough, wanted to quit, offered me his PVE marks. I told him to keep his marks, I'd rather he kept playing the game. He didn't take us up on the offer to join TS. (one thing I recommend to anyone is to not play this game alone, that should probably tutorial lesson 1) Coming back into port, he says in nation chat that he just lost his second trader ship. So we grabbed our freebie indys and ran out and did a few easy fleet missions with him following in the basic cutter. I guess it was enough to inspire him but yeah, there's not much of an initial 'welcome to the game' unless the community takes it upon themselves to teach. And folks like us can't be everywhere, all the time, to save those on the verge of quitting. NEED TUTORIALS. --------- Still think you could tone down the gloating(?) over PVP 1/PVP 2 global or hello kitty the servers are called now, taking players from one another, because this doesn't seem to be the situation. PVP EU hit a record pop (since wipe) on a weekday. Either Lord Vic hit the lotto and bought every copy on steam, or we're growing too. Still got a ways to go before we're all frustratingly sitting in a join-sever queue again. It's a fair question as to how long the trend goes on, but if both server pops are growing, GOOD. Maybe I'll come over to PVP Global and buy you guys a drink to celebrate. Won't be there long though, because USA is competing with France for smallest EU server faction right now and I don't want to leave the other two US players by themselves for too long. The house will be a mess when I get back.

With all due respect, you seem to be reveling in the fact the game is getting negative reviews. If you truly think the game is that bad, why still play? Because I must say, if a game keeps you coming back, it's a good game. When it comes down to it, I can say that the amount of hours I've put into the game means I've gotten my money's worth. I mean, you can go out and write a negative review, but if I keep seeing you in-game, um . . .well. Yeah I get frustrated with the path the developers take at times. I've hardly played at all since last August. But coming back, it always feels like a fresh game.

I'm happy for both servers that pops are growing.

I believe this deserves repeating. It would be nice for people who don't actually make the top 25 list for port battles to get something (not much, but something) for helping out.

Well, let's go WAAAAAY back to Sea Trials when you everyone was sitting at the main screen waiting for people to start shouting how many captains were in the lobby. No hard limit on the amount of captains in a fight—considered it a server stress-test (which it sometimes failed, lol). The countdown stops, the battle loads, and you are hurled into the biggest, most epic battle you've seen yet. (and you're in a lynx, getting out of the spawn without being run over by team mates and capsized is going to be your first challenge of the fight)

kind of makes small ships pointless unless they're also gonna bring AI ships. we tell pirates to play like pirates and then do things like allow a player on a trader lynx to bring two frigates with him everywhere he goes and meh. Then there's the opinion that if we wanted to fight robots we'd be on the PVE server. I do so miss the days when you got to rank 3 or 4 and the game snatched away your training wheels.

I could really use some tips for Winchester and Cross Keys after Shiloh as the Confederates. I'm almost to the point where I wonder if it would be better to just skip those missions and run headstrong into Gaines Mill, yet I know how important those career points are. (though it doesn't matter much if you can't win them) Winchester: I fitted a nearly 400 man strong sharpshooter unit with whitworth rifles and it seems to be reasonably effective against the 450 man artillery units (they can't return fire at what they can't see from over 400 yards) but it seems there's no way I can approach the town of Winchester to capture the obj without losing hundreds of men at a time to grapeshot when I try to send in my stronger units. I tried sending some cav units around to flank my way into the town, it looked like it might work, and then they were promptly shredded by 3 skirmisher units of 200 or so men hiding in the town. The horses forgot how to follow orders and all my attempts to charge the skirmishers were met with my cav units riding back and forth being shot at. On top of that the yanks have 2500+ men in their brigades to make sure any success at getting into the town is short lived. I'm playing on normal difficulty and up til Shiloh things are almost too easy and then the AI goes into prison gang rape mode. I keep getting to these points where I have to restart and try to take better care of my men. Maybe hire a few more veterans this time around so my units are better skilled by this point, but in every case, once I'm past Shiloh, I'm stuck.

Not sure but it would probably be calculated the same way as when you merge two brigades in the same division that have different weapons.

Yep. I learned that the hard way on the first playthrough. As stated elsewhere, the game seems to force you to try to build up the biggest army you can (not exactly realistic for a confederate campaign, and I think there's another thread where someone mentioned that as well), so while you have the RPG element of spending career points as you see fit, in truth, you'd better just dump them all into organization because the rest of them are simply not important by comparison. I would be happier if they would increase the starting cap on the number of brigades and divisions, but limit the size of each brigade to maybe 1,000 men. I don't know how that would play out but I think it would be worth testing.

I'd love for someone to put together a proper tutorial on cavalry. One of my issues is that cavalry seem to go off on their own a bit too easily. Jeb Stuart seems to like taking his men off towards a corner of the map and becoming surrounded, even though I swear I told him to go wait in town. From what I've seen, cavalry requires a ton of micro-managing.

The only thing I can think of is try to combing your brigades into division strength before you tell them to occupy a defensive position. however, this can become a nightmare since only brigades from the same division will combine, and that can be hard to make happen when your army becomes all mixed up in the bigger battles. There should be a way to simply select 2 random infantry brigades and tell them to combine, perhaps with a slight command penalty for not being in the same division if that has to happen.

Not sure if this has been brought up, but, I think army organization needs to be re-worked a bit. For the first few battles, you pretty much have to dump all of your career points into 'organization' or else by the 3rd or 4th battle you will find yourself simply not having enough brigades to max out your allowed army size for the battles. However, you unlock the ability to have a 2nd corps very early even with low points in organization. To me, this is absolutely useless, since you are only allowed to send one corps into a battle for the first few missions in a campaign. (unless I am missing something, if someone knows how to select the 2nd corps to send into battle, PLEASE TELL ME, lol). I think army organization unlocks need to be re-arranged so that you add more brigades FIRST, and then unlock additional corps. This will allow you to get the most use out of your corps and not have one corps sitting back at home while the men in the other corps are out getting all the glory (or punishment, lol). {Hopefully that's not too confusing, but surely I'm not the only one who is frustrated because the process of expanding your army doesn't seem to match gameplay progression) For example, I'm playing as the confederacy and I have to do a "stay alert" mission that allows 10 brigades. I have about a dozen brigades but I've had to put them into two corps and I can't even take the 2nd corps into battle. If the organization progressed so that brigades could be added to the 1st corps before that 2nd corps becomes available, then I'd be closer to full fighting strength by this point in the game. It's not a huge deal as it is, but it pretty much makes putting career points into army organization mandatory, even early in the game.

The game has a lot of factors to consider, for sure. I'm totally hooked. (and I see I'm not the only one who came over from Naval Action and didn't play Gettysburg.) If I'm not mistaken, I think that the cone-shaped line in front of your units indicates their effective range. So when you flank someone, try to get within that range (tell your men to run if they have to), otherwise the enemy will just turn to face your flanking unit and you will not have gotten the most damage while the opportunity lasts. So in that first video, the skirmishers you had on the ridge could have been told to move a bit closer while the enemy skirmishers were facing your larger unit. Don't be afraid to use the 'double quick' for brief periods. Obviously you don't want to use it all the time because your men will become exhausted, but sometimes you need that boost of speed for whatever reason. Also, if your units are stopped and you plan to leave them in that spot, leave the double-quick button toggled on, because it also affects the speed at which they turn while remaining in position. This is good for quickly turning to face enemies that might be flanking them. Now, if you learn how to use cavalry effectively without insane losses to your cav units, let me know, lol. Thanks for sharing your videos, I'm learning a lot about the game's mechanics as well.

I know, just speaking from a risk versus gain perspective, it makes no sense to attempt higher level missions unless you just really want the SOL bonus. And frankly, you could easily take a few trader cutters in a fraction of the time with much less crew loss or repairs. I'd say it needs balancing.

Question: Why do I get 50 hostility points for attacking a single AI trader snow, but if I am in a group doing highest-level combat fleet missions and get 8 assists and 1 kill—several missions like that, in fact—I only get about 180 points by the end of the day? It seems to me that attacking individual AI ships (even crappy ships like trade vessels), seems to pay out better in hostility points than fleeting.

I think there are too many forts. I was looking at the suggestions for the fort feedback thread and I'm really liking the suggestion for shore batteries (2 or 3 cannons per battery that are harder to see) as opposed to full fledged forts and towers. I can see how it would be very frustrating for people to try to take prizes in areas with ports very close together. The Antilles, for example, has more forts in a grid than ships. Maybe forts should be for regional capitals only. Shore batteries for the rest. So, yeah you might get shot at by the town militia, but perhaps not sunk.

Oh.. I wouldn't do that. I can't remember if I'm red or blue if it changes every battle.

Any chance we will ever see this implemented? For example, If I'm an American helping the Brits and we are allied, why do I have to fly the british flag? This is not a big issue by any means and not a priority, but it doesn't seem like it would be hard to implement and would add to the experience of being helped out by your allies.

I understand that the next patch is supposed to involve changes to port ownership and therefore it was necessary to give players a great deal of forewarning, but honestly this patch was announced too far in advance. People have completely given up the open world, either putting the game down altogether, or occupying their time with things like tournaments or the small battle challenge. The sad thing is, they are putting a ton of expectations into this patch, so much so that it has completely changed player behavior. "I don't care about that port, it'll change after the patch." "I'm just going to sail around collecting national goods." "Join small battles now, GO GO GO!!!"

That might get shipbuilders moving out of their capitals. I like this idea.

I don't think they hate you, but clearly the Swedes either over-estimated the fighting capability of the British, or underestimated their own strength.

Ah, that explains how both of our alliances expired with Dutch and British. Guess we have to take over the world by ourselves then.

40/10 = 4. One of the US guys must have ranked up, good job man. Interestingly enough, the Swedes thought they were balancing the server by joining the other side.