Snoopy

.. or a lobby? :ducks:

I don't think a Surprise can push a Bucentaure into irons, not alone. Unless the Buc driver lets it happen or was otherwise disabled (in brace, demasted, boxed in by other ships etc). The Buc is a very heavy ship and can drag a Surprise embedded in it's side around the map all day.

Thanks for the ship guys, half decent trim this time too ;) She is a fine looking boat!

Yeah. While a nice ship, that power creep helps nobody.

Presents \o/ Thank you and Merry Christmas

Your Sir, are a genius!

Well a penalty system wouldn't go off if a stray chain shot hits a friendly I hope. Some amount of friendly fire (including the occasional full broadside by accident) is to be expected.

This would be so sweet. We could have Trafalgar with French and Spanish flags showing on the same team. And mistaking flags is a feature not a bug to be honest. With smoke and sails obstructing views, mistaking the White Ensign with the Danish flag happened a lot to me. I even raked a friendly because of it.. beautiful rake too.

Aye, battles with mostly third rates and the occasional three decker would be glorious.

Well yeah I know, Spain went all-big EDIT: Spain is an outlier though

I hope the SoLs-should-be-rare crowd takes a good luck at those numbers hehe

Argh Otto, that statement made me SORRY for Lord Vicious, for the first time ever lol

The underlying question is "everyone-in-first-rates" or "nobody-in-first-rates" (first rates in terms of quality and size). I think cheap ship building is the lesser of two evils, Fine Wood was a mechanic that made a few players feel all elite and good about themselves, but the rest just left the game. That was the wrong direction and will harm the game more than the few hardcore players who liked the mechanic qq-ing. Also, ironically, at the end of that process, when only distilled 'hardcore' players remain you still end up with exactly the same scenario: everyone has good ships. They are either welfare-epics or result of a mindnumbing grind that (among other time sinks) drives off players, so why have the grind in the first place? It also felt clunky: there is an overlap between Mid/High Grade Notes and Fine Wood in limiting high quality ships, and it had annoying RNG and is easily circumvented by alts. Good riddance. EDIT: there are sane proposals (Bart Smith's for instance) about reusing the name of the mechanic that I like.

Delighted to see so much PvP! I am buried with work.. did anyone record those fights for this NA-starved Beagle? :)

You are making this Beagle very happy!

A lobby here may even ease fears about it for other game elements... :S

I miss them Trafalgars. If this helps, i'm all for it!

The new crafting proposals sound pretty cool, although it seems a bit like doubling down on an already involved system when most people only want to sail pixel ships and shoot guns for a bit. Current crafting != fun because of the logistics involved. Fiddling with ship builds will probably be a lot of fun (capsizing, too lol), but please address the shipping simulator/nightmare of crafting. It feels like a full time job.

Valid points. Lobby would have solved this but the hate is strong Perhaps you could reuse the hostility points to grant access. That is to say you buy a PB "flag" for your own ship with the hostility tokens. You can move the flag between ships. Everyone in the nation gets to see the player name and what ship type the flag is in (as a list on the map, conquest/hostility menu) That way you get a dynamic system, a lobby of sorts, where the attackers can fiddle around with their fleet composition but still would have to sail their ships in.

Yes, yes yes. It would also help smaller nations perhaps (fewer people? bring a bigger boat) Unfortunately, this seems to be a very unpopular idea. "Anything goes" 50 First rate battles should be in the domain of the large battle queue; events like a revamped Trafalgar evening. .. and Capital Raids.

And if you make owning first rates a miserable experience, 25v25 PBs will still have first rates in them (you just added a massive fun tax) .. until you don't see them any longer. Because then the game is empty. Cruising first rates are more imagined than real, without escort they were instant prizes before this patch, with the current ball rakes it is even easier. Enjoy the free three decker! I don't get the crusade against SoLs, it makes no sense. First rates are really only used in PBs or larger fleet actions. This is exactly what they would have been used for in RL. Reducing their availability means you are literally clamoring for depriving content from players (many players, even solo folks might -one day- like to sail their first rate on the odd Sunday a year) Every draconic measure to curb their use will hit casual players the hardest. The people who are organized and competitive enough will do anything to keep their edge in PBs - the only thing you will achieve here is sell more alts and/or make grinding out the ships more time consuming. So from a gaming standpoint enabling every player to (eventually) own all of the ships is the lesser evil. From a historic standpoint, SoL were not rare, this is why I think the idea of limiting them, especially third rates is silly. If you got into the Royal Navy in 1800, you had more than a 60% chance of ending up on one.

@OP: How is imposing restrictions not making it harder for players?

Not a bad looking ship, but third rate is optimistic tehehe

BTW: Why didn't these ships use a spanker? Seems rather odd given the build dates.