Snoopy

You see, this new age even made you happy!

Thanks for the level headed discussion, diplomats. You are on the right track. Cheers!

\o/

Aye, dark nights, like fighting in storms, is only awesome the first few times.

I didn't say you are unreasonable. I said you are evil. There is a difference!

Fair enough Look, I don't care which side I play for, I'm not running anybody's errands here, I just want to shoot my guns in fair PvP - and the only source of that is RvR at the moment. Rivalry is all good, but it comes with a level of baggage right now, every insignificant intransigence is instantly turned into an outrage it stops being fun even for neutrals.

This may be above your villain character impersonation's head but even after leaving GB, I actually still like to come back and play other games and chat with many of those people. This is apparently such an alien concept to you that the only reason I'd be on the Brit TS is to "beg" for something, but diplomacy didn't even come up, you can ask the people who were there. I presume feeling welcome didn't happen when you left the US? And should I assume you meant me with this?

+ = Healthy atmosphere in a game, yes?

Yes it is getting worse. This downward spiral need to be stopped, it creates a fun atmosphere in RvR for exactly noone. I'm out of the loop when it comes to diplomacy so maybe I am wrong on some of the details. But I knew that when I saw the two simultaneous port battles against the US scheduled 5 minutes after the christmas cease fire ended that shit was about to hit the fan, and I can understand your anger. I was furious, too. So much so that I went to Sveno and NorthViking (diplomats for SE,DK the two attacking PB factions), being no diplomat myself, and I expected them to argue and quarrel with me, or basically say gtfo, but to my amazement this happened: they agreed. Not only did they agree, they even went out of their way to make an offer to the US that to me as a long time player of the US/GB/NL alliance sounded more than reasonable. We could have had a deal that day. But it was made impossible by all this built up crap, the blood was up and I got to witness as neutral observer two sides that are not composed of evil people (Lord Fishsticks excepted, of course ), nor of unreasonable or dumb people being unable to come to terms when viewed rationally the deal was by balanced, part ways, and here we are. I'm trying to play for all factions until the game releases. Next stop will be the US, then (probably) France. I think if more people did this we would have a better game. The option to switch factions isn't really feasible for many players due to mechanics, so the next best thing is that factions change blocs. Get on it, and good luck, diplomats.

Division too deep.. you are basically making my point here Wouldn't you agree this means that something needs to be done? Or is this a healthy attitude for such a small community like ours, in a game that is in the development stage, that actual hatred between factions should be the norm? If nothing is done soon, will this be easier to mend in two months? One of the key elements of Nations and Navies of the age was that their representatives' (diplomats and officers) attitude towards each was highly courteous and professional, especially in war. Dining with the captain of the enemy ship after battle was the norm. Shifting alliances were the norm. It seems to me it's high time we get a slice of this. I know that a DK/GB alliance would be a hard one to swallow. So would the other pairings. It doesn't have to start with the most hated pairs first, try ES+GB, difficult too, but we need to start reassembling alliances on a regular basis, otherwise we will always remain in the trench you admitted being in. There are cases where this has worked. US/GB had several wars/peace in this game already and the last war was good sportsmanship on both sides, which made the following alliance a lot easier. DK/SE making up would've been unthinkable, but it works. DK/NL breaking up - unthinkable until it happened. There is precedence. The good bit about changing coalitions on a regular basis is that these break ups won't be forever, you get to play with your friends again. It would be a lot easier if this was part of a game mechanic. It isn't, so we need to do this via diplomacy. It needs to happen.

My homework for the diplomats this weekend: Implement a system of alternating alliances. Start with say (ES,GB,DK) vs (US,SE,FR,NL) or say (ES,GB,NL) vs (US,DK,SE,FR) or.. It's not as impossible and insane as it looks. Both sides are not beyond reason, I know this. You just need to get rid of the pile of crap you have built up flinging at each other.

I wish them luck, but it seems overly ambitious, and even if it works out with procedural generation you end up with a vast but slightly soulless game like E:D. Having ships to walk around in would be nice in NA. I wish they'd open their kickstarter for new stuff soon

Für das Geld kriegt man ja nen neues Boot oO

I didn't forget. But the ship lineup is tilted heavily towards the later part of the 18th century so naval strength in 1790 seems more relevant to the game than 1690 and it is too easy a troll to pass up I like to challenge established consensus about navies of the era, partly because I was fed the same stereotype. It still annoys the hell out of me that Napoleon Total war didn't allow Russia to build first rates when they built/operated more than a dozen of them after the French Revolution with basically only handwaving as evidence and "everyone knows the Russian Navy was crap". I do agree of course we need Dutch ships, and one of my pet hopes has always been they'd give us battle maps where their customary shallow draught could be an advantage and this might even be already so - I just had a screening battle where basically all SoLs ran themselves aground at some point.

You seem to forget the fairly extensive conflicts Sweden had with Russia, and a lot of it was done with ships, including one of the larger battles of the age. Many of their ships didn't last amazingly long, but I still stand by the fact that in 1790, Russia had more ships than the Spanish Navy, including having more SoL of 64 guns and up.

I really do want to see Dutch ships in the game, and if I am not mistaken there is at least one proper and probably highly competitive warship in the pipeline. Which is why you need to be careful what you wish for when you state conditions like [..]which played a very minor role[..] [..]when the biggest nation of the time period has 10 ships while a very minor navy has 30[..] Because you may shoot yourself in the foot and putting yourself at the end of the pipeline with those arguments Spain had a bigger fleet than the Dutch in 1790. Russia had a bigger fleet than Spain in 1790.

How is "cry babies" leaving helping the long term success of the game?

This is pretty cool. And: We gonna need a bigger flag!

If you keep the original spelling.. Temeraire (98) and Téméraire (74) .. job done no confusion

I always had a soft spot for the three decker second rates. Rubbish but charming hehe. If they ever introduce one of them I'm rooting for Barfleur, the ship was in pretty much every major surface action of the Royal Navy post 1750. If it's going to be a Neptune class ship it better be Temeraire though

The Stalkers are real

Well, the way your system is written doesn't do anything to restrict ships types in battles. It only restricts people to Commodore and they can still run their first rates. But even if your system did further rank restrictions, all it does is it puts pressure on players to regrind their rank (and since we are talking about chores here the path of least resistance is that it will be done using gank fleets as PvP areas have taught us) and when that doesn't work any longer it puts a faction into a downward spiral of being unable to defend anything after only a few lost PBs when they can't keep up fielding competitive fleets. I just don't see how your idea helps, to me it only introduces another grind to do PBs and then a snowball effect of locking a faction out of line ship PBs. Why not simply restrict ship types in battle outright when that is what you want to happen.. instead of introducing a system of punishments for taking part in PvP. Loss aversion is already such a strong inhibitor of PvP. (And I don't disagree with the original intent, I would like to see line ship battles with 74s as the backbone of fleets. I just don't think mechanics like stripping people of their rank will do any good in a game)

I think there is another flaw in your system. It doesn't do what you say it does. Your mechanic doesn't limit first rates in battle at all. It just limits who can be Rear Admiral, but it doesn't stop 25 RA from stacking first rates in a given battle just like now. It makes even fights less likely because you limit the pool of RA so one side may end up having to substitute smaller ships if their high ranked players don't show up. This pressure makes game play even worse for highly ranked players as they will be expected to play important battles since only they can operate the big boats. It also does nothing at all to address the uniform Agamemnon fleets in 4th rate battles which presumably everyone is still going to be able to field.

And not to derail this thread, the idea has merit. A different way to do it instead of bringing back flags might be to spawn an event area around the PB port where those strict BR rules apply .. same size as the PvP events.

Yes, big screening battles would be more fun for all. I just like to poke into wounds here, because so many things would never be a problem with a lobby system. I actually prefer the sailing to PB part myself, but the irrational angst when somebody says "lobby" is fun to watch :-)