oleander

OK, that makes more sense.

The Vasa should be an interesting ship to sail...considering it only sailed for a few minutes before it sank.

That all makes sense to me, and I'd love to see them move in that direction. Guess we'll see if they have any will to change or not. I was thinking about dock sizes earlier and not just having shallow or deepwater ports, but let actual dock size determine what ships can be stored there, ie what class of ship. Raiding would also be a nice addition and would make more sense.

What benefits would you want for pirates? I said limit the rank but give them special refits or perks that others can't have that make them a bit stronger. But, like you said if the devs have no interest in making Pirates less than a nation there's no since in talking about it.

That's true, but I was throwing them a bone if limiting their rank was on the table. Also considering the number of civilian vs naval ships in the game it would make since that they would have access to bigger guns here. I just hope that whatever gets decided has a lot more planning and testing applied to it than what we've been given thus far.

This is how I feel about it as well. Making Pirates a Nation where its player base can become a RA and have the ability to sail a 1st rate is a problem. If it were a faction where you had to gain a bad reputation to be branded a Pirate, you know like in real life, you could penalize them by giving them crew restrictions so they couldn't sail anything larger than say a 4th rate. But, I would also give them access to something like a "Pirate Refit" that allows them to put larger cannons on gun decks to help make it worth their while.

I like the idea of a reputation system, or maybe some sort of bounty system. That would turn the hunters into the hunted once the bounty gets so high. It would help with a lot of the griefing and ganking. As far as I know it worked really well in games like EVE.

I get that, and I agree with removing the need for alliances. I just feel like it makes it a bit one sided when you're basically setting up a war profiteering model, the war companies, and those that don't want to be part of those companies get the penalty for it through taxes. I guess what I'm getting at is something like the Boston Tea Party where you can basically tell the company to GTFO. I mean you could join a rival company and fight them that way, but I feel like Nationalism should be a thing. If an enemy company is controlling a port, sure you can fight them hands down, but if a company from the same nation controls it there's really nothing you can do and I don't particularly care for that. Make sense?

Reading through some of the other posts about Nations becoming irrelevant, I have to agree. If there's no way for Nationals, those that don't want to be part of a war company and/or clan, to fight against this the game will quickly sour for those that stay out of it. There needs to be a way for them to fight back as well, otherwise national allegiance means nothing.

Right, and you get your stuff back if your nation recaptures. But, if they are doing away with port capture, you would essentially lose it forever. So looking at things one by one for now. This tax concept, I kind of like it. Good way for Companies to make steady income. I do have a question about what happens to the money once it is collected. Does it just go into a "bank", does it go to the founder, does it get spread out evenly among Company members, can it be shared manually, can you set up ranks and set up a share percentage for each rank? You could theoretically set up a loan system with this, and if the player doesn't pay back the loan they acquire a bounty and can be hunted by anyone, or maybe just hunted by anyone in the same Company. That would be cool.

If they can do it without a wipe I'm all for it, I don't want to have to grind...again. That's just a lot of moving to be done, you're talking about a lot of ports that are going to change. I guess we will see what happens. You can enter an enemy port with a trader, but unless something has changed you can't build an outpost there. At least the game has never let me do it...

It doesn't say anything about outposts or buildings. You can't have an outpost in an enemy port.

They would have to wipe if they reset the map. Otherwise those that have outposts and ships stored in captured ports would loose everything. I suppose they could be given back through redeemables, but that would probably be complicated to get exact ships with refits and upgrades plus cannons.

I'm still trying to digest all of this and look at different scenarios. I like the direction, but I think its missing a few things. It feels like there needs to be some sort of mechanic for Nationals to be able to fight this, maybe that's what PB's become. There should be some sort of NPC function, maybe something like unrest based on population, that makes a Company have to continually invest in keeping a port under its control. That was part of the problem with RVR, a nation would go take a port far removed from everything that no one wanted to take the time to contend, and would control it unopposed even if they had no interest there at all. I can see this moving very quickly in the beginning then stalling out after a month or so once massive companies become a thing and it turns back into RVR minus the port flipping.

But paints were never a mainstream thing, there weren't that many people that got them to begin with and even then it was random which color you got. I don't see any problem with having a store set up for cosmetic items, black sails, signals stuff like that if it supports the devs, but nothing combat or xp related. Remember you pay that $40 once and never have to pay a subscription like other MMO's. Either way, it'd be nice if they were able to be crafted. Like you have this pigment from this port and so on.