Nathaniel

My correspondents are reporting with accuracy that those were mere nightly random skirmishes that our recruits and aspiring officers used for fun and training. Thanks for the latter! No line of battle ships were even close to getting caught up, and if two lost frigates on our side constitute "massive battles" for you, have fun with it gentlemen and let's meet at Port-de-Paix on the morrow.

Very narrow port battle which pretty equal forces which could go both ways. Extremely enjoyable, so congratulations to everyone involved. Let's it be the start of a glorious and active war

http://forum.game-labs.net/index.php?/topic/8022-patch-95-happy-holidays-2/#entry152467

Happy New Year to everyone! Let's hope that everybody who is around now will still be here for the next new year, teaching a gazillion of newbies the tricks of old seadogs. I'll drink to that! And probably won't stop drinking to that for the next 12 hours

I would like the Devs to give bram moderator rights, however what i think would work out for a start (and to gather some reputation in the eyes of the devs) would be simply two topics. One like "bramluijken's information gathering" where players from all nations would share with you data about the events of the day and you could ask them additional questions and the other topic the Chronicle proper, which would hopefully become a sticky and where you would only be posting your analysis in entrances (possibly also expanding the sfrist post). Subforums and devdata may always come later.

Yes, i think renaming ships, alternative paintjobs (still close to historical, no pink ships) and customizable flags and pennants would be a good start.

Or we just have to find one brave chronicler. In a PvP MMO i played we had one such enthusiast. He was writing a server chronicle for more than three years. He was playing in my guild but was considered by our enemies as an unbiased and welcome historian because he gathered information from a lot of sources and was very restrained in his conclusions, trying to describe who won in what way and not just opinionate about the reasons of the loss in question. It was an absolutely marvellous achievment, documentating the change of hands of castles, the mishievious strategic successes and the rise of new forces as well as the fall of old empires. So if anyone has the time, dedication and love for objectivity - the Naval Action Official Historian position is certainly open

Well, that's precisely what's going on on Wikipedia also. The whole things work because contrasting biases balance eachother out and edit wars are not worth it... with some moderating constraint, at least. So no reason it would not work in a wiki.

First, a disclaimer, the following are only my personal conclusions, in no way representative of SLRN's or the British nation's position. Of course the difference is enormous. If an enemy nation will decide to blockade the Royal Navy's base(s) of operation i will regard is as a challenge, and a welcome one and we'll have our ways to lift it as you had ways to lift the Tortue's blockade (i.e. organize a coordinated sortie, jump to another outpost and sail back with other ships e.t.c.). However i can not even conceive a situation in wich the Royal Navy would come to blockade Charleston, expecting no opposition and just robbing players starting over from the possibility of ever obtaining a foothold in this game. The experience of the players has nothing to do with it, it's the level of their characters that determines their possibilities to fight this blockade, which in this case was zero. That's exactly the reason, i suppose, why those people came to attack a newbie town and not try to blockade a real force that could actually answer back. I certainly assume that TDA has no connection whatsoever to this dishonorable activities. However, that being true, please, don't try to defend this guys. Gentlemen, my personal advice would be to severe all friendly and trade connections with this people and treat them as the true pirate scum they appear to be.

If i could i would have voted for both port investments and production buildings. Both very important priorites, as long as port investments do NOT make the fort nearly invincible (only more profitable) so to not turn conquests into a PvE fest or a port who nobody comes to fight and as long as new production buildings are NOT allowed in free towns (so to actually contribute to the advantage of port holding). My deep conviction is that the current port system needs not so much technical tweaks as a lot of additional incentives to both aquire great empires and try to hold your ground and fight back when cornered. Right now it's to easy to say "damn it" and go on a holiday for a few weeks with your ships and production capacities pretty safe in a free town. That being said, mortar brigs would be welcome - anything that makes port battles more equal without incentivizing defenders to fight. P.S. And, yes, a disclaimer i probably have added from the start. Not only is the game a dream for every disgruntled PotBS veteran, it has also greatly improved in the course of the last 9 months, to an incredible degree which i would not have expected. I see your "big experiments" approach thus as fully validated. Keep up the great work, so that in another 9 months we'll have a conquest meta that suprasses anything EVE and consorts have to offer

Hm, this infuriates me to an extend where i even would call for an international mission to protect newbie pirates players from such unhonorable griefing. As such, i would recommend to call in global, when such behaviour occurs again, i'm pretty sure you will be helped. We need you as strong enemies, not besieged without a chance.

Well, this is correct, but, on the other hand, as far as i know, as long as you are fighting back, it is not considering an exploit. If you restrict pirates fighting eachother but still allow large scale arranged battles between French and Dutch or Dutch and British e.t.c. it would be very strange indeed.

You wouldn't ever consider it feasible to serve in the Georgian Royal Navy then, surely? Or was that exactly the reason you decided that it would be better to take orders from Dutchmen?

While i fully agree with the general sentiment it should be possible to present the game as challenging while not scaring the player off completely. 1. It will hurt nobody if you introduce a new starter rank that will require only a few fights won with easy to fight missions just a few yards away from the capital port that will also include a lame cutter or so. There is a ton of concepts (not to speak of controls) for people to learn even before their experience can be fairly characterized as playing. Even if you introduce extensive ingame explanations they will still need practice. 2. Beyond that, we have a problem with difficulty, that is not related to "dumbing down". On a yacht, three privateers are deadly and most two ship combinations are deadly. On a constitution, i easily handle three frigates, a third rate + belle poule or a single pavel. That means, event missions now usually get easier with every ship you get. They get significantly easier once you get a brig, and one big step easier once you get a surprise. They become more forgiving, not less. Certainly, the curve should be reversed. No need to dumb the starter experience down completely, just make missions on yacht as diffult, as missions on a connie, not harder. 3. Even hardcore games need success experiences. In games like Rust or H1Z1 (comparable to DayZ) i was run over by several players multiple times on my first evening without a chance, that's true, but i was also able to kill a bear with an ad hoc bow and build a small shelter. Even if this shelter would be destroyed overnight, without this success experiences i probably wouldn't continue playing. Considering that with a lot of new players on EA they will already be subject to a large PvP threat i generally think it could be a bit over the top to additionally let them struggle with very hard missions on the PvE front.

Diplomacy is part of War. Nobody is stopping from improving your reputation in the eyes of other nations.

I still think that the system i proposed on page one, while more "gamey" than realistic NPC haulers, promises a realtively simple and still more realistic alternative than the teleports we have now. Just tie every order in a specific timeframe and region of the map into one representative convoy for that nation that sails, like, every eight hours for a relatively short trip of about an hour. Give it heavy defences so a big effort will be needed to attack it and let the attackers, if successfull, have a bounty of max 30% of the shipments. It will still be enormous and a considerable blow to the trader's nation, but not as big as to make npc hauling useless. As already stated, this could tie in nicely with port ownership increasing the defences of the convoy.

I'll copy my proposal here from the patch thread since it's more appropriate here. Under it all the trade assignments in a given sector of the map will be subsumed into one big "event" that could happen once-thrice a day. So attackers and defenders will have enough time to react. And the risk wouldn't be too high if all the traders are appearing as part of a large military escort. Even if the escort WOULD be defeated traders would still loose only a part of their goods and it would not be random: This can be a very good alternative. I, like most of us here, would very like to see NPC haulers on the OW, but i'm not sure the servers can handle a number of additional NPC ships which will by far exceed the amount of players (with 3 thousand players we can speak about 10k NPCs sailing around just hauling). So a blockade mechanic which would highlight popular traderoutes on the open map and maybe send representative trader convoys from once, twice or thrice a day to be intercepted could be a nice workaround. It should be a really big and heavily guarded fleet and if it doesn't reach it's destination every trader sending his goods on that day in the general sector of the convoy route would loose a certain amount (like 30-50%). It could bring strategic trade warfare into this, give traders the choice between a safer or more faster/prosperous/dangerous route and could even tie in with port conquest, for example, if the amount of ports a nation has would determine the strenght of the military escort.

The gameplay elements suggested are interesting. I disagree strongly however on the need to introduce boring blockades only because they were a distinguishible feature of naval life. Well, monotonous, boring officer watches were a distinguishable features of naval life, but we don't have them. And as a captain you were obviously excluded even from those and led an even more boring, distanced life, mostly confined to your cabin except the rare cases, when you were expected (i.e. allowed) to take direct command. We don't have that either. Why should we have an element of boredom in blockades?

Ehm, how is that to come about? You just make just enough battles that 1. it's fun an interesting for everybody involved, 2. it gives both attackers and defenders incentives to participate 3. there are some more strategically important battles and some more "just for fun/rewards" battles happening at the same time. It's a straightforward balancing act, not of making X or Y numbers of battles, but of making JUST ENOUGH for both the hardcore clan and the casual player to have fun. Nobody speaks about being able to attack the same port one match after another. But with over 100 ports and a port battle in each one at least once a week you are bound to have multiple battles every evening. And why should that be bad? I didn't remember the repetitive nature of trafalgar putting people off... If i understood the dev's ideas correctly, their picture is exactly NOT to have a dedicated skirmish mode completely detached from the OW experience (despite what what the current placeholder button might suggest), but to introduce seamlessly more structured forms of PvP into the OW experiences like trader escorts, admirality calls or, yes, fort sieges. Where is the difference in the escort of a trader being teleported into a battle instantly (which was discussed endlessly and settled) and a port battle with teleports in and out? And of course a port-battle with restricted access doesn't mean it isn't determined by the Open World. Of course it is: the ships players are able to bring, their skill, the ships and trade items being on hold in the port, it's importance in the world's economy. All that is determined by Open World player activities. Well, in the opening post we were asked to give ideas for Port Battles in a set framework. And this framework includes participation of random players: So if you feel the framework itself is set incorrectly, then you should probably open another topic. But anyway, earlier i set out two entirely different systems, both of which can pretty much harmonize casual player participation and organized/hardcore member interests. And i say that as a player belonging more to the "organized" camp. Besides, could you explain me, why there is no contradiction between this quote and this: ?

If i correctly understand the current planning, there will be no "contention" at all. An attacking force (with conditions yet to be defined, it wasn't announced, i can imagine it being a guild with X members or someone paying a fee) declares the wish to attack your port, you have to come to defend it in timeframe designated by the defending force. That's it. And that's a way better system, than PotBS "flipping". It wouldn't suck per se. If you generate a world with enough ports and enough battles going on on one evening (it has not to be several fights per nights as in PotBS), the single instances will be not a problem at all. On the contrary, organized guilds will have to cooperate with casual players, relying on them to also take over less strategic targets in simultaneous (or nearly simultaneous) battles. While i like your multi-instanced solution to at least have a test to try it out, you must also admit that it is a complex system, which will involve a lot of development and balancing. While trafalgar-style 25vs25 battles are already implemented, balanced out and fun. They just need a good meta to work as port sieges.

That still means a form of "flipping", which, as far as i understood, isn't on the table. Multiple battles at the same timeslots will achieve the same result even with teleports. I was a member of several clans in such games, that restricted player numbers per clan. You know what the clans did? They split into several companies while still playing as a plan. And there are nearly no solution to stop a big clan from being a big clan if it want's to be one

Of course. Your achievments in three instances can be ruined by bad play in the other two. And that happened regularly. The idea could still work by giving the attacking/defending playyers both enough time and the full choice which instance to fill up. I.e. the game invites everyone who signed up in a separate chatroom, based on that number calculates how much instances it will create and then all the players between themselves can decide which room to join. Maybe even give the highest ranked players/clan leaders the option to assign other players to certain room, but that's speculative. So anyway the "organized" players could share the casual players up between them and help them be a usefull asset in a fight (those getting more fun out of it). Even in that form however the system places hell of a demand of the organizing competence of an entire faction. I would like to check it out as an experiment though.

We had that with capital cities sieges in Warhammer Online. Due to the total lack of control over the overall battle i never met a player who liked the feature.

Let's assume there are 40 defenders actually at the port for 25 slots. Who will be able to join?

Well, if defenders just put out a timeslot, when the fort is attackable, then that's it, a PB will happen if anyone comes to attack a port in this timeslot obviously, no flipping is needed at all. Of course that makes the question of how to invite (and filter) attacker and defender captains all the more pressing and in need of a good discussion.