Slamz

edit: belay

Which seems strange to me. Not like people aren't on during the week. They could just as easily be flipping a port instead of grinding missions. Missions really need to be removed again. They are a pacifier for too many people who don't want to risk their pretty ships.

That is a terrible excuse. Brits and Pirates could be putting large amounts of contention on 3+ ports every day if they felt like it, and fighting over it. More players = more resources ready to go at any time. I think it's more like two heavy weights who have realized that they can both pretend to be the best boxer in the world as long as they never fight each other. "I'm the best!" "No I'm the best!" "Maybe you should fight each other?" "... I uh, well, got things to do." "...Yeah, uh... cake in the oven, ya know. Gotta go get that out now. bbl."

I was surprised to see Brits flip another US port and Pirates looked like they might have counter-ground some US contention against another coastal port. You Pirate and Brit ninnies ever gonna fight each other or you just going around the map until you run out of excuses? It's like you had one bashup on the weekend and had to go lie down for a week to recover from it.

I'm tired of dumb mini-games. I will take RNG if it means no more rock-paper-scissors. I'd rather have a Mount & Blade inspired swashbuckling routine but let's all have some real-talk: that will never happen.

tl;dr: You do boarding by pulling up, meeting the usual qualifications and doing a "Send Boarding Party". Boarding combat occurs in the background without interrupting the naval sailing game. There is no boarding screen and no boarding mini-game. It's RNG + modifiers. I was recalling an old Star Trek type game I played a long time ago. You could board enemy ships by beaming crew to them under the right conditions and the crew fight was just sort of a background thing that went on automatically while you kept fighting ship to ship. Your boarding party and their crew slowly killed each other off til someone won. I think that could actually be pretty reasonable here. Here's how I imagine it working: "Grapple" becomes "Send Boarding Party". Based on your preparation level and available crew in boarding, you can send over a boarding party. (Ideally I think it's a 2-step process: "Send Boarding Party -> [25%] [50%] [75%] [100%]" where the level you select represents what percentage of people currently in boarding you want to send over.) You can do this once every 15 seconds at most (Maybe there's also a "Recall Boarding Party"...) It's entirely possible for both ships to send boarding parties over to each other at the same time. Boarding combat resolves itself slowly over time in the background with no further interaction by the player. My ship has 300 crew and you just sent 100 boarders over. They are fighting each other in the background based on applicable modifiers (captain skill books, ship mods, deck height, etc). As defender, putting people into Boarding helps me fight off the boarders at the obvious cost of having less people in other systems. If the attacker wins, then it's just like winning a boarding combat today: the owner of the ship is booted and the ship goes neutral (we'll have to decide what happens to the remainder of the boarding party... easiest thing might be to just make them magically reappear on the source vessel. We'll assume they have transporters rowboats.) Grapple might actually still exist but it's more like a drag force between the ships. A more powerful ship can just power out of it but it might be enough to stick a lighter ship to you. Basically the idea is I can pull along side you, send a bunch of dudes over to attack your ship in boarding combat and then sail off and continue fighting. If necessary I may need to come back and send more boarders or recall the ones I sent but we aren't lashed together playing a minigame. I would also suggest that any damage against the ship is as likely to kill boarders as local crew. If I have 100 boarders to your 200 crew and then I rake and kill 60 people, I probably killed 20 of my own guys and 40 of yours. This also makes boarding kind of risky unless you REALLY outnumber the other guy. If I have 300 crew and you have 200 and I send over 200 boarders and, at the same time, you send over 150 boarders, we're probably both going to die. Your 150 boarders kill my remaining 100 crew and my 200 boarders kill your remaining 50 crew. Both captains are killed, both ships go neutral. You will never want to send so many boarders to another ship that it leave your own ship overly vulnerable to a counter-attack at the same time.

The problem I see today is that there are far too many "safe zones" in the game where you are very unlikely to encounter an enemy because nobody can be bothered to sail for 2 hours, each way, to get there. There SHOULD be more raiding going on out of remote free towns but the present state of the game makes it so much of a hassle that almost nobody can stand to play that way. (You really have to have zero interest in RvR to play like that.)

Screenshot each one. After like 5+ screenshots, start a Tribunal and post em all. CCCP will be able to weasel out of some of them with "oh I just wanted to attack that Trader Snow with my victory and didn't notice" but eventually it will be obvious that they are attacking whatever random junk they can find around you just to grief you. And I assume this is happening a lot around that Virgin Islands area where fleets are so packed into that space you can't avoid them if you want to do any sort of trading in the area. Otherwise the obvious answer is "don't let any CCCP ships near you". But yeah, I know that's impossible in the Virgin Islands and probably even Christiansted itself due to the way everything funnels into that bay. I will laugh my poopdeck off when CCCP gets themselves banned because they just can't play the game normally for 3 days straight.

I would argue that a mix is better. What you say would have been true in the old system where it was really just a 25v25 line fight but now with the 3 circles, I think a mix of tanks and something a bit more maneuverable has a lot of merit. Live Oak/White Oak aggies are a sack of bricks and have a hard time responding to the movements of Connies. (Connies can abandon one circle, drive to the other two and the aggies at the first circle will take a long time to catch up.) I think the meta has yet to catch up with the reality of the new system but I guess we'll see. But again, I'd be surprised if your team is only getting 25v25 port battles. I'm sure some are just gimmies that you could walk in and take some free marks from, or where a player showing up in a 4th rate to a lineship battle won't matter enough to cause a loss. (e.g., it was 25 vs 14 or the enemy just sucks)

How are you cut out of the deal? It takes 0 Conquest Marks to attend any port battle. You can even feel good about the 4th rate port battles where you can bring a Connie (which only costs Combat Marks). You can also join any line ship battle in a Cerberus. As long as your team still wins, you get the Marks, and from what I've seen, it's a rare port battle that 1 person (or even 10 people) in 5th rates would make any difference at all. So many port battles are empty -- arranged, screened or just nobody cares. That's just a mark farm. Yeah some big headed douchebags will yell at you. I've got some suggestions on how you might reply to them. I am pretty curious how a player aware of how RvR works has managed to end up with 0 marks, though. Like are you Spanish in PvP-Global or something? Literally everyone else in every team should be getting marks. Even a stagnant team (like the Dutch) has the opportunity to do 4th rate port battles for marks if they want. I do agree it's a dumb system but part of what's dumb about it is how many marks are being generated now. There must be Brits clans sitting on literally thousands of them by now. I have over 100 and I don't even care about this stuff.

I believe undercrewing ships lowers BR so that second guy presumably did not have full crew and therefore not enough BR to click out.

Random thought: "Pirates" could actually be the rebellion mechanic. 1) Pirates are not longer a team. They don't own anything and you can't start as one. 2) At any time, you can choose to "rebel". This causes you to become a hybrid: you are still a member of your nation with all of the features thereof (you still use the same ports, have the same outposts, etc) but on the open world you are "pirate flagged" and can attack -- and be attacked by -- anyone (including other pirates). 3) As a pirate there is some mechanic where you can switch from being, say, a French-Pirate to a British-Pirate. You'll move your stuff from your French outposts into neutral ports, switch to British and then move your stuff into British ports but while you do this you are still pirate flagged. 4) There is some other mechanic for allowing you back into the nation. This is all rather half-baked. The idea is that Pirate is no longer a team but rather is a form of outlaw that doubles as a way to switch between factions and if you really have a grief with your nation members, it's something you can temporarily turn into. And some people who really just want kill-everyone lone-wolf play would go pirate and stay that way forever, but it's still playable because functionally they are part of some nation. Getting out of being a pirate does not have to be easy, though.

I think it's fun, at least PvP-wise. What don't you like about it? One of our most accomplished PvPers actually swears by the Pickle and caps surprising amounts of ships using one. The Cerberus has become a popular PvP ship. Last night, for example, we sailed up into pirate waters using just 3x Cerb and 1x Endymion. Sank 2 frigates (with the Cerbs doing most of that work because the Endy joined late), stole a trader's brig and had to run like hell from the entire pirate armada that chased us halfway around the world. All the king's horses and all the king's men only managed to sink one of our Cerbs. An interesting footnote is that so many people failfit their ships (make them very fast at the cost of being very low armor) that you can do actual damage to them with just 6 or 9 pounders. It's really not just about the big ships. What? Why the heck not? What's stopping you? They only cost about 200k to build (more or less depending on wood type). If you were on my team (and someone we at least recognized and vaguely liked) our insiders cost would only be about 500k (...depending on wood type and assuming you had the conquest marks, which I have a hard time imagining anyone not having. All you have to do is show up to like 1 winning port battle now and then. We'd do it for a lot less than that if you provided the parts. And if anyone ever tells you not to join a port battle, tell em you'll agree but they'll have to promise you a couple of Bellona notes. If they refuse, then join the port battle and get your own marks.) I'm part of what I'd consider to be a somewhat casual PvP guild and the only reason we aren't all in first rates is literally because we do not feel like it. We have the marks, the money and the economy. It's not that hard. It's also an MMO, you shouldn't be having to build your own lineships solo. Get some help from your team or get a better team.

Please let France know if BLACK is sailing around in your waters. Since we had to declare peace with CCCP and since the Dutch are of limited fun, we're having to sail really far away to kill anyone. Going up to Denmark to hunt pirates sounds like a good time and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

More players on Global are always welcome. I am sure that CCCP will show you the level of respect that they show to everyone else.

That is fine. At the same time, we do not want to meddle in Danish internal affairs but we recognize Timjim2. Welcome Timjin2, it is good we finally have another representative of Denmark in this thread. Is this your in-game name as well?

Yeah, I actually think CMs will be going away soon. Admin has had some posts saying he doesn't like how they're working and was considering alternatives. And at the rate people are losing 1st rates in the game (how many have been sunk in grand total since server reset? Not capped but actually sunk. Like.....5?), I'm surprised anyone even sees value in the things. I think Purge has enough to give every member of the guild at least 3 L'Oceans but I don't see the point. Groups like CCCP and ICS are going to find that they burned all their bridges trying to amass a horde of Conquest Marks that have turned to dust.

己所不欲，勿施於人 If you feel you are being personally attacked, look first to yourself, and ensure you do not give reason for others to attack you. Especially do not give them a new reason every day for 4 weeks. Also, bear in mind that in this forum, "diplomacy, roleplay and light forum PvP" are allowed. Yes I, French Captain Slamz, think you, Danish Captain Chailang, are a scurvy dog and that Duncan McFail, Pirate captain, is possibly the worst diplomat I have ever seen, second only to Captain Jean LaKron Barbosa. In real life I'd be happy to have some beers and laugh about the game but in character, wow, does Captain Slamz really despise the lot of you.

This too. Swedes absolutely hate France. So the Danes just made a deal with them to give them 50 CM per day. What could go wrong. What exactly all 4 Swedes are going to do with 50 CM per day I can't imagine but I'm sure there's nothing fishy going on because Duncan said so and he would never be a bad liar who thinks he's an amazing genius and that everyone around him is an idiot and if only they could see his genius they would finally appreciate him instead of giving him crap jobs like having to be the diplomat in charge of talking to the Danes. Yeah, couldn't be that. Not from good old Duncan. The time for mutual respect was about 4 weeks ago when this all started. The other time for mutual respect was any of those times France offered CCCP a very fair deal to end the conflict and be friends. The other time for mutual respect was when we recently finally got them to sign a deal that could end the conflict and we could be friends and then whoops they said no. The other time for mutual respect was when we got them to sign a deal for real this time and not attack our ports and they immediately attacked our ports. The other time for mutual respect was when we asked you to intercede and actually enforce the treaty you backed and you fed us a load of crap instead. You could have also had some mutual respect by not claiming those ports were taken by the Danes because you don't trust France. The time for mutual respect is dead, Duncan. Deaaaaad. You killed it. You murderer. I'm going to be mutually respecting the next pirate trade ships I see, though. You know I don't think the pirates can be trusted with the contents of those ships. I'll reassign them to France for safe keeping, out of mutual respect. We'll use it to create a fleet of mutually respectful 1st rates that might help the British mutually respect a few key Pirate ports because we just want to make sure there's no funny business and that those ports get into the right hands. Gonna be a lot of mutual respect going on around here, Duncan. (You know what I like about the British? They want to kill me and they shout it from a distance and run at me with a knife in their hand. The Pirates act friendly, ask about your mother's health and then stab you in the back and then say it'll be okay, it needed to be done and we'll thank them some day, as they stab us again.)

That is the stupidest thing I have heard in at least the last 4 or 5 hours. But yes, please continue to think we are complete idiots and actually buy into the amazing amount of absolute rubbish that flops out of your mouth. There is a certain amount of entertainment in watching you act like a used car salesman trying to dump a 1980 Oldsmobile on us that was once completely underwater in Florida while telling us it's actually a 2016 Porsche in disguise. Fascinating, really. You should go into politics. I kind of picture you as a sort of Richard Nixon.

You know what, I'm tired of trying to explain to you what "no hostile port battles" means or what 3+ weeks of exactly this kind of dumb metagaming has done to my ability to put up with even more of it now. Much easier to just not make any more deals that involve Pirates or Danes. Go play your stupid word games with some other sucker. We tried that. Doesn't work. They're all idiots who think "alliance" is just a way to search for loopholes for their own benefit and screws us over at every turn. If you know anyone who wants a REAL alliance, involving actual cooperation and mutual respect, you let me know. It ain't Pirates and it ain't the Danes.

Because the treaty very specifically states there will be no hostile port battles between France and Danes. They immediately start up 2 port battles against France. Just plain dumb. Realize it's you guys making this complicated. The actual plan was very simple.

[translation: "If our relationship is good in the future, we can still organsie activities. The game can also be played differently (Sail boat race, Fireship tag war, Against the wind Gunboat avoidance operation, etc, and many more), but all these games shall wait till our relationship gets better."] I see no reason to believe our relationship will ever be good. CCCP has taken advantage of France at every opportunity. Temporary ownership of OJ and SJ until the Swedes could retake it would have gone a long way to mend relations. France would have gotten some marks and some Bovenwinds refits out of that arrangement because it would have taken the Swedes a while to flip it. By breaking the treaty and directly attacking those French ports, without asking for permission from France, CCCP has doomed this relationship just as we were trying to fix it. We will not try again.

Thank god you're here, Captain Three Weeks Ago. That is what we proposed all along. The Danish lapdogs refused it and made more and more demands instead and then poked us in the eye over OJ and SJ as a final F-U after we thought we had everything settled. I don't know why in the world anyone wants Danes for allies. They are impossible to deal with.

Great! Then why isn't everyone just fighting each other? What's with all these lame deals and gaming of the diplomacy and backstabbing? Just sink each other. Every day I'm a little closer to just having my guild go rogue, shut down all diplomatic channels and kill everything we see. Would be 10x more fun than what the Pirates and the Danes are having us do. Jumpin' through hoops like a buncha trained poodles.