Skully

Urgh, give me AI captains please. No cookie clickers.

Is addressed by the smuggler flag. You can have it turned on always as well. That is the Black Plague bug and that is the one that really needs fixing. If everybody went down the Black Plague, there is no other option but to fix it. Come on down.

To me the goals should be: Open World should be about fleet and ship movements and positioning. Fleets materializing at Free Ports is just an ugly affair. It should be relatively easy to get into PvP, but it does not have to be easy to play out PvP. It must not turn into a time sink, where you have to spend your real life hours doing things you don't like. At that point people will simple quit. For #1 to work we need "Send to outpost" removed, but this will conflict with #2 and #3. So for #2 and #3 we need something to alleviate those pains. Now we already have PvE missions for a grind, which are also totally unrealistic. Or the AI fleets which for some reason are doing their own things. I still think having the ability to order about AI captains is the best way to go to satisfy all 3 goals. The way I see this played is as following: With the help of crafters, traders, logistics and AI you get a couple of ships into the FOB. First ganking fleet goes out and engages. Losses will be suffered. Head back to a staging point and either order AI or ask logistics to bring back the first ganking fleet. It can even be 1 escorting player and a couple of AI captains following. Meanwhile bring out the second ganking fleet and reform. Rinse and repeat. A player simply becomes an "Agent Smith" avatar. Being able to teleport to any asset. And thus having the ability to be where the action is without wasting real life hours. IMO it would not deter anything from the realism of battle, nor the strategic aspect of OW. PS. Buffing the offenders looks to me like a bad move.

I even want to go one step further and say it should be a new building type for available to everyone: "Trade Post".

Hence I say, AI captains. We all know how they sail, so you will be taking a big risk letting them sail a ship to an outpost. But it gives you a choice, do it yourself or let it be done with all the risk it entails.

Might I suggest not sailing downwind too eagerly? Change is coming: http://forum.game-labs.net/index.php?/topic/14390-please-make-ai-stop-running-away-in-missions/?p=266465 So I think we can consider this topic a duplicate.

It's hard to find trader opportunities, but they are there. It's all about supply and demand. Plus it is having connections. I can sell you a Mid Grade Note for 60K, it's worth ~100K in Willemstad. So there is your mission.

http://forum.game-labs.net/index.php?/topic/14281-hotfix-982-patch-notes/?p=263996 It's by design. When you are boarding your crew is exposed. Don't board when other enemies are near.

I hope you are referring to AI no longer running away, not increasing the battle time.

I think having the ability to hire NPC captains to transport ships is a must before we go down this line. It would not be reasonable to expect PvP-ers to sail for hours either as smuggler, trader or transporter to simply bring ships and/or materials in. For the time being we could do with "teleporting" ships for gold and time. Apart from that I love to see this change come through. PS. I will smuggle, trade and transport mats for "reasonable" prices to those locations.

Isn't your vote then a contradiction? You want any kind of change. So lets see if we can have a quick and potentially simple change. Then admin can continue on his fishing mechanic and ultimately we'll see the war patch. http://forum.game-labs.net/index.php?/topic/14397-nations-should-rally-against-the-pirates-before-its-too-late/?p=266713

Yup, that's the reference I put in the first line to clarify this is either an interim proposal or potentially a more substantial one. If you want to "Carry on" in the mean time with empty port battles, please vote accordingly.

This proposal is not about snowballing through ports, but about creating opportunity for people to show up at port battles.

One potential exploit someone mentioned to me: Allies buy the slot continuously. This can be countered by allowing any offender to buy the slot and thus join the attacker side.

Port Battles should be grand events and this is clearly understood by the developers, see http://forum.game-labs.net/index.php?/topic/13606-war-and-port-battles-rework-moderated/ Other suggestions are also up, like http://forum.game-labs.net/index.php?/topic/14287-24-hour-port-battles/ In the mean time PBs remain to be a "rotten" affair. A lot of them are simply uncontested, because people are unwilling or incapable of showing up. (While the free teleport has elevated already some problems, I still don't have enough outposts to show up everywhere. ) Maybe something a bit more simple can be implemented. So I'm going to make a suggestion completely oblivious of potential development cost. But if it is easy to implement, then I think devs should take a stab at it. So here it goes (TL;DR-ers start here): Instead of buying a flag for a PB now, buy the slot for a PB tomorrow. No more flag carrying, simply open the PB at the given time tomorrow (/ after maintenance). Then nobody (who is in his gaming timezone) has an excuse not to show up. And thus, grand fight!

Or rather make the friendly ship turn back to the nearest player. The enemy ship should follow suite. In the same light, if there are 6 or more players in a fleet mission, then they don't need any friendly AI.

A week ago AUSEZ clan decided to go down with the Black Plague. We would go Pirate, live the life and see if we could take on Truxillo. At the battle of Ysil we encountered our first resistance, the remains of AUSEZ clan. It was actually the first sign of my conclusion and assertion I'll make at the end. But lets not get ahead yet. Previous to the switch, our PvP-ers went over into OOPS. Immediately there was a change of pace in the clan. They had a good time fighting up north against the US nation. Meanwhile we had to move our inventory into free ports. It was fun from a logistical point of view. As we moved in large La Gross Ventre groups, slowly the server started to get a whiff of what we were up to. The hunt was on and we lost some of our fully loaded LGVs. People say it is easy to switch to Pirate. I would phrase this as, it is not hard to switch to Pirate. Lets just say a lot of gold was lost in terms of materials and outposts. Again a good time was had by both ourselves and the ones chasing the LGVs. Back to the fight at Ysil, it was memorably as the last of AUSEZ made their final stand. For now I'll not tell the tale what happened, but it was grand. Moving among the coast we did not expect much resistance, so the ports fell quickly until Tulum. At Tulum the Chinese clan VVVV made an honorable stand-off. While the numbers and ships in the line-up were against them, they did not cave in and put up very good fight. Again I say, good time times on both sides. Then came the battle of Congrios. A couple brave SLRN guys gave it a shot but to no avail. We won the battle, but at a very high cost though. In the aftermath we suffered from attrition. That even a couple of SLRN showed up made a big difference to the story. Let me just say, it was another memorable battle and keep it at that. As the others ports fell beside us with just a handful of ships turning up for defense, we said to one-another lets move hard on Truxillo. And thus we turned to Ruatan. By now we were doing port-battles so frequently we had it down to almost an art. We spotted the grape bug. And as true Pirates we "abused" this to do port battle in 5 minutes. "Surely they will defend Trux!?" was said. I already was telling the clan, no it will not. Admin was too late with the hot-fix to save Truxillo. And Truxillo fell within a couple of minutes, to be switched over to Pirates 15 minutes later. Someone said, "We should switch back to British and go back north." But it would amount to the same thing again, we would rumble-stomp north through empty harbours. To me the move of AUSEZ to Black has been a very good thing. I think the rabit hole should work both ways though. And here is how I think of it currently, players should be able to provide story and content to the game at their own leisure and conditions. AUSEZ could not, because of various reasons, AUSFC has been so far by going down with the Black Plague. But, it will not last. The Ausies timezone can only pit them against US and Chinese. So regardless of Pirate mechanics or Nation stuff, we must have means of providing gameplay to all timezones. In this regard the teleport timer removal is a breath of fresh air. I think if the option presents itself, we might even switch to US or Dutch or whatever. So at the end, the game should give players options, not limitations. And then it only becomes a matter of "are you unwilling or incapable of playing the game?"

Simply turn pirate, you don't lose anything. Just come over through the Black Plague (bug).

I have had the same happening to me as well: reinforcement circles appearing on land preventing a nice battle to occur. If technically possible, I'm still in favor of the exponentially growing join circle.

Locking factions means you can not play with your friends. So that is certainly not the solution.

I do think that signalling will become a necessity though. If we don't speak a common language during battle, it'll lead to interesting results.

Starting a battle within 2 minutes sailing of an enemy port is your own choice. We call it poking the beehive and it makes for good fun every now and then.

I voted "no" on all questions (except the last), because the poll does not take the option of hiring NPC captains into account.

We are going off-topic completely here. I agree there is a fundamental problem in the OW mechanics that prevent good PvP action, but I think it is around teleport timers. For me your arguments do not hold: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=674713540 I'm not a very long member of AUSEZ (maybe 1 month now?) and I was doing clanless screening for BRITS and BWTC before. As you can see I owned a Surprise at that time and still I mostly sail in 4th or smaller. I don't know the timers, but you can check them in game on the conquest port tab. Once a flag is bought there might be a battle, or not. It is a gamble. You do need to have a good set of outposts though and a ready teleport. (<= I think here is a problem.) The screenshot is not a port-battle. Is it a lost battle that I'm showing? Yes, most definitely, but it is a large one. (PS. I survived ) I suspect that different nations have formed up different game styles. There is nothing devs can or should do about that. In the mean time I have had very good frigate battles with French, Danish, Spanish and Pirates. Some involved some 3rds and Pavels, others did not. To me a PB is not the holy grail, but just another activity. Note that PB battle timers are already longer. Back to the topic: As I see it, one of the goals of OW is making strategic placement of ships and fleets important. Having a large battle timer makes these placements insignificant. You could almost tailor craft a ship and sail it in from anywhere.

I agree. You ask the question that should/can not be answered. While it makes logical sense, this discussion isn't about the kind of game we want in terms of fleet composition. And as you can see yourself you immediately put in your favorite style. Gaming style is for each his own. The 1.5 BR rule tried to impose a certain gaming style and you see what happened. This discussion is about creating a good bridge between OW and battle. "Ganking" is a perfectly viable tactic in PvP. But abusing game mechanics, like overshooting the circle to abuse positional reinforcements, we should get out of the system. (Note that I really like the positional reinforcement system.) AI will be part of the final game. We should keep that in mind.