Skully

Absolutely nothing. But you'll get real tired of seeing enemies at 20+ minutes sail from you (if you can see them at all) setting a course away from you. So you'll start tweaking down the engagement distance, until you are at the distance you are comfortable with. But you actually found an exploit. As a trader, if you see an enemy you'll put your engagement distance at maximum and hope you get dragged into battle. I need to think about this. First, they would need to be that far away on open world to be able to join. Second, if they are too far away to provide assistance on open world, they are too far away in battle to provide assistance. It is positional reinforcement, so you join the battle on the exact spot where you are on open world. The tagging "mini-game" is out of scope. Personally I think it works very well. But we may want another topic on it. This one is purely about joining a battle.

PPS. If you spot funkiness with weather (as in http://forum.game-labs.net/index.php?/topic/14810-how-is-the-weather-matey/) please look at the ship next to you and F11 it.

PS. I also needed a story for http://forum.game-labs.net/index.php?/topic/14745-post-battle-entry-to-the-open-world/?p=274342

I don't have a screenshot of it, but I think I said: "All ships, all nations, please undock from your respective ports and lets get ganking south of Jamaica!" I thought that was enough of a hint, that things would be fishy. The British have been putting all timers in Panama outside of 10-12, while I'm trying to get everybody to put up 10-12 timers. We captured Sandy Bay back, but the diplos want it on I think 4-6. Urgh... I think we need a bit more drastic measures and create a 10-12 zone say from Great Corn to Canalete. Or maybe just Great Corn to Concepcion. But alas that has to go through the diplos to get into an agreement. The alternative is bring Pirates down on 10-12 timers and Spanish on 20-22. Alternate ports and voila we can have a 10-12 & 20-22 war zone. So right now the only thing is Bone Cay or Honduras. I don't care too much for PBs myself as well. If they are roughly equal, then yes we should dive in. If they are not, be creative. Do whatever it takes to turn it into a victory for yourself. The problem is timezones. I try my best to liven up the 10-12 in any way I can and bring as many folks into battles (not necessarily port-battles). Sometimes it succeeds, but most times it does not. We see some small battle somewhere or just an empty port-battle. The instant teleport has solved already been a blessing in that regard, because now it is much easier to bring players together. Maybe we just need more outposts? Or maybe once we have rid teleports (but added AI) we should all have the freeports for free outposts. It needs more thinking...

Next episode: http://forum.game-labs.net/index.php?/topic/14818-pvp1-june-24th-fishing-at-great-corn/

Before the story starts, please look at http://forum.game-labs.net/index.php?/topic/14485-hiding-in-battle-screens-solved/?p=271128 In particular the picture. -- June 24th, Fishing at Great Corn Preliminaries Coming back from a hard exhausting battle earlier over Sandy Bay a long Pirate Trincomalee approached Great Corn. Carrying a nice banknote picked of the dead body of a British soldier, the captain was planning to dock up quickly and trade it away for some good rum. However as a British Belle Poule and a Frigate came out of Great Corn, this was not to be the case. One Little Fish The British without hesitation dove onto the Trincomalee with a gleam in their eyes. However they had not counted on the speed of the Trincomalee as it slowly peeled away from the engagement. Two Little Fish By now the Pirates had readied another Trincomalee at Great Corn. As the British gave chase without any sagaciousness, they once more engaged the Pirate Trincomalee. However the other Pirate Trincomalee had already sailing close to range and joined the engagement. A fierce fight followed, but the outcome can be guessed. The British lost their two precious ships. Five Big Fish Meanwhile the British had not been sitting on their haunches and sailed whatever they could bring at the ready from Great Corn. Two Constitutions escorted by three 5ths came up onto the Pirate Trincomalees. Seven Sharks http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/267217845673139508/DE273844138276DFBF8F390E1AC92A58E3F66BFF/ But the Pirates had also been gearing up. As the first Trincomalee disengaged and brought his loot into harbor, a Pirate fleet came at ready. Consisting of a Victory, three St. Pavels, an Ingermanland and a bypassing Indiaman, soon joining the remaining Trincomalee, the Pirates were ready for a fight. So were the British apparently ... or at least that was the thought. But as the mists gathered, no British were seen... Notwithstanding the Pirates went back home to enjoy their loot and plunder from Sandy Bay. Result Again the Pirates managed to make a serious blow to the British, who lost two ships and the Sandy Bay port. With both morale and holdings coming to a new low, the British are desperate for their supplies underway from Britain.

The problem with F11 is that it is a problem crossing clients. Do you want a bag of reports from different clients? If so, it'll need some organizing.

It isn't broken, it's just a full PvP area. Pacific coast is coming, but it'll be another 3 months (at least). http://forum.game-labs.net/index.php?/topic/14640-devlog-forthcoming-content-patches-plan/?p=271569 Now while Pacific Coast will be considered a PvE area, I'm not entirely sure whether admin reckoned people jumping missions and such. If so, then that would be considered a bug. IMO Captains should have a completely free, safe, PvE area down there and can carelessly sail/mission about.

As the question to the captains sailing around you and you'll likely get different answers. http://forum.game-labs.net/index.php?/topic/14792-pvp1-june-22nd-the-foggy-dance-at-bone-cay/ It appears the weather isn't synced properly across clients. I don't care whether we have regional or global weather, but two ships sailing next to one-another must have the same weather conditions. It appears to me weather conditions are sent to a client over an unreliable channel, while for example chat is sent over a reliable one. Before, say, wind strength changes are introduced, this should be fixed. (Please do not add it to conquest information updates, these are buggy as well.)

Yes, as the circle passes over your ship, entry is dictated by the engagement distance of your choice you made beforehand. No, as you set sail from harbor, you pick an engagement distance that suites your style and set it via the slider in the ship detail menu. As long as you are not entering battle, you can change it at whim. No longer will battle entry be dictated by timer, but by a choice you make and control.

The best part about your mail is that you leave out the one issue this topic is about: Since you can chance to Pirate (easily) in game, there must be an in-game mechanic to change to any nation.It proves once again that people do not see the Black Plague bug. All the other things you mentioned are already on other topics.

Well, if we all agree that boarding currently is a buggy affair, then we can open the floor in the suggestions section.

Anybody inside the circle will not have the option to join, as you can only join on the edge (/the moment the circle hits you). To go by your example, the gankee get tagged by 4 gankers. At that point the circle starts growing. The 5 rescuers are at ~6.5km distance, so when the circle hits, they join up for the 20 minute sail. Keep in mind the circle is growing now by 140 kts. At that point the gankers send out a message for help. Lets presume their OODA loop is ~30 seconds, which is pretty short. So their reinforcements must be at least 9 km away ready for a 25 minute sail. The circle is now growing at 163 kts. Once the circle passes there is no option to join that battle anymore. Whoever makes another call, again presuming an OODA loop of ~30 seconds has to be at least 11.5km away (a 35 minute sail). So yes, it can grow large, but because of the exponential growth the later you join, the more you are penalized. Also keep in mind that joining forces are all positional. So nobody would stick around the center, but rather sail to the point that is most opportunistic for them. In the battle the gankee links up with the rescuers and then start an anti-gank chase, until they meet with the enemy reinforcements and thus are turned back. Maybe the battle will go back and forth a couple of times. But that is how battles are fought. http://forum.game-labs.net/index.php?/topic/14676-pvp1-june-the-british-honduras-campaign-pirate-perspective/?p=273848 After 5 minutes the circle has reached 18km, a good 53 minute sail to center. Whoever wants to join? Be my guest. They will never see an opportunity for a shot. The circle is then expanding at 233 kts. Hence the distance chooser, which you need to set beforehand. You can't manually join the edge anymore at those speeds. If your nation is down to a couple of ports, then every of that nation should be close-by. Or in other words, the density of ships per area of water should be roughly equal for any nation. Low population nations will have little ports. Now the hole that each nation has versus the Pirates should be fixed to prevent Pirates being the high population nation by design: http://forum.game-labs.net/index.php?/topic/14574-curing-the-black-plague-bug/ But that is another story. So in the end, while you can in theory poor ships into a battle indefinitely, it makes zero sense to tie up your forces as such. Nobody should be joining a battle at 18+km, if the enemy turns away you will probably not even see them through your spyglasses. You would have really wasted 90 minutes staring at sea-gulls. I hope I have convinced you that this suggestion can lead to interesting battles and you vote yes on it.

The current system is broken. Right now the ganking guide says: use OW to sail to the edge of the circle closest to the swords and join. Poof, gank complete. This suggestion actually takes away the advantage of communicating with an OW player and directing him to an advantageous join point. Ideally we would have OW go to 1:1 time whenever a battle is started (or even one is in progress). For some (MMO) reason, this can't happen. So the only thing we can do is take away the OW time dilution advantage on those players that want to join. The growing circle hitting you will do just that. My neither and I stated that in such hard terms, that I got a warning out of it. But as admin said: "Our position is and was always this: ganking has to be reduced by design." http://forum.game-labs.net/index.php?/topic/13106-patch-97-land-sighted/?p=239607 So we are kind off forced into having sympathy. As for the friendly/free port sailing, I have clarified that ships must be fully at the ready on open world. I want to put it completely in the hands of the defenders. If I was a defender I would put my distance at 2km max, roughly 5 minutes sailing. I would not waste more time on folks sailing further away from me. The other part is that this gives a slight increase of pressure on gankers, without truly increasing the risk. Should you find yourself in a battle with lots of reinforcements incoming (which you can see now). You can chose to disengage the gankee. I hope I have given enough arguments to convince you (and others) to make/change their vote (to) yes.

We brought the Trincomalee especially to keep pesky Mercuries at bay. But we met a couple of issues. The map is inaccurate, the Trincomalee had to circumvent the shallows perfectly. While I myself could not go to far out of range to ensure you would not try to take me down. I think the map inaccuracy isn't a game breaker, it actually makes a bit of sense. Fog isn't properly synced across clients. I myself and the GreenT in the other Mercury were in deep fog until after we had planted. The others just had bad weather as yourself. I consider this to be a bug, everybody should have the same weather. We kept moving around the shallows until we found the magic spot, where I could plant and was still within the tagging circle of the Trincomalee. It's another wonky mechanic, that is hopefully going to be replaced with http://forum.game-labs.net/index.php?/topic/14642-port-battles-assault-flag-rework-proposals-moderated/ In my mind it should be some point where you drop your whaleboats to supply an assault. (Similar to the landing ships in Battlestation Pacific.) In which case it wouldn't be all that bad if a Santisma can do that. I'll add my thoughts to that topic. Still you could end up in an empty port battle, but then the price paid to open it would be much higher. The current 150K for laugh and giggles was perfect. Didn't my announcement over global chat give away this would be for laugh and giggles? So are you cowards coming west or should we continue to harass Jamaica and surroundings?

AI Fleets are wonky, hopefully we'll see player directed AI Fleets in the future. There things are hard to implement in a good manner. But you can always apply for the job:http://forum.game-labs.net/index.php?/topic/13967-what-a-strange-meeting/?p=259883 Personally I would consider using AI Fleets to tag for advantage a valid tactic. It does mean everybody needs to pay attention just a bit more and not get distracted by the sea-gulls too much.

Please take away our territory. Please take away our shipyards. Please take away our crafting. And no, we'll keep the politics. We'll come ruffle-stomping on those nation capitals who do not do our bidding, because we won't have anything else to do anymore. I'm dreaming it up already as we gank and cap Pavels, Victories and Santismas from the fleeting grounds. Then sail them into the ground against other nation fleets. I'm going to bed and have some happy dreams.

http://forum.game-labs.net/index.php?/topic/14792-pvp1-june-22nd-the-foggy-dance-at-bone-cay/ If you see no chance of winning a port battle and getting away, then gank the stragglers who are trying to get in.

The one thing that is not captured by this mechanic is that ships in battle are fighting in "slow motion" as opposed to the ships sailing on open world. However I consider a slightly off the side topic, that we may need to address through other means. Also keep in mind that doing a battle usually requires a lot of back and forth sailing. (Although we had a battle in the past that started at Bonacca and ended at Black River.) So that part I consider to be, under investigation / construction. The problem with placing late arrivals further back results in ships ending up on land. Most of us have seen this happen with the initial positional reinforcement mechanic. It was hilarious. In this mechanic late joiners will arrive further from the center of battle, but there position is directly based on the point where the circle intercepts them. Here are the numbers: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1VIzDMmnXiq59XBjVmlIvntCm2RTcoypymowm4Qh7S4A/edit#gid=0 If you join after 3 minutes, you have 6.5 km to sail, which on average takes you 20 minutes. Yes, it means during the circle growth you can maneuver yourself a bit closer to the fight. That is the only "gamey" element in this mechanic, but for two reasons: As battles start around you, you want to be in the right/closest battle. (Not every battle starts at exactly the same moment.) We still want to "force" action to take place, while not nullifying tactics completely.

Next episode is up at http://forum.game-labs.net/index.php?/topic/14792-pvp1-june-22nd-the-foggy-dance-at-bone-cay/