mindnet56

The mechanics for Group Flags exists and we can have Crossed Red Swords over the ship attacking us. Therefore it must be possible to put red swords over an attacking ship, any attacking ship for all to see...

I take the point that 20 ships attacking different targets in the same area would be horrible to look at. Slamz comment would be simpler to implement and would give a good indication of what's going on. At the moment there is no way of knowing what is about to happen. I feel that this is an important issue with the game. Otherwise - great game guys - well done, it's shaping up well !

THERE COULD BE A SIMPLE SOLUTION...? At present only the player launching an attack and the player being attacked can see the attack circle and red crossed swords. This seems a bit ridiculous as any ship engaging another can be seen by all ships in the vicinity. The solution would be to make the circle and crossed swords visible to all players within a certain distance, possibly the ship being attacked could have crossed swords of another colour (blue for example), this way everyone knows who is attacking who. Any disputes and misunderstandings could then be resolved by all involved in the action as they know who did what. Before the action, players at risk of getting dragged in can try to avoid the action if they so choose. If something like this proposed solution was implemented, a huge amount of frustration and resentment that this causes in game would be avoided. Thanks everone for their comments - it looks like this is a pain in the backside for all nations. Happy sailing

Many people in the English Nation are getting dragged into battles by 'friendly' Basic Cutters attacking enemy PVP player fleets that vastly outnumber the Brit players that get dragged in. It is thought that the Danes and Pirates are using ALTs in British Basic Cutters to hang around areas where they can attack Danes or Pirate fleets, dragging in unsuspecting Brit players in the area into a battle where they are heavily outnumbered and CAN NOT CALL REINFORCMENTS. The usual deal is that it's a Basic Cutter, Midshipman, No Clan etc. This is happening very often and is becoming a pain in the back side. Rarely happens against AI fleets. Enough Said.

A few thoughts... As far as I am concerned, OpenWorld is Open World. Everyone should have the 'chance' to participate in port battles. I think that Capital ports should be considered invulnerable. In order to limit any nation achieving total domination, a value has to be used for the 'over reach' of a nation. So as they over reach themselves their ports become more vulnerable. Imagine the RN with say 25 ports as a starting point, then they end up with 100, perhaps their ports invulnerability should be divided by 4, or maybe less as they will have more money and trade to pay for their occupation. Maybe the invulnerability of nation’s ports could be linked to the number of ships/players in the nation, though some governing handicap factor should be employed to prevent world domination by any one nation. So a diminishing scale so that the difference between 1000 players and 10k players is next to nothing or inversed to give the 1000 an advantage. For example we could say that a massive nation could well become carelessly over confident, and a smaller nation would have to be more careful and cunning, hence the advantage to a smaller nation. So do we establish a status quo of port occupation and allow that to change only by a certain percentage.... perhaps we could have seasonal and political cycles that influence the status quo in favor of one or other nation(s). One thing is certain and that is that not everyone will be happy with whatever we end up with, but it must be enjoyable for most everyone to take part in.