WhiskeyBarrel

Maybe they could have one more popup box like are you really really sure you want to do this and if you do there is no going back? You did have click the box that warned you..............

Finding exploits and being caught and NOT reporting them should get them kicked out of the game. These people are just here to find hidden exploits to ruin the game at launch. They are not the people needed to properly test the game.

Frigates should be able to defeat single top rated ships, it was called stern camping and having the ability to move in and out of range easily. You never sailed big rates around solo. That is a deathwish. In POTBS would would take them down with small ships. The small ships were very hard to hit so we could sail right in demast and board. Now boarding was much different as if you lost you didn't lose your ships as the attacker, that is until the broadside came..............RIP. 1st and 2nd rate line battles are pretty amazing.

Smoke needs to dissipate based on speed of the ship and wind velocity. It makes no sense that it would hang around your moving ship. Even a slight breeze or tacking into the wind should move the smoke out quickly and it should dissipate more rapidly. Tab targeting would be nice. Targeting could be better. It would be nice to be able to set an elevation and have that held especially if you get into a running line fight. My gunners will know the proper elevation once a hit is made. Maybe there is a better setting for mouse sensitivity for aiming, but you need much faster sensitivity for looking around. These are hardly major issues for me but the ones that bug me the most.

Road Town is a deep water harbor yet has shallows just in front which seems contrary to being a deep water harbor. These shallows will be prime hunting grounds. I think there should be ports that are difficult to get into but deep water harbors?

I agree this is an abuse of a mechanic. I don't want to see pirates joining my side and have to worry about them firing on me so that suggestion is out.

Sinking a ship should net less loot than capturing it. I can't recall ever getting any wood or other resource yet so I have to guess that this part of the game is still under construction.

Thanks for the welcome! I would suggest that less experienced npc ships use only the auto setting for sailing. The AI is probably going to be far better are manual sailing than a new player. It is something I have yet to try but I have seen how it allows ships to turn far more effectively than not using manual. I hope that tutorials are in the works for new players? I could use one on manual sailing. Yes there are some decent videos and it probably takes some practice but understanding the dynamics would go a long way to helping new captains.

The gun would have whatever was last loaded. Maybe it was ball and maybe it was sail shot? Multi deck ship would usually have different types of shot loaded on each deck.

Why should there be a max Durability? If you want to add more Durability would you not just buy the same ship and combine it with the existing and add 5 more durability to it? This was a fairly simple process in POTBS where you actually bought a deed to a ship. The ships here are outfitted a bit differently but there should be a way to add Durability. Insurance was included with the ship but you lost certain mods, such as sails, guns and hulls. Captured ships were one durability. I have no aversion to having insurance if you want to buy it. Why would you spend money on a free ship? That was the whole point of them. Capture them kill as much as possible and if you sank you go find another one.

Can we have this or can someone point me to the right place? Being able to read Dev comments is really important to me so that I do not report or comment on something that is being fixed etc. Thanks!

The reward in gold in sinking a ship is much greater than selling the captured ship to the vendor. AH pricing (do we have one?) could vary greatly.

Compared to just sinking the ships. We spend considerable time capping ships and very little reward. We switched over to simply sinking ships and started to make far more gold. I think this mechanism needs some attention. When starting out stay in the lynx for free repairs. If you cap a bigger ship you will spend lots of money repairing and you will never get to a decent purchased brig or mercury.

I just thought I would share some initial observations on the game. I started playing on Friday and have enjoyed the testing very much so far. Open sea travel. I like it way better than POTBS. The speed might need increased as it can take a very long time to get places. This could be a turn off to many NPC's and areas for specific ranks- I spend a lot of time trying to find level suitable npcs to hit. Might need to increase the spawn rates at least for lower ranks. NPC battles-Initially our group was hitting single or dual mobs and were pretty much left alone. One of us is now J Lt or maybe a rank higher in a Navy Brig and we have noticed that the opposing side will have NPC's just show up either at the start of the battle or shortly after. Is this intended? Is this a bug? NPC Intelligence is excellent! Far far more challenging than POTBS ever was. Ship combat is hard at least at low levels with very few upgrades. Ships will not just run out with you so you really have to sail a lot. This is good. Sail shot-Very difficult to demast ships. NPC sailing characteristics-NPC's will pop repairs. I am not sure I like this. I understand the reality factor but there is a fine line between good game play and feeling like my time is being wasted. NPC and Battle experience and rewards-Is there a good explanation on how this works? It appears that the more damage you do the more exp and gold you get. This seems to devalue the efforts of a ship that is assigned to demast. Also is there a explanation on how loot is distributed in a group? It appears that even though you do not have dock space in a harbor that you do get free? for now warehouse space. What does the red aiming line signify? A 100 m or yard shot or just an aiming guide. Suggestion: Hash marks above and below the red line which would allow betting aiming for different shots. NPC sailing dynamics. Do low level NPC's have ship upgrades? NPC ships seem to go through the wind much much easier than player ships and they have much better handling, including stopping. Interior hull structure-There appears to be an unknown quantity of structure that remains after armor is removed. Some hints on sinking mechanics would be welcomed. Some ships will be sailing along and just sink for no apparent reason, I assume this was caused by a leak. Leaks and other ship damage. I would like to see a red text warning come up on serious damage like this. Love the pumping mechanism and leaks! Great idea! More later. Love where the game is! Thanks very much!

I like the idea of shallows port battles. I was a long time POTBS player too. I would rather not have an avcom solution to port battles. That system was very easy to defend with just a few people and a wrong pull could destroy the enite attacking force. I would lean more to more kinds of port defenses, such as cannons, heated shot if the game is going to be ship based then the outcome should be determined by the best sailing and ship setups. After traveling around the map so far in the beta, I would not be in favor of traveling to the port battle. While many gamers have nothing to do in their lives but play games, most have limited time periods in which to play and having to spend 1 to 3 hours getting to a port is exessive. The POTBS port battle was 2 hours long and it was easy for one side to time grief the other side. I would like to see a more varied approach to how a defense could be won or how an attack is sucesseful or the victor is determined by the most objectives obtained. Ships destroyed port defenses destroyed etc. I would also shorten the PB to 1.5 hours of real battle with a 10 minute prep time. The prep area should allow for the necessary docks and merchants necessary to prepare properly especially if there is not going to be a way to trade between players. I liked the options for upgrades to each side depending on what they did to prepare for the PB in POTBS the more NPC's your killed in the pb zone the better the options in the PB, more doors, better fort guns, etc. I think most like the perks but grinding the npc's was never a great time as much of it was done during off times with little risk around the attacked zone. There should be economic options to assist in the attack or defense of ports such as very specialized components that would only last for the battle. The port governor option was fine but it had to issue of dividing the faction because of egos. I would rather see more ship based perks over ground/avatar type solutions if Avatars ever come into the game. Port defenses should be upgradable through economic means There should be stiff penalties for losing ports, conversely ports should be very difficult to take. 50 percent more to produce items or 50 percent less produced or something along those lines. The one issue we saw in POTBS was that you could totally destroy one faction by simply taking all their deep water harbors, rendering them unable to produce large/huge ships. Once a nation lost all their high value ports, people either switch sides or stopped playing until the "Map Win". Will there be a "Map Win" or should the ports after a certain amount of time reset back to the owner with a period of protection? A careful balance needs to be maintained on the winning conditions so that certain sides do not just fold. There must be protections in place that do not allow a zerg nation to simply roll over the less populated nations because of popularity of say Great Britain during this period historically. Port battle awards or rewards should be based on contribution. We always had a few players in POTBS that would join a PB and sail off on their own or stay for the 30 minutes to get their reward and click out. You will always have some lone ducks that refuse to help so maybe some type of vote system to remove these players. Friendly fire is always an option unless there are plans to remove this, which I hope is NOT the case. Friendly fire makes ship combat much much more difficult and tactical.