Archaos

Personally I would have no problem with going through the ranks again, but grinding slots and hunting books again would be a real turn off for me.

This is a good point. Maybe if you capture a ship that is overloaded because of the perk then the perk should remain in effect till the ship is unloaded. After all the perk is supposed to be that because of your skill in stowing cargo you manage to fit more cargo onto your ship. Well once that cargo is stowed it does not magically rearrange itself just because the ship is captured by someone who does not have the skill to stow it well.

As the Indiaman is an armed merchant ship some of the cargo space would be given over to gun decks so she would have less cargo space than her size suggests. I guess the same could be said for the LGV. For the others if you remember originally in game they had very few guns and I cannot remember why they started putting a full gun loadout on them.

But now you cannot enter enemy port with warship in fleet, so no point in escorting your traders.

I captured a gold trader snow, this is the second one I have captured, the first was on the test server. For anyone interested its up for sale in Nassau.

Showing correct now. 😃

It goes to Wham - Last Christmas

Nice lyrics, but I think you put the wrong video, should have been Mariah Carey - All I Want For Christmas is You.

The problem with this suggestion is that such routes would be easy to monopolize by the big clans who would just sail large Indiamen fleet with lots of protection. The small lone trader would have no chance to compete in such a system. Having a few such routes may be viable as long as there were other options for making best profit that had to be discovered. Another problem with such a system is that raiders would tend to concentrate around the start port and end port of the route rather than rest of the OW and these ports would literally be blockaded.

Although I can agree that trading goods consumption should be reduced at capitals and other ports outside the safe zones made more important for goods consumption, I do not think it should be done for the sake of the 3 hardcore nations as this is part of the reason they are classed as hardcore. If we give the hardcore nations the same advantages of easier nations then they are no longer hardcore.

Where is it stated that you have to lose your ship before it can become a tribunal case?

I thought they did have possibility of sail damage with fire or at least the used to have it. I have definitely previously see my sails take damage sometimes when on fire, though I must admit I have not noticed it recently. You did not actually see the sails burning but you did take quite rapid damage to the sails.

I have seen this type of RNG in other games where you could reroll to get additional slots, but the chance of success got harder for each slot and if it failed you risked losing slots and even total destruction of the item. I do not think the anti-RNG brigade would like such a system. For example you start off with a 3/5 and by using some special gathered materials you could reroll it to see if you get to a 4/5 with maybe a 20 percent chance of success and if you fail it remains 3/5, if you succeed you have a 4/5 and if you get more reroll materials you could take a chance to go for a 5/5 but your percentage chance of success is now 5% and upon failure you have a chance of 3 outcomes, 50% it remains 4/5, 30% it becomes 3/5 and 20% you lose the ship altogether (percentages could be adjusted). Now that would be a serious RNG game which I am sure most would hate.

But you seem to be missing the original problem with this approach. The problem was that RNG ships led to an imbalance as you could face another ship the same as yours but they have the advantage because they are 5/5 gold while you are only 3/5, but with what you suggest only the rich would remain competitive while the rest would have to make do with substandard ships and what really ends up happening is that everyone is forced to get the 5/5 gold ships. With RNG even the poorest player has a chance of getting that 5/5 gold ship as long as he can afford to craft it and with RNG the total number of 5/5 gold ships is limited and in order to get more 5/5 gold ships the number of lesser ships increases putting downward pressure on the price and making them more affordable for all. I understand that everyone would love to sail around in a 5/5 ship, but if that happens then 5/5 has no value and we may as well all stick to 3/5 ships. They have to be rare to give them value. Regarding the Doubloons cost I do tend to agree that they may be too high to allow crafting many ships to get the 5/5 but people did ask for 1st rates to become rare and you have to agree that the cost does make them rare. But are they now too rare?

As I said such a system would be okay if crafters were only allowed to specialize in one type of vessel, but it would mean once you had a few people specialized in a certain ship it would become harder for new crafters wishing to specialize in that ship to sell their ships as everyone would go to the master crafter for the best ships. So you would still have an imbalance. I think many people would not like to be limited in what type of ships they could craft. Maybe they could have a system where the more you craft a certain type of ship the greater the percentage probability of getting a high quality becomes. I still think some RNG in crafting adds some spice to it, if not you get to the stage where everyone is sailing a 5/5 gold ship.

I believe they have already stated that this is not going to happen as they are essentially different ships in the programming and there is no reason to remove a ship model from the game.

There is a big difference between coming alongside and rubbing as opposed to a collision. Many small ships and boats go alongside much larger vessels and remain pressed alongside without any damage, just look at tugs and pilot vessels alongside super tankers. So it all depends upon how they come alongside, at a shallow angle matching speed till they touch and then press alongside will cause minimum damage and the ships can remain like that for long periods. With sailing ships this may be complicated by rigging entanglement but it is still possible. The problem in the game is that the smaller vessel for some reason is able to turn the larger vessel or even sit perpendicularly across his bow without receiving damage and no be swamped. Also, although in reality a small vessel could lay alongside a larger one and be under its guns, it would not stop it from receiving musket fire and being boarded even at greater speeds, and this is not represented in the game. They tried high speed boarding and it was so broken they soon changed it back.

The problem with such a system is that eventually nearly everyone becomes a master builder for all classes and that is the only type produced making it impossible for anyone entering the ship crafting arena to be able to sell lower standard vessels. If you were to have such a system you would need to severely restrict specialization so for example you would only be able to specialize in crafting one type of ship e.g. master crafter in L'Oceans, and once you specialized that was it unless you reset your specialization and started again. I am sure most people would hate such a system especially as many players craft their own ships.

Although fine woods allowed control of quality of ships, the fact that they were not readily available for all caused an imbalance. Now some say this is good as it provides a reason to fight for control for fine wood ports, all that actually happened was people created more alts to give them access to the fine woods. Personally I do not mind RNG crafting, the odd chance of getting a special ship is good. It also creates a supply of cheap ships as the large clans and rich players craft large numbers of ships while trying to get that perfect 5/5 gold ship, and these surplus ships are sold off relatively cheaply. If all ships were crafted exactly to the specification you wanted then there would not be as many ships crafted and the availability of cheap ships would dry up.

I would be interested in testing this game.

They do it because it is easy patrol points for no risk. If you get sunk just get another and carry on.

As you say there should be no reason to run from an even fight, but if you start losing then running away should be counted as a victory as you have saved yourself from losing your ship. I am just trying to look at it from the other angle. If I am winning an even fight why would I run, but if I am losing and I get the chance to run I will and I would call that a victory. It is incumbent on the person who is winning the fight to not let you escape, if they do they have lost and should not be rewarded for that.

Personally I think it is more of a victory to escape a gank.

The problem with this type of mission is that it becomes hard to complete unless you have a constant stream of new players joining the game. I get the idea you are suggesting but it will not work in the long run.

So why are they a Captain specialization rather than a permanent mod?