Archaos

The Mortar Officer perk is a definite requirement when operating a mortar brig and it costs 2 perk points, but the problem is the perk reset permit costs 200 dubloons, so in order to participate in a port battle in the mortar brig you are looking at a minimum outlay of 400 dubloons to operate the mortar brig and then change back to your normal perks, or go around gimped with your perks when not using a mortar brig. Either drastically reduce the cost of a perk reset to maybe 20 dubloons or make the mortar officer perk into a permanent mod that can be installed on a mortar brig maybe at a one off cost of 200 dubloons.

Agreed, with the new AI traders cargoes it is usually beneficial to try and get the captured trader home as the capturing vessel has limited hold space and cannot usually take a lot of cargo, so all players should have at least 1 slot fleet as standard without having to use up a perk slot.

In general I think it is a good idea, but there are a couple of issues. First at what stage is the BR difference decided to work out the multiplier? For example A attacks B in same class of ship so you would expect a multiplier of 1, but just before instance closes C joins on side of A at extreme range and only manages to get to the battle and get off 1 broadside into an already sinking B, is the multiplier now 0.5 because it is 2v1 even though A would have completed the win on his own? This problem becomes worse in reinforcement zones where home nation can join late in battle. The other issue I have is rewards given for getting on the leaderboard. If someone is successful enough to top the leaderboard then they have already gained enough rewards for doing that (assuming appropriate rewards for PvP) so giving them additional monetary rewards only increases the gap between successful PvP'ers and less successful PvP'ers to the point where it negatively affects PvP. I can understand the need for some people for recognition of their prowess but any reward should be cosmetic only. After all we know that the leaderboards will be dominated by the same few players every week. Also there is already a leaderboard style competition being introduced into the game so there is no need for rewards for another one. But overall I like the idea of limiting the rewards based on the difficulty of the battle, especially the bit about trader points being 0 as traders are hardly a challenge and their cargo should be the reward.

Lets just bring in a DLC that lets us win any port battle we choose, or maybe a DLC that lets us win the game and not have to play anymore!!!!!

If you recall as well most players did not like aggressive AI because it just became a waste of time. The AI is stupid and it is easy to get away from them so all they end up doing is delaying your passage. The idea of aggressive AI sounds like a good idea, but in practice it will not work unless the AI become more intelligent and can act just like players would.

I agree that getting people out of the safe zones is good, but I am not so sure how the whole idea will pan out. I guess we will just have to wait and see. Having areas where there is more action because there are several nations ports close together is good, but the previous advice to people who only wanted to PvE was to find some quiet corner of the map and hunt AI fleets, now it looks like this will not be so easy.

Have I read this correct, that the only AI around a nations ports will be the same flag as the nation who owns the port? I read the part about them wandering into enemy areas but by how far? If I am correct in my assumptions there will be good and bad to it. It will just about kill PvE grinding of ship slots against AI as for a regular supply of AI you will have to travel to enemy waters and not just exit your own nation port and pick up random AI fleets. The PvP crowd will be happy with this because it may mean more targets closer to their home, but it could also mean more giving up on playing. Experienced players who have already done most of their grinding may not see big issues with this but new players may struggle to find fleets to grind especially when it comes to grinding to get the rare drops. It is going to make the new hunt and kill missions more difficult as you will have to search for these ships further away from your nations ports, which is good for hunters looking for people doing these missions but bad for people who wish to do these missions to get dubloons. It may promote more action on front lines as people will create outposts close to enemy ports to get the overlap of AI fleets and not have to travel so far to find them, but it will be bad for PvP hunters that used to hunt deep into enemy territory as these areas now will only be populated by the odd trader and not many people hunting AI fleets. I assume safe zones will become virtually deserted as there will be no enemy AI to attack. These are just a few of my thoughts with this announcement, it will be interesting to see how it plays out in the OW, whether it brings more action or makes it more difficult.

This was something I commented on when they changed the maps in NA, they should have made the map more like the Admiralty style charts shown in the video. The contrasting colors make it easy to read and see where shallows are. I also like the way they allow plots to be drawn on the chart.

What has been overlooked in this case is that up till the recent BR changes a Le Requin would not have been able to tag a L'Ocean into battle. Maybe with these new BR changes they need to consider some new rules for smaller ships tagging larger ones. I understand similar results could have been achieved using a larger vessel to tag and that the issue raised would still be the same, but the Le Requin has its own special issues that make it a good troll boat for this kind of thing.

The issue with trying to remove RNG from the crafting of gold ships is that you will most likely end up with a system where all competitive ships have to be gold. If you have a system where some hard to get item is used to guarantee gold ship crafting then that item will be constantly farmed and have a very high value which would take it out of the reach of the average player. You could have a special item that dropped from epic events that guaranteed gold ship crafting, but then epic events would be constantly farmed and RNG would still be involved regarding the drop. If you have a system of crafting X number of ships before getting gold then that is what people will do, but all the ships they craft that are not gold will just be recycled or sold to NPC and the resultant will be all gold ships that are very expensive. You could have a system where crafters could specialize in certain types of ships and they would have an increased chance for getting gold ships, but you would still need RNG involved or you would just get people setting up alts for each ship type they wanted to be gold. Personally I think you should be able to decide on the trim of the ship by adding some ingredient to the crafting process, but the additional slots should remain RNG and if we dont want RNG then all ships should be the same number of slots on crafting.

I think most insurance policies would have an "act of war" clause and as in this game the whole area is a war zone all insurance would be null and void. 🙂

I doubt very much that many players are going to forgo the PvP marks just to generate salt by denying a player insurance payout on the basic ship. To do this they would need to have a fleet perk and take the risk of getting the captured ship back to port, seems like a lot of effort just to generate some salt.

I do not think XP rewards is the problem preventing people going out to PvP, the perceived lack of competitiveness due to not having all slots open or not having the super rare upgrades is more of an issue. Maybe you mean faster slot grinding through PvP. After all there are not many people who level up purely on PvP. Extra XP would only make reaching maximum rank quicker.

Although in the current game people may not think the base value of a ship being significant, I think that may change judging by the comments from the Devs and from recent patches where it is becoming harder to make so much money in game. Recently cash rewards from killing OW fleets has reduced, the overloaded ship penalties have reduced the excessive profits that could be achieved in single run trading, they have said tow to port will be gone soon and a rework of the economy to reduce inflation, all this will likely make it harder to amass large amount of wealth so getting at least some money back from a ship loss may be welcome as the game progresses. One question I do have is, will the insurance cost be inbuilt into the ship or will it have to be a separate payment in addition to the ship?

I guess by that logic, the fact that PvP players kill their alts to get PvP marks shows what an utter waste of developers time and resources it is to placate the PvP only players. Cheat instead of playing the game.

Yes you can equip Gunnery Sgt and Flag officer at same time, same with other similar modules. So if you have multiple copies it is usually worth learning one and using others to make perm upgrades. For example Expert Carpentry can be slotted in your knowledge and Northern Master Carpenters in your permanent slot. Not sure if they plan to change this mod stacking soon.

This again becomes a topic where people can pick and choose when they use the reality argument. In reality yes, sailors of this time period did have sufficient tools to estimate their position fairly accurately at least once a day, they also had compasses and methods of estimating distance traveled and all this should lead to a conclusion that the player should be able to see their position on the map at least once in every 24 hour game period. But the other side of the coin is that in reality people were not able to communicate with each other over long distances to relay their position to others and there was no system of knowing your exact distance from various ports. So at the end of the day a decision has to be taken as to what system the Devs feel is best for the game rather than try to simulate reality. Personally I manage to get round quite well with just the protractor and the distances from ports and sometimes use the F11 if I want to record the position of an epic event so I can return later, but I wouldn't mind an occasional you are here position indicator to appear maybe once every in game day and maybe not appearing when in poor visibility due to inability to take sights.

What do you do when alts start downrating respected nation players? The system would be so open to abuse that it would be worthless. Well known players would be targeted with smear campaigns and spies would be given elevated status by alts and average players would not have much either way.

Would the following solve the problem: When a port battle commences the port automatically becomes open to all till the battle is decided. This way upon exit from port battle instance the new owners of the port can access it immediately even if the other team keep the instance open. The same rules would still apply regarding warships sailing from enemy ports.

I see plenty of people trying to say that sailing ships battled in storms, but this is incorrect. A storm is when winds reach force 10 on the Beaufort Scale (https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/guide/weather/marine/beaufort-scale). Sailing ships in these weather conditions would be seeking shelter not fighting battles. Battles may have been fought in bad weather but I would suspect that once weather started getting anywhere near gale conditions fighting would have ceased due to the sea conditions. Another thing people seem to be getting wrong is that it is either calm or stormy, forgetting that there are a range of conditions in between and weather is dynamic. The weather can be flat calm one minute but over the space of minutes or hours can become bad. So a battle may start in good conditions but weather can deteriorate during the battle and affect the battle outcome. Personally I think this is too complex to try and simulate with any resemblance to real weather especially when you take into account the time compression differences between OW and battle instance.

I voted NO. It may seem to be an interesting feature but all it will become is a pain in the backside. Look at the OW when there is reduced visibility and storms and at how many people log off and come back when the visibility has improved or teleport to another area of the map to play where the visibility is good. As people have mentioned the reality of it is that invasions would have been postponed in bad weather, the bad weather in game does not even take into account the reality that in certain weather conditions the lower gun ports on many ships would not have been able to be opened for fear of flooding. Yes, battles did take place in bad weather of an battle that had already started was overtaken by bad weather, but in most cases they would have been limited engagements or the onset of bad weather would have interrupted the battle. Also to be borne in mind that the weather experienced in game bears very little resemblance to actual Caribbean weather. You seldom actually get reduced visibility that covers half of the Caribbean and lasts for days at a time like in game unless you are in hurricane season and even then the frequency is nowhere near the number of times we experience it in game. You may get some localised heavy rain that disrupts visibility, but these are usually short lived and very localised. Fog as far as I am aware is not common in the Caribbean due to the high sea water temperatures. There is a reason they call it the Sunny Caribbean!!! If you wish to introduce poor visibility and weather into port battles, do it because you want it as a game feature rather than any simulation of reality, because if you try to go down the reality route then you best introduce trade winds, currents, hurricane season etc.

I do think there needs to be some definitive rules regarding this issue especially upon wipe before game launch. If it is just left as a free for all on a first come first served basis you will definitely get some deliberate griefing by people deliberately stealing other clan names. There are some long established clans in this game who have been there from the start and even some who existed in other games prior to this game coming out. Some people will want to take those names just for the pleasure of trolling others. Imagine the scenario when the game gets released and the servers go live for the first time after the wipe, player will have their rank and experience but no cash to form the clan, so the first people who can rush to reach the 100k required to form a clan will have the pick of all the names and abreviations and even if the person who is supposed to be the leader of a clan is logged on in time he is not guaranteed to get the name. This will just cause dissatisfaction when the game is released, which is the last thing this game needs.

I think we all know that the AI are stupid, but soon it will not make any difference even if they do escape because if the attacker gets you you will just respawn in the OW in one of your fleet traders ready to be tagged again. Regarding comments about better armed trader ships I think the reality of it is that the Indiaman was quite well armed for the opposition she was likely to face. The difference in game is that we have to constantly face other nations warships in traders because all nations are always at war with each other, where in reality wars were intermittent and the main threat faced was from pirates who did not sail large warships.

Such a message board would not work not only because the escort would want more than the profit as payment as someone mentioned earlier but because it would be open to abuse by alts reading the boards and thus knowing the traders destination. Basically as it currently stands in the game most trading is more like smuggling where traders sneak into enemy ports at quiet times and do their best not to advertise where they are going to and what they are carrying.

The Le Requin cannot be captured as it is a DLC ship so what would be the point in boarding it if they surrendered if this was a mechanic. People would just use it as target practice till it sank then loot it. So it would not be much of a feature but rather a sign to say "sink me before looting".