Archaos

Not totally sure what you mean by "delivery order" but if it is any automated system that magically transports the goods between ports then I disagree with it. If you mean a system where you can set up a contract for someone to pick up and deliver your goods to another port or even another person for a price, then I think it would have merits, but as Victor says there would have to be some way to avoid scams and what happens if they are unable to deliver because they got sunk or captured. Things like this are what should be considered for a good self sustaining economy rather than reliance on artificial trade goods.

Costs more than that if you have not bought the permit for an outpost already and if all your outposts are used you cannot do this.

I think what he means is if you get sunk in a battle the game teleports you to the closest port and you have to use a basic cutter or buy another vessel in that port to sail back to one of your outpost ports. What he wants is the ability in this instance to teleport from this port back to a port where he has an outpost rather than have to sail back in a basic cutter. To tell the truth I wouldnt mind something like this when you have been sunk and have no ships in fleet with you. But I guess care should be taken that people do not use it to deliver a ship somewhere and use this as a quick teleport back.

This whole argument has been covered before and until pirates get their own special game mechanics they are just another nation and can sail the same ships and conquer ports as other nations.

As a trader I would like to explain the reasoning I personally dont bother with sail repairs or even cannons for that matter. With the new speed mechanics you trader loaded with cargo is slow anyway and when you read the setup of the solo raider you realize that if you get caught there is very little chance of escape unless you can force them into a bad tag and even if you do that then you still have to deal with the retag (see other topics on the whole issue of retagging). So if you accept that being caught means losing then you take steps to mitigate loss, sail repairs and cannons cost money and are unlikely to change the outcome of the battle. On my dedicated trader alt I tend to go with the numbers game of sailing with 3 trader vessels, if caught by a solo raider then I do my best to have him chase me while my other 2 traders escape, so I lead him away from them. My aim is to keep the raider engaged long enough and get him far enough away from my fleet that they can escape even if they are using the control perk. If he goes after one of my fleet vessels I get the other one to follow me and we head off in a different direction. If I am successful, I lose only 1/3 of my ships and cargo. Depending on the cargo I am hauling I also like to mix it up so that the most expensive cargo is in one ship, that way it is a bit of a gamble that the good stuff will get away. Another tip for traders is not to sail along the coast if you can help it. It may give you more protection from the coastal forts but the raiders know the weak points in the coastal defenses and that is where they will wait for you. With the current lack of GPS positioning anyone out at sea for an extended amount of time moving round on different courses will eventually not be too sure of exactly where they are or will have to constantly recheck their position using a third party site, this is a distraction for them. So when you sail get clear of the coast as quick as possible till you are well out of sight of land and then calculate where to make your alteration of course to head to your destination. The distance in the trader tool can help here. This way even if you are spotted by an alt leaving port they do not know where you are heading.

Sorry I think this just allows the richer players or big clans control the market. Trade good should only be sold direct to players and not through contracts. Contracts should only be allowed for manufactured goods used for shipbuilding. At the moment it is harder for newer and more casual players to get their foot onto the trading ladder to make money as many of the more profitable trade goods are instantly bought up with buy contracts by rich people and clans that can afford to buy them up and stockpile them till they can achieve a good price in the sell port. Just use the third party trade tools or even in game trade tool to look at the best prices on some of the trade goods and where they are available, then go to those ports even within 20 minutes of maintenance and I can almost guarantee that there is no more in stock for sale as they have already been bought up. The whole idea of changing some gameplay in the economy was to get more traders out into the open world, but at the moment it is very difficult for the small independent trader to make any profit. I personally have tried running an alt purely as a trader trying to chase round filling delivery orders just to see how viable it is to level up a characters xp and crafting by doing delivery orders as well as make a bit of income, and it is a very slow process. Usually the delivery orders have to be delivered to a port 1.5 to 2 hours sail away, yet for the same goods you could almost make as much profit just selling the trade good at a nearby free port, but usually the price there has already been reduced to 1. I have very seldom been able to get to the port where an item is indicated as being sold cheaply and still get it to fill a delivery order even when I log on just as the servers come back online. I usually have to fill the delivery order in several ports buying the goods at higher prices, thus dropping my profit margins. The down side of letting the big clans control the market is that they can defend their traders and sail in convoys which in turn reduces the targets for raiders. The game should encourage more small traders to get out in open world. Sorry it is a rant a bit off topic, but I just do not want to see any other deterrents to small traders in the game.

And remove all the intrigue about who is sabotaging your markets.

It is most probably being done by alts so knowing which nation their main is from will not solve the issue no matter who you declare war on. The best way to stop trade good stripping is to not allow contracts to be set up for trade goods. You have to physically be in the port to buy the goods from NPC's. That way it also fits in with your little roleplay. You notice 5 textile mills that were on sale a few minutes ago are not there anymore, so go look which traders are leaving port.

Then let them hunt me in open world, not look through manifests to find where I trade. Most know the likely trade routes anyway but why let them know what cargo I am carrying, let them take pot luck and maybe be rewarded with a hold full of rotting fish.

Please no, this would just be used as a tool to find out peoples trade routes.

You mentioned in your earlier post that having a mixed fleet in a port battle would allow for some real tactics? How can the battle commander apply real tactics when he is not aware in advance of what assets are at his disposal until the battle starts? It just becomes a free for all then and the side that gets the better ships in or the side that has more disciplined players who agree in advance who and what ships will enter the battle will have the advantage.

This is a good suggestion that has been raised and discussed previously. But the issue is how does the battle commander pre-plan his strategy when the battle is open to anyone who has gained hostility. You will end up replacing battles of 25 v 25 1st rates with battles of fixed numbers of the maximum classes that are allowed, because battle commanders would ensure they had the requisite number of each class of vessel available to join the battle before the 3 minutes was up and random smaller vessels could join. So every battle would become 3 first rates, 5 2nd rates, 5 3rd rate, 6 4th and 6 5th rates or whatever the set figures were against the same defending fleet.

I'm not saying the current system works, but you need to have some system. Many systems have been proposed but I think you will find that most have some flaws which also make them not work. Look through the many threads on the subject and you will see arguments and counter arguments, hence my comment about proposing a system that works rather than just saying the current system does not work due to bad design. I never played PoTBS after early access, but I have heard people mention a few good things about some of the systems from that game. I also think care should be taken implementing systems from what is essentially a failed game without ensuring they will work in this game. You originally said PB fleets should be based on a battle rating limit to allow mixed fleets, and I pointed out that this has been raised before in other threads and it was difficult to find a solution of how to achieve this without going down a port battle lobby route which would detract from the OW nature of this game. I hope that NA Legends or whatever they will eventually call it will have such a lobby system to set up different battles, but that is another topic. You also have to look at why PB's are limited to 25v25, is it because they want it to be a level playing field or is it because that is the maximum the game can handle? If the game could handle more, you could forget screening altogether and allow anyone that turned up to enter the battle, I am sure they would be epic battles with multiple types of ships, but sadly I dont think the system could handle that.

So what is the solution? Propose a system that will achieve what most people want.

This has been raised in other threads and I think most players agree with it, the problem is how do you achieve it short of having a PB lobby which would detract from the OW side of the game. The PB commanders already struggle to stop randoms entering battles, so how do they manage when there are battle rating limits, some random entering in a 1st rate suddenly takes up the space the commander had earmarked for 2 4th rates etc.

I dont do many port battles, but if the restrictions were removed then wouldnt every not shallow water PB become a first rate battle? I am all for mixed fleet port battles but how to achieve this without having to resort to a lobby system would be difficult.

I do not think that giving pirates teleport access to freeports is a good option as it will give them good access to trade goods and mean everyone will create a pirate alt just to be able to quickly teleport to freeports to buy trade goods. Also giving them easy access to every other nations ports again gives them too much access to goods for trading and items hard to get in other nations. This will turn the pirates into the biggest traders in the game. I do think pirates should have special mechanics that differentiate them from nationals, but again this must be hard mode or you will have the game swamped with pirates. We already have the pirates as a big faction on all servers way more than they were in reality. Pirates should never really be able to challenge nations in fleet battles. I am not a historian and I am sure someone will correct me if I am wrong, but pirates would seldom even challenge a navy ship and would prefer to hit traders and do the odd raid on a port.

By a random popup I meant more a note that said your ships master or something like that reckons there is some bad weather on the horizon, or it looks like we could be in for some fog, not that it would be a weather bulletin and also the chances that it would be true would be 50/50 at best.

I guess if they really thought this was something they wanted to put in the game then you could get a random popup or something like that saying bad weather or poor visibility is likely. But I do not think it should be something that was guaranteed even local knowledge and experience could often be wrong. How would you feel if planned to lurk in dense fog or rain outside an enemy harbour and it did not happen?

I say contracts should only be able to be filled by players not NPC's. Regarding alts, you will never be able to stop their use, people will always find ways round it. It has to be remembered as well that you have to fund the alts and with money not being as easy to make as it was before that can be difficult. They have to create a system where the alts have to be played actively to generate income, which is why I say they should not allow NPC's to fill contracts. As it currently stands if you have amassed enough money you can control the market and this becomes self sustaining with little input.

What would be the benefit of adding slaves to the game? We all know it happened historically, but what would having them actually add to the game play apart from being another trade good of which their are already plenty of in the game.

Personally I think placing contracts for trade goods should not be allowed. It is frustrating as a trader sailing round ports looking for trade goods to fill delivery orders only to find that most have been bought up by contracts from people who have a lot of money. Just look round at the number of ports especially the ones that produce pirate goods and the ones close by that consume pirate goods, you will usually find that there is almost a permanent buy order in the producing port and you seldom see the sell price in the consume port rise above 1. This is because people with a lot of money buy them and stockpile them to sell immediately the sell price rises. The delivery orders for the same goods are usually quite a distance away. For manufactured and crafting goods I can agree that the increase of 1 gold in bid price is frustrating as it favors the person who has more time online or the person who can automate the process if this is possible in game.

I remember crossing the Pacific on a ship in the 80's at a time when we did have weather forecasting services and we were a weather reporting ship and had to send weather reports several times a day and they still got the weather forecast wrong. We sailed for 2 weeks in thick fog and even though we always put this in our weather reports, the forecast always came back saying clear weather. I am sure it was just a single bank of fog that followed us for 2 weeks. It was tiring though spending most of every watch staring into a radar because you could not see anything else.

When I read the original suggestion I thought it was a good idea, but you are quite right with the point you raise here and it also makes me realize why they are not currently giving excessive rewards for PvP and why the game currently seems to reward better for PvE. People abusing game mechanics only have themselves to blame why the game seems to have become more PvE oriented.

Weather forecasting services were not very big at this time historically. Most weather forecasting was done by local knowledge and experience.