Archaos

The biggest fear of big nations losing ports regularly to the AI is that eventually people will setup alt clans in that nation and snatch the port from the AI as the hostility window is random, and who ever can get enough points in the hostility will own the port after the battle. All they have to do then is to restrict access to other clans in that nation to render the port ineffective. For example today the Nassau hostility window opened at 18:00, so if a group of Swedish alts had set up in Russia they could of had a good chance of raising the hostility enough so they got the port, and there is nothing the rest of the Russian nation could do to stop them.

I think with the changes to hostility the AI raids are no longer having one of the desired effects. As I understood it one of the reasons for the AI raids were introduced was to help smaller nations to take ports from bigger nations. If the big nation lost the port the small nation had a chance to swoop in and get the port from the AI. But with the new hostility this is seldom possible because the ports that are attacked are usually away from the front line. Sweden lost Saint John's but only Sweden are in a position to raise hostility on the port, so the AI raid becomes nothing more than a slight setback.

Same could be said for any port with forts. The Brits in that battle actually took the fight to the Dutch but not in a fleet brawl.

Again, good work, but surprised the editor did not go into more detail regarding the Dutch loss at Haulover, considering he took part in that battle. The forts in that battle dismasted one each of friend and foe, so were not as instrumental as the editor makes out.

Well the screening out of a PB fleet is a win, and the excellent response from GB players should be a warning to the Swedes, that if GB gets their act together they are a force to be reckoned with. Not many nations can field a screening fleet of 50+ players at that time of day.

Again a good read, but surprised that there was no mention of the Swedish Southern front stalling with the failure of the attack on Great River. It may only be a temporary setback but it was notable because of the excellent turnout of GB Captains, with over 50 ships participating in the screening action which prevented their port battle fleet getting to the port. Keep up the good work.

Its been about 40 years since I read the Alexander Kent Bolitho novels, but I remember them as being a good read at the time.

So is the rest true?

Is that not the whole point of having a front line system? By your logic they may as well remove front lines and let any port be attacked from anywhere.

If that is the case then they are limiting RvR as they become barriers to expansion.

The problem with free towns is that it defeats the whole mechanic of having front lines. Take for example the current situation with GB, they own nearly all the ports along the coast from Tumbado down to Great Corn and with the new front line system the front lines are the three ports to the North (Tantun Cuzamil, Tulum and Xpu Ha) and to the South (Grindstone, Blufields and Haulover), but if GB wants to expand further along these coasts they are limited by the fact that these ports or others close by still remain vulnerable to attack from Tumbado of Great Corn, so they are always on the front line and there is nothing that can be done to stop that. Russia now has a problem in the gulf of mexico because they have El Rancho smack in the middle of their coast line, so they always have a front line there which ties up peoples outposts. Without hostility from free towns we could have a true front line system for RvR. Free towns could still be used for raiding.

There was suggestions put forward regarding this a long while back. All that needs to happen is that a nation with no ports on the map can take hostility from a free town but once they capture a port then this is no longer possible. So basically if you have no ports then you can choose which area on the map you want to start your RvR from and choose the appropriate free port to start from.

Was almost same story at PaP

I think he refers to the fact that in a port with the LH discount and tools and provisions available you can craft as many LH contracts as you have tools and provisions for as it only costs you 300 LH to produce a 500 LH contract.

It does not matter how long it takes to obtain them, the fact is they will become the new "must have" and the first nation to get sufficient numbers crafted will rule the RvR which in turn makes it easier for them to craft more and continue their domination. There are players out there already with over 100m Reals and hundreds of thousands of doubloons and the ability to sail fleets of Indiamen almost uninterrupted between ports, so they will be producing these ships within hours rather than days.

I agree with what you are saying that the mechanics are very poor, but there was plenty of time to test these mechanics and not many people used that time effectively to test and raise issues with the mechanic. Edit: Mind you there were some questions asked by people that were never answered by the dev team, so it sort of puts people off testing mechanics as when they raise genuine concerns they are ignored.

Been asked for many times before, but they not interested in adding it at the moment, most probably as they have more important things to do and only one programmer to do them.

Your response to someones question was that they could bring an Indiaman and my response that the game mechanics of the raid does not allow your fleet ship enter the instance which make it pointless to bring your own Indiaman unless as you say you wish to have a diversion (which will not work as the Indiaman in the instance is demasted so unless you use a lot of repairs it will still have some obvious damage). The whole point was about the weight of the chest and the messing around you have to do to get it out, but instead of accepting that the mechanics could be better you prefer to bring up useless arguments to try and justify it.

How do you get the chest into your Indiaman into the instance as fleet ships are not allowed to enter. You cannot bring the captured one out as you do not have the 2 fleet ship perk and you cannot overload your warship and then transfer it over when you leave the instance as the game will not allow you overload your ship.

Will not work with a neutral or free town either unless you have the special key to unlock the chest, otherwise they have to be taken back to the port where you took the mission. Not sure where you get the special key they talked about. You also have to capture the indiaman with the chest as it is too heavy to take on warship if I can remember correctly, so bringing your own indiaman with reps becomes a problem unless you have the 2 fleet ship perk as your fleet ship does not enter the battle.

Remember as well that the chests have a timer of 2 hours, so if you do all 6 and have a long sail back to port then the first few chests will expire.

Are you attempting to place the contract in an enemy port, because you are unable to do that. You can buy the goods but cannot place contracts in enemy ports.

Can we just have attacks on ports that are likely to meet the criteria for being attacked then, because at the moment there are multiple attacks on ports that are never likely to meet the criteria for being attacked so people are not bothering to try and defend them.

You will not defend a port by just sinking the Indiamen as the warships will rack up the points very quickly if they get to the circles.

I have attempted to do some battles, but in each case there have been insufficient players to be able to defeat the AI. I have also raised queries to get some of the mechanics clarified and not received any response to the questions raised. I even opened a new thread with a question but there has been no response from the Devs or from any player which shows the lack of interest. I want to be able to defeat these AI attacks but the general lack of interest makes it impossible.