'Sharpe

Oh, I totally agree! I'm not requesting an instant-turn that is inaccurate to sailing physics, just that rudder controls be separated from sail controls. If a ship has no current movement, forwards or backwards, then changing course via rudder should have no effect. The situation I'm trying to avoid is: start at full sails with speed, and I set my sails to depower to a lower setting. My ship has a certain momentum that will decrease slowly, and during that time I need to steer my ship. Or another instance, I'd like to stay at battle sails throughout the entirety of a fight. Right now, making any course adjustment click brings me back to full sails again. Incredibly frustrating.

Hi dev team, I'm having a lot of fun in the backer's build and am very much looking forward to this superb game. There's really only one disappointment I can find in the early gameplay, it's the fact that the right-click functionality for ship movement seems to be the only way to control rudder. The problem is that right-clicking controls not only the rudder, but also the sails. The game interprets a right-click as "go towards", so if my sails are purposefully at 25% and I'm looking to merely change course or angle for a better shot while maintaining the same sail setting, a right-click to course-adjust will also automatically bring sails to 100% because it thinks I want to go towards that location as quickly as possible. This is obviously quite frustrating and takes one "out of the moment" - feels a bit arcadey. It's also caused me to miss stern rakes, fall out of formation, etc, all because I don't realize my sail setting is inexplicably moving towards 100%. Maybe I'm old school when it comes to this genre but, to me, sail settings and rudder settings should always be distinct from each other - the player always keeps in the back of their mind the state of each. Once they become linked unexpectedly, it gets disconcerting quickly, and you lose that connection to the sense of sailing. I do think that the right-click "go towards" functionality definitely has a place in this game, especially during large engagements where you need to plot courses and then divert your attention elsewhere. So, my suggestion would be as follows: 1- One single right click simply sets your bearing towards the direction you choose. Sails are not affected. 2- Two right clicks is "go towards" the chosen location, at speed, and continue on once you arrive (this is the same as the current single right-click). 3- Three right clicks is "go towards" the chosen location, at speed, and anchor there (this is the same as the current double right-click). Cheers - Sharpe

I love the new "fixed enemy strength" option! Thanks for listening to community feedback on this one. But can we get this option for Medium difficulty as well? I don't want to have the other bonuses associated with Easy difficulty, but I also do want Fixed Enemy Strength so my victories feel like they matter in the larger campaign.

Don't know why the devs can't just make port battles all day affairs where victory points can be racked up whenever - OR, an even better idea that has been proposed, have three separate battles spread throughout the day, you need to win 2 of 3 to win the port. Seems completely straightforward and yet this is never discussed; one can hope this is the plan Ink says is being worked on.

Will Raids be announced when they are formed so that the defending nation has time for its players to get in position to intervene? I strongly recommend this - otherwise you're going to get sneak attack raids, and no defenders who happen to be passing by and see the instance will want to jump into a battle solo against 20 enemy players. But, if you announce that a raid will be happening at X port in 45 minutes, then you will see more PvP.

I'm new to this forum so maybe this is a well-known answer, but the larger question is why historical battles are needed within the campaign in the first place? I understand the concern about runaway easiness if there is no scaling, but that's only if you are trying to enforce the order of battles and locations playing out exactly as it did. That's fun for single-mission players but it makes little sense in the context of a campaign where your force size and equipment stays consistent - but the enemy's does not. Why not provide two campaign options - one that sticks to the chain of battles as they occurred, and the other where all battles, even starting from 1861, occur purely as a manifestation of moving your forces around a strategic map. This would be a "dynamic" campaign but I can't imagine the coding required would be prohibitive. Basically the map would have cities/areas worth VP, and your army has a certain number of move points per turn. Move to gain VP, the AI will do the same, and eventually there will be a turn you will meet on the same hex. That launches the ability to deploy to a battle. A few random events could be interspersed as well. This is basically Total War style, nothing ground-breaking, but with this game already having a very nice system for equipment and troop management, and terrain that can auto generate into any "battleground", seems like the only thing needed would be to add the rules for map movement. I wouldn't except a Falcon 4 campaign or anything like that, but basically a simple way to generate battles over time with lasting attrition for both sides. Would solve the biggest problem in this game currently, in my opinion.

I am on Antietam now and just noticed this as well. When my army was around 40k, it said I would be up against 68k Union troops. I raised my army to around 60k after the prelim battles and now I'm up against 81k Union troops. This is the wrong way to structure the game IMO. Here is why: -I invested in the reconnaissance trait so that I could see the enemy army size and know approximately what I need before each battle. If this piece of data is scalable and changes magically to enforce some type of historical "accuracy," what is the point of spending career points on reconnaissance? What good is knowing the enemy army size if it's a moving target? -I was sitting at 100 reputation points before Antietam, but decided to spend 18 points to get more troops before this battle. I figured the extra balance of manpower was worth the 5 point morale boost I'd lose. But now the enemy numbers have shifted to counter-act my acquisition, and I've lost the 5 point morale boost essentially for nothing. -This is not even mentioning the loss of immersion when you feel the game is essentially cheating you to make things play out in a certain way. I'll never understand the insistence on the "on the rails" experience for this game - in my current playthrough I've had victory in every battle so far, you'd think by Antietam the Union would not be throwing 81k fresh troops at me. Some deviation from historical events is to be expected and I don't think anyone would complain if the campaign were to be branched based on performance, with some alternate history scenarios (or, at the very least, proper scaling of forces based on past battle results) but this is another discussion entirely.

Literally, shut the F up and don't bring real life politics into a sailing video game. You don't understand the frustration and anger many of us feel at having a popular vote-losing fascist elected as the global representative of our country, and I truly hope you never will. Please don't assume that everyone who plays U.S. is in favor of the current American political agenda, because that is not true. Back to Naval Action, this is a "sandbox game." The admin has stated so many times. In the sandbox, sometimes things ebb, and sometimes things flow. There have been at least two occasions since I started playing this game (2015) that the U.S. was pushed back to only one port. You know what? It made us better as a nation. I hope you can learn the same without crying to Maxim. Don't talk about losing ports due to "having jobs." Your prime time is during our work hours. Our prime time is during your sleep hours. If push really came to shove, who is really more able to actually log onto Naval Action? Yes, it sucks you may choose to wake up in the middle of the night. That is a choice you make. You might lose a little sleep. For us, we literally cannot take off work to play a video game without losing our jobs. How dare you preach to us about commitment to a damn video game.

Hiyo! But why is the rum gone???!

I'm not sure what is going on here. Pirates have made a choice. They chose to side with Johnny Depp, Hollywood, and whatever else rotten that you can pull from American entertainment exports. This is their ethos, this is what they identify with. When the game fails to provide a true Pirate faction, those who want to land grab under the "cool" Pirate flag are nothing more than sycophants. As proud Dutch, why would you offer these players a fair deal and expect anything in return? I know for me personally, if I had a chance to fight any faction, including the perfidious Danish Russians, I would choose to fight the Pirates instead. These are people who have seen the beauty and majesty of the Age of Sail, and instead said: "No! I identify with Johnny Depp and the giant squid from those movies! Who took the rum??" (sic) There is no shared decency for these types of people. They denigrate the historical reality of Pirates, and the game assists them. It's best to ignore their plight altogether, as it's been proven that - until this game provides a real Pirate mode - those who are attracted to the black "Pirate" flag of RvR are likely to abandon the game in search of easier pursuits (Clash of Clans, etc).

Great post Elric, spot on. How many players are deterred from the U.S. faction because it is "Very Easy." I certainly was when I first joined the game, I went Spanish. Once I realized the U.S. were undermanned and by no means were any "easier" than the other nations, I went to the nation I wanted to join in the first place. These are all classifications based on some long gone antiquated notion of what the game has become. They are also inconsistent with the idea of a sandbox - in a sandbox game, how can a static menu that hasn't changed in 2+ years accurately depict which nation is more challenging to play as? This should be a very easy hotfix to roll out, and yet hasn't been done in 2+ years, perhaps longer. I also consider the way the servers are labeled to be extremely misleading. Why "EU" and "USA"? There are plenty of US-based players on the EU server, and vice versa. Why not let the ping just speak for itself? If I was joining this game for the first time as a US-based player and didn't know any better, I'd naturally just choose the server that screams at me: "USA". And I'd find an empty population, and probably give up the game after a few days. It's no fun playing in an empty server. How many customers has Naval Action lost because of this??

Предложение для портовых сражений: - "Порт битвы" на самом деле 3 отдельные сражения в течение того же дня. Нация, которая выигрывает 2 из 3 боев, побед порта. -Первый Бой запускается так же, как и сейчас. Это позволяет агрессоры, по крайней мере контролировать время одной из битв. -7 Часов после первого боя, начинается вторая битва. 7 часов после того, как второй бой, начинается третий бой. -Это Будет охватывать все часовые пояса. Обладатель порта является тот, кто может выиграть свой собственный часовой пояс, плюс, по крайней мере, один из других. Или потерять во время вашего собственного часового пояса и выиграть два других. В то время как обороняющаяся нация может обижаться для одной из битв, как это кажется случай сегодня, они, несомненно, сможет сплотить достаточно сил, чтобы быть конкурентоспособными в 2-х из 3-х боев в течение дня. А если нет, то, возможно, их территория растянута слишком тонким - возможно, он находится на побережье, прилегающей к вражеской столице, где это не разумно ожидать, чтобы навсегда защитить такие порты в любом случае. Имея 3 битвы распространились в течение дня дает Я думаю, что лучший шанс для честной конкуренции. Вражеские альянсы всегда будет делать вещи трудно, в рамках системы - так поэтому давайте Поимка системе, как много игроков и времени, как это возможно.

The good: -Raids -True Pirate mode The awful: -Eliminating hostility, you "buy" a port battle? How does this create gameplay? How does this create immersion? -Return of Lord Protector just about ruins this game for anyone not in Euro time zone. At least players around GMT have the ability to wake up in the middle of the night if they want to PB for an American time zone port. People in American time zones do not have the same option to simply take off work in the middle of the day to PB on European time. The idea that all timezones are equal for a Lord Protector system is inherently flawed. -NPC changes. AI should never attack players on a PvP server. That is why we play on a PvP server, to fight other players!! Back when NPCs still had aggro, it would ruin PvP to have to dodge ridiculous AI tags from ships that posed no actual threat of harm or fun. There has NEVER been a PvP fight that was enhanced by the sudden addition of an AI ship, "elite", or not. Now we have to deal with this again. Why???

"Night flips" implies that the U.S. nation is secretly scheming, conspiring to take ports at a time that is inconvenient for both sides. In fact, your night time is our prime time. The earth is round and doesn't epicentre upon GMT (+3). In fact, this game places a strange restriction so that most of the U.S. primetime is off limits for port battles. It's actually incredibly fortunate that enough U.S. players stick with RvR in this game, knowing that we have only an hour or two (if you happen in an eastern U.S. time zone) to even participate. All of players west of Texas are locked out of port battles entirely. I don't see why the U.S. playerbase should be criticized and tribunalized for managing to scrape together a force to compete in a port battle, and then have that force mocked roundly by the enemy. We apologize - there have been so many of our players that have given up on the concept of port battles (and this game entirely) because of the arbitrary PB restriction placed upon us during our prime time. The Danish and Russian defenders chose to participate at an hour inconvenient for them - that's great! I think we all love this game, and love those who have the vigor for off-peak gaming. I should also mention that many U.S. players share this vigor for off-peak gaming, however the European prime time coincides with our work hours, and it is a lot more difficult for one to take off work to play a game than it is to wake up during the night when one has no other commitments. After dealing with the dual obstacles of an incomplete primetime window for RvR, and off-peak gaming that requires us to miss work and potentially lose real-life financial earnings, I would say it's not fair to criticize the U.S. players that have still stuck with and support this game, for wanting just a piece of the action. My humble opinion.

Just because the generation of hostility needs improvement (I agree it's too easy for the attackers now) doesn't mean we need to bring back port timers. You're vacillating between extremes. In no type of combat game should the defender choose when the attack happens. There are ways to tweak the ruleset to encourage PvP while hostility is being driven...this should be the goal, not denying some playerbases the opportunity to play the full game.

Great points Havelock! No doubt there would be details like these to be ironed out. I put some thoughts inline.

Small battles, challenges in global chat. These are traits of a lobby style game. If these are the best ways to find action, it's no longer an OW PvP game. As I stated this proposal is to encourage PvP within the operational confines of an OW-style game. I also think you are confounding "predictable" with "balanced." Predictable in this case means I can read the list of convoy routes that are scheduled and know I have a good chance of encountering other players along that route. I say 'good chance' because it's not a 100% guarantee , as not all convoys scheduled will actually launch. Keeps some sense of anticipation/dynamism. There will still be disadvantaged battles and advantaged battles.

Currently the OW is an extremely inefficient lobby for finding PvP battles. In an ideal state, the open world would represent the kind of immersion we all hope for, while allowing players to actually find each other and have a good chance of PvP battle. I am not advocating for a lobby style game, I actually quite like the OW. This proposal aims to simply make the OW a place where more predictable action can be found, and (importantly) that the action actually feels rooted in the larger war struggle. The proposal: All cargo hauling is done by AI fleets. Cargo convoys are set by the gameworld automatically to occur fairly frequently between two ports near to a front line. Additionally, players can schedule custom convoys. Each convoy launch will be known in advance (exact time) by the launching nation and allies. All other nations will know that it will launch between a given 10 minute period, but not the exact time. This is important. Cargo convoys only launch if at least one player has signed on as an escort. There is no way to transport cargo between ports unless at least one player is escorting a merchant AI convoy. If at least one player does not sign on to escort the convoy, it will not leave port and the goods will not be transported until it can be re-scheduled. Merchant AI convoys on the OW are slow and vulnerable. 75% of player speed. This would have the following ramifications: Funneling players (escorts and interceptors) into known places and times. Encouraging use for lineships on OW. (Valuable convoy? Now is a great time for you and your friends to use your Pavels and Bucs) PvP-seekers will be helping the economy by signing on to escort convoys, and crafters are helping generate PvP. It's symbiotic. If a nation does not escort its convoys, their economy will fail to function. It's that simple. Escorts MUST be done. And PvP will occur.

I like keeping OW. But I think the game needs to be flexible about some previously held beliefs. There is just not sufficient playerbase for a world this size. I started playing this game last year and have always been treating the world as a place that will come more alive once the playerbase increases. If this increase is not going to happen, the OW is always going to seem sterile. I'm not sure if the answer is increased OW travel speed once a certain distance from shore, making it easier to go where the fights are. I'm not sure if it's increasing the impetus for such fights to occur, via a notoriety system, or better rewards, or other. But the reason OW is disliked by some is that when populated by 150-600 players it doesn't feel like a robust, living world. It feels like an inefficient use of space if the intent is to get people to find each other and fight.

Hopefully there are changes to the PB initiation mechanic in the new patch. I like your idea, and I also like the very simple idea that has been posted of simply having the PB occur at a random city within the contested region. The PB swords do not appear until the time of battle, and their location is not announced ahead of time. This seems to have so many benefits: 1- The assaulting ships will need to time their ingress carefully. For each region, the geography and wind will be critical in determining where they amass ahead of the battle, and when they begin to move in. 2- Defenders will need to be nimble as well, flowing as one to the correct city in real time. 3- Since battle location can occur at any city within the region, we won't have the problem of essentially uncaptureable regions once terrain is brought into PBs. Certainly some harbors will have an easier layout than others, and it adds nice variability to the outcomes.

As someone who plays entirely from the "deck", this is much needed. I put deck in quotes because I'm really playing from 20 ft high in the mainmast. It's pretty immersion-killing.

These are fantastic additions admin, keep up the good work, I really like the direction of this.

I've never been a fan of the circle and this just reinforces that. I hope when land is introduced the game can make use of shallows/islands to create a more natural combat perimeter with only a few tangible exits, because the mechanics used by the circle (sudden complete armor loss) seem like they will always be ripe for this type of unfortunate bug.

Yes to this!

Diplomacy & proper Piracy mechanics are sorely needed. They are the #1 thing that keeps the RvR gameplay from appearing to be polished.