MaliceA4Thought

You would be amazed at how much rum was left behind in those ports.. The fleet is fully supplied now on Rum for weeks Malice

Yeah that makes sense of this picture now Malice

So are we going to just insult each other or settle this in the only place that counts.. on the open sea. All the rhetoric in the world will not change anything decided at sea. Whatever the result, it will be good to be fighting. “First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, and then you win.” Malice

Whilst I don't disagree with you in many ways,I don't believe in a sandbox, you can write a rule for everything, and as such I believe there is also a category of "use of a mechanic that by all commonsense would be seen, and deemed an exploit" and perhaps that is the rule that needs to be written to be all encompassing. For me that would require a strong warning and a one off temp suspension before any ban (or my suggestion above) would take place with a watch on the account in future. M

I am personally a fan of what some other games do (have done) in situations like this... A separate server is set up for the lawless and people who "twist" the rules (I won't use the term exploit here) for their own benefit. (not just talking this example, but for all examples). If found guilty of either an actual exploit not reported, or of a broad breach of a rule (or mechanic) that by all commonsense is seen as an exploit, or twist, then all accounts belonging to that person are reset to 0 and moved to the separate server with no return and no ability to post on the forums. Because of the no return, I would actually suggest that this is preceeded by a 14 day ban from the game and forums to allow a cool down but with a close watch being placed on that player subsequently before a perma server move. On that separate server, there is no tribunal, there is no policing.. its a server that just exists for the lawless and has no forum post capability. This does not prevent the player playing the game (after the 14 day ban), but it does put like people together in the game where they can enjoy each others company. Many are arguing about whether this is an exploit and whether leniancy is called for.. I see this as some people arguing that swearing is fine "because every other game doesn't stop it and it's the internet" Sorry not a valid excuse in my mind. The devs of this game have set standards and are prepared to back them up. I would think, although I have no proof, that for once, the silent majority is in full agreement with this and is happy to see that this game is NOT prepared to degenerate into another.. oh never mind it's just the internet. Malice

there's a separate section called patch notes in the forum already. M

We are seeing a rise in the amount of scamming when getting strangers to build ships, or high level mods for those ships. I propose there should be a method of crafting known as escrow crafting to prevent this... In this option, the builder would preload the BP into the escrow trade window. The requestor ( and crafter if they want to) would load required parts and any goods you transfer would be held in a "temp warehouse" that both players have access to.. the party doing the building would have access to these materials but only from this "temp warehouse" which would be used up on the build and the goods crafted would also go into the "temp warehouse". Once completed, there would be the accept buttons... if BOTH players hit accept, then the residue of goods provided would go to the building player, the built object (ship, whatever) would go to the other.. any money would also be transferred. If either (or both) hit cancel, then all parts placed in temp by requestor are returned, ship is removed. CN and BP lottery are only decided once both players hit accept and are sent to the builder.. this would stop a possible abuse where you could keep crafting in this way and cancelling out until you received a BP or CN. Likewise, in the lottery of stats for the ship.. these are not disclosed until ship is transferred.. (apart from colour and defined extra.. eg Yellow with Planking). A system such as this would prevent ANY scamming in crafting as the requestor can see what has been used and produced and the crafter can see that money and/or goods have been provided for the build before goods are transferred. As to the game itself.. I see the easiest way to do this as being a trade instance.. like a combat instance in OW.. the trade instance has the temp warehouse associated with it (so that is deleted upon exiting after transferring or resetting the goods) the trade instance continues until either both players have hit accept, or one player hits cancel. That would stop the need for multiple instances of a temp warehouse being setup and possibly filling up the database and storage systems. Honestly, I wouldn't have thought this was a huge job, but not one that should pre-empt the content being delivered.. however as we get to larger ships and high end mods for the ships, this scamming will become much more common. It could also serve as a base to handle in-clan crafting and deals through a clan warehouse. M

Not true.. It may be a fairly simple change to add an option to build by escrow (the theory is simple, the actual coding is not mine to determine:) )... If you are expecting someone else to craft for you on an agreed deal.. Then a new option is needed in the trade window.. I'll call it escrow. In this option, the builder would preload the BP into the escrow trade window. The requestor would load required parts and any goods you transfer would be held in a "temp warehouse" that both players have access to.. the party doing the building would have access to these materials but only from this "temp warehouse" which would be used up on the build and the goods crafted would also go into the "temp warehouse". Once completed, there would be the accept buttons... if BOTH players hit accept, then the residue of goods provided would go to the building player, the built object (ship, whatever) would go to the other.. any money would also be transferred. If either (or both) hit cancel, then all parts placed in temp by requestor are returned, ship is removed. CN and BP lottery are only decided once both players hit accept and are sent to the builder.. this would stop a possible abuse where you could keep crafting in this way and cancelling out until you received a BP or CN. Likewise, in the lottery of stats for the ship.. these are not disclosed until ship is transferred.. (apart from colour and defined extra.. eg Yellow with Planking). A system such as this would prevent ANY scamming in crafting as the requestor can see what has been used and produced and the crafter can see that money and/or goods have been provided for the build before goods are transferred. As to the game itself.. I see the easiest way to do this as being a trade instance.. like a combat instance in OW.. the trade instance has the temp warehouse associated with it (so that is deleted upon exiting) the trade instance continues until either both players have hit accept, or one player hits cancel. That would stop the need for multiple instances of a temp warehouse being setup and possibly filling up the database and storage systems. Honestly, I wouldn't have thought this was a huge job, but not one that should pre-empt the content being delivered.. however as we get to larger ships and high end mods for the ships, this scamming will become much more common. It could also serve as a base to handle in-clan crafting and deals through a clan warehouse. M

Adult people don't Get well soon Admins. M

No port reset, no capital location change and no mechanic is going to address an issue of a Nation failing to work together.. all it will do is set the whole process up to happen again, and this time, alliances are already formed and people will do exactly the same, but faster, so there will have to be more mechanics, more port resets and more location changes done with ever increasing frequency. The only Issue I think the devs have to deal with is the issue of stopping a nation abandoning their home port for the sake of new players entering the game. It's not the capturing nations that should have to suffer resets and restarts. The logical approach, suggested many times by many people is that the home port should have a buffer of 3 or 4 ports either side of them to protect the newbies and give the nation a solid base to operate from even if they are reduced to that area only during hard times. Other smaller nations have existed quite successfully by making (AND KEEPING) alliances and working as a cohesive group. Just because there is no full game mechanic for diplomacy in the game to date doesn't mean it doesn't happen.. in fact it happens a lot and countless hours are taken up with it. Nations that are capable of this shouldn't be penalised because another nation is only a group of players using the same flag that have no interest in working together. Don't introduce mechanics that penalise those that play the game, but by all means protect new players into the game and provide a relief for players to fall back to when it all goes wrong. When that Nation does start to get their act together, they will then have a strong base to spread out from to start progressing again. As things wheel around, each nation may well find itself loosing areas and having to consolidate, but it should be evolution rather than mechanic. Mailce

I see this "excuse" raised all the time on the forums.. the trouble is, reality shows that over the weekend at ALL times, there were battles where numbers reached 40 - 50 a side, and whilst we were defending ports and attacking ports in the south, the Spanish were also attacking Pirate ports in the north (with those other non-existant players).. and oddly enough the majority of players on both sides were within a timezone of each other.. in the south, these were not North American people taking ports from Europeans, these were European guilds fighting each other from similar timezones. The rest of the Euro team seems to have no problem with the port timers, whatever timezone they are set for and some of the Panama battles were at times set by the Spanish players. I think you do your friends in the south a disservice by trying to explain away their hard fought efforts by using a standard excuse that has zero validity and instead should be congratulating them for a campaign hard fought that at any time could have gone differently. If the rest of the spanish navy fought with half the fervour, organisation and coherence shown by RAE, then you wouldn't need to be trying to find excuses for loosing ports in the north. Please stop the timezone excuse and look to what you can do to become a nation rather than a group of players under the same flag. To our rivals in the south, be well and goodbye friends. Malice

Yeah props to all and to RAE for this weeks battles at all time zones, including yesterday a running 4 hour battle along the coast which could have gone either way. Sound out to poor chuchi in the screenshot above.. in addition to getting caught by PFK, he was in the wrong place at the wrong time a little later whilst we were blockading New Edinburgh and got captured in that skirmish as well. Good job by everyone this week and proud to have been a part of the huge diplomatic and logistics operations to help bring all these clans, nations and over 120 players together for these epic fights... Any battle where you end up like this at the end and walk away still firing as the main battle timer runs out is a good battle :- Malice BWITC

totally agree M

BWITC will be attending as per our chat tonight. Look forward to meeting you all. Malice

Agreed

adding a thought.. in a combat mission you get a chance of a drop.. some are quite good.. a trade mission should have a chance of a random drop of a trade good or consumable on completion. Still thinkin' about this

To some extent I agree, but frankly at 1st Lt, theres pretty much no risk of loosing a mission if you are in an appropriate ship, (personally haven't lost a mission since day 1 even without additional fleet members) especially if you take one a rank lower.. its more time and the cost of repair. The cost of repair is taken from the gold you get from the ship rather than the mission.. so they are basically a time sink.. as would be travelling on a trade route.. and there's always a chance to intercept a lone trader in OW.. so frankly I don't see much difference. 20 minutes to do a mission at no risk for 1000 exp and 3000 gold, + the exp and gold from the ship (and possible drop) or 1000exp and 3000 gold from running a 20 minute trade run. A 1st Lt mission will be against either a snow, brig, navy brig, 2 pickles level.. Anyone in a Snow or a Brig "should" be able to waltz any of those. A Lt Cmdr level brings in ships like a Renomee, again.. not an issue against a well played snow.. so I fail to see the risk involved in current missions. Maybe trade runs can only be your rank to avoid the one above rank risks of combat ones. Lets face it.. missions are not really a risk, they are just free gold and exp for a bit of time and if trade missions were known routes, then theres more likelihood of people waiting to pounce, so I would think the risk on trade missions would actually be higher

I wouldn't have thought it was hard to add trade missions to the system... where we have combat missions that are randomly generated.. couldn't we have trade missions that are randomly generated such as carry x amount of goods from a to b and get some exp.. range based on rank.. not actual goods that could be used by the players, but sail from x to y in a trader brig and get 3000 gold and 100 XP at 1st Lt for example ? Perhaps it could be the start of the trading line for people, as they could then add some goods of their own for the same route? Maybe these would only be between Free Towns and replicate the idea of people using the delivery system. Just a thought