Ratline

Disappointed to read this. While I accept that it might not be a priority, for you to abandon it completely because you're worried some people might not like it is a real let down. You will always get people who are put off by change, to say that you will not improve an aspect of the game out of fear of this is sad.

So much of this.

How does this add anything interesting or enjoyable for the player? It's simply a way of shifting around build cost rather than adding a potentially engaging mechanic which could impact how we play the game, boring. You have the opportunity to add a victualling mechanic which could have synergy with the proposed crew mechanics... run out of supplies and you begin to lose crew etc. The change as proposed seems pointless, just rebalance other mats if you don't want to give us something better.

Just as many people, if not more, complain because every time they try to undock and do a mission, or a trade run there's a gank squad deep in their territory waiting to attack them, and even if they fight that squad off they'll just repair and be back in a few minutes unless they sink every one. Going deep into enemy waters should be hard. It's what will make frontlines matter.. which will condense pvp... giving more fights without needing to teleport all over the goddam map.. and will allow traders and pve players some measure of security in their own waters. Try thinking beyond your own play style.

This does seem so blindingly obvious that I can't understand why it's not the original proposal. Also, the new Fire Ship upgrade is a joke with both current and proposed crew mechanics. Meaningful crew loss, per dura, is about the only deterrent to totally unrealistic, unhistorical ship and crew sacrifices in open combat.

Re the additional proposals. Like the idea of increasing the broadside tankyness and, to an extent, compacting ship hitpoints. Wouldn't take it too far though or we run the risk of ending up in a situation where ships simply feel rather generic and choice (within a rating/class) simply comes down to 'which looks the best'. Chasers I have mixed feelings about for the reasons given in the post above. I'd definitely like the increase in broadside strength in tandem with an increased relevance for 'critical' hits and damage, especially if you can implement that with officers. A lucky shot which takes out several officers, for example, should drastically reduce a ship's fighting efficiency.

If wind is something utterly predictable, that we can look at and say 'oh X ship will be useless for the next Y hours.. and especially with where the wind will be blowing from' then yeah people will simply log rather than play something they do not enjoy. And yes, those that do play will just sail the perceived 'best' ship for that set of wind parameters. 'Oh hai, it's a Mercury day, cba I'll play something else until tomorrow'. If wind direction and strength were somewhat randomised we would have to actually make meaningful decisions about what we chose to sail, weighing the potential advantages and risks. We would need to adjust tactics and plans on the fly to compensate for the unforseen. Chases would no longer be long, boring drawn out but utterly predictable affairs, the wind might back round in one player's favour, the strength might change giving the chaser/chase an edge they needed. It would add complexity to the game. I've seen it written that random wind was tried (I stand to be corrected) but that some captains didn't like it because it was too unpredictable and the current solution is 'the best' one for most people. If true it's very sad, in the same way we lost storm battles because some players found it interfered with their aiming (no shit, it's a storm).. life at sea should not all be plain sailing with predictable conditions. The way I'd love to see it working is wind blows from compass point A and rotates towards compass point B at (rotational) speed X and strength Y. When it reaches point B these variables are then randomly changed but within certain limits, so we can't go straight from a calm southerly to the wind swinging round to a northerly gale with no/little warning, wind strength would need to ramp up before you hit a full gale giving us some warning and the chance to say 'Ah, looks like it's coming on to blow!' Obviously more complexity could be added, say with certain 'presets' for gales which might hold the wind at a certain strength and direction for a period of time before returning to the more random sequences. Either way, while not totally true to life it seems a much more 'living' and realistic solution than the proposed predictable 'hey we have 18th century weather satellites allowing us to predict the wind for days in advance' system.

Tbh this would bore me to tears, it's just a copy paste of repair packs. Would much rather a more interesting mechanic which adds some diversity to gameplay, whatever we end up with.

In strong winds and heavy seas a larger ship, with stronger masts and yards and greater stability, would be faster than a frigate, yes.

Love the general idea, but wind should not be too predictable. Already dislike the clockwork nature of wind direction and would love to see a more complex system of wind direction and strength.

The idea being proposed by Niels and others is really good, at least on paper. Perhaps dev time would be better spent trying a new system rather than repeated tinkering to fix something which is flawed in principal and will always lead to undesirable, gamey situations. The discrepancy between real time and accelerated OW time will never go away with battle entry timers.

Killboards kinda suck. You know if the people you fight with or against are good, why do you need arbitrary statistics to tell you that other than for waving epeen around and calling other people noobs? Even in EVE they sucked. It was boring explaining to idiots that 'no, player X doesn't suck.. they are a recon specialist who has set up more kills than you will ever get and they're invaluable to our corp. Unlike you.'

They're not putting fences on your precious metagame. They're putting fences on chat behaviour. Calm down dear.

No loss, no reward to start with. The idea Leviathan and others put forward for later including some form of OW duel with loss would be cool.

It's easy to talk tough on the internet when you're riding on the coat tails of 3 more powerful nations. Little navy, big mouths btw you might want to tell your countrymen that just because they're speaking Spanish in global it's still not entirely wise to tell us to 'go **** our mothers'. ps: do you realise your avatar has been photobombed by a bear? Guessing it's the Russian minder.

Aye, don't like this at all. A step closer to being an evelike spreadsheets online game.

Can't think of any other game where i woul'd spend 45mins hauling coal around and still want to play. Love you guys.,. (I may be drunk<3 )

The need for an escrow system was brought up in another thread, still holding out hope that the devs will see how much it could bring to the game.

Oh please, it wasn't an ideological rant. No it's not my job to police your clan and I couldn't care less if your rep is trashed, those of us who witnessed the trolling don't need the proof The reaction to all this was defensive and weak, and the behaviour of some of your members (not just the scammers) rather unpleasant. I don't go around taking screenshots of every idiot in Brit chat on the off chance their clan leader doesn't know how they behave and asks for proof. Know your members, goes a long way.

Sure, probably some truth to that. Then again, if the Danes were not exploiting the use of 3rds as disposable ships to surrender and get their more valuable craft out of a lost battle risk free maybe they wouldn't be making this thread.

Dear Spanish person; I am heartened that you and your people have finally stopped bickering with each other and remembered which way to point your ships in a battle. Sadly last night we had a prior engagement with some friendly Danes who were given a toasty welcome before being sent home with an education in British naval defense. Perhaps we could make a future date to come and play with your little navy? Yours, An English Gentleman on behalf of the King. P.S. In English it is considered polite (not to mention politic) to capitalise 'King' and 'Buckingham Palace' for fear of causing offense. Obviously one can not expect you, as a foreigner, to understand this immediately, but again British education is given freely and lovingly to all our inferior neighbours.

Maybe we should all go pirate and just make the game clan vs clan.Seems like it might be going that way anyway

Yeah I know, and as a ship builder I'd rather not have it disabled (hence my dismay at the devs saying it's that or nothing). I'm just disappointed at their apparent reluctance to accept that there are solutions which don't involve overly drastic measures (removing player to player trade) or simply washing their hands of the matter. I was being somewhat tongue in cheek. And yes I agree that it's a small minority of idiots causing a disproportionate amount of drama. They seem to all be linked to this one clan on pvp1 as far as the Brits go.

Name and shame really does nothing much except perhaps warn off the odd person that actually reads the forums. These guys enjoy the notoriety, they're currently trolling about it again in Brit chat Ah, snap didn't take any ss, but still better things to do than police TRR for its leader, their rep is already rock bottom. Getting things such as a workable escrow system into the game should, really, be something of a priority. Trade and crafting are important and it would benefit more than the prevention of edge cases. It would open up new forms of gameplay in transporting/hauling and more complex trade agreements. That would surely be a good thing? Maybe not right away but in the not too distant future. In the meantime plugging exploits and ways in which people can troll/grief isn't unimportant.

Tbh at this point, if you are unable/unwilling to provide tools to counter this sort of thing (and I understand that there are higher priority things to do, and agree) you should disable direct trade. It would also stop the problem of people exploiting player trades to reroll and keep their gear, be they switching nation or scammers undergoing a facelift.