InfiniteAmount

Updated "Diplomacy Double Issue" 2/19

You have had me at a disadvantage of understanding, then. If this is the case that you wished to make with your posts, than I am sorry to say that it has been made poorly as nearly every US player reading this thread has taken offense to what you believe to be conciliatory words. Perhaps it would be beneficial for all involved to make a greater effort to avoid misunderstanding and focus on clarity of meaning, especially in matters as complicated as the relationship between inter-factional interaction occurring on the forums and actual diplomacy occurring in private.

See:

Do you not see the problem with what you are saying? Read through this subforum and you'll see that anytime a US player is acting "smug" or "arrogant" you'll find a Spanish, British or French player responding in kind, many times players from all three factions, and many times only in response to the same attitude coming from Spanish, British and French players. And yet you say that it is solely US player's conduct that prevents peace, that US players are smug and arrogant, and you expect us to believe that you are not only not criticizing us, but not insulting us, too? That your post insulting the nature of US RPers, while ignoring those same traits in RPers of your own and other factions, is somehow supposed to be taken as friendly advice from a veteran player that "knows better"? Do you not see how incredibly patronizing that is, especially considering it comes from a faction that couldn't negotiate itself out of a wet paper bag?

At least the American diplomats aren't the same people who display such allegedly "inappropriate" behavior. I seem to recall that the breakdown of US-FRENCH diplomacy was because the French Ambassador made inflammatory and insulting false claims about the leaders of US clans and their conduct during negotiations. I would find it laughable that a French player, especially one from the same clan of said diplomat, would be giving diplomatic advice to anyone were I not so thoroughly disgusted by your arrogance as a third party to speak of diplomatic talks that you were neither party to or represented in to someone who not only was there, but organized said talks on the US side. EDIT: This silly argument was based around a misunderstanding on the parts of both parties. Feel free to disregard my posts until: http://forum.game-labs.net/index.php?/topic/10733-news-from-the-north/?p=193270

I fail to see how a battle between the Republic of Texas and Mexico has any bearing on US/Spanish relations.

Updated.

An issue I see with a periodic map wipe would be the Tetris problem: not only are defeats resets, but successes are too. If wars would persist over the map wipe, it'll just be fighting the same battles over and over and over. If you're good at it, the map wipes and resets all of your accomplishments. If you're bad at it, you just get to keep getting attacked over and over and over. Conquest for the sake of conquest can be problematic. Either the Conquest has to be the main mode of play (A Heroes and Generals-type conquest system-- not feasible in Naval Action) or there has to be a tangible incentive for conquest that carries over ("Map winner" rewards of some type, but resetting the map when a nation loses doesn't necessarily mean that anybody wins). Unfortunately, I can only see problems for periodic map wipes, and while there indeed may be solutions to those problems, I just can't see them at the moment.

The year 0 thing sounds interesting. That way if there ever was an explicit date set by the devs or something, it would be possible to backdate anything previously posted.

I purposefully did not include a year specifically to avoid this kind of controversy. Although, I was leaning towards 1795/1796, there are just too many anachronisms to have any accuracy. As such, I just do not reference real life historical events (unless they took place prior to the 1790s). I think the closest I came in an article that actually made the cut was that I made a reference to "French Republicans."

The Spanish faction players are apparently so divested from reality that even just talking to them in the forums is sisyphean.

With the current ease of making ships in the game, cheaper, more abundant crafting materials will drive down the price of ships by increasing the volume of ships. As it currently stands, the investment to become a crafter is completely based on getting materials (and time, but that time is limited equally by the Labor Hours system). The cost of materials is a crafter's only recurring expense (unless they ship materials through the deliver system, but that's a pittance). The only other thing a crafter would require is maybe a warehouse space upgrade, but that's far from a necessity. Saying "suppy and demand" is a non sequitur. It doesn't mean anything relevant to the discussion. In fact, it doesn't even seem that you read through my post, because the main point is advocating a trading system that provides another source of income for traders that isn't crafters.

It's a zero-sum game, JCDC. The US would much rather spend effort, money and ships fighting the Pirates and Brits, but without a secured flank, we'd be in the same position as you. We are more than willing to make allies with those factions who's interests align with ours, but what Spain wanted in Florida was not what the US believed in the realm of possibility. The fall of Florida to the Pirates was unacceptable to the US, and the US was unimpressed by the Spanish forces in the area. If anything, the fact that the Spanish buckled so quickly against the US is a testament to how right US leadership was about the inability of Spain to defend Florida. If you have to vilify the United States players to justify the fact that your faction got caught up in an avoidable war that has decimated your nation, you have every right. But don't expect that US players won't try to set the record straight.

The only person who claims that the US conquered Spain "altruistically" is you. TF, TDA and all the US leadership recognized that Spain could not or would not defend their ports in Florida. Spain was making no defensive plans for Florida against the Pirates (whom the US was fighting in the Bahamas and around Florida) and Pirates were using the neutral ports in Florida to attack the US coastline. Something had to be done. so they approached Spain with an agreement to help Spain set up timers on their ports (by capturing Spanish ports and not setting a timer and not defending when the Spanish retook them) in return for a handful of Ports in Florida, and the person they were negotiating with told them to fuck off. So, US leadership recognized that if Spain was going to lose their ports in Florida to anyone, it would better for America for those ports to become US ports. Capturing past Florida has just been to force Spain to the negotiating table and make it abundantly clear to the entire server that the Spanish war against the United States was unwinnable.

Your ignorance betrays you. - The US approached the largest of the Spanish clans in order to negotiate borders without hostilities. - The large Spanish clan Representative told our diplomat that he must be on drugs, and to fuck himself. - Ergo war, which Spain is now losing badly so badly that the Devs are stepping in to help them.

Like the cannon ball that our nations increasingly trade, some shots will fall short. That is unavoidable. But do not confusing my meaning; I would not give it out, if I could not take it. Just because I can take it, does not mean that it is done silently.

As it stands currently, pretty much every resource in the game is used for crafting in some way, except some factional resources and historical artifacts. While this is great towards driving a player driven economy, it creates unhealthy competition between traders and crafters. A player with a Trader Snow can buy up an entire port's stock of a resource and move it to a crafting center for a unbelievable high markup price (up to 1000% increase with some resources), which in turn drive up ship prices for everyone and hurts a majority of players to the benefit of the handful of traders who got to the right port at the right time. I.e. price gouging. This got me thinking about ways in which the trade system could be improved. Obviously, the first would be to remove the artificial inflation of trade ships' hold back to their normal levels (1/4 of current). This increase, as I understand it, was to offset the fact that the larger trade ships were not yet implemented in the game. The problem I see is that there are considerable more Trader Snows (and Trader Snows are much easier to acquire and crew) than there would be East Indiamen. Not every single trader would be using an East Indiaman, while currently you're hard pressed to find a trader that isn't running a TSnow. It would make current trading harder, but would reduce a single player's ability to upset the in-game economy. The other issue, again as I see it, is that the current system creates that unhealthy competitive relationship between traders and crafters. Because crafters must spend more time in their outposts than traders, they are not able to compete with traders and are forced to buy materials at exorbitant prices from traders who have cornered the market on certain goods. There are many solutions to price gouging, such as increasing the production of materials, or making it harder to transport materials by reducing hold sizes. But the problem is larger just price gouging, the predatory market relationship still exists, only its magnitude is reduced. Another option would be to introduce resources that are used for trading and not for crafting. "That sounds all find and good," you must be thinking, "but introducing an artificial trading economy destroys a player based economy." Here's what I have to say to that; these trading resources are only useful to be consumed at ports. But in order for a port to produce a crafting resource, the ports consumption requirements have to be met. So Ports, in order to create crafting resources at maximum efficiency, must be kept well stocked with the trade resources that the port consumes. If a Port runs out of a resource it consumes, production rate of crafting resources slows. Without any incoming resources, production at the Port stops. So in order for a Port to produce resources, traders have to be moving more resources into the port, not just removing them. In my head, I see trading resources being foodstuffs, like Grain, Ale, Meat, Rum; or manufactured goods, like Tools, Glass, Paper, Pottery/Ceramics, Lamp Oil or Gunpowder. Additionally, there could be luxury resources which would improve production above 100% efficiency. These would be the factional resources, Danish Beer, Indian Tea, Batavian Spices (which I think should be renamed Javanese Spices, considering the spices don't come from Batavia, but I digress), and other resources, like Coffee, Sugar, Linen and Pepper. Ports essentially are trade nodes that turn trading resources into crafting resources. Adding production building could also increase or decrease what a port consumes, as well as what a port produces. Adding more military structures, for example, would increase the amount of food a port requires, while building a plantation could reduce that amount. With this type of system, it creates more variance for traders and more opportunities for making money, but also helps contribute to the player driven economy by requiring players to keep ports well stocked so that they can produce materials. A trader could not sit in a port buying up all of a single resource without putting some investment into having the port make those resources.

Good job on the southern front.

Grim and Nakor are no more diplomats than I am, Prater.

Prater, there is nothing to this thread except for Grim's fictions. He talks about a fantasy that only exists in mind as if it were a reality. TF has not been in a meeting with the Danes, Dutch or French because most of the TF leadership hasn't even been online for the past week. And when they were, they were leading Spanish port battles. Grim is just bored because he's a north American player that's stuck fighting in a European timezone war, so he's lashing out on the forums because at least he gets some attention here.

If you cannot smell what everyone else can, perhaps you should check under your own nose instead of accusing all those who detect something different of collaboration against you.

Actually I get the impression that Grim made the whole thing up as an attention grab, now that the US isn't Forum PvPing the French anymore.

I can't believe how salty you are, Grim.

Remove neutral ports and make Spain the AI-only faction.

Are server renames coming with this big patch or before/after?