Barbancourt

No, they just don't want to take senseless risks.

That was already done - the "Patrol Zone" is a daily thing. But the "raiders" instead prefer easy meat that isn't prepared to fight back.

Yeah, mine is around 125-175. I can't mast snipe. Sometimes I'll whiff a stern/bow rake. Otherwise it isn't a big thing. When it comes to boarding I have no grand strategy and against players it's a crapshoot what will get chosen in the last second. Sometimes a boarding command doesn't register in the last second, and I can't make a last half-second counter anyway, but otherwise it's just throwing crap at the wall hoping for a good rock/paper/scissors outcome.

It's gonna be a long 9-12 months if people keep scaring off players by using the "w"-word all the time.

Does anybody have a complete guide to how AI ship control is supposed to work? I have never understood how to use it, except switching AI between "free" and "retreat" modes. Half the time I push the buttons like "demast" "attack" "retreat" etc nothing happens. Some of them seem to do nothing or situational in some way I don't understand, or some of the buttons seem to only register occasionally. (And recently everyone was saying AI fleet control was completely broken, so does anybody know if it's fixed yet?) This should really be covered in the Tutorials.

I should start a new PVE server character and see how it goes as a fresh recruit in a Basic Cutter. As an established player the economy changes are mostly adding some extra expense, and then the teleport annoyance fee. My view of the game has narrowed to the daily routine of the Great DaBalloon Chase, since nobody is really doing anything else anymore.

Yes, the way all of the inventory windows redraw so slooooowly every time something happens with a single inventory item is really weird. These lists are very tiny amounts of information, and the graphics aren't demanding, so why does this take so long? Why does everything else get re-drawn if only one item changed/moved? It feels like the game is re-fetching the info for everything you own, one-by-one, from the server before filling them into the hold/warehouse windows again, even though those items didn't change at all.

3-4? I'm really pushing my limit taking on 2 similar AI ships, and get it done in 90 minutes. And to do 2 at once I have to waste a bunch of hull repairs and occasionally lose a ship.

😂🤣😜👺👍👜🐩

Trying to make doubloons feels compulsory but is not immediately inspiring with random drops and lump missions that take weeks. I have 10/16 complete on my first 5th Rate Hunt mission. I think the most progress I've made on any of my 8 Seek & Destroy missions is something like 4/10 or 3/12. I log in every night for an hour or two and do a couple AI battles because there are always knowledge slots I need to unlock, but it's hard to find OW targets when most of the AI roll around in such huge fleets. "L'Hermione + 10"? What am I supposed to do with that? But, it's also a BIG holiday week in the USA so lots of people have other things to be doing this week.

"Actual", but also highly variable.

Are "Piastres" still going to appear, or was that dumped completely?

It is a very difficult game to learn, with lots of undocumented stuff you can only learn about by doing it. It's better start learning now rather than later. Release is many months away. The game economy is still untested and unstable. If nothing else you can master the tutorials now and not have to waste time on that later on.

Wut? I'm in a part of the map where I have only one outpost, and I set up a Workshop and I'm crafting my repairs and rum. Aren't repairs and rum crafting level zero recipes?

I think the most I managed was about 12k, but it's normally more like 8k.

Chasing raiders is just not usually very rewarding. You have to drop everything else you were intending to do in the game and sail around for an hour or more and often don't get anything out of it. Now with teleport fees added to that, forget it.

I'm not treating it as "second class", but just pointing out that progress will plateau there very quickly since the AI does the same silly stuff every time. We need something that falls in between the extremes, allowing some transition.

Make boarding "blind". We shouldn't be playing rock-paper-scissors and ping FTW.

Ramming should cause leaks

pff, that's pretty much the only place you'll ever see cartagena tar or copper ore.

PVE server is a waste of time. You will plateau in a month doing the same PVE things you can do on the PVP server. If you want to make progress the only thing that matters is joining a clan of the proper fit on the PVP server. ...but with a dwindling population that's easier said than done...

The "capital zone" is tiny. With the wind you sail out of the capital zone or the useless "reinforcement zone" in seconds after leaving port. I've recently got sealed bottles within sight of my nation's ports.

"learning how to sail" is easy. Figuring out how not to get constantly curbstomped by everyone is what takes years, and you'll never get that out of PVE or out of the curbstompings, and certainly not out of farming AI t-brigs and LGVs for daBalloons all day.

Normally I only used Gazelle on trade ships, to make the loooooooooooooooong haul ever so slightly faster.

I'm not sure I understand the first item - when I started with Basic Cutter and Yacht I used to accumulate repairs and XP by camping a Lynx spawn, killing it repeatedly. Dozens of times. Fighting Lynx was the highest reward/risk ratio of any 7th Rate. Privateer are a bit harder. However, you lose very little using a Basic Cutter against other fore-aft ships. Missions used to be harder. At least now you know how many ships you will face in the mission. It used to be random, and you could enter your mission and find yourself facing 2-3 larger ships.