Barbancourt

Unfortunately, they do waste it on less important things.

Let's be honest, guns are irrelevant on a trader ship. Do you somehow feel brave because a t-brig with only 60 crew shot its pop-guns at your endymion and you survived? And stop with the "escort" nonsense. Nobody has time to waste "escorting" trade ships. If you fleet your own warship with a trade ship you are just slowing yourself down to make it much more likely that you get caught more often and lose additional ships, plus giving the enemy additional easy rewards.

Wait...what?

Has anyone experienced weird Yacht sailing behavior in a battle instance recently? I was in a battle with a T-Brig and it got me down to about 65% sails which I repaired to 97%. After the repair it seemed like the Yacht sailed very oddly. I would be going about 8 knots across the wind, then I'd turn 180 degrees through the wind in either direction (with/against) to be sailing across the wind in the other direction so I could fire the other broadside, and that turn would lose all my speed so that I was stuck at 1-1.5 knots for what seemed like a really unusually long time before the speed finally started to build again. If I was within 30 degrees of sailing with the wind I'd also almost come to a stop. Then I'd turn 180 to the other direction and in that direction it would sail more normally again. I do not remember this behavior when I battled with the Yacht a lot last summer, and this was my first battle in it since about June. Build is Bermuda/Teak. (such an improvement from the old mandatory cag/crew redeemable!) I was not in manual sails. I did f11 it, but I was uncertain if the f11 went through. Since my Yacht kept coming to a stop I struggled to keep the t-brig tagged and it had me down to 30% structure at one point, but after about 75 minutes I did manage to finally unlock that 5th slot on my Yacht.

Some kind of well-defined PVP mission that gets people moving across the map expecting to find an appropriately sized engagement would be nice.

So the big nations can collect even more ports their players rarely bother to visit?

I need to get back to finally unlocking that 5th slot on my Yacht

At the moment some of them are usually pretty quiet. However, if the population is up near 2500 it will be different.

That might become a bit difficult if the population gets large enough that it's hard to get in/out of the Free Ports, though.

Shop ships, buying free/open port ships, lying low and cruising in the shadows. It may be a little expensive, and much harder without the windfall of Global redeemables, however it's a project to keep you busy.

It is good experience to capture traders with them, and you can use those resources as a noob. Lynx also used to have the best bang-for-buck loot - not sure if that has changed.

Seriously? It isn't that hard, and it doesn't even take very long. If you're "dumping full broadsides into the ocean" you need more time in a 7th rate to correct that error rather than trying to "fix" it with more decks of cannons. The Brig is crap and I'm sure it made quite a few players quit.

new players don't really need 'em and you might as well try to get them as drops from OW Lynxes first (there probably should be an Admiralty for everyone at one of Free Towns for nations that don't have any owned ports at all)

Bahamas doesn't interest me much. Too crowded and too many "pirates". As a noob I went to a quiet location (Saint Marc) with a reliable AI Lynx and Cutter spawns to farm repairs and XP, and to mine Gold Ore when it was rare after the Wipe. I'd rather have Puerto Plata or another port on the north Haiti coast for access to the Bahamas. The first destination for a new "Small 3" player should really be another Free Town or two (or more!), to start establishing your teleport network and your secure Free Port warehouses while your ambitions are still limited to sailing the fast Basic Cutter or Lynx. (less of a target as you port) Noobs don't need an Admiralty since we don't have a Prize mechanic. I don't want the "Small 3" nations removed. I'd like more of them, even. It gives people a place to go for a different game experience from the big nations, and a way to escape from some of the personalities in those. If noobs aren't getting what they expected, that's a failure of the game interface. These need to be advertised as Free Port nations.

Dariena is a dangerous bottleneck, and all the fun is in the center of the map.

Hauling mountains of crap around and trying to decide on a new direction

I guess this is some sort of pirate fantasy senario, but I have absolutely no interest in any mechanic that involves having to hire fecking "pirates" to do things.

So you're saying they wanna play "pirate" like it's a halloween costume with a plastic sword and fake eyepatch?

Depends on where you put your stuff. How are you defining success? We haven't quit sailing. Adapt, change, evolve

I don't feel like these nations were intended to do RVR conquest on a permanent basis, but to instead roam and hold a port here and there and wage a limited campaign at the right time for fun. They also give people a place to go and escape the oversized personalities in some of the big nations.

LOL I have never had a Mercury that buffed. Basic Hull Refit is the only one of the upgrades that really matters, but I don't have patience to do 5 knowledge slots on this sailboat. I can't even remember if I got one or two of them done - it was many months ago and it got gang-raped and sank at the Battle of Les Cayes. Anyhow, I've always been of the impression that the AI will always try to protect their weak side, and they're better sailors than we are with the new sailing physics so it's a bit of work against the wind and exposing yourself to fire to always be chasing their weak side...?

Why are these accounts still active? We've been watching these names pop up for weeks.

No, you just pull the big cork out of the bottom

If this small amount of storage space (it's just lists) is really a "problem" then the game would have serious issues if there was ever a healthy playerbase with possessions distributed around the map using far more storage space.

Well, the sooner peoples' crap gets hauled out so the cannonballs can start flying freely again instead of forum banter, the better.