Barbancourt

I made a new captain on the PVP server, though I can't remember if I've even seen a player in several hours of sailing. After about 7 failed attempts in 4 hours to locate and initiate combat with trader lynxes (they always escape my slow cutter), I got really frustrated and started targetting slower ( == more powerful) ships. I just fought my first fully armed cutter and got annihilated in less than 5 minutes. 1 XP! Well, 1 is greater than 0, so since I earned just enough cash with the new captain to mount carronades I'm going to try Full Frontal Suicide Assault on any ship with less than 100 crew as a means of generating any XP at all. It's kind of tricky in this area because I had to sail into enemy territory to actually find enemy nations to battle, but now that I'm across the "border" they're swarming and I have to isolate traders and cutters when they don't have allies sailing nearby. At the same time I can't trade at these closed ports or store anything at the one neutral port here. Let's see what bigger guns can do... (...answer, 8 XP)

Well this is weird - last night I spent over 100000 gold on an outpost, a forest to farm, some commodities, and a Snow. This morning I log in and the ship, outpost and forest have all disappeared, as well as the gold I spent on them. I think I may have been rolled back to the previous save. Do people often lose an entire game session or more of progress?

Well, that's the littlest guy. I just meant not one of the biggest.

Does the yacht have more firepower than the cutter? Sinking or boarding anything solo with the basic cutter takes me an hour or more. Basically I'm mostly cruising around in a trader's cutter checking out the ports in my region and making money to buy and test-drive other ships. However, my rank is low so when I bought a Snow to try it's less than half crewed.

I'm not the pirate type, though.

I am currently learning the game on the PvE server. I expect I'll eventually want to participate in some occasional group activity, so I'm wondering what the best group and PvP server choices will likely be for my time zone Hawaii GMT-10. I'm currently sailing as Denmark-Norway. I could possibly entertain a switch to Netherlands or maybe even Sweden. I like the little guys, and I like being based centrally in the Antilles.

I bought the game back in December, when they were offering the yacht as an early adopter bonus. I haven't sailed it "in anger" yet because it looks too purty to get scuffed up. Saving it for later when I know what I'm doing.

Heh, it's happening at 9PM for me - prime game playing time. By the time it's back up it's too late to start playing again before bedtime.

I wasn't sure what would happen if the crew went to zero, so I stopped when they got down to 3. However, I couldn't cut the speed of the lynx enough to board. How often does the server get rebooted? The last 3 evenings I've started playing and within an hour or two the notice of a server reboot came up so I had to quit the game for the day. GRRRRRRRR

I do know of that one, and gave it some thought, but with limited resources I have my money and time invested in the old school 1970's style games already. Lots of nostalgia from playing those hex-and-counter games long ago. All I need is a dimly lit basement with wood panelling, a vintage stereo and to finish my tiki bar... Yeah, Blue Cross White Ensign is the Flying Colors Russian expansion. I don't think I have the other expansions yet.

I've been trying to learn Flying Colors now and then. I love the old school hex-and-counter war games. I picked up the expansion based around the Russian fleet and battles with Turkish and Baltic neighbors. Unfortunately it's hard to find other people as enthused by spending hours moving around little tagboard counters and battling like it's 1979. The people I know want to play "x-wing" type stuff. :/

After a couple of months of playing some other games I'm back to Naval Action. I retired my old captain and joined the Danish. In part because the continental coast wasn't too exciting and I wanted a base down in the middle of the islands. Also in part because I like being one of the little guys. I've been playing PvE to learn how it's done. It took me much more than an hour to sink a Snow, so I've been trying to capture unarmed traders instead. Still, my first capture of a trader lynx also took more than an hour. I shot his sails down to 60% easily but after that sail damage basically stopped and 60% wasn't enough to slow him to boarding speed, even when I pushed his bow into the wind. Then I tried to shoot his masts with ball but they absorbed numerous hits from the 6 pounders and seemed to be made of steel. I shot his crew down to 2 with grape. Finally he made a stupid turn and I was able to start boarding. At least fighting 40 vs 2 went quickly. Now I may try trading with the captured lynx to save up enough money to buy a ship with bigger cannons, becuase it took far too long to capture the lynx. Seems I'll need bigger guns to do it in a reasonable amount of time.

Thanks, I would like to do some more organized battles too. In these battles I drop into ships are always crossing each other's lines of fire.

I built a new computer for this game back in September but started playing some other games while I was waiting for release. I bought the game when it opened up in mid-December, but only just logged in the first time a couple days back when they said we'd get a free ship if we made a character before the 21st. (though I don't see a new ship on my list now that the 21st has passed? maybe I'm looking in the wrong place?) First thought: "We have to choose a nation? Err, hmmm..." I have seen the game map somewhere on here and kind of wanted to go with one of the little guys, Netherlands or Denmark (which I usually choose when playing Flying Colors), but wasn't sure about the national dynamics so I just made a United States captain to start. Is switching even possible? So, it's kind of a long way from Charleston to the Caribbean, ugh. I started going South, checking for open battles as I went, getting sunk every time. Then I found out you can interdict the ships sailing by and jumped in on a smuggler and then interdicted a "ship" which turned out to be a group of 4 french ships, just past Savannah. "Surprise!" Still getting my cutter sunk every battle. I watched endless youTubes of this game early in the fall, but that does not improve my novice aim much and the spacebar/rightclick combination to fire is not yet natural for my fingers yet. (wish it was the same single-click/double-click firing I'm used to with world of warships) I have about 130xp from randomly landing a cannon ball now and then while sinking. So, at the end of the evening I figured I'd just spend a few days sailing South in PvE and getting sunk (not kidding myself) as many times as I can to get some XP and practice. I'm not sure if there's a better plan? The battles can be kind of frustrating when a horde of ships jump in and crowd the target. One of my battles was 7 US cutters against a single pirate. I got maybe 10 shots off during the odd moments I could even see the pirate through the throng...though when I stopped those 4 french ships I was all alone. Now I am reading in the forum here about "port battles" and nations gaining/losing ports. I was not aware of that. That is probably activity beyond my little cutter? I'd like to get down to the Caribbean and look around and sail past the ships of other "nations", but it seems ports won't be open to me? So much to learn besides just aiming, switching ammo and repairing/survival...