Barbancourt

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.

Word will spread across the server like wildfire

This "server event" is proposed to happen in the capital of the nation. It will bring a flood of enemy players into the heart of national waters, which effects everyone.

Newer players don't really learn anything from getting gang-tackled and sunk in 5 minutes by PVP squads, and don't even get XP out of it.

No, it would make it a slaughter and pollute your home waters with enemies. You'd try to fight the AI fleet and instead just get farmed by the usual PVP blowhards.

Hey, it's something. I could slap on Cotton Sails for w00t 2%, but then I gotta put on the reinforced sail thing to counter the drawback. It all sinks in the end.

The configuration of ships on the screenshot sure makes it look like the attack would have had a hard time

Could be interesting. On the other hand, alts would spread the info to enemy nations and suddenly ships would be appearing from all over the map to feast on the carnage.

A fleet of em

. Unfortunately yep that's generally the only path to "success" in this game for most players.

The point of joining a nation is to be part of a nation. That means sailing out of your national capitols and saying "howdy Joe" as your fellow nationals sail by, following your fellow national peeps around the national waters to (at least in your mind) keep the riff-raff out, trying (or just hoping) to participate in the RVR in some way, starting your shipyard, delivering iron and gold to your clan warehouse, etc eh, without planking the AI cleans my clock with its laser beam cannons and ballet-dance sailing manouvers. It's much easier and safer to just sink the AI and use the cash to buy ships from the ship shop, and then you get the XP, loot drop and mission progress as well.

Shroud Cay is far from most people's nations, and there's nothing much there except Hercules and gankfest. If you can't afford to buy a ship you probably won't be able to cap the equivalent ship, LOL.

People used to craft a bunch of them to start their crafting levels, since it was one of the few low Rate ships that would have a chance of selling. Some people would ask other players to take them for free, but it's faster to drop them on the ship market. Few people bother building ships to sell, otherwise. Everyone's buildings closed down, teleports are expensive, new mechanics to try, new economy uncertainty, new risks, etc... Starting on shipbuilding crafting levels isn't high on many minds at the moment.

On the contrary, I'm sure that when I'm getting ganked the enemy is getting much greater rewards than I do, even after splitting it between them.

I thought the Kill missions matched the number of ships you brought into them with the same number of AI?

I think a straightforward prompted "Open World orientation" would be more helpful than a string of mission hoops. Particularly things like navigation (with protractor and trader tool), fleeting and fleet control, markets/trading/contracts, farm/mine/workshop/shipyards, port entry rules, missions/patrolzones, hostility/PB mechanics, other things I forget....and most importantly of all the Rules Of Engagement in detail. I've been playing for a long time and I STILL don't really understand the ROE. I also don't understand all of the interface for controlling fleet ships in battle. Elaborate "newbie quests" like establishing multiple outposts, killing multiple ships or getting involved in PBs or clans are getting off track of an orientation, and instead could be offered through the normal mission interfaces. The game has no manual, so an orientation is an opportunity to guide players through how the interfaces work.