[green on green friendly gank attempt]

Well in this case the guy was in a trader, I believe the br is 10 for traders and higher for the attacking ships unless they want to use traders themselves for some silly reason. So couldnt he just chose the side with the most br?

[We raise our glass ...]

It was great fun and I was impressed by the reactivity from the dutch fleet to defend all the ports. It doesn't matter, next time all your jenever are belong to us!... maybe.

[News from the North]

So the spanish still want their alliance with the brits that have conquered Cuba. *facepalm*

Nations aren't as united as you seem to think. its not an alliance between both nations but just between a few clans of both nations, not all clans agree to that,probably like the one conquering cuba.

[Damage Farming - Demotions]

I don't think anything actually happened to most of the cheaters yet because we still see some notorious cheaters still with their ranks that were doing it before this announcement and they are still damage farming with multi account openly as if they didn't care about this announcement. It seems they are just alternating between real fleet farming sessions with multi account damage farming sessions to avoid any demotion.

[Improving Port Battle Mechanics]

I think they should raise tower hp by a lot and reduce their damage and accuracy by even more so that they act more like a temporary defense that would give time for defender to regroup while not allowing defenders to just hide behind the towers and wait for them to totally destroy the attackers if ships on both side are of similar battle rating.

[A French flag is flown in Trinidad & Tobago]

Most of the french loss came from the attacks in the shallow ports. In the deep ports it seems the french had minimal loss.

[Person joining trader cap to take ship by damaging it]

I dont think you need the damage lead to get the captured ship. I often am in this situation since I only shoot sails to capture and winning the boarding fight have always worked to get the trader ship.

[Replace escape timers]

In port battle some ship can escape while they are completely surrounded by enemy ships, demasted, lost all armor on one side, most armor on the other side and are in the process of sinking so when people see that kind of ship they will usually switch to another target that is still active threat because that would be like beating a dead horse hitting that ship without armor just to keep it in game. But magically if we leave that ship alone 2 min just before it sinks completely it will have time to magically disappear and escape from battle.