Sir Texas Sir

Ok so some of the guys on was grinding up to flip a port so I headed over with my Vict and took a hostility mission. I got three Victory's and sunk all three and this was my rewards. Well when I was in the battle the guy that started the agro was heading back to get repairs. It seems some one flipped the port. So I head right over and join the port battle. Though next time need to figure out better join/wind time. I was listed Pirates zero vs 6 when I joined. Later we got 5 more players to join in. Well got to say I found an easy way to beat the AI. I joined and had all the AI chase after me. Than other join and cap the circles. Capping takes a long time so we had me lead the AI back to Circle B and proceeded to sink a few of them. At least three was taken down along with two towers by time the battle was over. My reward was about half what I got for sinking the three Victs by myself. Which is about right when you look at the damage I did to the two I helped sank. I like that the rewards are bumped up a bit more, but kinda feel they might be to high. Maybe if there wasn't any big SOL fleets about so folks can only fight SOL's in hostility missions maybe? Keep the PvE grind to 4th rates and below missions wise. I assume the 3 ships was the match up with the AI side getting two more ships than who ever joins from the start. 6 Ships in the port battle keeps from folks trying to solo beat a port battle, Can still have some one cheese lead them away. Did like the fact they capped the circles as they went through cause they had more ships than myself in B circle. I think I'll get the guys in clan on later to do some more testing. I think Barcoa was set Pirate port and not sure what he set for tax and port battle timer.

And I'm tired of giving every lazy PvE carebear the same options I have for my hard work. There should be rewards for folks that do hard work in the game. If they want the same ships than they can buy it off those that do the special extra stuff. Every game I been in to get elite stuff you had to do the elite dungeons and if you wanted that gear and didn't grind it yourself you had to pay for it big time from those that do grind them. And those ships are not OP if you keep them to OW only. The wasa can be sunk by just about any 3rd rate or good 4th/5th rate players if need be. It needs to be a rare reward so every one in there mother isn't in one for that exact reason you stated. If I can be in it than why would I sail anything else? Niagara since it can't be in Port battles is another good ship to make as a special rewards ship for those that do certain content.

Just wondering since we can't see it on the map and I don't feel like sailing all the way out there. I assume Kidd's Island is conquerable? Was hopeing for a few more black dots spread out (traditional pirate havens) for those that don't want to get into the the RvR part of the game. Guess my clan will have to take the brunt of it and put some controled ports around....you know so them pesky NPC's won't get the money instead lol....though honest I was expecting a bit more perm ports for each nation. That is a lot of white/grey dots on the map lol

I would like the Wasa to stay the same stat wise but it's BR put between the other 4th rates and the 3rd maybe so it can't be in port battles? Though it's going to be interesting with the new system of just ports. Maybe these ships should be special PvP/RvR rewards so they aren't for just any one to grab. yes I know folks are going to say that makes you to OP, but if the Wasa can't be in 4th rate port battles it's not really that OP cause you can still fight it in the OW with other ships. Dang you I was about to head out the door to take care of some things. Guess I might put that off for tomorrow....lol I think you can't do solo port battles with a Mortar Brig any more like the old flag system. Wonder if any one has captured a port solo on the new system. It can be done if you activate all cap circles, just takes time. The Pirate Republic needs to fund it's operations too, if you don't like Tax's than there is always the outlaw patch. As for the SOL thing? They should just make a call on this. It's funny they bitch we use SOL, but I see more nationals using the Pirate Frigate than the Pirates do. Makes you wonder how they got the BP's and Permits? Hmmmmm I thought it was only pirates that had all the alts...lol. I do supply them to one nation but they give me SOL permits back in trade. Hay good thing when this goes to live ya'll will get Savannah back.

PAINTS.....I surely will not be letting any one know if I got pants on or not...lol

I actually liked when @admin posted this cause this whole alts fault for every thing is getting silly. You want to know why folks loose port battles on GLOBAL? Cause they show up in trash ships or 5th rates for a SOL port battle and than wonder why they can't win against all SOL majority fleet. Than they give up trying and blame others for why they can't win.

There is an actual schooner in the files. Wonder if it was a model ship or just something they tested with?

yah we don't even blink an eye at sinking 2nd and 3rds for the most part. We where capturing so many Aggies the standing order became just sink it. I don't think I gotten more then 40-50 marks from any big fights since the system was updated and before than I was lucky to get a couple of CM's. I can go grind PvE and get more in an hour than most PvP. That is unless your solo of course. The problem is the casuals that have only a couple hours a day or week aren't the ones getting rich with millions. I'm one of those guys that can put in any where 2-8 hours in a day depending what is going on and I make a good penny, but I spend a good penny to as I use it to fuel my econ. These guys like myself hurt the little guys when we out bid every one and drain the system of any possibility of them getting a part of it. I know more than one player that spends all day while he's at work with traders going from port to port collecting stuff and than sales them. You can't as a causal player compete with players like that. Pre-Patch when I spent 3-4 hours on PvP EU I made 5 millions do trade runs and Ink asked me how. I told them and we shortly after got some adjustments. The thing is the causal guys aren't going to have 3-4 hours to do that and by time they get on every thing is gone from the shops.

I do kinda wonder, but any 1st rates as the one battle we had with some against us I was to busy chasing Frigates in my Vict (doesn't work to well). I did capuere a L'Ocean out side with same Vict (no repairs left on it). Sadly I didn't check my share log of the credits/xp I got from that port battle, but it wasn't very much cause once again you share your kills and rewards with other players. So in port battles I have yet to get very much CM's when there was a fight and before hand the system wasn't updated and you got very little. Though the nice L'Ocean that the US donated to me was handed off to a player that just made curse. Could of easy built him one, but we figure lets recycle the other nations ships first encase he screws something up and get it sunk. So has any one solo killed a 1st Rate in PvP? What was the rewards and what ship was you in?

Did you have any other redeemebls? You been gone a year so you might not have synced up the game between servers and steam account and than just now logged in. Also might help if you let us know what server you where playing on before and tried to log in this time?

Even if the battle is over I make the habit of retreating my fleet ships just to make sure.

We really should have PvE and PvP missions that are like this either by damage or kills you do you get a reward of gold/xp and than maybe a random Mod/Book. That are certain missions are for certain rewards. Give folks goals to do in game will add more content for players. I know a lot of us hate the PvE grind, but some folks love it. I wouldn't mind it myself if it wasn't all based off RNG (which hates me as I tend to only get cannons and Rig Repairs). Copper Plateing should not be a random drop either, that should be a BP that we can craft. Still limits you to 3 mods either way. So should the other dorps like the pumps and such should be stuff we can craft our selves. Just add them to the Refits page. Maybe make Copper Plating a PvP only reward to learn the BP? And get us some paints back into the game as rewards/drops too. I would say keep this as mission/rewards drop for sure so it is something to show you did something in game. There was a hint that ya'll where thinking of making them like ship knowledge slots once found and learned. That would be cool, but until than why take them out of the game. I'm tired of just about every ship looking the same plain color.

The rarity unless you want to grind nothing but PvE to get them. Admiralty store and maybe rewards at the end of Port Battles. Would love to see port battle chest return with one paint and one random book/mod. NO SHIP NOTES THOUGH. Pretty much like the deadman chest rewards. There was nothing wrong with the PvP Marks system and I think we should go back to something but instead combine the PvP Marks and the Victory marks. Every time you win a port battle you get a PvP/Victory mark. Every so many PvP kills (lets say 5-10) you get the same mark, this rewards the RvR guys and the PvP guys. You can do it as a missions rewards kinda like POTBS had PvP missions. Than have a section in the Pirates Den/Admiralty shop that has these PvP/RvR rewards. They should be a way we can buy the books that and BP's of rare mods and ship knowledge. Keep the PvE random drop, but come up with something we can get the same items through PvP/RvR. And I'm sorry if the PvE Carebears are going to complain they can't get the same thing, well than they can pay for the PvP/RvR rewards like just about any other game does when you have Elite gear folks get from Elite Dungeons or PvP only content. Every thing is still in game you just need to pay more for it for some one else to do the grind/fighting for you. As for farming alts/others don't you have a sysetm yet in place to track this? How about this make combat news list kills like this. Admin killed Pirate Sir Texas Sir near Kidd's Harbor. Than if we see you killing me over and over every hour (cause it's the only way to have the rewards) allow a report command so we can report suspected farming.

Every time I been boarded by AI was when it was sinking and half under water, but I was smart and board prep up or made sure I had more crew than it. When you get ready for looting pop a broad side of grape into that ship and it sinks faster depending on crew lost shock, and or makes sure he has less crew than you. An AI will only board you if it has more crew. With that though I think if a ship is taking on water and/or sinking like that they should not be able to rage board you. I get a player doing this, but even than most of his crew is tied up in survival trying to pump water out, so why isn't this so for AI? I know ya'll say they follow the same rules as us, but there are a lot of times when they do things like continue to reload faster with half crew, pull a board while sinking, things that they couldn't do while manning guns and full on survivals. I mean I been shot by a ship that had all but one deck under water....how the hell did they reload when most of the ship is underwater? Every time I was sinking and had most crew in survival I couldn't get my guns reloaded for ages. Now lets not go into the fact that no matter the ship it has Marines, Barricades and who knows what other boarding mods on them so that it can be a pain if they out crew you and you have no preparation set when pulled. I was testing Marines on a SOL and had them on my 3rd right right after patch (was one of the first SOL in game on global). Got a Pavel down to sinking and he pulled me cause he had 5 more crew than me. Well he had 20% marines compared to my 10% and no other boarding mods. It was a close fight cause I didn't have prep up, but I had to stay alive long enough to disengage so he can sink. As soon as I did he was sunk. So for balance reason ya'll should look into AI boarding last moment while sinking. I can see putting something int here where if your over 50% full of water Boarding is disable. Prob should be for players too, but than taking on a full health crew at the last moment can be interesting, but than again if your that close to sinking you won't be able to exchange crews fast enough at end of battle.

That is all nice and dandy until you try to find repairs in a port that isn't going to cost them an arm and a leg if they are even stocked up. So instead out clan just stocks the crap out of the them in the warehouse and gives them out before we go out to do anything big. Every one gets mandatory stocks of what will be needed for the fights. That is half the problem folks make them and than charge and arm in a leg. Up till the patch we keep pirates capital very low cost, but that was cause my clan was pretty much it with a few stragglers. After patch we have so many folks trying to make money we can't police them the way we did (and no we won't use Pirate on Pirate to do so like folks think we do.) That and folks like to buy them when cheap than they take them over to La Tort or Some where else and sale them and make even more money. Would be nice if the shops seeded some that can't be resold, only be bought at a nice low price. I try to encourage new players to start there econ out by making repairs since every thing can be gotten at Mort and one other port (Islet or lIttle Inguana) to make Hull or Sail repairs. Even though I been MIA playing other games i noticed that too, normally when they get silent it means they are busy and something might about to get updated. Hopefully Town Management is close to be ready and will hit Test Bed soon. That reminds me I haven't played American Trucker in a while, a few updates have happen. Prob should pop in and see how bad I can wreck things....never let me drive a big rig folks...lol Even worse the new AI traders are armed 75% of the time and for a new player that thought he had an easy target to find out it's armed. I think the reason we don't see a reload issue with the traders have small crew is cause every one remember a while back they reduced the crew needed for 6lbrs and below to help new players and the crew kill was so easy with grape. I think they need to put the numbers back up since you can't easly (without stern camping ) grape shallows to death like you could pre-patch.

Just basic stats. That way I capture say your ship and I can see where that ship has been and in who's hands. I'm sure there are a few ships out there that has changed hands a few times.

Yah I actually like the whole War Company concept so that clans/war companies that want certain alliances can have them with other nations. You want to trade with that nation than set your owned port to Neutral and do so, if you don't than make it your nation port so they can't easily use it. It looks nice on paper so far, but like yous said nothing ever turns out the same once implemented into play. This way if GB/US players that don't like the alliance between the two nations (not that there is one now) they can still fight each other instead of doing what every one else in the respective nation is doing. I would love to see 12 man raids too so that small clans/Nations that can't get 25 players together can still have fights and maybe an influence over some things. They might not be able to capture and hold a port, but they sure as hell can get the numbers to raid it.

You really be surprised how many times I catch a trade ship with zero guns or repairs on them. How many times we catch some one out in OW with a store bought ships and hardly any repairs. It's one thing if your raiding and trying to travel light, but I"m talking about folks grind fleets. One nation on our server has a bad habit of hardly keeping any repairs and they just port up to repair after doing a mission. Those or the guys we love to tag and find in a mission cause when they get to running they have hardly any repairs and burn through them fast. I mean who needs Rig Repair when your fighting AI ships right? I do think the repair CD needs to be bumped up to 12 mins (happy middle of 10-15 mins). Lets try that before tweeking with how they work and weigh right now. Remember folks you have 10 mins between those repairs to stop that player. Even than repairs only brings you so much back. Now what I would like to see removed is the stupid laser stern accurate guns. We don't need it any more and it makes ships like Surprise that won't miss nay of it's four ships god mode when in a chase compared to Trinc that you might miss some of the 4 rounds. It should actually be the same for both guns accuracy wise.

I stayed playing every time the population went low and to me a lot of it was multi things. We would stop playing cause we got board cause the other Nationals would stop playing cause there war method is not to fight, but to ignore us and let us get bored, which makes a bored game over all and the reason many guys jump ships, cause they want to fight. Peace is not good for a game like this, never has been. When we got US down to 11 ports before the alliance patch I think the server (PvP2) was at it's best, every one was playing and fighting. Than alliance came and even with the mega carebear alliance it didn't stop a small hand full of pirates coming back and pushing GB to one port. Than GB (CKA) pretty much said, "We don't need ports we just use the US.'" Which creates more lazy bad problems in a game meant to be about action. There ended up being none cause the populations gone down out of folks refusing to fight and folks getting bored and going to do other games. This is a cycle we see with other nations, large pop nations that don't have the organization of RvR clan to fight they just give up. These nations have the numbers, you see that when they where taking empty Spanish ports and you had to take a port and be in battle to get the rewards. Once they removed that incentive to show up and fight and some one actually came along that fights back folks stop showing up. Did they stop playing the game? Didn't look like that as Global numbers didn't start to fall as it stayed a rock 250-300 prime time until they announced the patch to come. Than it along with EU's numbers fell through the floor. Hell even I been off playing other games. Bee playing MWO this week and only popping on to do econ and grind a little ship knowledge on two ships, but i just can't be motivated to do that. Plus I'm suppose to be moving and packing and well this lovely hurricane weather keeps distracting me lol. Than we have the other problems bad patches (Fine woods for example) that get folks to stop playing and the more resent hard grind that just about every one hates (hay I'm sure some folks like it, but not every one). Than you have the icing on the cake that kills the server population every time......ANNOUNCING ANY TYPE OF WIPE OR PATCH CHANGES. I have mentioned about bringing back alliances for small nations. If they have say under 5 regions they can unit, but as soon as they get more than that they have to break the alliances or a big nation can only have an alliance with a small nation. I always though the Dutch/GB alliance was a good thing, just not when you throw US into that. If say US had picked up Spain/France or something it would of been a good thing. You have large power nations taking in under there wings a small nation. Kinda like Danes and Swedes have on GLOBAL and Danes and French had on PvP2. Pirates than again is hard mode so we can't have any official alliance with any one and I'm fine with that. Never stopped us in the past. The problem is figuring out how to figure if a nation is weak or not to allow an alliance. I can see an nation keep it's regions small just to use the other nations ports. That is where you need to make it where they can use each other ports but you can not build in any port that isn't owned by your nation or a freeport. So lets say the GB/Dutch. A Dutch player can set up an outpost in KPR, but he can't put any buildings in that port. He can only use it for teleport and trade. This will encourage the alliance to help the other nation get ports back if they lost all them or to defend what little they have. All this is moot with the new RvR going to Clan base over a nations. A small nation can pool it's resources and capture and hold a few key ports if need be. They just have to understand you don't have to own every dot on the map. So the old cash/land rush of old days won't work for GB and US as you have to maintain those ports. Same with Pirates we would have to keep only what we can afford to upkeep. You going to see a lot of grey/neutral ports on the map I'm sure of.

I have still yet to go into that one though. I was thinking that would make a killer base for any clan that wants to only live out of shallow water ports/ships. Other than the neck of the river can be blocked off by another clan. Maybe I'll make a trip up that way before the patch hits.

But does it? And @Skully brought up a good point, if I get ganked all the time than I'm going to have a bad score even if I'm good at the game. This is why games like WoT and others dropped any concept of doing rewards by skill level. It doesn't work as you think it does. If I want to power level a char I'll just make him suck and get xtra rewards and than start playing him good. Cause some people don't give a dam about Leaderboards stats. Using WoT as an example I have accounts on ever server and than an extra on NA. My main has some what crappy score/rating cause of the learning curve and leveling. My alt which was suppose to be transfer to SEA but missed the only transfer has boarder line Uni PURPLE stats cause I done every thing knowing how to level it up and not the stupid grinds that hurt your stats. Now my SEA and EU accounts are crappy cause when I have been in Africa/EU or Singapore/AU I normally had pretty bad internet and just played them for the fun of it and neither has anything above tier 6. So by your means those two accounts would get rewarded way more than my main or the alt cause of bad PUBS and internet they have very crappy scores on the leaderboards. Leaderboards like that are so easy to abuse as to why WoT did not go that route. I could baby seal club to get insane stats or in your example farm the crap out of a bad stat char that I use for nothing more to get better rewards when I take him out to fight. Cause he would be the underdog. Last I checked we where up to 5K on GLOBAL. Yah it's folks to lazy to grind things out cause the grinding sucks so they just jack up the price to buy them. Than folks complain when I post a ship that cost a crap load. Well bring me the marks and let me build to order if you want it cheaper. It's getting now the marks are the same cost as the mats to build something so it doubles the price.

Guys I think ya'll missed one fact, he's speaking of the PvP2 super care bear alliance. GB/US/DUTCH where the two largest nations on the server had an allaince form last August up until this new patch hadn't had a single port battle against each other. It was just proff that three nations making up 60-70% of the server population couldn't stop one nation (Pirates) that made up 20% and instead would only pick on the little nations (Danes, French, Swedes with Spain tossed in). It just didn't work cause folks got bored, rolled over to pirates that would fight or they just stop playing. Though many game mechanics where also to blame this did not help one bit with server population staying up. It's was in some ways worse than the East/West Split EU had between it's nations with the Day/Night time problems. That might work on GLOBAL, but on EU those nations are actual pretty strong compared to on our server. Though I do think those nations should be merger and we only have 5 nations with a pirate faction instead of 8 total. One solution to this would allow pirates at act as privateers and join other nations port battles to help feel them up. Even better have a reputation system and let them get Letters of Marques to fight for one nations. The only way an alliance system would work if it limits/Locks out the top nations form making them. You can't go off actual population as we have found having the most players with US or GB doesn't help if you can't get them to fight RvR or even open world PvP.

How does a game decide who is the experienced player and how is the noob? No it should not reward on experience of the player, but only the char it self. If a Rank 5 char kills a rank 10 char than yes he should get more reward, but this is done all ready in game with BR bonus for difference in ships. I can play a privateer all day long and kill bigger ships and get more rewards. I can roll a new char and play that same ship and slaughter other new players of same rank but with less skill. Seen it happen on games where we would delete a char to keep him in the low rank area. I did it on Guild Wars and other games to help folk level up and get to the main player area. I'll use an example of this. Last sale I did buy a new account. He's only second rank and I was moving him to Kidds to level up by grinding safely there. The event popped and I went to it cause I was right there. Caught a Rear Admiral in a Trader and he did every thing in his power to get me off him, but he couldn't at the end of the battle he asked, "your not a new player are you?" So the system has no way to tell who is the new player and experience player. Some games do show stats gained and the level you got most kills at (world of tanks with tier for example). So you can see if some one is an experienced player or if they just got all those stats from killing noobs, but they don't give you no different reward other than tank tier difference. If we had a noobie area I could just keep this char in that area and every time he get up to two-three levels delete him and start over. So noobie zones are great either. Now what we do want is to get better rewards for PvP for sure. Honestly we need xp for damage to help all and make the PvP rewards if we are going to share them x5. Making them x2 right now is not enough when you have to share the rewards.

By killing off your char and making a new one your easy mode to do spies and saboteurs. If some one actually has to grind out the reputation and go through a bunch of steps to become a spy saboteurs more power to them, but I bet the majority that do this is for to actually leave one nation they don't like to join another. The funny thing is the true spies and saboteurs in nations are the folks you never hear or see. They just watch and listen. Well the spies. I'm sure the saboteurs get caught pretty easy by doing stupid stuff....that are they are the same leaders doing the same thing for a year now that does nothing but hurt there nation. Those are now the true saboteurs....lol People need an ingame means to change nations without loosing everything. By making it take time it honestly makes sure they will be willing to stick with that nation and fight it out. Also keeps folks from doing the whole jumping fence to the wining side as it takes time and not an instant push of a button like forge papers. You also forget the folks that actually like to play a role with there char in game and roleplay things out instead of just pushing a button. I would love to roll my second pirate back to Spain and be a Spanish privateer again if I could do it in game and we had Spanish players on global, but I'm not going to just push a button and use forge papers to do it.

The problem is folks can't get it in there heads the Devs only have Pirates as a place holder nation for now if they do plan to do anything else. Right now they want to finish the conquest system and national stuff before they even look at pirates mechanics and even than we might not ever see them. Like you said we can pretty much talk until we are blue in our face, but until they are ready for a new mechanics we aren't going to see any changes any time soon. As for hinder I don't think it's a poke at BLACK, but many folks that want the restrictions are folks we fought, but I seen plenty of similar post on both sides from EU players too. Hell even some PvE players. The majority of those post though want to put tons of restrictions on pirates to make us more pirate like while nothing changes for the nationals.3 Like I said it needs a check and balance on all sides not just one. This is why we honestly need a reputation system in game and make Pirates something you become not made into at chargen and you have the option to earn reputation back or gain it with another nation to become a National once more. They can do so much with a good reputation system like replace Nation trading with reputation instead of a smuggler flag. This will allow more freedom in game too. You can have your Spanish Privateers that are border line pirates in some eyes or you can have your strict naval officer or Merchant Trader.