Anolytic

Admirals, Today some REDS-players entered a hostility mission at Gasparilla, thinking they would find a fight against the Spanish players that had joined on the opposite side. What they found is shown here: 4 Spanish players had already surrendered in this battle. All presumably in store-bought ships (without cannons maybe?) The logical conclusion from this is that Spinacia, who currently tops the PvP-leaderboard as I type this, is an alt. Our suspicion is that the surrendered Spanish players are working with this alt in an effort to set a port-battle on Gasparilla, where with no clans on the friendlist of NRED2, this would leave the port invulnerable for several days, preventing a real attack on Gasparilla. There is a very recent and very relevant precedent that applies here: In this recent tribunal hostility on a port was also raised with the use of surrendering enemies. But in the case at hand, the purpose is more malicious. This time it is not a creative way to trade conclude a mutually agreed port-trade. In this case, all evidence suggest the purpose is to make a port invulnerable by cheats. I want to point out that all the players that joined on Russian side after the initiating player are unaware and uninvolved in the action. Both REDS and RIC players joined looking for a real fight. On the Spanish side, the actions of the surrendered players in the screenshot speak for themselves. As for the rest that joined I don't have enough information to determine their involvement or not.

Battle Ratings are too low. Too many ports are just 5000 BR and involve too few people. The people who screamed for lower BR in the first place are now complaining that they get screened out of every fight. These low BR ports are detrimental to clan-play, player-development and player-retention. With so low BR battles are determined as the first ship sinks, and there is no room in these fights for players in training. Clans/nations only bring their most experienced players when every individual ship counts so much. With higher BR individual skill is less important and group cohesion is more important, which allows groups to try out and integrate new members. How do you think experienced players are made? They don't grow on trees. They are forged in the line of fire, by bringing them to battles. If you always bring the same "quality players" to every battle you're going to eventually run out of players from natural selection. And we're going to have to lower and lower BR again and again.

We had a NPC raid against Nassau today. Normally the port has 2900 BR. When there's an NPC Raid the BR changes to 2500, but the AI still brings 2900 BR (2880 to be exact). Defenders are limited to 2500 BR. AI exceeding the BR limit is not in line with patch notes: And therefore must be a bug. Moreover. The spawn locations in Nassau makes it impossible to tactically prepare for what the AI might do. These are the spawn locations in Nassau and how you would prepare for them in a reasonable scenario: 1 fleet always spawn from either position 1 or 2. Meaning Group B will always have equal chance to intercept them. Group A has the harder job because of the distance between the spawns and has to position in the middle between them as best as possible to be able to intercept in either direction a fleet going either to A or B circle. This is what happened in Nassau today however: Spawn locations 2 and 4, with both fleets going to C circle and the wind blowing from E-NE. This left group A with no chance to intercept their AI fleet and group B had to contend with both fleets. Thanks to great effort by group B, and by luck half the northern AI group beaching themselves on an island in the north, the last AI in the circle were killed at 954 points. This kind of scenario in NPC PBs leads to nations loosing their ports at a coin toss. And we cannot wait to see where AI spawn or where they go. Because the battles close after 10 minutes. There is no way to prepare for such a bugged scenario where AI all goes to the same circle. And none of the "testing raids" before raiders could take ports showed that such scenarios were possible. This is not to mention the ridiculousness to begin with of groups having to, by 100% necessity, use tools outside of the game itself to prepare for NPC raids, and any group or player that may have joined to the game after the raids were implemented having no way to get an understanding of how this mechanic works that may loose them their port.

There were updates (with patch notes on discord) on the 25th, 26th, 27th, 28th, 30th and the 31st. So pretty much every day for the last week. And before that every other day almost. There's nothing wrong with your PC, just a diligent development team.

May it be another, bloody year in the Caribbean!

How? ------------------- Thanks btw. And Happy Solstice to you too.

You're looking at the wrong server I bet. These guys are from the Dark Lands (PvE-server). Btw, solution should be for port owning clan to change the port setting for Investment rights to: "Clan & Friends".

aDg6YWx_460svav1.mp4

Fireships: First of all, let's separate between fireships and exploding ships. 1 month-2 months ago, explosions were mostly alright. A good explosion could do serious damage, enough to cripple a fleet if quickly seized upon, but in a moving fight they were hard to pull off. There were some issues, that were F11'd many times. Ships would frequently explode without warning. Fireshocks were supposed to be the warning, but more often than not, ships would explode directly from just being on fire. Sometimes, ships would even explode directly, without even catching on fire first. This happened to me once in San Juan. One could argue about the frequency of this occurring (it was way too often), but it's somewhat historical - if not the best gameplay - to get randomly blown up without warning from a stray cannonball igniting the magazine. Since the changes to explosions the situation is completely different. A "fireship" (exploding ship) doesn't have to be particularly accurate. It can blow up far from the enemy fleet and still devastate it. With the "great" combination of captured NPC 1st rates it is a tactic without risk or cost whatsoever. And it has no counter. "The only winning move is not to play". I am no expert, and I don't have access to the historical records directly, but I know enough that 1st rates were never used as fireships. Moreover, gunpowder was an expensive resource and even if they could have packed every deck of a 1st rate with gunpowder, we would not see the kind of nuclear explosions we now see in-game. One of the most spectacular historical 1st rate explosions in history was the destruction of Orient. Wikipedia says about this explosion: There is: Nearby ships took hull damage (ripped seams) - but not to the point of sinking. No mention of crew killed on other ships from the blast - after all they are well covered by the solid hulls of their own ships. No mention of masts falling on other ships - presumably sails were ripped. Other ships caught fire from falling debris. Other ships got "crew shocked" by the blast. If we want to model explosions in-game on this, here's how I propose: Crew shock to all ships in the battle after an explosion, but longer crew-shock to ships within short distance from the blast. I.e 15 seconds for all ships and 2-3 minute crew shock for ships within say 500 meters. Crew loss only on ships immediately near. I.e up to 500 crew lost on ships that are literally touching the exploding ship. No crew loss on ships more than 100 meters away from the explosion. Fires, fires everywhere. All ships within say 500 meters should catch up to multiple fires, simulating falling debris. Fires that have to be fought, and could be dangerous, but which especially a ship in brace should be well prepared to handle. Fires spreading should be the real danger from any exploding ship - or any fireship really. Masts should fall (if at all) only on ships in immediate vicinity to the blast. And then no more than middle sections. Only on ships within 250 meters max. And if you want to make it somewhat realistic, only ships with their sails fully raised, not depowered, and perpendicular to the direction of the blast should be susceptible to loose mast sections. Otherwise the force of the explosion would not catch the sails. Sail damage, as in ripped sails, on ships close to the blast. Sail damage should be up to 50% on the closest ships, and reach no more than 400 meters away. Sail damage should however be increased again for ships on fire. This goes especially for the fireships themselves, but also for ships catching fire from falling debris after an explosion. Hull damage to show how ships seams were ripped. Maybe manifesting as structure damage or som 20-30% damage to hulls, depending on proximity and angle. ---------------------- As a whole, fireships themselves and fireship fittings should be changed to focus more on fires and less on explosions. They are after all named fireships, not explosive ships. The real danger of a fireship, should be spreading fires to other, adjacent ships. Explosions should be rarer, more chancy, and significantly less potent. There should be no fireship fittings above 5th rates. Possibly 4th rates. It is just not historical. And the purpose of a fireship should be to drive close to enemy ships and spread multiple, significant fires, to their hull and sails alike. Fires that would be crippling, do sail damage and take up big numbers of crew in firefighting, leaving the ships vulnerable. A fireship should have an increased radius at which fires spread, so that it would not need to completely touch/hug an enemy (or friendly) ship to spread fire to it, but the more it hugged a ship, the more severely the fire would spread to the next ship.

Wait? It was though:

This was F11'd in - or after - battle, by those who tried to loot, as in Nassau Port Raid which happened just now, there were no raid chests dropped from the NPC as they were sunk. According to patch notes the warships were supposed to drop "raid chests" lootable by port raid defenders.

Screening fight vs Brits PB fleet outside West End: Being that they had less BR and ships and more than 1/4th of our fleet was multiboxing the fight, they had strict orders to stay defensively on range, tag, and "not sink too quickly". Sometimes I feel like people just don't listen to me... One ship was left alive to tell the tale... Yours truly was a little late to the spot and had to wait outside.

1st guy crashes into me, looses bowspirit, I board him. Second says in chat to his mate he'll recap the ship (why? it's a rättvisan...) -> crashes into me, looses bowspirit, I board him.

Three of the battles from the 1st Skirmish at San Juan:

First Skirmish in the War of San Juan: Our screeners were engaged by dutch: Our PB fleet was engaged by Brits: Then the Swedish PB fleet engaged our PB fleet right as we got out of our battle with the Brits. This got a bit messy, as they had the wind on us from the start and were able to dictate the engagement for the first half hour:

There is no rule against this. Furthermore this issue has been brought to the tribunal before, with the admiralty ruling it not an exploit, and I defer to this precedent: That being said, the stacking of hostility missions is a bad mechanic. When we saw that Swedes had 25+ players in big ships outside San Juan, we sailed away from our first hostility mission and tried to offer the Danish Swedish a fight under their fort. Instead they sailed back into San Juan, hiding their fleet rather than engaging us, and we decided the only way to get a fight was if we come back tomorrow.

Little Cayman PB: Basse-Terre PB:

Little Cayman PB: As the brits were kiting us near their fort for the whole time, it was more than anything an intense fight against the clock. You might want to learn to count, since I remember 2 recent battles against GB at Cayman Brac, but okay, if you want to start the count at one again then this is me after battle number two won: btw YOU were the ones flexing after a single, very uneven, battle

George Town PB:

George Town PB: Russian Commander: NorthViking/Anolytic Brit Commander: Shocktrooper Bastey (?) Thanks for a nice fight! Thought we'd bring a proper fleet to the rematch... @Captain FrosT, @Admiral Howe of Gibraltar didn't see you there...

Rio de la Hacha, captured by REDS: So ends the bloody business of the day. -Homer (I'll use whatever words I damn well please thank you very much)

Rio de la Hacha PB 2nd try:

Attack on Santa Marta