Anolytic

I believe this was the very first contested PB since the new damage model.

It's right there.

I haven't had time to update my guide yet: But these should be all the new flags (21): In no particular order.

Well. There's time to work on both balance and content. I'm anticipating a late spring release in October/November

I have 5 characters that I grinded to max rank, 2 that are second highest rank and another 3 that are Flag Captain.. I support a total wipe. (Am I a masochist? Maybe.) However, please stop framing this in terms of new players and veterans being on an even level after release. That's not the case. Skill cannot be wiped. And new players are going to come after 1 month, 2 month 3 month after release, and everyone who played since release are going to have a head start on these new players. But as admin says, it is about first impressions. If you buy the game a month after release, you have to expect to face players that have played for a month. But if you buy a game at release, you are buying it then because you want to get in on the ground floor. You want to be part of a fresh new world. You don't expect a world where some players have already been amassing assets (or XP) for years. It's like running a marathon: When you're new to running marathons, you have to know that veteran marathon runners are going to outrun you - by a lot. But you'd be pretty pissed if those who ran last year's marathon get a 1 hour head start that doesn't count on their clock. On a related note, yacht and Pandora should be released as purchaseable DLCs on release, that new players can purchase, while eligible testers get them for free as scheduled. Also, it's nice that @Banished Privateer's idea of a delayed XP redeemable is received so well by so many.

After Patch 27 most ports were not profitable, but all ports had the potential and could be profitable, if their owners traded from them. REDS made a profit by making an effort to use our ports and trade from them. Since patch 29 that became impossible. Ports don't need to make profit by themselves, but there should at least be the opportunity for clans to make profit on their own ports if they invest in it. It seemed like we were heading in the right direction with patch 27, but then the system broke and nothing was done to fix it.

If/when trading is fixed, then traders will be able to (and need to) buy doubloons, which both PvE-ers and PvP-ers will have in excess and can sell to traders in order to make their PvE/PvP profitable. That is how it worked back in October/November. Although not perfectly, since it was not that well balanced and PvE quickly became way too profitable and PvP way too unprofitable.

You can change your own notification settings in your profile. And the repeat notification is not because of likes to my post, but because I edited my post (typoes), and when I submit my edit it counts as another post to your notifications. This can sometimes be useful (and other times annoying). For instance if someone writes a post, and then they retroactively edits it to tag you ( @Tom Farseer ). Then even though the post was originally submitted without notifying you, the submission of the edit will trigger a notification that you were tagged. Stopping duplicate notifications for the same action (tagging or linking content) when editing posts is probably something you would have to bring up with Invision Community, the developers of the forum software used here, it's not for Ink or Admin to solve. The easiest solution however, as mentioned, is to simply disable notifications for somebody linking your content.

Thanks @Tom Farseer! I was just in the process of writing a suggestion topic about this very issue:

There are a lot of great new mechanics being tested on the testbed. Including new trading. But my impression is that the changes to the damage model might still be undergoing some fine-tuning before making it to the live server. In the meantime, I would suggest either hotfixing the trading mechanics to bring them back to the state they were prior to December, or implementing the trading changes that are on the testbed while leaving the combat changes for later. Since patch 29, in the beginning of December, when all the trade goods stocks in all ports were reset, most ports have been spawning practically no trade resources. There are some ports in Cuba that spawn a nice load of trade goods occasionally, while other ports, despite having trading post upgraded to level 2, does not spawn anything at all, or maybe 10-20 of a single resource in a week. Not enough to fill even a single Indiaman. Between October 31st (Patch 27) and December 11 (Patch 29) any port you visited would have about 2-3k units of medium to highly expensive trade goods, typically divided between two of them. And if all of them were bought from the stock, the port stock would refill within 1-2 weeks. Since December 11, some of the same ports have stocked about 100-200 units of trade goods in a 2 & 1/2 month period. In the first period I could over a time of one week empty out of Saint George's Town, or Flatts, about 2000 Oregon Beaver Coats and 1000 Indigo or China Tea. Within 5 days there would be another 1000 at least of each of these trade goods in the port respectively. Since December 11 I have been able to buy 11 Indigo in Flatts. That is all. It's not even worth the 2 hour trip to move them out. I posted about this previously: And got the answer that nothing was changed in December about trading. But either you changed something by accident, or something was changed in November that only came to light when the trade-goods stocks were wiped in december. In any case something changed between the beginning of November and the end of December that destroyed trading completely on the live server. I am not the only one to have noticed this. I’ve been talking to a lot of people about it in-game, in global chat, and on Teamspeak, and others have also posted about it in the forum: Following the tendencies in @qw569s spreadsheet ( https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1AlmRPa7687Tp7m2KcdKqfrDWgNF0YsyfX8keu6J81Jw/edit#gid=1893672317 ) overall port profits are waaay down since November. Before December, any port could easily be quite profitable, if the owning clan just bothered trading from it. Now port ownership is a vaste, RvR is useless, and almost every clan that owns ports is loosing money. As I understand it, in the new economy since the change to reals from gold, the game is not supposed to be about just one thing. You can't really make money on PvE or PvP, so you have to do at least some trading on the side. This is fine. But since December there is no trading to be done, anywhere. Unless you plan to release the new trading system this week, could we please have the old trading back as a short term fix?

Fear* is a powerful ally. Outgunned, next to a british fort, and with little or no repairs left - yet the enemy sacrificed 3 heavy L'Oceans to get away and into port. *Fear is in this case BF who joined us despite having 0 repairs left from this rather more impressive fight: https://youtu.be/9_f_SP3TiaM?t=13577 ( @Captain Reverse )

Nations are too small? Join one and start recruiting. Russia is growing day by day. REDS is recruiting: In the last 1 & 1/2 months REDS has increased our ranks by about 25%, particularly with significant growth in other timezones.

The REDS Battle Dance: Inspired by the old RDNN-ritual (captured by @BABAY) : No, video. I was half sure that I was going to fail, so I didn't want to keep any evidence.

After a long search for something to shoot at, we came across a L'Ocean. Sadly it was inside a reinforcement zone, but we took the opportunity to perform our ritual to call upon the PvP-gods. Later, while sailing back to port, our devotion was rewarded. ----- Also throwback to @BABAY and the pre- port battle dance of RDNN & RUS:

When you're ganked... Both of the escaped ships lost a mast, and the endymion was down to half structure, but unfortunately I was not in a chasing ship.

My post is below, but for those who will avoid reading anything longer than a paragraph, here is the short version of my proposal: Limit wood type choices when building Lineships (4th-1st rates) to only allow the heavier wood types: sabicu, white oak, caguairan and live oak. --------------------------- I have observed with interest the discussions about the combat model we are now testing on the testbed. I haven't gotten around to testing it myself yet, but I have gradually grown more positive as I've read admin's elaborations on his thinking on the matter. But there is one issue that, like many others, I foresee: speed-built ships-of-the-line cruising around the open world, able to run away from all other SOLs, and devastatingly deadly against every frigate, and at the same time with the ability to catch them. Should this really be a thing? If the new combat model prevents frigates from messing with SOLs, should SOLs still be able to interfere with frigate-combat? I seem to remember having seen some historical evidence that SOLs would not fire upon frigates in a fight, unless the frigate opened fire on the SOL first. So even in battles like the Trafalgar, frigates would fight frigates and SOLs would fight SOLs. If a frigate did fire at a ship-of-the-line the latter could return fire, and it would be devastating. Another question I have is: Why ever would a navy build a lineship, as expensive as they were, that would be unable to fight in formation against other lineships? What navy would waste their treasury on building a "fir/fir" Victory, that could hunt down frigates, but would be useless in the Battle of Trafalgar, or Battle of the Nile, when they could probably build five frigates to patrol waters against enemy frigates for the same price, allowing them to cover greater areas, be less vulnerable to ships needing replacement or were lost. Historically, ships did not last infinitely in service like they do in-game unless sunk. So my question is: Should we be able to build "light" lineships? My suggestion, though I put it out there without taking much time to ponder it myself first, is this: What if we limited possible wood type choices for Lineships to only the heavier woods? What navy has use for fir, bermuda, mahogany or even teak lineships? I would also take oak out of the question, because it can be farmed and doesn't have to be bought from the market. So that leaves us with sabicu, white oak, caguairan and live oak. Those, in my opinion, should be the only options when building ships from 4th rates and up. Frigates however, should have the option to use cheaper/faster wood types - for diversity and tactical choice.

Some fun, and heavily outnumbered, battles.

There are two versions of his monogram (as with many of the danish royals of the period), here they both are used in flags on paintings. First one is Christiansborg in current day Ghana, Africa. Second one is of a Danish brig that I fail to remember the name of. Here are the monograms used in other places: To the left, the monogram used on a cannon (note: the crown is missing here, it was never missing on flags). The right is a third version of Christian VII's monogram (Christian Rex VIII - never used on flags to my knowledge). This is the monogram on the wall of Fredriksten Fortress, Halden, Norway. I go there almost every summer: Danish half-a-shilling: The other version of the monogram as used on flags: Will do. I'll send them later today. It's snowing a lot in Norway, I have to go out to clear a path to the house...

Objections? Yes. It looks like a crude deviantart-project. Someone took this flag texture or a similar one: cropped it and pasted a the CoA of Gustav Vasa (dead 1560), as well as the 3 crowns symbol and rampant lions from the modern CoA of Sweden over it. EDIT: To be clear, the king whose CoA is pasted in the middle died in 1560 (way before the timeline of this game). The Blue and Yellow flag of Sweden was first described in laws of Sweden a few years later. There is a possibility of timeline overlap, but there is no possibility that they would mix and match the CoAs with the flag into such an aberration.

It is most likely a very crude drawing of the Coat of Arms of the then current (1805) King of Sweden, Gustav IV Adolf: If you look at the colours and shapes, except for the mid circle heraldry being mirrored on the flag, it much better matches the CoA of Gustav IV Adolf than the Greater Coat of Arms of Sweden. The Greater CoA has a cape in the background, which the flags lack. At the time, the CoA of the king would be synonymous with the CoA of the country. It is weird, because in your quote I see some images are missing, but when I go back to my post I can still see all of the flags I think. Interestingly the sites that are not loading their images seem to be statehistory.ru and another .ru-domain. I will save them all and upload them directly to the forum instead.

REDS have been involved in a few scrapes recently. Some of them include: Bani: and yesterday at La Orchila: Following the PB we chased down and sunk a few more Dutch.

Yesterday we noticed that the BR of some ships (Essex and Belle Poulle) had changed, as far as I know without any mention anywhere. I don't know exactly when, since we usually have some buffer in the BR, but it must have been recent. It is good that the BR data is continuously being updated, but why not let us know? As a port battle planner you can't always have one of each ship in your docks to be able to check that the BR is the same as last time, but PBs do require planning and when the premises - i.e. BRs - change without alert, then that only serves to cause frustration. How about an official Google Spreadsheet being created that is kept updated with the BR of all ships in the game, that we can consult with when setting up PBs?

When the commander tells the Russian fleet to enter a PB.