Matt Murdock

Hi there, First post, but I have been playing Naval Action for a week or so on the US PVP server and have taken part in quite a few battles (both on my own and capturing/defending ports). One are that seems a bit disappointing at the moment is the fleets (I heard it is turned off above 1st Lt for now) but I have a big suggestion that I think will make fleets far more exciting. What I propose is that player fleets are manned using their own spare ships and crew, rather than "hired" ships. So when you outgrow your ship that you have lovingly spent days outfitting, rather than having it languish in your outpost, or getting sold, or worse, broken down for parts - instead if you have some spare crew left over after manning your main ship, you can bring it along as your AI controlled fleet. At the main port screen all it needs is a button alongside the repair/sell buttons that says "Send to fleet", to move it to your fleet screen. Then you can turn on (tick) upto your maximum allowed number of controlled ships (for your rank) and the game simply goes, "well if you can have 150 crew at your level, and you are using 120 on your snow, then that leaves you 30 crew for your cutter which is next in line". The bonuses that this would bring to the game are: 1) Its exciting to get to re-use your favourite ships 2) Players would buy more ships from other players, (rather than hiring from fleet) stimulating the economy. 3) Players could create a specific task force for a specific purpose, with ships and weapons picked accordingly. Of course there might need to be some limits to prevent people from creating a fleet with a dozen basic cutters, (maybe a maximum of 1 basic cutter in a fleet? Or none at all?) but I think the crew limit, along with the existing ship count limits would work pretty well in controlling any spammy exploits. What do you think?