The Spud

We had this in the beginning, but it was not usefull at all. It was a "Ship Report Letter" if I recall correctly. Mostly by the time you read the letter many minutes had passed or the location wasn't even close to you. It was like something you got when you sunk someone as a type of reward. It was removed because it wasn't used.

That would be an interesting turn of events... a full wipe

In every propaganda post he makes about SORRY or the Pirates (read, about himself) he feels the need to refer to those two times he conquered the USA and reduced them to one port. So obviously its a bit of a fetish of him to reduce nations to one port, if he could, he would do it again no doubt about that. I think the other nations are mature enough to play hard but not to kill the game. We're getting some numbers back in this game, so I hope we can at least keep those numbers. We all hope for a better conquest mode, with less empty PB, more good fights and a much slower conquest progress, so wiping a nation can't be done in a couple of days.

You know ego is not a good thing right? I think its the pirate nation and its coalition who missed the chance to rule the map a couple of weeks ago.

Your ego, my word... "you need 4 nations to try to do what I have done with 1 clan" "I have the entire nation backing me up". This seems to be more about you then about the pirate nation my friend.

I think you should be able to surrender whenever you want, I think in the age of sail, any captain would have accepted the surrender at any time of his opponent as it would prevent further damage/death of his own ship/crew, becaus we can click repair and replenish crew right after battle, but back in the age of sail any damage was a weakness in a next battle or was going to cost them valuable hours of sailing time to repair it. From some reading I also assume that there was a bit of an honor code amongst sailors, therefore I don't think they would let any sailor drown after their ship was sunk unless it would endanger his own ship/crew. Just like they (tried) not to bomb hospitals and shoot doctors on the battle field in both world wars. Upon blowing up or sinking I would apply a penalty of losing a random percentage of crew between 25 - 75%, the rest is supposidly "saved" from drowning. I would like for another option, maybe only possible when being attacked by pirates. When getting attacked, instead of surrender being the only option, have another option, demand to negotiate with the pirates over a price in return for safe passage (this can be gold, or anything you are keeping in your hold). So you could escape the battle instantly and have a two minute safe mode, maybe accompanied with some invisibility. The pirate can always deny this and just board/sink the guy with the chance of losing allot of crew and maybe even the battle.

I don't see the problem with it realy, nobody will say we'll go AFK fishing for 3 hours instead of doing PvP or missions. I AFK fish, while cooking dinner or when i go out to do grocerie shopping or take a shower. Not when I can do other more fun stuff, where I need to sail anyways. So it doesn't make sence ot hate the AFK fishing, these are not active players turning into AFK players, these are AFK players not being AFK in port but out in the ocean instead. If the problem is they can fish while standing still, you can't realy catch big fishes near a port (Tuna, dorado), most are small fish or the ocasional bull shark etc. and maybe a bottle. I kinda like the sight of all those ships, looks a bit simmilar to what a harbour would have looked like in that time. Just big ships docked a bit out of Port. Nothing wrong with it. Its not like people went fishing instead of fighting. Nice addition would be the possibility to set out Fishing Pods, to maybe catch like lobsters and crabs and other stuff. And you need to set them out in the wide ocean away from ports (area where you can usualy find tuna etc.) and you can only set them out for a maximum amount of time before the pod is lost. Say 7 ingame days or something. So you need to go back and collect it in time before it runs out. I guessed that if people want whale hunting, they might as wel like this addition. If people think fishing (or anything not PvP) is killing the game, they need to consider that the more features you add, the more dimensions the game gets and the more people it will appeal too. Its like Trading and Crafting. Its unrelated to the PvP, but there are some people out there considering trading as their main goal in this game.

Its interesting, but 65 votes on a total of 1200 - 1400 active players is not realy a fair representation unfortunatly. Idealy, if we could have nation specific ships in a balanced manner, that would be ideal. I would love to have a ton of ships in this game, so you don't automaticaly know what you are up against at the start of a battle. But we would realy need allot of ships, so nations are not limited to 6 ships per nation or something. Would at least need to be more or less the same as the choice we have now for every nation. But one can dream i guess.

I think the pirates have such great potential that is not realy being used in this system. Pirates should have their own game "inside the game", their goal should be to get as rich as they possibly can totaly unrelated to who is on the receiving end of their cannons and swords. They should be opportunistic barbarians, turning up on the right time at the right place to catch a nationalist at his weakest hour. They should be a verry irritating nuisance, but not a sizeable threat to a whole nation. Give them special pirate ships, don't realy care if they sail SoL or not, not crafted ones but captured ones sure, I mean would a pirate captain have turned down the opportunity to sail a 1st rate if he could have captured one? Don't think so. Key should be that it is still fun to play pirate, don't nerf them until you only have the odd guy playing pirate. So they'll be as rare as those sealed bottles. If we should ever have two full PVP euro servers, and we can play different nations on both of them. I would for sure play pirate on one server and keep my British account on the other. PS: Devs, does this new post about Pirate Mechanics mean the changes are pushed back a month?

Literaly every exploit accusation in this forum: Nation X: "Nation Y did this" Nation Y: "But you did the same then and then, why complain?" Nation X: "But that was because of this and that, thats totaly different, you guys started doing that before this" Nation Y: "Yeah, but that was because of this and that, and its totaly different, but you guys did it even before that..." Some people forget that unlike in the "real age of sail", there is nobody directing and controlling every fleet. There are just a bunch of people doing random stuff "somewhat coordinated".

The problem is also a bit that sometimes you get logged out unintentionaly (by the game or your internet connection, we all had this) so any penalty you put on this will also influence the people who have this already frustrating bug happening to them. Also the ships popping up on your horizon seem to be very close all of a sudden, they just pop in much closer as you might expect especialy when you can clearly see land in the background or the shape of a port, you don't expect the ships that are closer to you to pop in later. Some of this might be confused with fleets "logging in".

I feel there will be an excellent excuse from Lord Vicious as to why that doesn't matter... stay tuned...

Agreed, there should be no ristriction on who you can attack and who you cant. But they should disencourage ganking in some ways, so we get better fights. Shouldn't matter if it is right outside a capital or in the middle of an ocean. Traders are always fair game in my opinion, and guys undercrewing a big ship are realy asking for it. Besides I myself don't realy know the ranks of the other nations, I need to look them up, especialy the pirate ranks. The real wasted time is getting chased by 7 reno's when you're sailing a surprise or something, some defensive tagging, some possible escapes, new tags, etc... you're going to escape maybe 1 out of 10 times if everything is in your favour. While it would be fun to fight two reno's in a surprise. If they're only half good at the game, you can take them both out. They should motivate people to do fair fights when it comes to PvP. When defending ports all should be allowed off course.

I think they should just give some sort of penalty for fighting with BR differences. If both players sail the same ship, no matter what level, I don't see why they should prevent that. I also don't realy think a rear admiral will be sailing a small ship just so he can fight low level players. If someone in a trinc starts tagging a privateer or brig or something, they should get a penalty in gold and XP. Unless the total BR in the battle is more or less even. Any trading vessel should be fair game, you know you're running a risk when sailing a trader. So whenever you are in a situation you need to defend a port or something, you can attack that low level player (but with the gold and XP penalty). This will otherwise be a exploit mechanic, where a midshipman could safely investigate the defence of a port without getting attacked. Or give the flag to him so he can't be attacked reaching a port or something. A low level player might not have the big ship, but he might very well be a good captain and an excellent shot.

The more you talk to this guy the more he'll feel important, and the bigger his ego will become. Don't feed his ego...

I'm going to start taking screenshots myself, because I was at the defence of PA and I got dragged in one of these BR exploit tags at least three times. You guys even pulled in the whole SoL defence fleet outside PA with the BR exploit, giving a clear way for you guys to enter the battle. If you are planning on making a statement on saying, the British are playing dirty and we are not, make sure you're not using the same tricks mate. I'm not here to be starting the finger pointing game, but these one sided stories are not realy adding to any of this. That being said, aside from these BR exploit tags, the whole set up was well done, bit cheesy with the smuggler flag sitting in PA. But we saw pirates, spanish and french working together, so it was a good effort that payed of for you guys.

I'm not calling you out on anything man, I even said people only want to play fights they can't lose, but you started a fight you can't win, so kudos for that. But you can't hit the wall with your fist and complain the wall is too hard afterwards.You knew he had a fleet, so there is no reason to throw a rant about fleets. The guy would not have stand a chance otherwise, so good job on him for taking some fleet with him. Fleets are ideal for traders, lower leveled players or lone wolfs. Please don't be offended by my posts, as these forums are allready filled to the brim with bitter people, and I do not intend to add to that. I only want to promote fair gameplay, balanced fights and a fair chance for the easier targets in the game to protect themselves. I am sure you agree with this, and I am sure you're not amongst these pro gankers, who used to log out etc... or sail invisible out of port to fight a totaly unfair fight. My complaint was directed to these kind of people, because I hope these are not on this topic ranting about people running fleets to protect themselves against ganks, because thats just low... I'm a Brit, we're allied, but if you want to do a fair battle we can totaly arange that, not to settle any scores or anything, just to for fun...o7

I got three bottles since the drop rate fix, two on the first day and now I had one yesterday. The drop rate is low enough for me to not focus on it, but however I try to sail as much as possible in the other stuff I do. Instead of being lazy and buying stuff at KPR I sail out anyway to buy it cheaper ot whatever. Do some AFK fishing while having to do some other stuff. The balance is just right. I rather have less drop rate but with higher loot as compared to higher rate with lower loot. Would be cool if 1 out of a thousand bottles has a treasure map instead of a wreck, and you can get some gold (currency) and a redeemable ship or something. The loot would need to be so much you need to choose what you take and don't take, because you can't take it all. It would need to be extremely rare, but just the legend that such thing would exist. Rumours here and there, people lying about finding one, is it true, is it not true...

Agreed. I think the last option of the 4 is the best option. A gentlemens agreement will never hold. Locking conquest now with so many new player/returned players would be a unfavorable choise. And locking the ability to purchase multiple flags will just cause more trolling. Conquest flags can also be pulled at the very last second, so the other team can't pull a counter flag. You can work around the problem. Only very few ports can be protected by pulling a counter flag realy.

Ooooooh the burn on that one... I say screenshot your post, and post it again on this topic, because that post alone is a clear victory!

I agree with the very amusing "Pagan Pete" that true Seamanship is what makes the difference in this game. You can outrun a frigate in a slightly slower LGV if you are sailing under the optimal angle for your LGV as compared to the frig, if you counter tag properly and possition good in OW, you can outrun that frig. But when you leave the battle screen you're back in OW and the game starts over. In any case this will be less fun then fighting a fair fight in your LGV. The positioning of you ship is key in this game, and you need sailing skills to do that, you need to know you ship what it can and can't do, and this will make all the difference in a game. But there are some situations that are so unbalanced that even your best sailing skills will not be enough. Even solo this game can be allot of fun, and you'll always find other people to do some fun stuff with PvP or missions or whatever. But if you want to do stuff completely solo, why not give these people fleet options and let them enjoy a safe trade run.

It just bothers me that people only want to engage in a battle when they have the clear upper hand, when you engage in a battle that can't possibly be lost from your side. To me thats as good a gank with two ships as with 10 ships. A managable disadvantage is no problem, but two frigs vs a LGV, that is just a lost battle. Even when the LGV counter tags, the frigs are faster and have chasers so will get him eventualy. Thats just frustrating gameplay for the LGV captain. That is like playing CS and your team has less then half the players of the other team. All the coolest battles I have ever played in NA are battles that are even or at a slight disadvantage, they give so much satisfaction. Last week I got attacked by a lone surprise in my lone LGV, it was the best fun I have had in this game for over a month. There is literaly no skill involved in capping a LGV with two frigs, chain the sails, shoot the masts, grape, board. So I don't think people should be complaining that a trader is running a fleet to protect himself.

If your view of PvP is 2 frigs taking on one LGV, thats just ganking mate. If now all of a sudden that LGV has a 3rd and a frig as a fleet, and now he's basicaly "ganking" you its unfair? Let your mate sail a pavel or bellona, you sail a frig. Let your mate take out the 3rd rate and the frig, and you take out the LGV. It shouldn't be any problem. He'll think twice before he sails out with his 125k worth of crew + his cargo.

On the same note, if you are in two frigs and he is in a lone LGV, what is he to do about you attacking him? He's putting out a ton of gold in crew in his 3rd rate and a frigate as AI fleet. If you can't take him on you shouldn't attack him. As a trader even in a LGV he is vulnerable, so good for him he chose to run a fleet to protect him from people raiding trade lines. If you would have been with a little more or bigger ships you could have taken him...

If the crew effectively regenerates every 24 hours, and you surrender your ship instead of letting it sink when all hope is lost, you can only lose massive crew when getting stern raked or when boarding or getting boarded. Now both of these things can be avoided in some extent. I need to check out if crew realy regenerates as some say it does some say it doesn't, if it does i'm totaly fine with the price thing. If it does not regenrate it realy is very expensive...