The Spud

Well we could argue what a gank is, but I would consider a gank a fight where one side chooses to attack a significantly weaker opponent. With the fleet one could basicaly be a gank squad on his own...

I understand you want a fleet when sailing a trader, but in a PvP fight i much rather have none of the AI sailing in my way realy... If both the ganked and the gankee are running fleet, its maybe as much a pro ganking as an anti ganking thing? I would think people will rather run a fleet to prevent getting ganked then use them to gank.

Could be an officers perk, when capturing a surrendered ship or a captured ship that lost because morale was 0, you could have a set percentage of that crew.

However I feel like this would add some extra tactics to the game, I fear it will be too complicated for allot of normal players who don't sail IRL.

We had a bit of a in game "Brexit" a good month ago, with lots of people going inactive. I hope with those shiny french ships sitting in our waters some will be tempted to come back for some fun with the french. I know allot of them very much enjoyed the french players, always in for some friendly banter. I hope this spirit is still sailing strong with the french. Happy hunting and I hope to see you (on the bottom of the ocean) soon...

I thought this was not the case some months ago? I have noticed this too...

Does this mean the Brits are going to get extra screwed now?

We should have a system with production buildings and instead of the crafting thing we should have a general workshop. Where you need to hire craftsmen, in much the same way as we'll need to hire crew. You could hire Woodworkers, Ropers and blacksmiths. The mix of you craftsmen will determine the speed of production. Like a full woodworkers crew will produce planks faster then a mixed crew, etc... So you could basicaly also let woodworkers make iron fittings, but they would be less efficient in it. The number of Shipbuilders inside you crew would determine the quality of your ship build, and will reduce your production rate. The craftsmen need to be supplied with goods to produce a specific item, so you "drop" the goods for that specic item, lets say medium carriages, and depending on the number of craftsmen in the shop it will produce X amount of carriages over X amount of time. The longer they produce the same item the more efficient they will become at producing that item, more carriages over the same amount of time. When you change it to lets say planks, the efficiency is gone. We could even implement upgrades much the same as the ship upgrades, like "Exceptioan Woodworker" giving an upgrade to everything wood related, "Exceptional Blacksmith" for everything forging and casting related. You would need to restock the workshop from time to time, or reset their production item. So you might be out ganking, and you would get a message "Workshop stopped working because they ran out of resources". So you would kinda need to check on it from time to time to see the stuff is still up and running. We could even give a bonus to the production when the player is online. Crafting at the moment doesn't require a ton of work, you collect the resources from nearby ports, do some clicking and you have a ship, only LH hold you back. Hours generate the same for everyone, with this system you can put in a bit more strategy. And clans can optimise their production, as workshop fully crewed for woodwork will produce frames etc at a much faster rate.

If you make things nation specific, it will have the same effect as now. People will chose the nation that give them the highest chances of victory. I think we need a fair playing field. We can't go talking about the pirates having benefits, and at the same time want to have differences amongst nations. If there should be a difference, it might be better to give smaller nations some sort of economy boost (more goods bought/produced by NPC). This would be more fair than giving every nation different ships with different specs, it must be realy frustrating to know that even if you field a fleet of your 25 best ships against their best 25 their chances of victory are higher because their ships are just better. Bit like the Victory VS Santi, or the consti vs ingermanland, or the frigate vs BP.

It has its pro's and con's in my opinion. Gankers running fast boarding ships who target lone targets, are now prety sure there will be no friendlies popping up. So they only need to get close board and it is a win.On the 5 minute mark however, the gankers run bigger risk as 5 minutes give the gankee plenty of time to rally all who is nearby. And even if the numbers are even then, boarding ships will usualy not be equiped as good as a full on live oak warship. So basicaly now it is in favour of the full on boarding gankers a bit more. But if we change the battle timer to 5, we would have to change the no enter battle timer to five minutes, to prevent people popping out of port to join an ongoing battle. At the time I think it gives less disadvantages then the 5 minute mark. Try to run in tight groups between places so the 2 minute timers don't matter.

I think the wars system will be more or less like you are describing it, it will give some more end game options instead of just PB's. The advanced warning will make things allot more interesting. Everybody will know tomorrow at 18:00 the action will be going down in the Ile a Vache area, and even the pubbies won't need to ask around about what will be going down. Use national chat, group up, sail over there and defend/attack the area. This will also eliminate the port capping while a nations major fleet is somewhere tied up in a PB so you kinda use that time to cap 2-3 undefended ports. We need more battles over less ports, with more possibilities for lower ranked players to participate in this. I like it.

I like the proposed system, I have a suggestion for a nice addition in the PB mechanic. I suppose this will be put in place when the diplomacy is in please, so also when each nation has a governement chosen by the biggest land owners of each nation. Interesting would be that this governement would have a treasury, it be from a weekly tax, or a tax on combat gold, or only the tax created from sales. Maybe the % could be changed by the governement. Each PB attack, the governement will have to dedicate a set amount of gold towards the creation of the assault fleet, this money will be used to pay the people who "sell" (instead of give) their goods for the good cause. Could be prices at a set % higher then the NPC prices, or even give the option to make them considerably higher to attract more players in selling goods to the fleet, and getting the fleet constructed faster. This addition will make attacks more valuable, a nation will not be able to steamroll a nation if their treasury can not take it. The defenders should only need to show up with ships to defend and have no need to implement gold, although they could dedicate some gold towards possible defence upgrades (more towers, thicker walls, bigger cannon's, more cannons,...) that will also need goods to be brought in and those will have to be payed for in the same way as an assault fleet. But it shouldn't be a necesity for the defenders, 25 skilled captains with good ships should still stand a good chance to succeed in defending even without defence upgrades. This will create situations where after a number of failed attacks that nation won't be able to launch another attack due to lack of money. This might create situations at a "frontline" where in turns one side launches several attacks, but is after several attempts forced to hold off attacking, giving the other side a chance to attack. This will make it hard for nations to launch attacks on several fronts, unless that nation is well prepared and has calculated exactly how much money it will need to be able to sustain an attack on multiple fronts before their money runs out. Bit like in real life This will give the opportunity to smaller but usualy better organised nations, to partialy cripple a nation by fending of attack after attack, leaving them unable to attack for a couple of days. The goods being used for the fleet will also influence the attacking nation,as less goods will make it to the crafters, maybe making them ask the governement to hold of attacks for a while.

I think this answers most of the many questions people have been asking, I hope this will make a majority of the people return to the game, good job devs. I don't know if this is under the fleet section of the upcoming patch (fleets return but improved), but can we replace the massive 1st/2nd rate AI fleets with something a bit smaller, I never realy saw anybody attack any of these massive AI fleets? Or am I wrong on this part? They are there but I don't think they add much gameplay wise, as you would need a massive group to attack such massive fleets and at the time its even hard to get a 10 - 15 man group together.

Well I had the same misunderstanding, its a bit confusing the way it is written down by the devs, that and also the discussion about how long 6 months ingame would take in real life. So no hate on whoever misread that. You have put it down more clearly then the devs (no hard feelings).

Agreed, I think I have played small battles in my basic cutter for the first two ranks. The first time I went outside of KPR and did some OW sailing was when I had to look for a cheap snow. I think I bought an NPC one at tiburon back then. Good times, and thats only been like 4 months ago or something...

Alliances can be made for the same absurd reasons war can be made, so it doesn't realy matter why nations are allied. Like true hippies we should strive for a unified peace in the carribean...

Thanks Hethwill, I got confused by the fact that you could buy them everywhere (as like repair kits). The dev's trying to say that they'll add them to the crafting recipe, so the provisions are "build in" as the devs say 6 months translated to real life hours is far longer than the average lifespan of a ship in this game. So it would be pointless implementing the feature if it is never going to be used. With the you can buy it everywhere, they actualy mean you don't need to look for a port and get them there.... The pieces are comming together, the way it was written down got me confused.

What is going to be the penalty when you run out of rations in the middle of nowhere? Can you still sail to a port, what happens?

That collor combination on those pictures in the OP, I like it. I like the blue/yellow/black combination like the front of the Victory. I need to check out the shipyard part of the forum a bit more...

Well the devs haven't realy talked about this in any way, so i'm gonig to assume it is nothing they are taking under consideration.

Some thought I had for a nice addition when doing some long distance sailing, instead of the AFK sailing or watching a movie and switching over from time to time. A small minigame would be nice, like a game of "battleships" . Something in game with an overlay window (much like the chat window) you can minimise when you need to focus in sailing again. This might be a stupid idea, a programmers nightmare, or just a waste of valuable development time. But when the game is finalized, this might be a nice thing to add. Could even be a more NA themed concept, just a fast 2D minigame. Toss in a high score list or something. I know you can play other games while doing the AFK sailing, but if this game would be overlay and something NA offers, this would be used far more i guess. Don't shoot me on this :-)

Its these kind of people this game can realy do without, its hard enough to escape normal gank squads. I'm totaly OK with squads hiding behind an island or a corner or whatever, a real ambush. But this kind of stuff is realy weak...

The difference I feel between Brits and US/Swedes, is that everybody seems to hate the British up to the point I believe they will not stop at just reducing us to jamaica, but will want to put in that extra effort to make it realy frustrating to play. Now it might never get to that point, but it does feel like some people are putting in some extra effort to getting us "wiped".

This is a bit like a Mexican standoff, where the devs say they will keep on delaying the pirate change every time we discuss it and the players say they'll stop playing if it isn't changed. Not a preferable situation in any way, I understand a bit of frustration from the devs part, its like we're getting a nice cake, but we're complaining the cherry on top is spoiled, to state the obvious, the cake is delicious... I expect that the devs have a bit of a roadbook, and maybe some features can only be implemented after others have been implemented before it. If you think about it they better dedicate their full attention to one major game change at a time and fine tuning it before adding another layer to the gameplay cake. If they would implement a new crafting system, a new economy system, diplomacy and pirate fix at the same time, this would be too much of a game changer to ever properly fine tune it. When you stack a house of cards, you better make sure whatever you are building on is solid enough before you ad more. It is frustrating that we need to deal with this for some time, but lets just hope it turns out for the best.

Well, about the nerfing, right now the pirate faction is basicaly something between a nation and a real pirate faction. So either way you'll go, there will be some form of nerfing. I feel we should cater to the needs of the players who realy want to play the pirate role and are not interested in Ports and any diplomacy related stuff. If this would have been a pirate only game, we would probably be wondering why we can sail 1st rates and cap ports right? What the pirate faction needs is a end goal, something that keeps them motivated to play even after reaching max rank. My sugestion was to make it purely based on gold/wealth, it be sort of "prestige" ranks after the top rank, it be a ranking system, an option to decorate your ship in gold, possibilitys enough in my opinion. The details over what types of ships can be sailed and what types not can be experimented with. But port capping should not be part of a pirate factions activity. We have plenty of nations, and I'm sure the pirates who do want to do port battles and fight nations can probably find a nation they'll be happy to join. Most importantly the pirate factions should still be FUN to play, they should have plenty of PvP options and some exclusive content. They shouldn't be nerfed and beaten so bad its no longer fun to play. This faction could be perfect for players who want some fast PvP action, solo or as a clan or group. I think it might even be nice for national players bored of port and diplomacy stuff, to take a little break and be a pirate for a while.