The Spud

Cheers Liquicity for the great effort in organising all this, first time I joined yesterday was great fun! Sadly I didn't knew it was going to be all carro's. Little note, I'm in the ROYAL clan and not the AHOY clan tho.

The biggest thing to tackle is manual sailing, i would recommend grinding XP till you can fully crew a surprise and use that ship to do some PvP. Its a good ship to learn to manual sail, its very forgiving if you screw up, it has nice firepower vs other 5th rates, its a good sailing ship and the favourite of many. You can buy cheap NPC ones everywhere. Its by sinking your ships allot that you learn the most, don't be afraid to sink or get capped. Don't use gold ones until you are confident enough to keep it affloat in sticky situations. For missions I recommend sticking carro's on, they reload faster and do more damage, but has less range/accuracy, but the AI Tends to get close anyways. For PvP always use longs.

I agree, kinda. I'm not a sailing expert at all, but wasn't ship speed more a thing like how fast it could go without breaking stuff (masts, rigings, sails), and not just a max number. So we could assume that an experienced captain would know better what his ship could take without breaking stuff, thus making it faster then an inexperienced captain who is running on absolute safe mode, the same might be true for manouvering. So some difference in speed would probably not be totaly unlogical, but not like the differences we have now (like several knots difference). I also think they should remove wood options like fir and cedar for SoL's, as they build these mainly for toughness not speed. Although for the sake of gameplay its fun to fight eachother with ships that have different specs.

Well it might just be, but nobody knows that when they need to choose a nation. Thats why I think people should be informed what language is mostly spoken in a certain nation, and what real life nationalities are mostly in that nation. I think anybody new to this game would just, like myself, assume Sweden and DN is full of scandinavian people who I don't understand at all. And I don't think you can blame them. I know it doesn't feel right, but it doesn't feel as ahistorical as sailing under the flag of a made up nation. We all know that it would be more fun for everyone if the playerbase was evenly devided amongst all nations, but I feel that imaginary nations would just be weird for some people. I believe we can come up with a better plan. Maybe just add a random join button which gives a nice bonus, some gold, XP and a redeemable. I would have probably gone for that one if it would have been in.

I think if GB would have been in Swedens spot, it would have just as many players as it has now. My nation selection when first playing this game, without any background stuff on this game was as follows: - I know a bit of French but not enough, so not France. - I don't know Spanish, so not Spain. - I don't know Danish or Norwegian, so not DN. - I don't know swedish (although I was assuming that DN and Sweden would have allot of german players, but like with French I don't know enough), so not sweden. - Pirates is probably a mix of everything, not my choice. - I speak Dutch as native language, but I'm a Belgian so thats a no go. - Only leaves me English with GB and US, GB is european like myself so I chose GB. I don't think people choose GB for the easy mode, its just the place you'll most likely feel most comfortable communicating as a european. If you would know for instance, oh there is a reasonable Belgian community in say the Swedish faction, I would probably have gone swedish. Another fact in favour of GB is its rich Naval history. As for fictional nations, It would feel realy weird sailing historicaly accurate ships under a fictional flag.

If you "force" an alliance where half a nation disagrees on you'll just have half of that nation either quit the game or switch to brit or dutch, basicaly making it pointless. Would it be an idea if everyone would mark his native language & country, and have it show up on the nation selection screen. Like for instance "Great Britain" 60% native english speaking, 15% german speaking 10% dutch speaking, etc... and alternatively you could select show country. Would maybe say 40% players out of UK, 15% US, 5% australian, 4% German, etc... So like Italian people could see, oh France has the highest number of Italian speaking players i'll join France. So people who share the same nationality and language can find eachother more easily. Would avoid people choosing the easy solution and going for the obvious choices.

I think if the devs would have ever had one sollid alt case, they would ban, I still believe that most of this Alt stuff is just players who lack experience. If people in PB's would just initialy act normal towards the "suspect" instead of calling him names and why he entered in a bellona or whatever, you might get an explanation and not someone who escapes the battle because hes not wanted and angry at the same time for not understanding why he got called names. You might even get the person to fight the battle as good as he can and still manage to win. I don't think many people would put a 40€ account on the line just to join a PB and leave, leaving clear evidence for the devs to use against him. Its easy to spot an alt when he does nearly no fights and most of his activities is just trading stuff with the same person 75% of the time. I only have problems with alts joining PB's and doing bad tags. If you get scammed its your own fault, this might as wel happen to you IRL. If they use stong language just report them like you would with any other player. However I still believe that the real hardcore players might still play dirty, but I don't think many will go as low as ruining a possible great and even fight. If they would be realy determined to do so we would see this way more often. Maybe with return of conquest flags it'll be harder to get alts in position to ruin gameplay.

If they enter PB's to grief, screenshot it devs can track if its an alt or not (by checking for suspicious activity) in any other Alt exploit situation do the same and devs will check. As far as crafting goes, if you realy want to pay 40€ extra just to have double the outposts, production buildings and crafting hours...why not. If you're half descent you should be able to manage all your ship needs with one account, or have a clan backing you up to do so. The devs can't state that they'll "tollerate" it and then afterwards forbid alt use and ban people who payed 40€ for every account thinking that it was tollerated (I heard of people having 8 and more, do the maths). Besides its not fair for those who genuinly share accounts, for the little trouble alts give its not worth it. This discussion has been made allot of times.

Can we have like an example list of different scenarios and what would be needed to tag them, so we can kinda work out a bit what we'll need to tag certain groups. I'm guessing screening will now be favoured by sending in groups of 25 ships with preferably high BR as they can tag everything but can't be tagged easily by other ships. I would realy like bigger screening battles, would be more fun.

I know you're a Dutchie, so don't tell me you like this red white and blue flag over the dutch flag...I'm going to have to tell Willy.

The order is perfect, you guys just have to turn your flags around if you want to join I'll be happy to translate between French and English, I have seen "Allo, allo" many times, it will be no problem.

The Red, White and Blue, cause all our flags have the same three collors. Giving France an option to join us...

Points to be solved - The current PB system results in people not logging on aside from PB's, there should be raids or a partial return of the flag system to make people log on every day and have RvR action every day. Now it feels like some days are action packed and other days nothing is happening. - I feel we shouldn't have rare ships in this game, all ships should be available by the same way. - The idea behind the current ROE is OK, but I feel people would prefer the previous mechanic over this one. Ships in the outer circle are often too far away and are forced to chase and might never actualy be part of the battle. Would probably solve some screening issues, might bring back the purpose of fast ships for tagging. - The current compass wood integration forces players to dedicate more slots to forests, resulting in a lack of supply of other resources. Would like to see this adjusted, maybe extra levels of forestry or added building slots. New features to add: - Added PvE possibilites for moments when not many players are online (outside server Prime time). - Crafting overhaul, its wonky and slow (with the sliders etc.). - Create more immersion (will probably be improved by new UI implementation), I like the crew sounds in the testbed. Might like some sound when in port too (the typical port sounds, carts rolling, people talking, some funny lines you can pick up from amongst the gossip) a nice background maybe animated. Give options to turn these off seperatly to avoid people getting annoyed by it. - Some randomness in things, like some of the AI stuff you guys planned, get the NPC to very rarely sell some rare stuff in the shop, maybe even get a chance to rarely see a gold ship for sale. Might get some notes to drop with hints on the location of a possible "interesting buy". - Implement some group features, like markers on certain people (like all group on X). Maybe get a fleet leader who can control different groups. Features to be cut or changed dramaticaly - Maybe PvP event should be more like a small/large battle lobby thing, would create even fights and potentialy remove the abuse that is reported (people sinking alts or just making arranged fights) and also the fact that the biggest gank fleet will win.

True, although if population was enough I feel that a PvP server with a more slow paced realistic rule seet would attract many Age of Sail purists. It could give all these great idea's that don't seem to fit on a more competitive based server a place to be appreciated.

Some months ago I thought the same about the crew stats, and how it would make boarding a bit more of a risk not knowing how much crew your oponent exactly has. But I think that it would receive allot of comments and people would not like it, and now I wouldn't even want it myself. Same as with the coordinates, dispite being unrealistic, it prevents a ton of frustration and it increases the "quality of life" within the game. We don't want to be wasting time running in circles around a wreck or an island, figuring out if we're too much south, not south enough etc. people wanted faster gameplay, and the coordinates are a way to cut sailingtimes and cut frustration in general. I also believe that new players allready have a steep learning curve to deal with, and to make it more difficult would probably be a bad idea. I have said this in other threads, it would be a great idea for the devs to open up a "realism" server at release, where they could implement these idea's as wel as many other suggested idea's that increase the realism of the game. Remove the TP's, one dura ships, maybe different damage model, etc... it would remove a bit of stress towards the constant balancing between realism and gameplay we have somewhat been struggeling with over the last months.

John Swiglebottom is a spy? Wut?

Just all send people who know what they are talking about and can switch their ego's off for a couple of minutes.

The return of the flag system, couldn't it be like raise hostility to 100% and then you're able to purchase a flag from any friendly port 30 minutes after hostility reaches 100%. So we don't need to go back to sitting out a port timer in front of a port just because someone might pull a flag. Would make the game more dynamic, would not keep people away from NA as there is always a chance for PB's, and we'll probably be back to a couple of PB's every day. About the communication of the devs, I think they're helping themselves allot by doing this. It might make a more coherent game over all, when you're not constantly torn between catering to the needs of either a age of sail purist and a competitive player decision making might go allot faster, and idea's won't get ditched because of some forum rants before the idea is even finalised. I hope we can have a new patch soon, seems so long since the last one

The way they've put it down it doesn't sound like exclusive ship packs, I think its a fund raiser to be able to get more ships in the game for everybody, not only those who paid. I think I read somewhere that they need more funds to get all the ships in the game they want to put in. So its not going to turn into a P2W.

Before they patched it they could also attack eachother but I believe they had a code of honour where they wouldn't attack eachother, they acted more like a nation. If there would be outlaws and real pirates you could still join the outlaws to prevent this from happening.

I like all of it, its probably a tough decision to remove/replace stuff you've put so much time in. The return of a flag like system will be a good idea I think, I always liked the flag system when it was used as it was supposed to be used. It will also give all players a bigger chance to get into PB's, as the planned ones always end up with roughly the same people fighting eachother. Victory points I like allot, as it'll give incentive to do PvP, even for the less skilled players who'll manage to get maybe a point every now and then, they'll get to have some exclusive stuff too. Also the NPC changes will be nice, however I remember the way they used to be was the NPC would only attack roughly similar BR. But seen as it is easy to take down a similar sized ship/fleet, I just hope they don't become more of an annoiance then an actual challenge. I wonder how good the Elite NPC ships will be. Fot the missions, sometimes I feel like I just want to sink something, so I hope whenever server population is on the low side we still have plenty of chances to get a fight. I'm willing to chip in on any additional ships in this game, if we could double or triple the amount of ships in this game that would be so cool. I realy look forward to see the conquest changes!

I can't remeber I ever payed that much money for a medkit, but I might be wrong. I think I crafted them myself once or twice maybe, cause non were for sale I think. But as of the last couple of months I have had cheap crew replacement. I said I was going to write down the exact numbers but I kinda forgot to, so I don't have them down to a crew member exactly but yesterday i had the following situation. Screening at Bridgetown, got in a fight lost 125 crew, Port Battle at Salamanca lost 200 crew, screening at Castries (got fireshipped) lost 450 on my pavel (ouch). I do know I made 280k gold combined, at 500 gold a crew that would have been 387,5k gold, so a 100k loss. Luckily it only costed me like 50k of med kits to replace. Now a fireship is not something you'll experience every day, I think my losses would probably have been around the 50 mark on that last battle without it, so it still would have been a nice profit even at 500 gold a crew.

PvP1 KPR, i buy my medkits at 10k (that is 10.000) or below, I haven't even seen them for sale for 40-50k. I bought 50 a couple weeks ago, haven't checked since. If they would be 40-50k, i would start making them myself. But I could probably get some of them from my clan too if the cost would realy be that high. Might very well be they're priced allot higher elsewhere, but I wouldn't know. Will check later.

I think I just fail in getting my point across here, I don't disagree with you guys. I just think that its stupid to have one option that makes the crew cost 500 a piece and then you can buy a large medkit as low as 7500 gold, making it 50 a piece for crew with just a little more effort. Those are like way too far apart, that just doesn't make any sence at all, the default offered solution to hire crew is basicaly a scam.

Isn't it strange that with the use of surgion, doctor and medkits your 40k profit turns into roughly a 160k profit. Wouldn't it be much more balanced if your initial profit would be 80-100k and the perks/medkits make it a 160k profit? It would still be worth putting them on, but it wouldn't become on of the standard officer perks like frigate master (etc.), double shot and double charge. I don't mean they should increase the mission rewards, just reduce the crewcost.