The Spud

I consider 1 crew loss = 500 gold as being the core mechanic of the game, and I see medkits and perks as a way to reduce the effect of this core mechanic. We must see if by the regular way PvP is profitable. If we see its not and people have to use perks/medkits to make it profitable, then I think the core mechanic is not working as intended. Thats why it would be interesting to see how much money you actualy made after 20 battles, cause battles is what this game is mostly about. If you would concentrate purely on making money, then you wouldn't be doing missions you would be out doing trade runs, crafting or capping trader AI's (which can land you +-60k each time for 5 minutes of "battle".) So to speak, if someone with a total disinterest for crafting, trading or AI trader capping would play this game could he make a decent profit doing so. As a side note, at this moment, with the lack of tutorials, I have found that new players will just hire crew at 500 gold each. As they don't know about officer perks or medkits. They'll hire an officer but don't know how to use the perks or how to reset them.

What we should do as a better comparison, i'll try to do it myself too, is for the next 20 battles write down your crew loss and the money you made. Preferably not 20 missions, just PvP, screening and PvE combined (maybe not PB's), the battles you would normaly do. And then at the end make a comparison. If we take crew lost x 500 and compare to your earnings, we'll get a better average of how many money you can make from doing PvP. Obviously if you focus on making money like capping traders AI or player your profits should be nice.

We could just make missions auto replenish lost crew if the captain is below Rear Admiral. So to speak as a "bonus" from the admiralty for succesfully completing one of their orders? Additionaly, just a random thought, it might be something to disencourage or change ganking (wether or not ganking is bad, I'm gona leave in the middle), if someone gets ganked and BR is x times higher then their own BR. They also don't lose crew at the end, as a form of "bonus" by the admiralty for bravery. This might reduce the frustration for people getting ganked, it might make the victim actualy fight a battle and try to do as much crew damage as he possibly can, cause the other guy needs to pay for its crew. Concerning the cost of crew, unless you are participating in a battle where you dictate how the battle goes (superior numbers, superior ships), you're not going to realy make money out of it, unless you use MedKits. And if we look at the cost of puchasing outposts, a vital part of effectively participating in RvR and Crafting, you realy need the extra gold when ranking up. So replenishing crew on mission below Rear Admiral might be a good start for that.

I see people do that, and it is stupid, just buy a ship in another port I never have trouble finding an NPC ship, especialy if you have different outposts. I realy think getting ships atm is not hard at all. If you ask around if someone has a free ship they'll surely give you one too.

I think for some its a struggle to keep their fleet afloat, and other people need to give ships away cause their docks are full. You need to put some time in putting up a good crafting system, with ports close to eachother that produce the majority of goods you need in an area that has a good regional bonus. This took me two days to set up, and I have taken another two days to move it. Once you are set and you do your daily routine of collecting stuff and the occasional trade run to get stuff on the right spot you should be putting out a couple of gold ships every week. Unless you only sail SoL's at which its probably closer to 1 or 2 every week. Use contracts in ports that produce a good where you can't place a production building. If you are low on money do rear admiral missions and cap 1st rates or just cap traders for good loot or money. For people below Flag Captain I would suggest not to invest any money in gold ships but using the NPC ships, they are dirt cheap they'll give you a good return on investment and they are widely available. A gold ship is only a good idea if you also have good upgrades to fit on it. Instead save up crafting stuff and find a crafter to craft you a gold ship. Don't put all your money in a 2 million surprise, put you money in production buildings and outposts they'll suit you much better in the long run. If you look at the capital shop every day, I bet every now and then they'll be a ship for sale at bargain price. They always say, don't sail what you can't afford to replace. Also don't put good upgrades on a one dura ship. I think you're from a smaller nation, so its a tad harder for you to do all the above, and the chances for ganking are also realy high. But try to go out in groups, get involved in an active clan, they'll usualy run around in groups you're less likely to be sunk. Sometimes you gank, sometimes you get ganked sometimes its an even fight, thats just how it is.

Would indeed be nice to see, maybe after each maintenance, the planned Port Battles for each server. But it might work both ways in people logging on cause they know there is a PB happening and also people not logging on cause they know nothing is happening. Still support the idea tho.

I kinda feel the same, the last added ship that could be crafted by regular blueprint drop was the Bucentaure I believe. The PvP events are gankfest, the PvE events are realy boring after a couple of dozen times and PB's are realy hard to get into. Would much rather have PvP kills count towards getting a possibility to get a BP drop, cause even if you're not all that great at this game eventualy you'll get enough killpoints to get a shot at getting a BP.

Well in my opinion the NPC ships are excellent for newer players who don't have the cash or crafting XP to craft their own ships. With gold surprises going for +-1.5 million at the moment, I don't see how any of the newer players could ever afford to buy such a ship. And even if they get together the money, they're most likely to lose it in very short time. So NPC ships are for them a nice way to enjoy PvP without losing all their gold (so to speak) on one ship and have them sailing in a cutter again after a week. I think all top rank players can replace ships fast enough to not prefer NPC ones over crafted ones, even in screening. Using NPC ships only for fleets or when you don't have a ship on the spot. On top of that not all ships are available, and there are no SoL's. With consti's going at +-165k, they are not exactly dirt cheap either (well they are now as we all have millions stacked from fine woods).

I think it will not be a case of "all or nothing". Its my understanding you will have a "default" ship, with the stock perks where you can increase certain "specs" but at the cost of other specs, I think this will probably be done gradualy (like increase speed 0.5%, 1%, 1.5%,2%,... and at a simmilar ratio reduce armour HP with X%). So in general ships should be "balanced" apart from wood type and regional bonus. If they rework upgrades it'll probably be something simillar, I think that specificaly the "Marines" upgrade is something that will be reworked.

I said it before, the devs need to put out a statement concerning a possible wipe, and how it will be implemented. I know we should expect wipes in EA, and I have no problem at all with wipes, they offer new challenges in the game. But I know that some people are just not playing NA cause they don't want to waste time in doing stuff that is going to be undone "next week" (so to speak). A clear topic on this, and not a post somewhere burried deep inside a topic would be a good way to do this. If the devs have allready decided about the timing of a possible wipe obviously.

If you implement extra gold/time sinks to acquire or improve basic things in this game, it will have a negative effect on the majority of NA players. If you need rum for speed bonus, you just know nobody will sail without rum on board. Just like nobody is sailing around without the light ship, frigate or line ship master perk on. It won't add anything extra, it'll be one more thing added on the basic battle set up list. And for most of the NA players it will just be one more time/money sink to do PvP, and it might just be that one time/money sink thats just too much for them. PvP is allready a loss or break even most the time. I do think there are a good number of people out there like you guys who would realy like added realism, no TP, no increased OW speed, authentic gun layouts, nation specific ships, etc. and I hope after release the devs put some time in making a seperate server for people who would realy like this as this game has the potential to be a realism game as well. But I think for the majority of players its not adding anything to the game in the contrary.

I think the devs are trying to find a balance between realism and gameplay. And the stuff you mentioned would benefit the "immersion" of the game, but it would not benefit the gameplay in any way (unless your thing is realism). All ships have their own characteristics, their pro's and their cons, and I would agree that they have brought these differences closer together for gameplays sake. If some ships stood out significantly, that was compensated by the fact they only had one of those ships in service. In this game if one ship stands out in its class, you will only see that one type of ship. For example the ingermanland is probably one of the oldest ships in this game, I can't imagine this being so close to the constitution as it is in game. The nerfing of upgrades made it actualy more difficult to make for example tanky but fast ships.

I would be more in favour of the PvP points you can use to purchase stuff, like Stilgar suggested. Could be a multiplier used for these points when screening. This way even the casual players can over time gain enough PvP points to be able to purchase a paint or get one of the rare ships. It might also keep it interesting and rewarding for those top rank players who do lots of PvP. Would even be in favour of giving the Pirates a bonus in points, as their situations is less favourable for RvR stuff.

What if you would just raise hostility to 100%, upon doing so a 15 minute timer runs before a "raid" starts, if the attackers win the raid the port is "contested" until the PB starts. This means no players can tow ships to the port or can TP to that port, so the defender needs to sail in to the PB just like the attackers has to. This would force defenders to get out there and defend their region when hostility is rising, and not just having the defenders rely on their PB to win. Alternatively the defenders can on the off day between the raid and the eventual PB, do a raid on the attackers staging port to make it difficult for them to assemble their attack fleet. The flag system was just a griefing frenzy, just pulling fake flags to have people waste 2 hours of game time sitting in front of a port. I remember also that at times it was just burning out some players when we had like 8-10 port battles every day for a couple of days straight.

Frankling, we know eachother from PvP1, sounds like a fun fight, when you sink you "strand" at the nearest allied port or freeport, so its not necessarily in one of your outposts.

Agreed, what this last patch did was basicaly rectifying what the last patch got wrong (crafting & hostility bomb) and add the events. Thats not enough to lure people back in. We might need the Land in Port Battles, to make people curious about the game again. Maybe some new ships. Its nice to see some real RvR stuff again, with fleets going out to raise hostility in an area and being succesfull at doing so. Only complaint people have now is that on days where no PB is planned, people just don't bother logging on. Might need some port raiding, or something to keep it interesting every night.

Cool theme song you guys got going there

Well there's not only the bad names, some people just don't want to see ahistorical names on ships, thats also why a big list of real shipnames would be a better option (look up shipnames of the royal navy). Its just one of those things that would work great, if everybody would be using his common sense, and just use appropriate names. But you just know thats not going to happen. It would probably take a ton of time to implement, and I think we're just going to have people complaining and defending their choice of name for a ship. And the devs will have to be the judges in the end, and then people will say the admins hate them and thats why their ship got removed. It will just not be worth the effort. I just don't see costum shipnames happen in this game, would be great, but a list with real names would be the best option imho.

Its discussed in some ohter topics, but not recently. The thing was that it would be impossible for the devs to check for "inapropriate" names, and it would have to rely on reports, and then they would have to have someone check every ship name reported and decide if it is OK or not. Including the many different languages etc, would be impossible. I think someone suggested to ad a list of real shipnames to choose from, but I don't think the devs ever commented on any of the topics. Would love to have it in, but I think if its on the development list, it'll be at the very bottom.

Would be OK, as long as the defending PB fleet can insta join the PB (get out of port and immediatly join the PB). Caus otherwise the defending PB fleet can be "screened" by the attackers. And in ports that have a narrow bay, that might be a tad too easy. This could create some interesting tactics.

Agreed with the proposition from Admin, both on the log off and on BS. One note, require the person using the TP option to nearest friendly port, to empty hold (aside from health & medkits), to prevent a guy getting his precious cargo stolen and the thief then just escaping and TP'ing. On those commenting screening is impossible to stop, last time we tried to take salamanca the spanish & allies even started logging in amongst the attacking fleet. And we still nearly made it to the battle if it hadn't closed after 13 minutes. Screening worked back when we had flags, should work just the same now. We can't go to a system where every battle requires you to log out hours in advance.

I think the LH mechanic is fine too, for me this game is not about trading, or making money off crafting, I just want to craft my own ships so they are cheaper and I can replace losses myself. Last mechanic was to time/money consuming where you almost had to put 5 forests up for fine woods, and had to buy all other stuff.

And what would be the added benefit of doing that if I might ask?

The devs said its not technicaly possible, because it would require the server to run a separate timer for every ship that is getting crafted, resulting in 100's of timers. And the current system with LH's only uses one timer. Its the same, gather stuff, wait for LH's to generate, craft it. Or gather stuff, craft it, wait for ship to be crafted. It would be more logical in our head the way you say it, like you would bring stuff to a shipyard and say build me a ship, and they would say OK it'll take X days. EDIT: I read that yesterday somewhere, can't remember where realy.

Is that the PvE events?