The Spud

I don't know if this works on PvE, but if you announce in global chat. Like, who wants to join small battles at 20:00, and then repeat it a couple of times. And if your lucky you'll get a couple of guys in small battles then. Maybe also state like "5th rates or below", to keep it a tad even. Works a charm on PvP server.

Are they basicaly worthless now lol?

Speed also behave strange around shallows I have found like dropping fast and rising fast again. Probably in the same way Anolytic described the ram, which is probably what happened.

Well AI sometimes can bend the game mechanics a bit (unintentionaly), like they can sometimes immediatly fire after a crew shock, which would leave a real player unable to reload its guns, but the AI just appears to keep on reloading during crew shock and fire it the second cooldown is over. Once flipped a ship capping another ship (both AI), and the flipped ship sank to the bottom and still continued the boarding (and won). Could be your connection, could be just a broken mechanic, hard to say. Did you report it? All in all I find the boarding unpredictable at times, sometimes your slow and close enough but the angle seems off, and sometimes you think well this I screwed up this boarding attempt, en it still gives you the pull option. Very impredictable. I also vaguely remember we once had a officer perks or something that increased the speed at which you could board eachother. But I don't know if this is my imagination or something that was removed. Non the less wouldn't make sence in AI using it.

And I correctly plannen a whole night of uninterrupted Naval Action... sweet.

As a Belgian guy, I laughed at "Black Pete" :-)

Rage-Quit: Angrily abandon an activity or pursuit that has become frustrating, especially the playing of a video game. Source: https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/us/rage-quit It doesn't specify time of abandoning, so I would agree its a rage quit.

Well, the resources are still scatered around and they still need a long sail to get to freeport and a long sail to get to capital. There's plenty of room there for warships to escort, and they will need escorts cause raiders will figure out trade habits realy quick. The fact some goods can only be gathered by doing a long trip will also create added value to those goods, something the traders did not use to have cause most of the goods were only two ports away before so if the price was too high they would just go get it themselves, that treshold is now significantly higher. The decentralisation you speak of, like getting people away from the capital, is not a good mechanic with the amount of players we have. 500 people spread out over the whole map, sailing a trader for the most part, just gives for far less PvP cause people will be harder to find. Surely with 2000 people online, that will not be as big of an issue as it is now. On top of that with regions and hostility, we don't need to wait for port timers to do RvR. If they tone down the war supplies, people will still need to organise and sail out to a region to raise or lower hostility. Regions will still be important to keep, and people will still defend it.

Well, i'm getting confused as to what your point is, so i'll just explain my point, i'm just not understanding correctly I think. If you centralize the crafting to one spot, you also centralize the resources, so instead of 10 people bringing coal to 10 different places, 10 people will bring coal to 1 place. So you have a bigger stockpile at the capital instead of having them scattered arround, and have one port undersupplied and the other oversupplied. So as you say people who do the effort to produce stuff and sail it up to the port should make money, and i'll be very happy if they do so. Now you have no central trading hub, people used to dump their extra stuff on the capital shop, now if they sail 5000 coal into a port, they'll think if I sell it I need to do a boring trade run again sooner. I'll just keep this sitting in my warhouse.

I was actualy not using sarcasm, I was refering to "the good old days" of buying stuff in the capital shop at higher price then production cost cause you just couldn't be bothered sailing around for it. I'm not lazy or anything, but at current HQ there is NO stock of anything in the shop, nothing. You either need to bother an officer (or be one) or sail it in from somewhere, and I just keep delaying it until i'll need a ship and then i'll have no choice but do it. You need to sail everything in yourself, every bit of resource. And thats allot of different stuff.

The joy of just overpaying something but not havig to bother sailing it in from across the map. I need coal for over a week now to continue doing any propper crafting, and I just can't be bothered sailing it in. I just don't want to do ... like work, I do plenty of that during the day but not in a game.

So I thought about some small stuff that might change the game in a good way, as far as I know I have not seen anything about this anywhere else. Make the regional trims you have in owned regions selectable in the nation capital for crafting. Benefits: - Nation Capitals return to being the trading HUB they used to be. - Players will return to the capital area, so PvP will return to the area. Like we used to have pre patch, it'll be more concentrated. - Resources will still be scattered around the map, but they will all go to the same destination. Making it beneficial for traders who like running stuff around, and will give PvP minded players the benefit of just being able to buy the stuff off the shop. Also longer trade runs to freeports that can be camped by raiders. (Like we used to have between PC and KPR). - No need to move your HQ to a capable region, less risk of losing stuff, less frustration, more fun. - No devided nation where new players are around the capital and the more experienced players at the new HQ. - Resources aside, regions will lose a bit of their importance, making more frequent port battles more acceptable (As in now they're too important, and if they get capped by the use of "wonky mechanics" it will cause less frustration.) Drawbacks: - We'll see more superships with double speed or doublel hull strenght. By making only the trims available the nation owns and not the ones the alliance owns. You'll still need to sail out to certain allied owned regions for certain specific trims. Now it'll be prety obvious by reading this I'm a Brit, and I know we're the ones benefitting the most from this. But thats only because we were the ones getting the biggest disadvantage on that field since the last patch. So on that behalf it would even the playing field again to pre patch standards, as it would remove our achilles heel. Please for a second think as a naval action player and not as a nation player, it would remove part of the importance of regions. Less stress, less anger, more fun.

Its a well written text, and its indeed a good encouragement to new players. But to say they just have to suck up the griefing caused by rear admirals just going in there for the sake of sinking rookies, is not the best way to approach it. We should not ask from rookies to just see the bigger picture, thats not how games work. This works in real life, where you have no other possibility then to deal with the situation. Nobody likes losing all the time, thats why most games use matchmaking to match skill. I tend to talk to new players, or they tend to talk to me sometimes, if I can I try to do some missions with them. I give them some tips, or just point out some mistakes. Most of the time the crew system confuses them, they either undercrew a ship or they think they don't have enough crew to sail a bigger ship caus they just don't know how to "heal" crew. I can assure you, i'm far from being good at this game, but most of them would just get rekt by any half descent rear admiral in similar ships. I think they should just have tons of fun in the first weeks they play naval action, and then they might think, "how can I get realy good at this game?" And at that point they might be ready to take on some bigger oponents. I get what you are saying, and for someone who starts this game thinking "I'm going to be the best captain to ever sail this game", that would be an excellent approach. But for someone just interested in age of sail and loves sailing ships etc. they don't need to be tossed amongst the lions until they emerge a lion themselves, cause they'll just quit before they'll ever get that good.

Well in equal ships or even in smaller ships, most rear admirals will sink the rookie player non the less. Unless the Rear Admiral is a truly rubbish sailor, or the rookie has exceptional skills/luck, now you'll agree either of these are very unlikely to happen. And even then, if he can't do it by skill, he'll make sure he has a live oak gold mercury, with good upgrades and offiers perks to do the trick. Now obviously they'll pick up some tricks even if they lose, but it does not give the incentive for players to sail out and do PvP if they get destroyed every time, probably every time by the same player(s) too. If you go out to the rookie region, you might be able to help out the rookies getting attacked by higher ranked players.

Saying its OK for Rear admirals to actively search rookie targets, is like saying its OK for Messi to play in 3rd division, caus he can make more goals then. Leave the Rookie zone to the Rookie players, let them do their thing, let them not get demotivated by some salty griefers sucking the fun out of the game for other people. The area should not be victim of any RvR stuff going on in the bigger part of the map.

I think the level of modification right now, especialy with the new super builds one can create by combining regional trims, custom trims and wood types is allready very wide. And you can get yourself a very fast trader build, it just takes some time and effort to get it done. You can always ditch some cannons for added speed or take different calibre. I would hate to see very unrealistic gun layouts on ships, especialy on national ships, as national navys probably had predictable gun layouts. Pirates however, I would be fine with them rolling some unusual set ups like on the Pirate Frigate. On the other proposed parts of crafting you proposed, I'm guessing the devs allready have some sort of plans in mind, so i'm kinda curious to see what direction they want to go with the crafting part of the game.

Actively disencouraging new players to play this game by unfair fights in an area that is intended for fair rookie fights, and then complaining the game is dying... *slow clap*

The Devs are going to put in Towing: Now they didn't give details on how this will work. My personal assumption is you'll be able to send ships between outposts (like deliveries between free ports). They say it will untie their hands in other matter like ship capture, so I think this means you can't TP ships out of battlescreen, you'll probably need to put them in fleet or "tow" them to an outpost. We'll see how it turns out.

Well the current PB system is based on armour and firepower. So as BR is an indication of firepower/armour. It should in theory always be balanced if the BR is equal. Now I know even if BR is the same if the number of ships is different, bigger numbers will usualy win. Now with new Land in Port Battles and the new objectives, you'll probably want to compose your fleet differently. You'll probably need some faster ships for this objective, mortar brigs and some frigs as guard for the other, you'll want some SoL's for firepower. The tactic of just pouring in your big hitters till the BR runs out will probably not be a viable tactic IMHO. Sp it might be a good thing to have a pre battle moment to see what made it to the PB, and kinda compose a fleet to suit the best tactic, and not have just a bunch of random dudes spawn in with totaly random ships. Cause I think we kinda forgot, with the log out "mechanic" that assault fleets don't always make it into the PB with the numbers or players they want to. And lastly if there will be a class limit, this will probably be the best way to do it. I just would like to see many different ships in a port battle, instead of just having either 1st rates, agga's or mercury's in any of the three PB types.

So lets say we use the BR limited and maybe class limited Port Battle. To make it easier to "compose" a fleet. Upon PB time opener, a 20 minute clock starts to count down until start of the battle. During 15 of those 20 minutes people can join the Pre Battle screen, with a max of say 35 ships. Screen has 7 columns (1 per shiprate), you get put in the column according to your shiprate. At the top you see a BR counter, and you can see the BR limit. So you know if the fleet is over or under the BR limit. At the end of the 15 minutes you now have 5 minutes to compose a fleet out of all ships in the pre battle screen, with a maximum of 25 ships. Players can discuss and voluntarely check a "withdrawal" checkbox to remove them from the battle fleet. This way the players can discuss and can fiddle around until they have reached best composition and have respected the class limit. 9 out of 10 times this will probably go without a problem, should some people refuse to leave the battle fleet, the top 3 players having the most hostility points to their name have the right to remove whoever they want. So you could have 4 minutes of voluntary composing, and the last minute the top 3 players can still remove and add whoever they want. In case none of the players in the battle have any hostility points, the choice is random amongst highest levelled players. In case there is no valid fleet at the end of the 5 minutes, a minimum amount of ships will be removed to reach BR limit. For example If the BR limit is exceeded by 10 BR, the game will randomly remove one of the ships with the lowest BR. I would realy like this to be in, and I would rather have a BR limit instead of a class limit. As otherwise we'll only see agga's as 4th rates, trincs as 5th rates, and so on. With BR limit, even small ships would be interesting to get in, cause if you have 50BR left you can put a snow in there or something and it might not live long, but it might do a couple of rakes that in the end tip the balance a bit. Would also be cool to not know what you are up against, that would be a game changer.

Oh, thank god for that. Instead of "bending" the rules to get ships TP'd we can now use a real game mechanic. I'm guessing this means that a capped ship in a battle now can't be TP'ed but needs to be crewed and sailed out. I'm guessing that is what they mean by "untie our hands in several other mechanics"

I think it has multiple reasons, and the fact it is in OW will make sure it has a select group of participants, it will prevent people from using their vic or santi in a 1vs1 fight as they need to sail out there otherwise. Can't rejoin immediatly after a loss (I assume) also preventing people from just surrendering every fight till they get one that they can win easily. Maybe creating some PvP around the area. I think any addition you do to the game, that doesn't immediatly influence RvR is just a good addition for this game. It gives people something to do when not much is going down, or when they want to do something different for once.

I have also thought about how europe could be added into this game, and how the two "maps" could work together. And it sure does offer a ton of possibilites. I have rather thought about it as having two servers. One being the europe side, the other being the carribean (as having one massive map is probably technicaly not possible + the sail between europe and the carribean would be... insanely long). And they would be linked like it hostoricaly was, the carribean relied on resources from europe and europe relied on resources from the carribean. This would work interesting, as it would make alliances more complicated. Cause what might be a favourable alliance in the carribean might not be a good idea in Europe and the other way round. But there are some "concerns" i have. - Does it add enough for every type of player to be worth it? - You would need allot of players to cover both maps, so both feel lively. - Would only be fun if people would play on both maps, so you don't have like danes doing great in the carribean and having like no ports left in europe. - It can't slow down the gameplay/PvP, it can't be only there to make it ever harder to get goods transported or stuff made. I would love to have it historicaly accurate, but it would realy need to add gamefun to the game. You could also make different ROE between the carribean and the europe side, like we have the bahamas now. You could for instance not do PB's on the europe side, but do like blockading of ports only. The europe map by design will offer more concentrated PvP areas, like in the English channel.

I was there too. I mostly did the Small Battles, big cutter battles, awesome. Then I wanted a snow, so I had to roam around to find an NPC build one I could afford. Then cerbs were like the biggest ship you saw in game, and I was like "OMG, oh no a cerb, sail around it". But people who played early acces will know not to waste time doing unrewarding PvP in cutters, when you actualy will need allot of money to invest in getting your outposts and production buildings going.

First days after release will just be money grind to get outposts build, production buildings build, labour hours used to max potential. Struggle to find a half descent NPC ship anywhere around the map. Gold Ships for sale for a bigger amount of money then all the gold ingame combined. It will be fun. Would be realy nice to see the servers filled to the brim with returning and new players. That would just be the best any NA player can wish for.