Enraged Ewok

Except that this ignores every other scenario where life intervenes, not to mention encourages even more group sailing/ganking and discourages solo play. Why on earth should I sail my rattlesnake alone hunting traders when there's a very good chance at least 3-4 ships will be waiting for me outside the battle because the trader I hit hash-tagged pirates@PR on his olde tweeter and updated his facebroadsheet status? I don't have a scout to see outside the battle if the coast is clear, but thanks to the trader's instant messaging the revenge fleet knows exactly where I am, exactly how many people hit the trader (me), and thanks to time compression are camping outside the battle that, if time was uncompressed in OW, would have ended the day before they reached the area. Regarding the suggestions of going to infinite timers but forcing the spawn at the original location of the battle and not near the combatants, this is already how battles with positional reinforcements in the green zone works. This did not stop a 10 person pirate fleet from catching and wrecking the Ingermanland that was tagged by a Renomee 10 minutes before in the green zone, and this 10 person fleet consisted of everything from Surprises to Pavels, all sailing upwind to reach the Inger and Renomee. From my experience with this, we'd be back to square one where unless you gib someone with leaks, any smart player can easily slow you down enough for the revenge fleet to catch you despite there being nobody else in visual range when you entered battle. Another thing I'd like to point out: most battles take place near capitals or free ports. This is because most players congregate in those areas, and people who want PVP are forced to go there to actually find traders to hit or warships to fight. The 5 minute and longer timers people are looking back on with rose-colored glasses, existed when any teleport incurred a 4 hour cooldown. There is now no cooldown for teleports. If I was to tag a lone frigate near a freeport, in 5 minutes I could easily have 10 people in the battle instance trying to sink me because there is no cooldown to go between outposts. And this doesn't even begin to get into the use of bait ships tagging or being tagged near ports to drag someone in, where the rest of the fleet then undocks to complete the gank. EDIT: Remove double quote

I would love to see storms, along with the light/normal/heavy wind and sea conditions as well. The heel on that Trincomalee is pretty amazing.

Speaking from how things work in reality, what he is getting at is that added weight does not necessarily equal less speed. Speed comes from sail area, wind angle, and hull form. Purpose built sea-going merchant ships tended to be tubbier than warships (hull form), but both would carry enough ballast in addition to cargo or stores to put them at their loaded draft. If a topsail schooner was being used as a cargo hauler (and they were popular as coasters in North America) and built identically to one being used as a privateer, the difference in loaded weight would be negligible to the ship's performance at sea. The merchant would be carrying goods, stores for a relatively short sail up or down the coast, plus any necessary ballast in the hold. The privateer-fitted topsail schooner would be carrying guns, provisions for a much longer time at sea to maximize chances of finding and capturing enemy merchants, with the necessary ballast to put it at the proper draft to keep it seaworthy. The reason for the difficulty using the privateer/lynx for their intended purpose in game primarily comes from the gamier bit of the simulation, which requires a cannon hit to keep the opponent in battle. In reality, a topsail schooner would have far more time to exercise its speed at any angle other than straight downwind to close with its prey. To help it out, I'm all for giving it an invisible "chaser". Call it a swivel gun and give it half the range of a normal gun, since after all the Lynx did carry swivel guns in addition to her broadside armament. Hopefully any future schooner additions would have a single forward 6-12pd chaser (this was a common thing in American navy schooners during the War of 1812).

The worst part of the series is the long wait between books

Pretty sure they do. When you grape down the crew of an enemy ship (especially AI) before boarding for example, you'll notice a lot of the time they have less than 100 morale. I've seen it as low as the mid-80s before boarding.

Personally, I think the punishment for surrender is fine as is. You already need to replace any crew you lost before you surrendered, and you also lose the dura and any cargo you were carrying. Not to mention there's no historical basis (except for pirates) of ransoming the surviving crew, putting them to the sword, or having them join the pirate crew. If surrender suddenly becomes as expensive, if not more so than sinking, then sinking and fireshipping will go back to being the preferrable and cheaper option. Hell, people may do it anyways just to try and kill your crew as well as deny you the refill from their own crew.

Historically, successful boarding actions were essentially over when the defending crew was driven below decks. At that point, the most the defenders can do is have grenades dropped on them through the hatches and the entire ship burned down around them if they still refuse to give up. Crew did not fight until every last man aboard ship was dead. It was seen as a useless waste of life by all of the navies of the time, and surrender was an honorable way out to preserve the lives of the remaining crew (which the captain holds ultimate responsibility). Being unable to surrender during the boarding action and being forced to fight until crew/morale hits 0 is what is ahistorical.

I have to disagree with this scenario simply because of how broken boarding is to begin with when mastercraft/exceptional marines are involved. That that's even a viable setup is absurd, and yes I have seen it done. The only reason it succeeded was because the captain doing it had a bigger ship and friends (who initiated the combat to begin with) to slow me down to the point that I couldn't outrun him. With no guns you're going to have a hell of a time forcing any half competent captain into the wind before he can escape.

I think it's a mistake on threedecks. I can find references to a British 32-gun frigate named Juno (different from the 26 gun spanish 6th rate, but both armed with 12pders) which participated in the capture of the Echo of of Luisberg during the siege.

Beautiful. Especially looking forward to the frigate.

Or the players could be observant and test, in order to notice things like what Boris, AKD, and myself mentioned. Also, free crew for your level is smack dab in the middle of the port screen. Nothing "hidden" about it.

And when I saw the Santa Cecilia name in the API, I was thinking it was the devs being clever and we were getting the 12pd 26 gun frigate Juno. http://threedecks.org/index.php?display_type=show_ship&id=13005 Oh well.

Personally, I think the drop rate is good where it is now. I've been getting a bottle about every other day, and I think that's fine.

I tried this last night and can confirm it works as Boris said. I sold an old 1 dura Surprise that I had capped several weeks ago to the AI. Total crew (on ship plus available) was 796 out of a maximum pool of 1100. After selling it, my total crew was 1036 out of 1100. I think this may be a bug unless there's more rules to it other than "sell a ship to the AI and recoup the entire crew complement of the ship."

Which is why I'm wondering what the relevance is. The map is only as big as you make it. Basing yourself in Bermuda and sailing to the Bahamas or the Florida coast for your PVP is the height of sillyness. With the "hotzones" under discussion in the admin's newer port battle thread (I think it was the suggestions forum) you can see where most of the players have been fighting and make one trip to locate yourself and several ships there from wherever you were before. Make that trip, and then you have 15-20 minutes sailing before you find a fight on the OW for the foreseeable future. The "sail from one end of the map to another for a few days, then relocate across the map again" is a pain in the arse that the player imposes upon himself, not something the game forces on them.

I'm not sure what you're trying to get at here. With the new fleet and crew system, you only need to sail once to set up an outpost (AI fleet with the ships you want to move, or buy the ships you want at said outpost). Once you have your outpost, you do your hunting near that outpost. Sailing from Bermuda to Tulum is absolute nonsense and in no way relevant to how people actually play the game.

That's when the small nation gets help from friends or hires corsairs to fight the larger nation. There's more than just two factions in this sandbox.

At first glance, I like this outline. It appears to both solve the port battle issues of the current system and problems of the old suggestion, while also combining the "PVP hotzone" suggestion. I'd love to give it a try.

If 5 ships are firing chain at you, then you have messed up hard somewhere before the situation you describe and you have little or no chance of escaping whether they board you or not. In a 1v1 situation, what stops you from chaining the would-be boarder and graping his stern while if you're in a smaller ship? A Trincomalee or Constitution can't do much when a Frigate or even a rattlesnake is playing the stern rake game correctly.

This is what I don't get. We used to have AI reinforcements. I never encountered a trader that stayed in battle to fight with the reinforcements unless I forced him to via tag. I realize this is pre Indiaman and Gros Ventre, but I would only expect an Indiaman to possibly fight since he can't escape most warships. The Gros Ventre outsails damn near everything. At the end of the day, the trader is either going to escape as soon as he can, or be captured by his attacker assuming a good tag (unless the Indiaman can't get away and actually prepared by putting on boarding mods, rudder upgrades, etc). The only thing the AI means is that a player who does get the good tag and caps the trader is going to either lose a dura on his ship or lose the cargo and capture while running, or if he can take on the AI it turns in to a timesink having to kill them while the player's revenge fleet gathers. Yes, I was under the impression that that is in the works, and any fleet ships you have are crewed from your crew pool.

You are on a PVP server yes? You have friends who sail combat ships yes? 1 + 1 = 2. Pay your friends in materials, discounts, PVP, whatever their asking price is to escort your ship into and out of the freeport. They get PVP, you get into port safely and can go about your crafting. Its a win-win.

They were in the past, to the point where I stopped using them because they sank me (by ram) more often than appreciably helped against other AI when I was learning the game. I'm hoping that if AI fleets are back however, that it comes with a collision avoidance update to leave a hefty "safe" distance between each other and allied players on the fleet AI's part. I'm also concerned about the impact to single-ship combats in OW along with privateering and commerce raiding, but I'd like to test first before making my mind up on whether it's desirable for gameplay.

Assuming we can form AI fleets and crew as many ships as we are willing to dilute our total crew, I don't see a reason why sailing the ships to the outpost is bad from a gameplay perspective. You make one trip with the ships you want to move to the new outpost, and done. In addition, the lack of teleporting ships from the battle end screen would open new markets for crafters. Currently, almost all crafting is done in the capital, with the biggest notable exception that I've seen being freeports on the Florida coast (seriously, who in their right mind stays any longer in Charleston than they have to?). Crafters can move from the capital to freeports around the map and begin plying their trade with new markets and less competition. With no teleporting of ships, I'd definitely pay a bit more to buy a ship in Tumbado than spend the time sailing it there from Mortimer. That requires the traders and crafters to leave the nest first though.

I'm not sure how you expect to have the latter without the former.

Regarding chasers, I would prefer to keep this historical if at all possible. Many ships have bridle ports (Essex, Belle Poule for example) that give a gun a a line of fire 30-45* from the bow. Other ships (looking primarily at the Trincomalee, Rattlesnake, and I think the Constitution as the biggest offenders) have bridle ports or angled weather deck ports that would give that same line of fire off the bow as the Essex and Belle Poule, yet have chasers and can fire directly forward. The only ships that should be able to fire directly forward are those with chaser setups like the Frigate, 3rd/Bellona, Victory, etc.