Enraged Ewok

1 month for the voting (end of March to end of April), and then the discussions we've been having on the forum on this topic since the end of April and the backend design of this massive addition to the current game framework takes a while?

I like the smuggler tag as a way for smaller nations to get access to materials in hostile ports, or as a way for players to commit economic warfare on other nations at the trading house as well as on the open sea. That being said, if it is no longer necessary with the war and peace update, I would happily see it go to remove the exploitability of dynamic position on OW when leaving battle instances.

Why is this necessary when we have the smuggler tag?

And here I thought I was on the right track after several duels with you and then reading this. Looking forward to the new version.

Player trader raiding/piracy, convoy raiding, single ship frigate actions, medium and large fleet actions. All you have to do is undock and go sailing instead of hanging around your capital or favorite free port. This is a game where unless your entire reason for playing is to click "build" on the crafting screen, you must go onto the OW. The thrill of outsailing a pirate and protecting your cargo, the feeling of triumph from sinking another player, its all there on the OW and only costs the risk of pixel gold and a ship dura which can be easily regained.

This must be my PVP issue. I'm usually not home from work and online until 1800-1900 EST

I had several ideas to help flesh this out: 1. Assault Fleet Creation: a) The port where the assault fleet is created is where the invasion force must be assembled and supplied. So for example, if I want to attack Portillo and I pay the gold to start the process at Baracoa, Baracoa is where the supplies for the fleet must be delivered to build the assault force. Since these shipments would have to travel at least partly on the OW, this would give defending players an opportunity for commerce raiding and the attacker the job of defending those shipments, with a clear idea of where the shipments are going to be travelling. b ) In addition to transporting supplies (food, planks, canvas, cordage, cables, carriages, etc.), troops must be delivered from capitals or regional capitals to the launch port. This would require a new kind of crew (call them "Infantry" for example). A ship can carry for example at most 200 or 50% of its maximum crew as infantry, whichever is less, and would replace the marine complement while on board. When the conquest successfully begins, infantry can be embarked from the port for use in the PB (more on that below). 2. Port Battle Combat Instance a) Each capture zone in the PB instance is tied to a fort and is close to shore. In order to capture a zone, ships with infantry embarked must sail into the capture zone and come to a stop. As the zone "caps" the infantry is disembarked from the ship and begins building an AI gun battery on the shore to shell the fort. The battery will only attack the fort linked to its zone until the fort itself is neutralized, then will begin firing at the nearest target. The AI battery can be destroyed by defender ships getting close and graping the infantry on shore or destroying the guns with ball. More ships in the zone will mean more guns in the battery to a certain maximum, and each zone will have a maximum number of infantry that can be disembarked. Number of guns can be linked to number of infantry disembarked. b ) Victory in PB for the attacker requires all defending forts to be destroyed/captured, with no requirement for enemy ship destruction. Victory for the defender requires a large BR ratio plus holding all the capture zones (zones are recaptured by killing all disembarked infantry/guns) The aim of these suggestions is to give a designated "hot" zone for PVP through the preparation period and then to give a clear objective for both PB teams that revolves around conducting or preventing an amphibious assault on the port being attacked. EDIT: Removed smilies

From Roosevelt's The Naval War of 1812, captured sailors (during this war) were typically treated quite well. Usually they were paroled after reaching shore, and occasionally used for prisoner exchanges. Ships that were burned or sank after capture would have had their surviving crew removed to the victor's ship, which would carry them until it found a neutral ship to offload them to or returned to shore. That being said, I am not sure how often men were pressed into service by the British when they captured American traders or privateers, as Roosevelt's book tends to deal more with the US navy and not privateers.

Regarding the worries over crew casualties in combat then translating to the OW, this seems like a remarkably simple thing to fix. Treat the crew number in combat as the number of combat effectives left, IE not killed/wounded. After the battle, a percentage of the crew casualties are returned to duty (wounded fixed up by the doctor), which for example would be 40-60% of the casualties. This would also apply to the enemy crew available for pressing into your crew after a boarding.

Personally, I thought having at least a basic-common marine module was a necessity now, and nearly always was. They give a minimum impact to your ability to fight your ship, but still give you the edge boarding edge over players that don't carry marines at all in lieu of their gold powder monkeys, toolbox, rum rations, pellews sights, and hammocks. Regardless, from what admin has said marines will most likely go from being a drop upgrade to another type of crew you can hire, allowing all players to carry their preferred setup of marines without relying on rare drops or having to pay exorbitant prices. Regarding kills/assists, if you assisted another player in capping a vessel I would think you would get at least some of the prize money.

I'm actually a big fan of this despite the AI being a pain in combat, solely for the ease of closing old outposts it would provide. Currently, we do already have to sail across the map to set up an outpost a good distance away from an existing one, so I'm not sure why people are complaining about making the sail as if it is something new introduced by these new mechanics. The nice thing is that instead of making that trip and then finding a friend (if pirate) or trader ships next to the port you want to move the ships from, you can sail the ones you want at the new outpost in one trip (Ex: I'm switching outposts but I have 3 ships in the current one, I just get the crew for my Mercury, Essex, and 3rd rate, add the Mercury and Essex to my fleet, and sail the 3rd rate to the new location).

Not exactly. The difference between your example and what happens in game would be if HMS Terpsichore was waiting within visual range of the battle itself for the Santisima to limp away, where she could then take a crack at it. This is what happens in game, where with visible battle markers players would keep the wind advantage in OW until the prey dropped and then jump them. This is very different from running across them as they head back to port from the battle, as at least in that situation the damaged ship has more than 30 seconds to put up sails, use repairs (if any) and take steps mitigate any wind advantage you may have. What you are suggesting enables the same crap I saw early on in Steam release, where players not happy with the battle outcome would come back and wait for the aggressors to drop from the previous battle for another try.

I disagree with this due to the time compression in OW vs the battle instance. I don't believe a captain who happens by hours to days after the battle began should be able to anchor and wait for the weakened victor to pop out. It's not fun for the guy in the battle to immediately be forced into another battle against a gank squad simply because the guy he killed in the battle gave the location to his friends 2 days sail away. Leaving it hidden at least allows some room for error so that the waiting player/fleet isn't guaranteed the perfect position to intercept anyone who leaves the first battle. Regarding the changes listed, this looks suspiciously like the system Sea Dogs used which is a good thing in my opinion. More OW traffic, and also prevents the rapid redeployment of ships from one side of the map to another. I can also see this decentralizing ship crafting and commerce centers (currently everything worth anything is in the capital for most nations). I'm a big fan of crew casualties being divided up into wounded/dead, with wounded being available again after the battle and the surgeon/doctor officer. Also, I second DeRuyter's question. Will surrendering allow us to keep our crew/officers, even though we lose the ship durability? I'd like to see how the player's mind works as the morale system when losing his ship will also mean losing the crew/officers. EDIT: Fixed CTRL-V fail

From what I've been reading of Roosevelt's Naval War of 1812, the crew was the deciding factor for the closely matched (on paper) engagements, ex. Chesapeake vs Shannon and Constitution vs Java. With the exception of the Shannon, the British ships on the American station tended to be very poor when it came to using the ships guns, despite in most cases being very good sailors and ship handlers. Despite controlling the engagement from the beginning, Java 's accuracy was incredibly poor. By comparison, the Constitution shot the crap out of her and displayed excellent gunnery. The same occurs with the sides flipped when Chesapeake engaged the Shannon, where Shannon was firing off two broadsides (and firing far more accurately) to the Chesapeake's one. By the time Broke boarded the Chesapeake, the only crew able to organize any resistance were the ship's marine complement, and the handful of remaining regulars that had transferred from the Constitution.

Currently a pirate, for two reasons. Primarily (one I voted) is because the clan I play with switched from USA on PVP2 to pirate on PVP1 for bigger populations and more PVP. Pirate faction naturally lends itself to the PVP due to location and ROE, so it makes me a happy camper.

My issue with that mechanic is that it only works fine for ships with chasers, leaving many otherwise great ships useless without a buddy to tag for them, or perfect wind and land in the battle. It pains me that my Essex has only ever seen a fight in the duel room in part due to this.

Excellent posts on why they should not go into gunnery if reducing sail freed up crew. But surely they could automatically go to boarding standby, correct?

Can confirm. Both are BR 200, though I was a pretty poor match for Mr. Doran.

That would be a neat improvement to our current system now that I think about it. Shortening sail would free more men to help with guns, or if guns are full, they would stand ready to board or be available for plugging leaks.

Unless you're sailing a trader or one of the smaller ships, even with hammocks you will not have the ability to fully man both broadsides and your sails. If you could on every ship, the crew management system would lose all meaning. The ships we are sailing are, from what I've read, at their full historical complement on men assuming you have the rank to fully crew them. Being unable to fully man both broadsides was a fact of life for ships in this era, and in the event ships were engaged on both broadsides the gun crews would split to serve the guns with half crews.

I don't think they are going to stop there. This is essentially a quick and dirty way to test along those lines. Ship draft and port depth are likely on the TO-DO list, but not high priority at the moment.

By introducing the crew changes, the blob of first rates suddenly becomes far more risky. Why risk the first rates for anything but the most important objectives, when third and second rates can perform the same function with less risk?

I think like this would hurt smaller ships more than SoLs. In a gank situation it's already near impossible for a 3rd rate or higher to get away from 2-3 Trincs/Constitutions once the battle has started. It simply doesn't have the speed to do so against any smaller ship with a chaser. It will eventually get run down, dismasted, and sunk or captured. The only option available is to fight, as running just prolongs the inevitable and makes the ship less effective in the fight due to damage aloft from chasers. Meanwhile, it is possible for 5th rates and below to escape the popular PVP gank ships even if heavy damage has been taken. Making them a guaranteed kill if/when they get tagged again reduces the reason to use them even further. Regarding fleet battles, my own experience is that unless the small ships drastically outnumber the SoLs, the SoLs will annihilate the smaller ships with little damage to themselves. The only thing that will stand up to a SoL fleet is another SoL fleet, skill being near even.

Regarding uncapturable ports, how would you expect to take Cartagena de Indias or St. Augustine if Spain actually showed up to play? Some ports by nature of geography and the forts historically built to protect the approaches make them impregnable to anything but soldiers on the ground. Regarding the purpose of victory points and the war declaration system, http://forum.game-labs.net/index.php?/topic/13596-such-is-a-lord-simple-politics-and-alliances-part-1-heavily-moderated/

I am on board with only 50% crew loss on surrender with 1 dura.