Francis Tabernac

Oh dear, I sometimes forget what serious business these pretend internet boats are! Thankfully these forums are here to remind me. PHEW.

Seeing how the war went overall, and how quickly it ended the moment the initial stalemates were broken, it saddens my heart to say that the British likely have very little to fear from this supposed Commonwealth. And as was pointed out by the honourable Hethwill, Kommandeur Kaptain: "Common. Wealth." The latter of which seems to be more the concern of my countrymen, in particular. Time will tell I suppose.

You're kind of falling into the old "if you disagree then you don't understand" hole here. It's not that I can't wrap my head around your idea; it's simply that I disagree.

Yes, yes! Fight amongst yourselves, you men of peace, FIGHT!

I was only teasin' ya, don't worry mate. Though as to some of your other points: Extra players on the tennis court would be hilarious; Ottoman corsairs would be so out so out place that I'd at least get a good snicker; couldn't care less about roulette so screw it, 20 it is! For football, it depends on which one you mean. Grid-iron/"American" football? Extra teams on the field would be funny, but the novelty would wear off a lot faster than with the extra tennis player. If you meant soccer, well, the sport's already garbage so screw it, 5 teams at once sounds great. Think of it! They'd be spending so much time diving all over each other that it'd look more like a sad, embarrassing wrestling match! Who wouldn't want to watch that?! In all seriousness, I get what you're after. I like the variety myself, though I think the smaller nations would benefit from having a little more space around them for now; this'll be mitigated once there're proper diplomatic mechanics added though, as the opportunity for, say, France/Dutch or Sweden/Dane-Norway to team up and wreak some havoc would be grand. I really don't mind it, personally.

And I'll do it again! I promised to only use this power for good, but so help me God...

Because variety is the spice of life, and if you're taking away our variety and spices, we'll have to cook with only paprika and oregano, which is terrible, and that limits our freedom. Don't limit our freedom, Aussie Pastor. Why do you hate freedom? What did America ever do to you?

The Red Ensign is inspiring, I have to say. Reminds me of a great story from back when I was still bashing tin. I was replacing the furnace for an elderly gent, and had stopped to chat with him for a couple of minutes outside while we both had a smoke. I commented on the Red Ensign he had flying in his backyard, and he said that as far as he was concerned, that was the flag he'd served his country under and it was the only true flag of Canada. He then went on to talk about how his happiest moment was years and years ago, when Pierre Trudeau was coming through the west on his ill-fated tour (this was right after stabbing us in the back with the NEP and had begun gutting our armed forces, if you'll recall). I don't remember which town this had supposedly happened in, but as the story went, the PM stepped off his train and was giving a speech and my customer said he hit him right in the lid with a tomato. I laughed my ass off. As happiest moments go, that one's not bad at all.

That was my first question, too. But hey, so Mrs. Herminator was just out trolling for a little strange, is that so wrong?

I think you sum up my points well and, it seems to me at least, that we are in agreement in general. Many people bought into the game for many reasons, and there are indeed as many approaches to testing as there are hopeful outcomes for the finished product. I quite enjoy early testing and have bought into a great many early access titles because I see a game with an interesting premise and a lot of potential, and I hope to see it become something enjoyable. There are successes, for example I quite like the direction that Space Engineers has taken since getting into it from earliest days; and there are failures: burn in hell, Star Forge, you unplayable, abandoned heap of garbage! I take play-testing as seriously as an unpaid hobbyist ought to, in my view: I hope to enjoy playing the game as I help test it, but I don't expect to enjoy it all the time because it's not a finished game but a work-in-progress. The end-game is that I love the game that results. I run into people all the time that buy early access games thinking it means they just get to play a game early, and end up poisoning the well, so to speak, by then crying out about how bad it is. I find that incredibly frustrating because it makes it more difficult to find people that would do a good job of testing the game, and it makes people less willing to buy it later once it's more polished and complete because these negative views don't just go away (nor should they). These people do not belong in a game that's still in early testing phases, and I think they hurt far more than aid the process. When I say things like "you can reroll" or "you're on a PvP server" I don't do it spitefully. Or at least not usually I say it because, in my view, as a tester you cannot become too attached to what you currently 'have' in the game at any time and instead should bear in mind at all times that your role is to test as many aspects of the game as you can. By rerolling you're not only continuing to test from another perspective, you're also testing the very mechanic that allows you to reroll for whatever reason. I also acknowledge that PvP means very different things to different people, and I wasn't criticising any one view of it; I simply hoped to illustrate for people that are perhaps new to this type of game that people do in fact have different, and perhaps equally valid, views of it and that's okay. That's where my thoughts on different servers having different rule-sets comes from. In MMOs, I come from a gaming background that would be considered "hardcore" PvP and raiding (though I have to laugh at anyone that actually describes playing a computer game as "hardcore" ) and while that appeals to me, I realise it doesn't to others and I'm quite fine with that. As I said above, I suspect that both camps are hoping this game will become one that appeals more to their side, and this is likely where a lot of this acrimony has come from. As you said, in the end it'll be up to the Devs to decide which way the game'll go. As I said above, the other aspect that creates so many hurt feelings around here seems to be the inability for some people to separate the RP nature of this forum (and the game, really) from reality. This leads to personal attacks, ignorant calls of "you're not playing [my game] right" and on and on. These forums exist, in my mind, to allow us more of a "game-y" feature to express ourselves on because we're meant to be testing the game as much as "playing" it, and while it's fun to engage in some RP banter and back-and-forth, when people start taking it personally they need to step away and cool off. Some people around here do a great job of it, some people less so. It's not my call what happens, but that's my opinion on it. What's the fix for all of this? Who knows. I'll stop postulating on that before I get carried away with yet another wall of text, and Grim has to come in here and hassle me for it again. In the meanwhile I've quite enjoyed what I've been a part of so far and I hope to continue doing it with all (or at least most ) of the folks around here. Here's to helping, in our own small ways, make a good game great. If I got a little ramble-y I apologise. Kind of. Cheers!

Absolutely. Simple, reasonably realistic palettes and paint schemes to choose from, and no bright, garish sails and the like, please, they're absolutely awful.

I think that frequent map wipes may be the best way to encourage people to keep the testing nature of our gameplay in mind, so that nobody becomes too attached to their precious in-game possessions and instead can keep perspective on what our goal currently is. I agree that there're are definitely a wide array of directions the game could be taken. I suspect that part of the reason there's so much acrimony here is that, because the game hasn't been defined as "hard core" or "soft core", per se, both camps are hoping that it goes their way and want to insist that anyone else from the opposite camp isn't playing "the right game". Combine that with wildly different ideas of what constitutes "sandbox PvP" and here we are. This is leaving out the general maturity level and ability for people to recognise and separate RP, etc, which is a whole other discussion I wonder if the best way to alleviate this is with different servers with different rule-sets. I won't go into it too much because that's really not what this (National News) forum is for, but in short: instead of having PvP 1/2/3 and PvE servers, instead perhaps the game should have two PvP servers, each with different levels of gain/loss risk and more or less frequent map resets with their own "win conditions", and then a nice, quiet PvE server aside. Reduce the PvP population in total from 3 to 2 servers and the separate rule-sets would let people play "the game they want", so to speak. If you're scared of losing your little boats and ports and want to play nice and occasionally engage in consensual, balanced PvP without resets then go to server 1. If you want to fight until you can fight no more, damn the odds, or trade under dangerous conditions and enjoy the competitive atmosphere between resets, join server 2, and so on. I'm just spit-balling here, but maybe there's something useable in it.

This will only work if you promise that the nice Dutch girl will be wearing one of those darling conical hats and those delightful, oddly-arousing wooden shoes. Otherwise the deal's off. DEAL'S OFF!

Thank you, I needed this laugh. I was among the first to congratulate the Dutch and Dane-Norwegian factions for coordinating a smart campaign and smashing us. I've also been roundly condemned by fair-weather friends for wanting to continue fighting. You need to actually pay attention and work on your reading comprehension before you start wildly lashing out. No, we ARE here to test. "alpha tests ends when game went on steam platform" you're exactly the type of player I was talking about when I said that not everybody is suited to early access testing. Congratulations: you're the problem. This ranks right up there with the guy in Armoured Warfare that told me that the game was no longer in beta because there wasn't going to be another wipe at launch, and the devs are lying when they say it's still in beta I'm not "hiding mistakes", I'm pointing them out while encouraging people to continue fighting and playing and testing and not just up and leaving. "Game...is exactly the same for all" no kidding, nobody has ever stated that it isn't. Do you think people here actually believe we're playing different client versions? Get your head out of your ass

Here's the other point at issue: Everybody is allowed to approach these ideas as they see fit. If you want peace then fine, rally for peace. If you want war then fine, agitate for war. Where people have gone awry here is the belief that if I disagree with you, I'm disagreeing with you as a person and not merely your specific idea. This leads some people to view a disagreement as an attack, which is why I've said several times (on these boards and elsewhere) that people need to learn to separate the idea from the man. This is an extension of how people seem to behave in general, and it's likely impossible to separate it here, but that doesn't make the behaviour any more acceptable or excusable.

Oh some of us do, though perhaps with not quite so positive a spin I also love seeing, especially from those clamouring for this peace, the repeated statements of "the vast majority of players..." and "99% of the nation..." etc. I for one don't recall seeing those polls presented. People really ought to try to move away from believing that their opinion automatically speaks for the majority

What a ridiculous mis-representation of the argument. Congratulations for following the path laid out by so many already. "OMG if we flatten the French they'll all quit and then it'll be a PvE game!" We're here to test this game, plain and simple. If France becomes unplayable for a portion of the player-base then they are testing out the various methods available to them for finding gameplay elsewhere: take advantage of keeping your XP while rerolling; going pirate; etc. If they up and quit the game entirely then they clearly weren't here to test in the first place, or perhaps have realised that the PvE server is more to their liking and are currently playing there, or are currently on a different PvP server. Who knows? Otherwise they end up playing in a different faction elsewhere on the map and you can find and fight them once more, or perhaps they will find you instead. I won't reiterate my entire other post, but yes, we are here to test. That is our purpose in this game at this time. And yes, we need to see how broken a system is in order to properly fix it. Have you ever done home renovations? Have you ever seen how quickly "I'm going to replace my cupboards" turns into "well, with those down, I can see how banged up the drywall back here is" which becomes "wow, the insulation in this wall is somewhat lacking" and soon turns into "Jesus, is this a hole behind my siding?!" Problems lead into other problems, and we're here to help find and expose them. As for having paid for this yes, I don't know when paying to enter a beta/early access title became the norm.. it was sometime in the last 5 years, afaik.. but it is now. It has the added benefit of providing early income to the development team as well, which I suspect is why it's become so common. The fact that you paid to play this doesn't change the fact that we're still playing it to test it. Honestly, I'm so very tired of "sweet Jesus, won't somebody think of our PORTS?! We can't lose ALL of them or ALL of the players will quit FOREVER OH MY GOD" Speaking in hyperbole like this does nothing to support one's argument. It merely makes you appear unrealistic.

Anything that encourages PvP is worth trying right now, I'd think. As Ratline pointed out this game is currently in early development, and there's no better time to try out these systems since that's why we're here to begin with. If it doesn't work great, toss it and try something else.

I quite enjoyed the Cerberus for the short time I sailed it, and while the current scheme didn't take away from it in my eyes, this paint scheme is without question more attractive.

And there's little Reki, showing both his mettle and his education for all to see once again. Way to keep the bar low Keep up the good fight, sir! Glory to Sverige!

Those rascals! I'm sure you'll be commended for promptly reporting these blatant violations of this most noble and gracious peace.

1000 times yes!

That's a good point, too. The smaller ships are still a lot of fun to play; bigger isn't always better. When I feel like playing my Mercury I go out merchant-raiding, but I can't see a good reason to lock it out from mission-running if that's the player's preference.

Seems like this would be easily remedied by naming the ship for the class rather than for a well-known member of said class, as mentioned above. The tag appearance would be pretty straightforward, you could have it read: [<Clan Tag>] Francis Tabernac <Ship Name> (Leda-class) We could have our ship name displayed (if that becomes an option, and however it's implemented) but have the class readily visible as well so people know what you're in. Calling out "Leda" instead of "Trincomalee" would be less irksome for those of us that're a little pickier (I get that completely). Generally speaking experienced captains would most likely be able to recognise a ship's class by visually inspecting it (by memory, memory of another officer, whatever) and this can be represented by the class showing up. For ships without a class, give it one as mentioned above. There's no reason we can't say "well, in this version of the setting that class was common, so they'd know it" and go from there. If we want some mystery involved, keep the ship name secret like the clan tag is until you're in-combat, though I don't see the point of that personally.

The idea of still being able to access lower-level missions is a good one for a couple of reasons, I think. One is that it leaves the mission option open as a way to rebuild funds after a significant loss or reroll. Two is that it still gives you an easily-accessed method of fighting smaller ships with your larger one, and while the gold and xp gain should of course be significantly lowered (perhaps the gold reward removed entirely) to reflect this, the actual experience of practicing fighting off small, nimble craft with a frigate (for example) is invaluable.