JCDC

exactly. this change, and the defending statements, is built on a very worrying lack of understanding of how the game actually works in practice. I have been heavily involved in organising operations and campaigns, in the national council, in diplomacy. this is just a totally unrealistic vision from the admin here. really. I guarantee it.

Christ, please guys don't be so Naïve. 1. there are so many ports, and so few players, that its not possible to contest all areas. no one ever fights in the gulf. its easy for the nations there to do deals and farm marks. but its not just there. there are strong alliances between nations, for example the Spanish and danes can also swap ports and farm marks, the british and dutch can do it. You are imagining that now suddenly people will contest all areas to prevent this but that's wrong. its just not going to happen. 2. National leaders? are you kidding? this is a game, people are going to do whatever they think benefits them. there is no amount of leadership that will stop this abuse. the nations currently have excellent leaderships and organisations and councils etc. but new or selfish players cannot be controlled by them. this is not a school, there is no discipline available etc. if people want to be trolls. this is the internet ffs!!! I didn't ask for you to make the game mechanics force people into line!!!! I am just pointing out how dumb it is to make the game mechanics actively encourage people not to!!! Is this some joke to sabotage the game now you have made such good progress?

I totally get what you are trying to do with this policy, but it will have the completely opposite effect. really. this is just one giant invitation to exploit. it will actively discourage real port battles while everyone is so busy doing risk free uncontested ones.

no I understand perfectly, it worries me that you do not. The Spanish have 10 useless ports in the gulf. they let their allies take all 10. then, the Spanish re-capture 5. all uncontested port battles. Then both nations have 5 'captured' ports that they get pensions from, forever. for nothing. They wont have to defend them, because no one will come to attack. its just free marks.

I cant get over how negative the results of this are going to be. massive numbers of conquest marks from political port flips, total breakdown in co-operation within nations over conquest and fighting for position. This is insane. really. insane.

@admin I like that you are trying new things, but this is the most abuse prone system I can think of. this is not well thought through. Nations who are allies will let each other take loads of ports, then take them back. on both sides. this will lead to both sides getting enormous numbers of conquest marks, for no effort, with not a single shot being fired. they wont have to defend them, they just need to do this once and then sit back. You are trying to promote more Port battles and more PvP and you say nations now have to hold captured ground to maintain heavy fleets, but the allowance for political territory arrangements means that the opposite is true. there will be a wave of mass scale flipping and then conquest marks will become plentiful and irellevant. there will be a spam of heavy ships and we will go back to the old situation. this is really a disastrous mechanism. why on earth would you not only do this, but even mention in the notes the very mechanism )political port swapping) that is going to destroy the mechanism. This is madness. Not only that, but for genuine port battles, you wil create enourmous arguments within the nation over who gets to go to them. Instead of co-operation, you will get hordes of players trying to get into battles causing enourmous e-grief and a separation of those who have, from those who don't. not based on effort or work, but on who can click the enter battle icon faster. This is the internet equivalent of deliberately starving 10 dogs, and then throwing them 3 pieces of meat so that you can sit back and enjoy watching them fight over it.

Well, its hard to tell how many people showed up, and how many were just there anyway! but there was quite a lot of fighting around La Navasse for the first few hours. I was in 4 battles, I saw a lot of others. I had a couple of good battles and a couple of total massacres each way. but in the spirit of the event I fought no matter the odds! That battle didn't end well for me. There was a lack of big fleet action but I think the main reason was the main fleets I saw there were the Danes and the pirates. there simply weren't enough Western alliance ships around to put up a big fight and the pirates/eastern alliance didn't seem to be fighting. there was a 10 ship dane fleet and a 10 ship pirate fleet there most of the night, but they never seemed to be there at the same time. Also the main British fleet and the Spanish were preparing for a Port battle that happened in the second half. So, not a huge number around. Hopefully next week will be bigger as we get closer to the wipe. Try and spread the word for the next one. the more the merrier!

18.00 server time..............

First event starts in an hour

First Edition of this event starts 18.00 tonight server time, so 7.5 hours from now for those too lazy to look it up! Lets get a big turnout and have some fun. I'm ready. are you? come and claim one of these ships. all free to a good home and someone willing to take them at the point of a sword and the muzzle of a cannon.

Its 18.00 to 24.00 this Saturday and every Saturday after that until the wipe.

At risk of making the fun too organised, I have added a sub event 'the great undocking' to encourage more fleet action and less 1v1. Every hour, anyone in dock can all go out at the same time and start a fight. simple stuff. see OP for details.

sorry if this is cheeky but link to a thread/event to help us all get over this asset loss. Pls all join in and more importantly spread it to everyone else you know. /thread derail

Captains! Now that the asset wipe has been confirmed: We are all left with the question: What shall I do with all my ships/goodies/stores? The answer I propose is to have fun with them!!! Tired of leaving your best ships and addons in port for fear of losing them? Tired of seeing enemy fleets/ships run from marginally unfavourable battles? Tired of the salt when someone ganks you? Tired of struggling to find action or caring about the results? Well, we are going to lose it all anyway so lets party like its the end of the world, NA style. I am declaring that This Saturday, and all following Saturdays until the wipe there will be a party at La Navasse from 18.00 to 24.00 server time. Who will be invited? EVERYONE!!!! Bring your best ships, bring your friends, bring your enemies! AND FIGHT - Throw your carefully horded gold ships away in an orgy of violence and cannon fire. - A mass brawl around la navasse between anyone, from any nation, of any fleet size - Only rule is no running. every fight is to the death, to run is shame and pretty pointless anyway - fight 1 v 1, 1 v 25, organise a fleet and fight 25v25 IT DOESNT MATTER.... - when you don't care about losing, any fight is fun. fight in a santi vs a swarm of gunboats. fight in a surprise vs a horde of Santi's WHO CARES!!!! - Either hang around around La navasse and attack anything you see, or dock up and join the main events 'the great undockings' every hour on the hour. At this time, every captain from any nation can undock and then a fight will start. who will be on each side? who knows? who cares? fun will be had. if this goes well, should be a bunch of large fleet battles with a totally random assortment of ships. The first Great undocking at 19.00 server time each Saturday. For too long this game has been to much about politics and hoarding and collecting. finally, we have a golden opportunity to just cut lose and have fun. to do no trading, no building, no planning. just to spew away all our hard earned possessions in a ridiculous cloud of cannon balls and swordfighting. for this to work lots of people need to get behind it. Tell your mates, tell your clans, tell your nation. Everyone who will turn up just post 'I'M IN' or some suitably piratey version of that. also, more people posting they are in keeps the topic current, which gets more attention. the more we get, the more fun it will be. don't let this wipe pass in the absence of a good send off, don't let all that hard work lead to nothing. bring your ships and send them out in style. I've put 1000 hours into building my fleet, that's a lot of effort to fire out the end of a cannon and i'm going to be doing my best to achieve that. if I have a single ship left at the end I will be disappointed. No prizes, no salt, no leaderboards NO MERCY!!!!!

US players helped in two of the ports.

Yeah before this becomes a massive flame war, i want to point out that both sides did a really good job of organising this night and it was a lot of fun. its harder to attack than to defend. we might not like the mechanics of WS but it allowed, as Tenakha said, to create a great event. I was running the British side on the Belize battle and the Spanish fought fairly and well and it was a very close fight. it was good fun, well done to eveyone who joined in. this should be remembered as a good example of how fun and good this game can be, not a big flame war about who is better than who, both sides have their good nights and bad nights. GG all

Couple of points: - The brit's advantage? what about your advantages? Pirates advantages: - Are all high level players - On TS together - Well practiced as working as a team - spent the whole pre-battle and battle running, allowing kiting advantage AND better concentration of firepower. - Most/All had full gold upgrade setups specifically chosen for the type of pvp you do. e.g. most of your main ships could repair nearly 50% when low health - Brits were random collection of who were in the area at the time: - Many low ranks and poor ships - Not everyone with experience of working together as a group - Less than half actually on TS together, so couldn't communicate - Not in Specifically rigged gold PvP ships, just whatever was to hand at the time British advantages: - 50% more BR BR isnt the only factor, as you well know. Overall, your advantages make this an even fight at worst, perhaps even tipped towards you but close either way. really I think if you had tried something other than running away, you could have won. it was a great fun fight, played in the right spirit. its a shame you desperately need to twist the results to buff your ego. really, it was a great performance by a patchwork collection of British ships against a tight and very well equipped team.

Look, the reason and intention behind this rule is good but combined with positional re-enforcements its far too complicated and has so many unintended consequences. The fact is, the more complicated these sort of mechanisms are, the less fun and more frustrating it is to use, the more 'legit' players will get caught out by them and the more loopholes and exploits the gankers will find to abuse them. This mechanism can be used to surround ships that were ahead in open water, which makes no sense. it can be used to gank ships of the line with large numbers of small ships and leave friendlies outside helpless to intervene thus preventing anti-ganking, it can be used to split up large fleets moving in open water, meaning fleets sailing together in close company suddenly find half of them locked out of a battle artificially etc. The answers to ganking lie in good gameplay, not these artificially constructed rules. the negatives caused by this are worse than the positives, you will never design gamplay so ganking is impossible, its just part of the game and people need to get used to it. If you really want to stamp down on ganking then you could make the rules differnet for attackers and defenders so that attackers have limited re-enforcements and defenders have as many as they want. however this will just give loopholes to the use of alt accounts and tricking people into attacking etc. however you try and fix it, the toxic players will find a way around the rules and use them against the 'normal' players. and it will also mess with fleet on fleet normal engagements. You just need to accept its part of the game and move on. none of the changes you have made have really helped, they all just make it worse in my opinion. I think you should have a slightly longer timer and higher BR level for defenders than attackers, this would give a mild boost to the attacked party and cancel out the silly advantages but not cause too many side problems. its a compromise but it might work.

There are not enough players for multiple servers at the moment, its unsustainable to have specific servers for specific timezones. maybe after release that would work but not now.

odd decision. closing a forums will just move people elsewhere. it doesnt solve the problems, it just attempts to shuffle them off somewhere else i think. there was a lot of rubbish in here and trolling and abuse but there was also actual useful things. seems pointless to lose them. the good stuff will dissapear, the bad will move elsewhere i think. You cant stop the internet being the internet by trying to silence it.

Guys, there is no need for the borderline racist and xenophobic remarks and jokes starting to fly in both directions. that will get real ugly real quickly. If you say that you have multinational players in french nation then what on earth is the problem? your non-EU players can fight our non-EU players outside of 'peak' hours This is perfect!!! isnt that how the game is supposed to work? if all nations are multinational, the port timers would be way less of an issue. And John Q, the french took plenty of ports from us. some when we were fully defending them. its not their ability to fight that is an issue.

Brits are a very multinational nation in game, the comparison isnt much use. we have strong contingents from Aus, US, China, Euros aswell as actual british. Anyway that argument is boring and dead. As to the mechanics themselves of attacking ports the devs have already confirmed the current ones will be replaced, we all know they dont work very well. The last thing you want is 24/7 ability to attack ports. it would lead to fewer contested battles not more, and more forums aggro, not less. it would be impossible for some nations to defend any territory at all. the 24/7 nations like pirates and Brits would own the entire map. at the moment we are hard to attack, with no timers we would be impossible to defend against. Ports should be harder to attack and capture, i like the suggestions about having to create unrest first so this endless flipping ends. but the defenders should still be the ones to choose the timing. its the least bad system avaliable. yes it gives an advantage to the multinational nations but tough. life isn't fair, there is no way of artificially nullifying these advantages.

these threads are more like french ports. however many you close, another one just seems to pop up and then you have to deal with it.

its the ones taking it so seriously that i am refering to.

Oh god, not all this again.