Lyteros

Pretty sure he was not confused since both came in OW and follwed, both in the same clan. I am pretty sure I did explain for them, in the open pirate faction chat and the battle instance, that green on green was forbidden. Since it is a while since it happend, not sure it was BEFORE the first salvo was fired though (and of course who believes the guy you're trying to kill...). Background Information: This was not an isolated incident. The same clan was in similar green fire incidents over the next days (beeing discussed in several instances the pirate faction chat) A few days later, when another such instance was reported (and flamed...) in the pirate faction chat, I even went to the forums and searched for the post explaining the "green on green is forbidden" thing and at least they announced they would not do it anymore, as long as this is the case and you cannot pick sides properly. No idea if they held their word though. So they did it despite beeing notified it is not allowed. Pretty sure they would have sunk me anyway, if I had not managed to outmanouver them and got away.

I find it pretty ridiculous how some people seemingly just want to push pirates down by whatever means, then call for pirates beeing more "historically accurate" and invoke "realism" as reason. It seems to summarize and translate into: weak and useless. The same people then get mad when pirates actually play like pirates and take abusive game mechancis for their advantage. There is absolutely no problem at all having different (!) game mechanics to make factions unique etc, but plain taking away options is boring and stupid, it is no meaningful addition in the game and will weaken and over time kill the affected faction. It makes a faction just boring and weaker, thus it will not be taken due to better options and bleed players until it reaches a point where it is so weak everyone will leave. All the "historically it was..." argumentations are kind of cute when you realize this is a online game, where people paid money to have fun... You want to play hardmode? Well its your decision to buy / build ships of the line or set for yourself the restriciton to do not. You don't want piratse to attack ports? - Then Don't participate? If you really wanna go historical, by all means do that. For the beginning I suggest: for the next 3 weeks consume stale and occasionally bacteria infested water while eating only hard and somtimes moldy bread, and if you are lucky there might be some insetcts as protein sorce in it. And don't forget to spend time outside at night in wet clothes while it is raining and a cold wind blows. Oh and no more medicine, that would be cheating. Now to beeing a bit more constructive: If there is meaningful choice and customization per faction yes, but not just by only taking stuff and options away. It becomes autowin for one side while the other dies. Pirates should not get higher tier line ships? Fine, but provide alternative mechancis to combat the lack of strength there. Probably improved frigates that are really mean when going for captures (like: fast, overcrewed with bonus to boarding combat so they can take on 2nd / 3rd rates with their huge crews... priates live from boarding and got experience with that after all. Combined boarding / additional pirate-boarding equipment or something also would help). Reduced availability and strenght of line ships automatically changes the port battle mechanic anway, since raw firepower will be lower, so if pirates manage to capture a port it was harder and more work than nationals with a load of lineships. Just raiding ports for loot becomes probably the better (time/effort/reward combination) option automatically. You want pirates to be weaker when building big ships? How about improving the ship capture and modification options to offset it? (Since you have to capture you cant select what exactly you want to minmax on build, which everyone else can) You want pirates to not become deathblobss (aka what every national group does daily)? Probably strengthen the game mechanics for solos or small pirate groups and make sure they can not just be wtfblobbed and ganked in minutes. This is happening all the time, because people can simply communicate in chat, in real time, form monsterfleets and go gank someone. They can just organize a good defense against a single pirate looking for 1v1 fights in seconds and blobb him to oblivion. (Hey how about the realism topic here? Remember how nelson used his trusty chat console to coordinate trafalgar? Good times.) And while everyone can become a pirate anytime, switching from pirate to something else is impossible right now. There could simply be an option to first become a privateer for a nation and after a while where only the nations enemies were attacked and not the nations ships, you can join up. TL;DR: Different mechanics are fine, but there have to be meaningful choices with a somewhat balanced foundation and tradeoff for every weakness, or its just utterly wrecking one nation which will die off because it's just worse than any other option.

Hi, got a pirate with a snow initiating an attack on me (also pirate), which is game mechanic so far and not the target of this report. But then one of his friends (same clan) joined the battle on my side, to spawn next to me, and prompty started to fire on my ship with a mixture of chain and normal shots. I assume to get me slowed for his attacking friend. After several salvoes I managed to outmanouver them and flee. Attached a Screenshot during one attack salvo. Sadly I didn't know the ingame screenshot command and did overwrite the damage log printscreen with this one... hopefully one will do? Happend 12.02.16 on PvP 3, local time around 18:50 (see screenshot chat)