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Grundle von Grundel

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Landsmen

Landsmen (1/13)

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  1. In this game a realistic application of wind, such as you mention would be hugely problematic. Imagine - due to their port locations and realistic wind patterns certain nations can run a great distance downwind to raid an enemy and then teleport back 3 hours later... consistently.. because "hey, prevailing winds". Meanwhile the enemy has to travel upwind nearly all the time to get to strike back taking 3x longer and requiring tacking.
  2. asking for calms is just masochistic.. sorry, please do not ever add calms. Also, random wind will simply aggravate people into constantly complaining about how the RNG wind system ruined their entire operation despite the best laid plans. I suppose to some people that heightened level of realism is appealing, but I believe that vastly overall the population will complain far more about such a system. The wind as it is is already an interesting factor that forces people to contend with it within reason for this game, which realistic, but far from extremely realistic.
  3. OP, I've never had this happen before, but I can see from your description that the game mechanics are broken. The devs made it so friendly players couldn't join for all the right reasons.. the trolling and general selfish nonsense forced them to do that. Now it is clear that that was not a great fix as it really helps the enemy. Surely, it is blatantly obvious that it is wrong that when an enemy joins they start right on top of you, and secondly that they are by default friendly with the AI side.
  4. I recognize that this is alpha, but in the earnest desire to contribute to the success of Naval Action I'd like to discuss the state of RvR, population imbalance – and by extension power imbalance – on the broad, long term level in this beautiful game, and the need for added mechanics to allow for truly engaging experiences across all the factions for the overall popularity and benefit of the game. I know this is not a new topic, but my attempts to find deep conversion of great insight on the situation has not led to much more than threads of largely forum pvp, in which the large pop victors and the struggling small pop factions squabble. In my humble opinion, both sides of that coin are simply victims of the very limited RvR mechanics, which do nothing to address population etc. In the hopes that this can be a productive discussion, let it please be clear up front that no part of this topic reflects upon the combat and organizational abilities of any specific faction, clan, or individual. The goal here is also not to definitively prove that population imbalance etc. is a problem. The assumption is that if you are discussing solutions to this problem here, you agree that it is in fact a problem on some level. Whether the developer's agree is something that I have no compass on, and I merely hope that some ideas discussed are considered by them. Regarding the harsh realities of sandbox RvR it's adequate to say that adversity is an extremely important part of this game. That's great. There will be factions that have several times the number of ports as others certainly, and that is Not a problem. Factions being crushed to dust is a problem, and the notion here is that that could indeed occur with current mechanics, and it'd happen in a very bland and anti-climatic manner is a problem. I don't think that I'm alone in being concerned about the experience of the people playing factions that presently don't truly have a chance when push comes to shove, and in the long run, I am concerned about the fate of this game if it really does come down to a numbers game where large factions turn the entire map their color like domination victory in Civilization. Meanwhile the losers are forced into a small hole, knowing that they can never really hold anything for long, all that is left is pointless and fruitless game play, surrounded by enemy ports, leading to a further population decline among those factions (you can afterall reroll to a larger faction with your XP or just quit playing altogether). Then what; everyone who has been crushed rerolls as two or three different factions that are on a more even footing and the real fight for total supremacy begins? That could be interesting, but it isn't ideal, the game would surely lose lots of people. I mean, doesn't the phrase, “real fight for supremacy” strike a cord with this game's more mature player base, versus “systematic easy grind”? Don't we want epic confrontations and meaningful fleet battles as we push back and forth with other factions at the edges of our holdings? Let's talk ideas for possible solutions (in no particular order): Defensive port mechanics that would allow for port defenses to be improved by players and AI fleets to be purchased for various durations to be on standby to help with port defense. It would be 100% imperative that these mechanics be on a scale of increasing costs. For example, the first 5 ports improved by a faction would be fairly reasonable. The next 5 quite expensive, and less potent, and then beyond that exorbitantly expensive with diminishing returns or simply unavailable completely at some point. As stated previously, one faction being very large compared to another is fine. The need here is that the small faction can have a good chance of maintaining a small core of 5 to 10 ports, for example. Port timers are essential for such a diverse collection of time zones. We need the ability to purchase “ownership” at a cost identical to port capture for ports held by a faction from the beginning so as to allow for timers to be set in their core areas. Manpower scales that act as an added layer for each faction to account for in their expansion. At a certain point (equal for each faction) it becomes increasingly costly to take ports due to low manpower, or running ports with low manpower causes them to have lower innate defenses. This mechanic would be scaled to not really effect things until a faction had expanded considerably, and small pop factions may never have to worry about this at all. We would not want this mechanic to completely stifle expansion at a certain number of ports, so perhaps manpower would not have a hard cap, rather it'd be regenerating (or building up) constantly. Therefore all this would do is force people to think about their next target a little more, once their manpower is stretched, rather than it being a two dimensional matter of – we have the gold for the flag and plenty of people, let's keep taking ports. Ideas have been bandied about for some sort of bonus xp and gold for missions etc. for players on smaller factions. Basically this would be on some dynamic percentage sliding scale. Silliness would like ensue in which people joined small factions to level and then rerolled a couple weeks later. Maybe this sort of silliness would be acceptable in that who really cares if someone gets 5% or 10% extra xp for a couple weeks... the players who stick with that faction are still going to benefit much more on an ongoing basis from a system like this. Diplomacy will need to allow for full alliances, in which allied nations can fully support each other, use of ports, etc. However, it'd absolutely need to be broken into two distinct areas, military and trade. I expect that most commonly military would be engaged, but not necessarily trade rights since lots of people might frown on the sudden incursion of 50 more players exploiting the trade routes of your 10 ports. Ideally, trade rights could be granted on a port by port basis, so that ports near the ally could be enabled, but not necessarily the home territory. There matter of leadership would need to be decided on a simply voting basis, with players getting one vote at a certain rank, and higher ranks counting for more. Disagreements in direction would occur surely, but large negative xp penalties would need to be in effect to deter chaos. Perhaps this system in it's normal form could not apply to the pirates. Starting positions merit further consideration. Yes, this game is pseudo realistic, but some more bending could happen to allow for a better safe harbor for initial expansion among the factions, and core base for new players and trade etc.. For example, could the French capitol be in Louisiana instead of piled between several factions? Could the Spanish start in Central America? It's clear that there can't be total parity here, some factions have amazingly safe starting areas compared to others and that's a fine part of the asymmetrical nature of the game. Some of my feelings may be off due to being pvp2 server, but I'm pretty sure there is room for improvement. I love this game like no other, and I look forward to seeing how others feel about the larger future of RvR, and what the devs envision. Yes, I know it's alpha, but ideally we will hear something regarding this broad topic before certain segments of the player base become disenchanted. Sometimes people really need to hear that such and such is valid and we are planning x,y, and z. I don't want to see people write this off, ask for steam refunds etc. If we know that some specific positive mechanics will be implemented followed by a map reset and asset wipe at launch I think we'll be looking at some amazing and dynamic RvR for a long time to come, and people will remain excited rather than becoming frustrated.. Getting it right matters especially because this isn't some sort of RvR match that spans a week or two, we say “gg” and then it gets reset and we start again. So, I think many would agree that we shouldn't just shrug and say, “well it's just the nature of RvR, gotta roll with it.”
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