KrakkenSmacken

The problem with that model is that national population would guarantee victory. They would be there when it was quiet on the other side, AND when the battle was contested. Given enough people with interest, your going to see some players willing to log in at any hour to fight that spot. The more players on a nation, the more that fall into that category. If it was 1 PB every 3 hours fro 24 hours (8 battles), it would be all but impossible to balance the values of uncontested fights against contested.

There is a potential solution to this, build a system where a player can migrate between servers, and move all goods and ships in their capital with them. Then you will see exactly who want's to move but doesn't want to lose their stuff, and those that stay due to preference. While your at it, set it up so the same thing can happen nationally. Build a "Switch Nation" feature that lets you take all the stuff in your capital with you. Then you would see people migrate around based on Clan/Friend loyalty, and not on server or national loyalty. It would also end the bitching about pirates having an unnatural influx of players due to the "turning pirate" mechanics, which should be replaced by a locked "Smuggler" check box for 24hrs per Green on Green action.

I think what he is getting at, is that with even the current model getting away from a long fight with players is hard, given the revenge fleets that tend to hang around waiting for the fight to end. With a ship that wins a close fight, and leaves into the open world essentially crippled, now with a prize captured ship, also crippled and driven by AI, the ability to escape getting revenged is going to be practically zero. I happen to think that as long as revenge fleets are possible, he is absolutely correct in this regard.

You seem a bit angry for some reason. Anyway, as I explained earlier in this thread, port ownership in a back area is convenient, but hardly necessary, to stage and effectively take over a port in hostile waters, especially with the 48 hour prep time before the port action starts. So for your first question. "Of course the use of it is bad, it is already bad in the current state of the game without those new mechanics ! Where in the world did you saw a Nation able to magically spawn large fleets of warships right in the middle of the enemies waters and sail less than 5 minutes to get into battles on the heavy populated waters of the attacked Nation ? " Without numbers to know how much hostility it takes to create a port battle instance, it is theoretically possible for a dedicated single player operating deep in enemy territory to trigger a port capture instance, which then the rest of the team can stage for, and then log off in the stage location, in preparation for taking the port. Log back on, and poof there is your instant magically spawned large fleet of war ships, no port required. As long as people can log off at sea, there is no way to prevent fleets from hiding in this fashion. Well timed, this strategy could cause the target to be faced with two fronts, and have to make a choice about which one is the one they want to defend, because setting up defenses in both could be... problematic. As to what appears to be the core of your problem with the model. " What's the point of owning territories in this game is you get rat holes everywhere inside you "National" waters allowing this ?" Well, to get resources, and to attempt to have some contiguous trade and national presence, oh yea, and have a boat load of fun fighting other players who want to kill you and take your stuff. I could turn that question on it's head so easily. "What is the point of joining a game that only has defined fronts where the strategy is limited to beating your head against the same, rarely changing, set of ports and areas?" Limited chaos is much better than stagnation. Also, a nation on it's heels without free ports would have to focus on a very small area. That forced focus pretty much guarantees that they would be stuck forever, since they already were not strong enough to resist being taken over in the first place, odds of them being able to push back are even less. Oh, and don't move the goal posts by talking about the current trade rules and "deliveries" model for free ports. I think those are broken and every product not produced at a port should need to be shipped in the OW at some point. Risk free deliveries are indeed a bad thing.

You say these things like the new potential uses are bad. I think that with the new proposed mechanics, of port battles taking a protracted period of time to wind up, that having this wind up start anywhere are good things. Let's nations wind up more than one area, and then focus on the one that really matters to them. Also a good way to make a large country attempt to fight a two front war. It adds a depth of strategy that pounding on well defined lines just doesn't allow for. For example. I am currently observing for the second time, an fractured front for the Pirates. One group broke off from the main and started a new group well to the south. This left the area around mort (again) less defended and the US and the Brits have made some very significant gains in that area. Without free towns to base in, the only place that a nation behind the 8 ball could hope to fight would be near their capital, rather than striking out in a new area and forcing the larger powers to consider splitting their efforts.

Please define the difference between "war supplies" and "normal trade goods", because that line is rightfully blurry. I made more money selling raw materials to shipbuilders than anything else, so I fail to see how "Oak Logs" would qualify as a "war supply" more than say "Compass Wood". If it's simply arbitrary "this dock won't deal in X", with X being anything used in ship construction, then what the hell is the point of a free town?

I don't see what "warships" has to do with it really, I've already figured out a work around if free ports only allow traders. Dock your smuggler non-war ship, Le Gros Ventre, in a free town. (Classified as a trader) Pick on Snow/Brig/Le Gros Ventre Traders from the enemy nations directly adjacent to the port. Smuggle in the same area. Once 100% is reached, rally your nation to make the trip in time for port battle. (you have 48 hours to do this prep.) Stage in open water nearby, You don't need a dock anymore because no more flags. Begin assault when the window opens. I don't see what prevents any nation for starting hostilities in any location. Open water is not a game of boarders. Oh, and I happen to think all of the above is a good thing. There should be no place entirely safe from attack. Us infectious pirate types should be able to be found popping up all over the map, not just around Mort.

I proposed something similar on another thread. Vote for a set time, then the time is declared. The vote could be a player setting that always applies to all "Hostility" they earn, so that all hostility points come with a set time, that is displayed to all when they accrue. The reason it should be a set value, is as a player I would want the fight to start when I start, not when I earned my points, especially if I earned the most at the end of my play session. A set value means I swing things closest to my own availability. Players could then block out what time they DON'T want fights, and any counter to hostility points they make, will take points from those set in that time first, and then move to the next closest times to that. [Edit: Will hostility points earned used to determine placement in a fight be a TOTAL of all points earned towards the port? If there is a back and forth it should be, as other wise it will be a nightmare to figure out "who's" points got removed by counter action. It would also be interesting to see the level of contestation for a port based on TOTAL hostility earned/lost in the process.] Fights start 24 hours + whatever it takes to get to the set time that the two teams hostility settings were set at when the hostility hit 100% In case someone leaves these things default. Current time is used to gains, and 12 hours out is used to remove. This way even during the ramp up on hostility, both teams are trying to influence when the port fight will happen. The most active on each team having the highest influence on when it will occur. It will add a depth to strategy, in that teams that see hostility climbing on a fight in a time they don't want, may focus their efforts in that direction rather than one they figure they can win because the time is more favorable. Or NA could try the model that Crowfall is using, they are going to have the same problem with castle sieges. "During a campaign, a castle siege like in this video will have to be planned. It wouldn’t be very fair to attack an Australian guild on American hours, for instance, so the aggressor will have to declare a window of time when they’d like to attack, and the defender will be able to choose the hour. " http://www.pcgamer.com/watch-a-large-scale-castle-siege-in-upcoming-mmo-crowfall/

So a few questions, one opinion Is "Hostility" by nation? It seems it must be. How does Hostility work when two nations are operating against one nation in an area? Is it a race to 100% for both nations, can more than one nation have a port battle scheduled against a single nation at the same time, or do the activities of one nation reduce the hostility of the other, so that if more than one nation is targeting a single nation, the singled out nation has a bit of a reprieve in that both nations can't trigger a port battle against them at the same time. Can hostilities create a situation where two teams both have scheduled port battles against each other, over the same cities? I.E. is hostile gain weighted higher than defensive, or vise versa? I think that if one nation is being picked on by two or more nations in the same area, that those nations should mechanically be limited so both can not gang up on a nation in that way, with a mechanic that forces them to collude as to what country gets to push hostility to the 100%. For example, if hostility of one nation is higher than 50%, no other nations hostility can go higher than that same 50% until it has dropped below 50% for the first nation. This would allow the defending nation to focus counter hostility efforts against just one of the hostile forces at a time.

1.) As said above, smuggler lets the other factions do this. 2.) I think should be changed, but that change is actually quite simple. Since they now have smuggler, simply lock a players' smuggler to ON for 24 hours for each Green on Green encounter. It's up to each nation how it deals with spotted smugglers in it's midst. Switch to "Pirate" only after having that lock go above a certain threshold, AND strip all possessions except the current ship. Mechanical problem solved. The social problem of people wanting to join the winning team, well to quote Peter Drucker "culture eats strategy for breakfast" And your fighting culture on that one, so good luck with whatever strategy you try.

Regarding "XP for trading" Has any discussion taken place regarding the form this will follow? I personally would like to see it work not based on profit, but on port consumption items need. Profit is dangerous from an exploit point of view as players can control both sides of the equation with purchase/sell orders. I would like to see a port place it's own consumption as purchase orders, and if you fulfilled THOSE orders only, you get the XP and the product immediately leaves general circulation. A one way door that can't be manipulated. I would also like to see the "travel" XP changed to "port visited XP". Every port starts at awarding 50XP to a player as a base, and awards a 2X bonus for first visit. Every hour in real time you have not visited a port, you will earn 1 XP for a visit, to a cap of 50XP (two days, two hours). If you visit in a trade ship, under a smuggler flag, that value doubles (so 4X for a first visit smuggle up to 200). That way frequent small trips to the same area gain little, and exploring around the map could be more encouraged. AFK XP for just pointing to the wind and going for distance would also be solved, and it would also be a reason to log in at least every 2 days to go collect port XP.

I guess I need to amended my statement to "everything MOST nations had". So how much traction do you think the anti pirate crowd would get if they included national "realistic" requirements for access to national ships? Gee, I wonder what nations everyone would switch to and would be the next complaint about being OP? Spanish I guess, seeing as the Santisima was their design, or perhaps whatever nation holds Havana, the shipyard she was built at. Careful what you wish for....

The irony of all this anit pirate chatter, especially the "they should not take ports" is that at one time the pirates had EVERYTHING the nations did. Ports, Construction yards, standing troops/marines. Just read the first paragraph of "Piracy in the Caribbean" on wikipedia. "Piracy flourished in the Caribbean because of the existence of pirate seaports such as Port Royal in Jamaica, Tortuga in Haiti, and Nassau in the Bahamas." Also ironic, is that if pirates were mechanically crippled as many want, the people playing pirates, the "killers", would just move to a different nation, and produce exactly the same results as you have now with the pirates. If you want pirates to be different and not have all the same abilities as other nations, then you are not being historic, your drinking the Disney Jack Sparrow koolaid.

I would rather see it go the other way. PC escorts his trader ship with his combat ship. That way the only thing the AI has to try to do is get away. As a Pirate I would rather have a player in a combat ship protecting his goods, than an AI. More interesting that way.

Interesting. I didn't count them but it sure looked like most killed were either not listed as why, or listed as having something to do with a "shell" or "shot". It looks to me like from first glance that it's, around 7-1 wound/kill ratio, and that most kills with listed details were getting shot, while more wounds were splinter. So yea, I will concede that splinters were more dangerous than MB found, (stupid science with bad conditions), and that you were more likely to be wounded by splinters than direct hits, but I won't concede that you were more likely to be killed by them than a direct hit. And yea, concussion from cannon flying though wood would probably not cause significant damage. It also points out how strange the total crew wipe outs we have to do to force a surrender actually are.

Yea, that was what I really noticed about the Niagara footage. The splinters may not have done much penetrating damage, but all the figures wobbled around from the concussive forces. If World War Z (the book, Battle of Yonkers story) taught me anything, it's that explosive ordinance does more damage by force than by penetration. I could easily see doctors of the time assuming all the dead and injured was caused by caused by contact with flying objects, and not "just" the shock waves caused by impact.

Actually no, I had not seen that, but I think I just did. Splinters through an inch of plywood is impressive, but if it was the 1999 live fire footage I saw, it looked like the plywood guys were fronted with Styrofoam to highlight the splinter damage, besides I found this quote on the link above. "No. This test was made with a much larger cannon of a type not even available in the golden age of piracy (you do rememder that the MB episode was about a "pirate myth"?). They used a six-pounder, completely realistic for their intentions. That the results of a huge naval cannon appropriate to a man-of-war a hundred years later are different (as seen in this video) doesn't invalidate their test at all."

I think with the new "smuggler" mechanic they could do away with the "turning pirate" and make it a character creation choice. Simply force the smuggler tag to on for a period of time based on the crime. That would mean anyone could attack them, and it would prevent them from switching nations for free. If you run up enough crimes/hours of smuggler lock, THEN you turn pirate (and lose all assets in the process). It would also give people who make the mistake of attacking a national once or twice a way out without being forced pirate at the first infraction. Nations would be free to decide for themselves how they handle identified smugglers on the open sea. Very sand boxy.

I think the approach has merit, but I wonder if all the current approaches don't suffer from a basic flaw. That basic flaw being that everything so far has been revolving about what happens AFTER you hit the OW, not the method that triggers the transition start in the first place. If your in a fight and hit [ESC] to exit, have nothing to decide regarding captured ships and rewards, you can be transitioned back to the OW effectivly instantly. Perhaps where we need to deal with this, is by putting limitations on how that occurs. So with that in mind. Give players a way to see what is in the OW before they commit to exiting the battle instance. Either a [TAB] like ship display of visible ships, or a copy of the map tool used in battle. Something that shows the ships and active instances in the OW. When a person selects to join the OW, a count down timer to join the OW starts. Base 120 seconds, that adds 1 second for every second you sat on the end of battle screen, up to 300 seconds. This countdown is canceled if there are no ships or events in visible range on the OW. Once you start that countdown, you WILL be pushed into the OW when it ends. You can not cancel this once it is started. Where your ship will appear in the OW, a semi transparent copy of your ship will appear, showing where you will be entering the OW when the timer ends. The semi transparent copy of the ship will not appear on the in instance view of the OW. Those in other battle instances are not aware of each other's transitions. Logon joining directly into the OW, will trigger the countdown (max time) and the transparent copy of your ship. What this accomplishes is several things. You can't use the invisible duck blind to hide. Any fight that starts before you request to leave the battle screen, will be a fight you can not participate in, and many that you have requested to leave before, but start early in your count down, you will also not be able to join. There is no advantage or way to avoid the battle screen limitations by using logon/off mechanics. The onus is on you to be certain the area is clear before joining the OW. You can log out, and avoid the revenge fleet. The fact no transparent copy of your ship shows up will mean they know you have decided to wait them out. Now let's be clear, I do not have a problem with TP to capital, but if that is not an option perhaps we need to look at HOW a person enters the OW, and not simply what we do about them once they arrive.

I concur that the boarding mini game needs some love. I would really like to see it take on a similar shape as the main game. You assign so many so many to attack, so many to muskets, etc, and then when they finish prep, just like loading a cannon, you are able to engage them in that capacity or hold them in brace until the right moment. Built on waves, so that limited groups engage, attack, etc, and you have to decide where to put your priority times. It also needs more back and forth. Right now once you get ahead on crew, it's simply a matter of time and patience before you win.

The splinters while more numerous in the above footage did not appear any larger or faster there than they did in the mythbusters footage. Now medical being what it was back then, I suppose a few splinters could have turned all infected and eventually killed the crew member, I just don't see anything from that other footage that would indicate the increased amount of splinters were anything more than marginally more dangerous. Certainly not as murderous as the cannonballs, one shot of which was able to penetrate THROUGH four full sized pig carcasses. Fun little argument though.

There is no good reason why a sunk ship couldn't launch life boats and most of the crew become "survivors". Despite how fast ours sink because it's a game, historically speaking wooden ships did not go down quickly. It's a small suspension of disbelief to imagine that crew would be taking to life boats once the ship could no longer maintain buoyancy. Heck, they could add a toggle for launch boats like the boarding preparation. The further along you were with it, the more survivors you would end up with.

I personally don't really need to. In fact I can tell you exactly what I would do, because it's the same thing I do when an outpost has full ships, or the ship I captured has more goods than my attack ship can carry. I would hunt close to the outpost port, capping whatever is convenient. I would after a capture return to port, I mostly do this to save $$ on repair kits and reduce cargo risk now. I would break the ship I don't want to constituent parts (Labor hours are expensive, so the "free" hours of getting already constructed materials is worth more than the gold of selling.) I would use the deliveries system when I have enough items to justify sending them to the closest outpost to my capital. Often I will simply include 3 spaces of broken materials with a heavy shipment of logs or something. Log on in the morning when nobody is likely to be hunting the run from outpost to capital. AFK sail to the town or nearby coast while I have a shower. Dock, unload, break up transport ship. The only thing that might change is how often I fight at the relay outpost. Now I don't do that very often, its the one that gets sent all the magical TP ships. I would much rather they flesh out player ordered AI on the water, and do away with both capture TP AND Deliveries, and force every product to sail from A->B. The change would be that I would send all ships to my closest port, and before logging off issue the transport order in the same place in my cycle I issue the deliveries order now. But at least that way the cargo would be at some risk for the trip.

I guess two more. If the defenders are delaying, and the attackers trying to build, will the attackers have the option to SET the attack time AFTER the project is completed? What I am getting at, is that I don't think it would be very good game play for there to be a mini "when will they launch" game that revolves around the exact moment the project completes. I think it would be much better for the team that builds the project to be given the ability to change the attack time by vote (contribution determining vote weight), during the first 24 hours after it is built, and then the attack launch wherever the vote put the attack between 24-48 from that time. That would mean that the attack could happen anywhere from 48-72 hours after project completion, at the discretion of the building country. Two I would really like it if the construction phase also included labor hour requirements, of a suitable level, to actually BUILD the assault fleet and possibly defense fleet at the origin (defending) port. So the assault fleet was in fact a major construction project, that included the construction of the ships destined for the battle. So the "recipe" for crafting the fleet would include for example. 1 Santisima, 2 Victories, 5 St Pavels, 5 Bellonas, etc. This would require the building of at least one outpost and shipyard of suitable size. Players would be rated on contribution based on labor hours provided, not currency. (Use the extraction cost in labor hours of raw source material.) In this way the offensive and defensive forces would be both interesting, of varied composition, and would be obligated to make room for all types of crafts. No ships build for OW sand box play allowed, just those purpose built for the invasion, which could then be taken out into OW after the battle was over. In my head I am seeing a fleet selection screen during the building process, where players are identifying which ship in the constructed fleet they will be captaining. With a way to different players to assume command should one of the assigned captains not be available. If you have ever played League or Legends or other DoTA games, it would look a bit like the champion select phase of the game. Now if you don't want to go so far as to require defenders to build a new fleet, allow them to "donate" competed ships to the defense and assign them in the same kind of "champion select" window, subject to the same ship class/count limitations as the attackers.

A ) Will all nations be able to see the current progress? (Would like to see a Yes answer) B ) If so, will that take "smuggling" into the port that is producing the assault fleet to spy it out? (Also would like to see a Yes) C ) Will disruption potentially force the cancellation of an assault fleet, rather than simply delay it? (Would like to see a Yes. It would be a great way to allow a nation back on it's heals to focus all efforts at stopping an invasion, even it that means having to build a counter assault and capture the host port prior to it's completion) D ) Will the current build up of the port (Outposts, resource extraction points, shipyards) increase the cost of assembling an assault fleet against it to begin with. (Would like to see a Yes. This would also help weaker nations concentrate defensive strength and require hostile nations to spend more to engage them) E ) If the above is yes, will assembling an assault fleet first require a certain amount of spying? Again would like to see a Yes, and if D ) is also a yes I think the more buildings the more spying should be required. F ) Will the assault fleet have a set ship composition, so that these fleets can't be 25 Sant's? G ) Will your place (reservation in battle instance) for the assault fleet be a reflection of your individual contribution to the assault fleet, and not based on what guild/clan you are part of? H ) Will the fleet have a waiting list, so that if for example the 25th guy just does not show up the 26th contributor can take his spot? I think that's enough for now. Cheers