Sir Robert Calder

I respect you and your opinions Hethwill, but I find the system terrible. Why? A report goes out last night that pirates are harassing KPR from Carlisle, I get into a Bellona with some others and sail to Carlisle to put an end to the harassment. I proceed to sit around for 20 minutes outside Carlisle while I watch 10 or so Yachts and Cutters sail around doing relatively nothing. I grow bored, turn to leave and in the process I watch as someone from my faction who isn't quite on the ball gets jumped by a bunch of these pirates sailing ships with such little BR I cannot help my comrade even if I wanted to. My comrade will of course lose because regardless of what BR dictates, as more players generally win out over a lone individual. Even if we did want to help, we'd have to have the right ship available within a 2 minute sail to oblige the 1.5x requirement to aid said comrade in such a specific engagement, which is asking much from even organized groups of players. This all occurs within a 5 minute sail of my Capital, not some fringe border port hotly contested by two opposing sides or at an enemy Capital, but my own. Something about that just seems incredibly wrong to me. "You should have been in the tag circle if you wanted to help your friend by avoiding BR lockout." "BR mechanic forces players to be more organized." "BR mechanic makes fights more fair." "Pirates were playing smarter/more intuitive." "Ganking was getting out of hand before." Every single one of these responses or one like it makes me wonder what exactly the new BR mechanic has done to make this game any better? How much ganking has this anti-ganking mechanic stopped exactly? How many players have actively stopped participating in fights where they don't outnumber their enemies 3:1 or 4:1 when given the opportunity? Do I fault these pirates for acting the way they did last night? Were they cowards? No. they were smart individuals who took advantage of a system that in the moment worked in their favor. I applaud them for showing to me how notoriously stupid this new mechanic is when people are lauding it as an anti-gank mechanic because that's exactly what they used it for: to gank.

I agree, and I'd add that things like having the ability to tag ships without dragging everybody around you into it either by a declination or something else would be helpful. It's not impossible to calculate the BR of your group using wikis, but is this really necessary? Is it intuitive?

Fair point. There are lessons to be learned from other games, though I'd rather Naval Action learn from its own mistakes and it has been doing a decent job of it. EVE has been very successful with a player-driven world, but I would be excited to see if Naval Action could pull off a player-driven world that is different (and still successful), such as players pledging loyalty to AI Kings/Democracies that have whims/goals of their own which players try to support to great benefit. Differentiation is the key word here. I've never played POTBS nor have I ever cared to even from the little bit I've seen, yet Naval Action despite being similar to POTBS has grasped hundreds of hours of my attention due to differentiation. There are some in this thread who think that Naval Action will live and die by the POTBS sword, though I'm frankly not seeing the logic there or perhaps I'm just sodded in the head. So far, I feel the developers have headed in the right direction, albeit with a few speedbumps here and there. It's a little early to call doomsday like some folks have.

If people want even PvP, let them join the blighted Small/Large battles, as that's what they're there for. There have been several good anti-gank suggestions in this thread as well as some important discussion in regards with making tagging less open to being abused (which is a far bigger problem in my opinion) and I highly recommend the developers due away with this 1.5x limitation nonsense soon. I'm fine with the developers tweaking with the battle join timer until we reach a compromise, but outside of that the limitations need to be stopped there. If you don't like being ganked, don't play on a PvP server. It doesn't get much more simple than this.

I think the constant comparison to EVE online and POTBS is very unfair for a game that's trying its hardest to carve its own footprint in the industry.

I hadn't experienced the BR mechanics myself in-game yet and Prater's post I quoted seemingly implied to me that once a BR difference occurs the battle locks. I stand corrected. I still am not entirely satisfied with this new system however. I feel like PvP near Capitals should have dire consequences for attackers who aren't rocking around in a nearly unassailable armada. What we have now is an awkward attempt at making things fair, but really just equates to players mathematically ganking targets to be in their favor. Perhaps I'm someone who lies in the diehard PvP logic camp, that by participating on an open world PvP server you join with the assumption that ganks could and will happen fairly often and that no game mechanic is going to hold your hand in dangerous zones. Players who sail alone near an enemy capital will be swarmed by overwhelming numbers and the battle imbalanced, but rightfully so one would think! It forces players to realize that areas of the map will vary in degrees of danger, and that is part of the beauty of an open world PvP server. Now we have a system that basically allows ganks, but tells gankers they need to do their math homework to figure out the best way to get a 4v1 against a 3rd rate. It's confusing, not conducive for large port battle actions, and ultimately I felt the problem lied more in the fact that there is a 2:00 minute battle join timer which is practically nothing for defenders who want to aid those who are ganked. PLAYERS SHOULD BE THE ANTI-GANK MECHANIC. Battle join timers should be dynamically based on BR difference instead, with no restriction on entry aside from the 25 player limit on each side. If someone is ganked by relatively even BR, the join timer should be fairly minimal (even going down to 1:00) to encourage those who PvP in small groups where the person being ganked has a chance albeit small. If the battle becomes more stacked against a particular side however, allow more time for anyone to enter and hopefully balance the match out. If the person being ganked is in a terrible area where even 3-5 minutes isn't enough for anyone to come to his aid, then that is the fate he suffers for making poor decisions. The static 2:00 limit to me is too binary at the moment and clearly the BR mathematic mechanic isn't popular.

The British EU1 economy is highly developed, what with the Pirates/French/Spanish practically sailing their boats to Jamaica to be taken as prizes. We've all gotten very rich!

If you want a fleet that has the same turn-speed and accel/decel, bring a fleet that has all the same ships. A truly skilled fleet of players actively compensates for any discrepancy that different ship types may bring to disrupt their formation.

A good Englishman gets jumped by 10 ships outside of KPR because they blobbed in a circle and I can't assist him because the BR difference is too skewed? Rubbish. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding you, Mr. Prater, but I'll be damned if a BR system says I can't help my comrade-in-arms. Frankly, I preferred the previous system which completely excluded this BR difference garbage because if anything this has helped gankers even more!

24 Repair kits = 6 100% health repairs on the open sea. If anything that should be more than enough to keep you operating for quite a few hours in enemy waters without having a friendly dock nearby. If you decide to be deep within enemy waters, you should be prepared for the consequences. Also I have never gone broke even after a liberal use of repair kits on PvP frigates. 3rds and above have expensive kits, but these are expensive ships and often make quite a lot of money in heavy ship PvP battles to make up for the cost..

Supporting. Was talking about this just last night with the lads.

I imagine whether [sLRN] disagreed or agreed we really have no control over that. If anything, we respect the pirates simply in that they are a considerable threat across the entirety of PvP1. Feel free to embrace your victories as the scurvy pirate menace you are and know that we'll be back!

There is no reason to add a new nation into the game when the conquest mechanics do not support it. As a Spanish player on PvP2 where we were woefully outnumbered by our enemies, we were struggling for basic resource consumption against larger and more numerical foes. In the future if conquest mechanics are more in favor of fewer, more meaningful engagements/changes on the campaign map then perhaps it may be more feasible to have additional factions. Maybe even AI factions in the distant future?

I think it's a reasonable feature and I'm not willing to demonize it until we've tried it in-game. To be honest I've been annoyed with ganks lately (more so that in that they are too easy to accomplish without any chance of counterering the gank), though I wanted a more dynamic battle join timer solution than a restrictive one.

I have been privateering Danish vessels recently with a Fir Built Surprise, and I must say Long Beard has quite a good choice in ships. For a scoundrel, anyways.

Apologies if the title is confusing. This is a very simple suggestion: AI Reinforcement fleets will be exploited by players, this is admitted by even the devs until further retooled, but I suggest removing them completely. Instead, I'd like to see the "port aura" that emanates from a faction's port (indicated when you're in the port and open map) allow PvP battles that incur to add additional battle-join time to the side that owns the port so friendly players have a chance to respond to ganks in friendly waters. I feel this would support the idea of "safer waters", especially around one's own populated port areas. Everything outside of that aura should still be on a short (or even shorter than we have now) timer. I'm sure you could even play with the idea of having certain types of ports offer more or less time addition protection than others or even have over-lapping effects for having chained ports one after the other on a coastline (or even cancelling each other out if they're adjacent to an enemy port aura). Perhaps that could make taking ports a more strategical investment than they currently are, and also make certain areas of the map incredibly applicable for ganks or less so in other areas. It's just ridiculous to me right now that I can't respond to 10-20 man ganks just outside my capital city because they're barely 2 minutes out as they prey on individual players with impunity in just huge numbers, operating with the usual Trincs/Rens. Worse still is when gankers just sit in the after action screen to avoid any retaliation. This suggestion has mostly Open World PvP in mind, so I am willing to hear any criticism if someone feels like this may interfere with Port Battle mechanics too much.

While it is regrettable that our nations have a divisive history, it is my hope that our shared Anglo-heritage and mutual distrust for piracy will see us battling side-by-side in the near future.

It's hard to defend a country's good name and reputation when they openly hold hands with thieves and scoundrels. It should be any national's duty to active put down pirates where ever they may arise, rather than actively "non-aggressively" address them.

I'm interested in where you got that 42.7% figure from.

You want high PvP XP and Gold? Get 20 of your buddies. Get nice big ships. Park up at a Capital and harass them until they come to fight you. Buy a flag too if you want some nice mods. I'm not bashing those who like to hunt down players for small engagements either, but really the double xp/gold is extremely profitable for those who like to PvP. I don't do 3rd Rate missions for gold anyways, I do 3rd rate missions to cap me some 3rds so I can kill pirate player fleets with some considerable (and expendable) firepower.

I still feel timers should be reflective of the type of Battle Rating a conflict is in-game and adjust in real time if that is possible to do. If a battle houses low Battle Rating on both sides such as 1000 v 1000 or less, keep it at 2:00 (or even 1:00). If one side decides to stack up say 19000 v 1000 BR, I believe the Battle Timer should adjust accordingly upwards to a maximum of 4-5 minutes, given how much BR that particular fight has attracted. It increases the risk for people who like to gank in an incredibly uneven fashion (especially around hotspots like Capitals), while also encouraging more fair fights to those who prefer the more beneficial battle timer against player reinforcements. I'd even go so far as to say that invis/invuln should be increased based on the BR rating of a battle as well, but that's for a different thread.

Less of an exploit, more of a clever use of unfinished game mechanics in this case. It's an option that's available for any player who caps an enemy ship, and in this way the Pirates lose durability as many others have mentioned making it not a productive use for them to exploit their green on green tag mechanic.

Perhaps the Admin has shown mercy to our poor National News forum?

A shame about that Pavel. We sunk quite a few French, Spanish, and Pirates alike last night. To be honest, I had a hard time telling them a part from one another as the blighters kept attacking our quaint island all through the night! My only dismay was that our massive amount of enemies weren't organized enough to engage our motley crew all at once, and most of the massive fights around Carlisle devolved into unfavorable ganks usually blatantly in favor for us. When I see reports of 20+ enemies from various nations sailing in a uniformed coalition around my home port's waters, I want a brawl not a chase! Either way, it was enjoyable to say the least, when many of the major attacks are in the off hours and we've got 30-40 players sailing around grinding tedious missions when they'd rather be PvPing. If you're itching for the gallows and a decent fight, feel free to come shake the Kingston hornet's nest anytime. You certainly have the numbers, the skill, and the ships -- that's been quite proven I'd say. We'll be glad to keep adding to the nice barrier reef we've been erecting around Jamaica's shallows, and we Brits really do quite enjoy not having to sail our boats far to sink rats.

National News and the many AARs posted here brought me a great deal of enjoyment, it is an extreme shame to see it go because of a few bad eggs. I hope in the future this forum will be unlocked or reworked so that threads such as the Black Spot bounty hunts, AARs (something I personally spent time on creating), and updates on current campaigns (such as Britain's defense against the Tour de France) will get another chance to flourish again. While I wasn't particularly happy with the forum's tone lately, I didn't think a lock was necessary.