William Death

Limiting any ship to a specific woodtype(s) is bad. Better option is to simply have wood types balanced so every woodtype has a quality that makes it useful. There is no need for useless framing/planking combinations, yet we have them. Two years ago, we didn't. You went LO for the tanky, Oak if you wanted middle of the road tank, Teak if you preferred a bit more bounce, or fir if you wanted speed. Every wood type was used. If maximum difference between one end of the wood spectrum and the other is maybe 10%, there will be no useless woodtypes. Furthermore, if all ships (and DLC ships especially) are properly balanced with each other, you won't need to artificially nerf them. Again, its the same thing with the silly idea to limit wood construction type of SOLs. If ships are balanced with each other, and frigates have diverse sailing profiles (diverse when compared to larger ships, and with each other), then speedfit SOLs are not a problem. Nobody cares that your Bellona goes 14kn downwind if all average build frigates can outrun it upwind.

'Wasa is not Wasa; Wasa is Gustav.' I saw the name painted on the back of the boat. Made me think of this, from the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean film. (video should start playing at 1:05) Hehe. We have been deceived!

The little check box you can toggle in the minimap. It shows little color-coded bars for hull HP, sail HP, and crew count. The bars get shorter as the ship loses HP in those categories. Useful to have it clicked on so if you're in a big battle, you can tell which ships are hurting at a glance. In the old battle UI, it would stay toggled on in all battles if you set it once. Now I seem to have to re-toggle it each time I go into battle. Maybe bugged?

Ban them for what? Existing as an alt? Developers have said alts are allowed, they must follow the same rules as other players. Ban the players who always insult others? Yes, the developers already do this. The report function works. Let us not forget that alt =/= bad human. A person can have an alt and obey all the rules of Naval Action, and be polite in chat. I wouldn't go so far as to call PBs "utter trash," but I agree, they could be much much better. I think they were better in the old Martello tower days. At least then if your ship was sinking you could go capture a Martello tower and command it. Not to mention it encourage more actual fighting and not the same old circle kite and cap game we play now. (incoming: "but mahhh strategies!" complaints) It would be interesting if more than 50 people could be in a PB, but that would require entirely new PB mechanics not based off BR. Not to mention how do you stop zerg nations from being even stronger? In a game with <500 online most of the time, lopsided battles are bound to happen more often than not. And then you'll still have the issue of a few players (maybe alts maybe just unskilled/new players) who can cause more harm than good in the battle. How do you deal with this? If there are no mechanics to prevent such things, they will happen, and players will be upset that player "____" did ____ and caused them to lose the PB.

But it just doesn't work that way. When we had "national" play, what happened is this: Port battle scheduled for strategic port >>> everyone wants to help (great!) >>> unskilled players join port battle to "help" >>> port battle is lost because those players ruined it (frustrating for everyone who worked hard to capture the port, only to lose it due to a few player's mistakes). I was commander of a very important port battle a couple years ago. Had a nice plan with players and ship selection drawn up the day before. I said in nation chat "if you are not in my port battle group, please do not join the port battle, but rather screen outside, fleet composition is set, but we appreciate the turnout." This was responded with sentiments like: "Be quiet! You don't tell me how to play! I paid my $40 and I'll join that port battle if I want! I know what I'm doing!" Well we had 2-3 such players join, so a couple of our assigned ships couldn't make it in. Despite this, we got to ~960 points before everything turned bad. One of the players went AFK. Another rammed one of our players into land and proceeded to stay stuck for a while, being battered by the enemy in the process. And that was neither the first nor the last time such events happened. I lost all hope for a "nation-driven RvR system" that day. I know it sounds incredibly rude, but if I don't know a player to be at least capable of manual sailing, then they should please stay out of any important port battle my clan is running. You'll find most port battle fleets are commanded that way. Players can be useful outside in the screen fleet, or join one of the friendly clans and receive training on how to be relevant inside the PB. If a player possesses a desire to become skilled in the game and is at least somewhat friendly, most any clan would be happy to recruit them. Worse still is using alts to do this. You say "ban the alts," but its not that simple. How do you prove that its really an alt and not a player who is simply playing really poorly? You can't just ban a player for being bad at the game. And IP address is meaningless too since players can have accounts in several nations, as long as they are playing as a legitimate character for that nation at the time in question, that player has done nothing against the rules. On to alliances: they're fun for a while, but when everyone in the nation gets a vote, this happens: alts get votes in the politics (alts can rig the alliances) players will make uninformed votes (since Jeheil quit playing and producing his excellent video content each week, it has become very hard for players to make informed decisions on the politics of the game) most importantly, the map immediately divides into two blocks. It happens every time. It even divided along the same lines on the separate servers one time! One block inevitably has the smaller population, but usually the larger number of skilled players, while the other block has numbers but lacks skilled players (but can easily dominate because everyone likes to zerg) Admin has it 100% correct here. I disagree with a lot of development decisions over the past couple years, but moving to clan-controlled PBs was one of the best changes made to this game. I can only hope that more mechanics allowing clan warfare and alliances are introduced in the future.

No. Go the other way, full on clan-driven RvR. Clans control who has access to the port, who can place contracts there, different tax rates for different clans and other nations, etc. Why should (casual player who doesn't contribute to the cause) have access to use the port that my clan captured? Clans take care of their own first. If you're that casual player and want access to the port for whatever reason, make yourself useful to that clan, or get a fleet and go capture the port from them if you're upset with their rule. What you suggest will simply cause less player interaction and less PvP. Imagine this: governor of US sets "Peace" with pirates. Pirates don't want peace, what happens? War (hopefully, as you can shout "Peace!" all you want, but I'll still send cannonballs your way)? What about if Pirates and French set peace with each other, meaning no PvP (how can this even be thought of as a good idea?) and no RvR...now every national who didn't vote for that "governor" is prevented from engaging Pirates. Thats going to be a frustrated national player who dislikes the "nation" system. Go clan-driven RvR with alliances between clans. Maybe have nations be catch-alls for players who don't want to play the clan playstyle. They can go capture ports for their nation's flag, have votes on timers, taxes, etc.

Sounds good. Sounds an awful lot like our old damage model that worked quite well, needing only some tweaking to repairs and mechanics to make it easier for casuals to avoid "hugging tactics" and the lopsided battles where one SOL wrecks a bunch of noobs in 4th-2nd rates with the occasional 1st rate. And once again, rather than do a hard nerf to speeds across the board (which will do nothing but make combat more boring), its far better to implement diminishing returns for mod stacking, and eliminate the speed cap. Do this and re-diversify the sailing profiles as they used to be, and you won't need to worry about those speedfit SOLs because everything else can outrun them going upwind. And I strongly urge everyone to forget about "rates" of ships, as that is absolutely meaningless...at least in terms of balance. Think about ships in terms of cannon caliber and cannon count. Then things make more sense. There will NEVER be balance in the rates....because no matter what you do, Cerberus (9pd frigate) will always be the underdog when fighting Trincomalee (18pd frigate). And thats fine. Just because its a "5th rate" doesn't mean all "5th rates" are equal in a battle. Cerberus has the advantage in that it can (or if the sailing model was correctly balanced for gameplay, it should) outrun Trincomalee. So, regarding Constitution as a 3rd rate...I don't care what you rate it. As long as performance is good enough to have reason to use it, and BR reflects this...it'll be ok. Right now poor Connie is slow and changing her to 3rd rate nerfed the books she can use, making her even worse. Constitution needed a *slight* buff (.30 kn speed buff)...instead she got nerfed. RIP. And turn rates don't need to be nerfed anywhere. They need to be buffed back to where they were pre patch 30. The reason people call for SOL turn rate nerf now is because they weren't hit as hard in the across-the-board-nerf that all ships got. A frigate losing 10%+ of its turn rate is noticeable. A SOL losing 10% of its turn rate is....noticeable but not nearly as detrimental, since you're only playing the turn-fighting game when fighting ships smaller than you. In short....undo all of patch 30 that relates to the combat model and *adjust* what we had. We've only traveled a short way down the path of re-inventing the wheel...its not too late to turn around go back to something what worked (at least better than the terrible damage model we currently have). Or...we can keep "tuning" this damage model....until we end up right back where we were, just with arbitrarily bigger numbers for the HP, thickness, cannon damage, penetration, etc.

You cannot damage surrendered ships. Not a glitch, its been this way for ages.

Or...just have the combat model balanced so that making artificial limits on ship construction isn't necessary. If we have un-historical massive speed differences due to ship construction, then we can have un-historical woodtypes for ships. However, if mods are reduced to +/- 15% (so that the maximum difference between super speed and super tank is 15% on all stats, rather than the ~25-30% we can currently mod to), things will fall in line much better. Furthermore, no matter what builds you compare, unless the frigate is a bad build (like oak/sab or something silly) then it will still ALWAYS be able to outrun even the fastest fir/fir Bellonas upwind. Source: I have a fir/fir 14kn+ Bellona, but any average teak/wo frigate will leave me in the dust if he turns upwind. I, also, haven't played with the new damage model on testbed. I feel we need to wait for thickness to be properly implemented as Admin mentioned before we call foul on the new mechanics. (although I'm convinced that the changes are unecessary and our current damage model on live server is fine). "If it ain't broke, 'fix' it till it is!"

This^ What is worse even than fighting that good battle, is getting a nice battle, 1v1, 1v2, 2v3, etc and then having those players kite you around till their friends are ready outside, then they leave and you get ganked. They technically "fought" (shooting some ball or chain and generally being an annoyance without actually accomplishing anything) looks like fighting...at least in the server logs and on the tab screenshot (so a tribunal is worthless). But everyone knows they weren't actually going to fight you, just wait for their friends to gank. Then, thanks to short invisibility & speedboost, you (the hunter) are not likely to get away. Which is arguably fine if you were just a mile or two offshore of your enemy's major port...but we all know that revenge ganks can and do form almost anywhere. RvR, is a different animal. I personally think screening, as a tactic, is poor gameplay, at least with the current RvR system. Screeners have 24 hours to form a fleet and position it to catch the attacking fleet (which will be a mix of ships). The easy answer is "well they need to bring screeners too" and that sometimes works. But it just doesn't appeal to me. Spend hours grinding dumb bots to set a PB, then spend time getting a fleet ready, sailed to there, only to be denied content by a fleet of crap ships that don't intend to fight you, just waste your time. Most everyone has been on both sides of that screening fleet before....but maybe I'm alone in not liking being on either side of it (unless the fight happens to be somewhat reasonable and enjoyable, not just a kiting fest). Delaying in hostility is another thing....one part of me says thats OK because you are technically in there and can be sunk by their fleet (which chose to start a battle that would be unlimited join for your side)...another part of me recognizes how trolly that is. At least in the old flag system, screeners had an hour to fleet up and stop it. Fleets were haphazardly thrown together (at least for the non-major port defenses) and hopefully you could stop the flag runner and/or intercept the main battle fleet. Screening felt a lot cleaner then. More pure and fun. Finally, the grief-by-chasing. This has happened to me more than the other types of griefing. I generally sail light, fast builds. I reserve my right to run away from any fight I don't want to engage in by sacrificing my HP, thickness, turn rate, reload, mast thickness, etc. So if I get tagged into a fight I don't want to fight in, I turn and run away. Then (assuming no revenge gank outside), the enemy often chases, maybe is faster than me in OW so he tags again....I escape again. He tags again....that is trolling. He may have intention to fight, but I don't; and he should know by that point that he can't catch me. So, I'm in battle with no intention to fight, but I didn't start the battle. He has intention to fight...but knows he can't make it happen. Who is at fault? I say he is, for tagging over and over, wasting both our time. So ultimately: Yes, any time a player initiates a battle with no intention of actually fighting the enemy, and no reasonable reason to start the battle...that is griefing. Especially if that player does it over and over. RvR is a grey area for me, and I can see both sides of that opinion. I think better PB setting and BR mechanics would go a long way to fixing that. I think a partial solution to the griefing issue is to increase the invisibility timer and cannot attack timer. I chose 2x and 3 minutes for all because, honestly, whether you pressed attack or not, there is always a chance a revenge fleet will be out to get you. Both the hunters and the prey need at least a chance to make good on their escape before being thrown to the jaws of the revenge fleet. Further solutions to this problem: join timer is unlimited for anyone within sight of battle at the tag (if in render distance, then can join), join timer for anyone else is 5 minutes, with an ever-expanding join circle so that if you join close to the 5 minute mark you'll be super far away from the battle (unless you saw the battle start, then you get normal join circles and have unlimited time to press 'enter'). This will encourage sailing as a fleet, but also allows a hunting party to spread out a bit to cover more ground. Finally, Reinforcement zones: Should be extremely reduced in size. Make them maybe 25-50% bigger than the capital zone. Big enough for new players to figure out how to make their ship move on OW, sail to missions inside the zone, etc. Should be 100% safe for new players. Let players up to (and including) Captain rank (5th rates) spawn missions in their reinforcement zones. Remove all AI fleets bigger than 6th rates. Allow maximum of level 2 shipyard in capital ports. Remove ability to tag players in their reinforcement zones. Remove ability to join player's battles in their reinforcement zones. Reinforcement zone is NOT for Admirals to get rich grinding AI. Reinforcement zones are NOT for players to set up their primary econ/crafting hub. If they want a safe space to do that, PvE Server caters to them. But, reinforcement zones are also NOT for hunters to go hunt players in. Implement proper mechanics that encourage players to move out of their reinforcement zones as they gain rank and skill, and hunters won't be trying to go into those zones to hunt. Add in proper ROE for patrol zone battles and you're well on the way to a properly functioning PvP server.

@Coraline Vodka and @Christendom we gotta start charging entrance fees to PBs. These guys are getting rich off PBs!

Engagement outside Bensalem PB. Pirate squadron defeats British Port Battle Fleet Having received word of British intentions to capture the mighty French port of Bensalem, we (being the opportunistic Pirates that we are) decided to investigate. Squadron of light and agile ships assembled, we sailed to the area and found and engaged the British fleet of tough and fast-firing (rumored poods, no confirmation) port battle ships with our fleet. Although our fleet was superior in number of lineships, the enemy ships were considerably tougher, their cannons easily punching through our flimsy hulls. We took some losses, and had a couple close calls, but overall had some good fun. Masts were taken and leaks were given and received. Thanks for the fight Brits. Also props to @Christendom for always saying that I am going to get leaked out when I sail my Victory or Pavel, yet he was the one who sank to leaks . In his defense, it was an AI-captured cag/crewspace Bellona that did well until the leaks came. Oh, and we have come to the conclusion that Wasa is nearly worthless for this sort of fighting. #buffWasa #buffnotmakeOP #creatingcontent

Its been like that for ages. Even back on PvP2 when I had like 32 ping my alts would show in slightly different locations relative to each other, sometimes even up to half a tag circle's difference. I've noticed it every time I have two alts sailing near each other. It sometimes happens that it can be far enough off that tagging doesn't work properly, you either can tag when you don't see your ship in the circle, or you're sometimes halfway in the circle and its still not lighting up. Definitely an annoyance. Oddly enough, I don't ever recall noticing it when two accounts are stopped. Like when "stacking up" or whatever you want to call it in OW. Perhaps the issue is more noticeable when our ships sail faster? I'm not really sure....

Is this any better, Squidward?

Better solution: if you like the challenge of navigating without your location fix, don't equip sextant perk, there are plenty of other options . Let the rest of the players who don't want to deal with the annoyance of using outside applications to find out where they are have their GPS perk. Majority of players I speak with prefer it that way because we feel Naval Action's strongest part is fighting battles, and the weakest part is OW sailing and econ/trading. I've played when we had no navigational tools, then the grid squares and coords, then nothing but trader tool & compass, and now sextant perk. I think sextant perk is by far the best system of those, and it should keep new players happy because they won't get lost and frustrated. If a player decides a more immersion/roleplaying game is for them, they can turn off the perk. Everybody can be happy.

Pavel was balanced nicely when it was faster than the Buc. It already has the turn rate and hull shape it needs. Buff the speed and change the 24pd carronade deck to 32pd carros and its good. 2nd rate balance should be as follows: Bucentaure: most HP, medium thickness, 2nd best broadside, worst speed/agility, worst hull shape. Christian: least HP, medium thickness, best broadside, medium-high speed/agility, best hull shape (tied with Pavel), 4x stern chasers. Pavel: medium HP, highest thickness, worst broadside, best speed/agility, best hull shape (tied with Christian). ALL ships should get bow and stern chasers. Especially the second rates which have enormous forecastle decks with plenty of room to mount some chasers. All that being said, I've been sailing Pavel a fair bit in Port Battles, and I've done well with it. But I would absolutely not recommend others sail it. Its too difficult for most players to use without getting leaked out (most players don't know what to do to prevent leaks anyways). Its slow and difficult to get out of bad situations. Broadside firepower feels barely better than Bellona with poods&carros. And DD means you can't just go rageboard first rates either. In addition it is just plain not worth the saved ~50 BR over a Buc/Christian. Better to drop to 3rd rate with poods and save another 100 BR. So yes, please return Pavel to a good spot. Thats about all its good for at the moment. Boarding players who carelessly tack in front of you with less crew than you on their ship.

Do we honestly believe there will be a ton of "new" players right after release? Is game release some sort of magical time where everyone all of a sudden decides to buy and play a game? Will the game be massively different than it is a month before release? Have not the majority of players who will buy and actually play (I mean take the time to achieve max rank and learn to fight passably well) already bought and played Naval Action? I just don't think there'll be a massive influx of new players that everyone seems to be counting on. Rather, I think it'll be mostly old players returning to the game to see if it has become worth their time again. And at any rate, what is the difference between a new player coming into the game 3 months after release and dealing with vets who have earned good stuff; vs a new player coming into the game at release and dealing with vets who already have good stuff? It is literally the same experience for that player. This exactly^. Go roleplay a new pirate in the Caribbean if you enjoy that. Start from scratch and pillage and plunder your way to the top. I've done it already please don't ask me to do it again. I didn't enjoy parts of the grind. If other players do and want to play that way then so be it. +1 ships slot grind is the worst. Wipe if we must, but let us keep all types of XP. Especially ship XP. That is definitely one of the worst parts of Naval Action for me. Its such a silly and unnecessary feature to have. It hides necessary* parts of the game (upgrades) behind a wall of grind. I've done it for all the ships that matter, I don't want to do it again. *Someone is surely going to come along and say how you don't need ship slots to do anything. Kindly stuff it. Everyone knows if you don't have at least 3-4 regular upgrade (skillbook) slots unlocked your ship is gimped from battle start. Thanks to gear meta (another discussion for another time).

My experience has been the opposite. I won't tag certain ships in OW if I think they're a better player than I am. If I suspect that ship on the horizon is a good player (like Ram Dinark or Liquicity or Reverse) in a sturdy ship; I won't tag them because I'm confident they're sailing a ship that is more-suited to dueling/actually fighting than I am (I usually sail very light speedbuilds). Not to mention, they may still beat me even if we were both in proper fighting ships. Why risk my ship to find out? For 62 doubloons? No thanks. As a result, I miss some fights against players who might be only average in skill. No battle happens. Similarly, when I go hunting I see that other players have the same mentality. They won't tag me, even if they have unlimited join timers in their R zone and/or a superior ship to boot. They're so used to seeing an enemy player and subsequently getting wrecked that they automatically assume its a good player and choose not to engage. A battle doesn't happen. Furthermore, on the other side of the coin, names in open world means you have a bit of protection for low ranks because some players won't bother with low ranked captains who are still learning. I used to have a guideline I tried to follow: no sinking anyone under lieutenant commander rank (200crew/frigate rank). I'll farm established noobs all day, but I don't want to sink the guys who are still trying to figure out how to manual sail their brigs and make their guns reliably hit the target. Other players I have sailed with had a similar rule. But now we have no way to know if the ship we're tagging is sailed by a max-rank player or a new player. The only way is to waste your time tagging the poor skipper and find out. More instances =/= more battles or better content. It is frustrating. Sometimes that leads to "well we've already tagged him anyways lets sink him no mercy." That new player then quits because the game didn't tell him where not to sail and he just lost everything he had (because the game didn't explain that he shouldn't put all his eggs in one basket) and never creates another battle. But go ahead, stick to "red=dead because this is the hardcore full-loot PvP Server" mentality. If, say 15%, of new players quit because they get sunk right out the gate (the game does a horrible job of explaining how to use reinforcement zones and where a new player should be) it won't really be noticeable because NA has such a low population anyways... All these "hardcore" changes do is annoy veteran players, frustrate/turn away new players, and satisfy a small group of role-playing sailors who want something that places playability behind realism. But "Yarr, I'm a Pirate and you're the enemy! I shall endeavor to sink you! No I do not care that you just bought the game 2 hours ago, you chose PvP server you knew the risk."

No. Leave it as is, and re-add names in OW. There is absolutely no good reason to hide this information. All it does is reduce the willingness to tag. People now sometimes don't tag enemy because they're not sure if its an elite player or a noob. Imagine how many people would run away (more often then they already do) when tagged by an enemy. "I won't fight because I don't know if you're a good player or not, and I don't wanna get sunk."

Water graphics.... thats pretty low on my list of issues in Naval Action. I actually think the graphics are one of the best parts of Naval Action (disregarding the land and buildings). If devs want to upgrade it at some point, so be it. Right now I think there are more pressing issues like the way the combat mechanics do (or in our case, don't) mesh with the repair/damage model we currently have. Regarding how the ships interact with waves...feels pretty good/realistic to me. Having been on a smallish (~72 feet) wooden boat with a deep displacement hull (a trawler) in 2-6' seas, I can confirm the vessel rolls and pitches a fair bit as the sea size increases (the vessel barely notices 1-2' seas but begins to jump around more as the waves increase in height and steepness). In Naval Action, Lynx, Snow, and other similarly sized vessels behave similarly. But larger ships will laugh at such small waves. Naval Action feels this way to me. Ships like Victory or Bellona barely pitch or roll in choppy seas, only the groundswell is really noticed. Feels ok. Here are Naval Action's graphics (fairly high/ultra settings, a few things tweaked down when I detected no noticeable difference in quality, I also have a reshade program applied):

Regarding previous instances of this happening: It has happened to me twice, a few months ago, I'll link a thread another player made about it. It also happened again a few weeks after that (no forum posts were made that I recall). Last Night's Disconnect Issues: After the first time that both accounts disconnected, I was able to log both accounts back in. I then finished my trade and manually logged out of the second account since I was done with it anyways, and just played on my one main account. I got disconnected again (just the one account logged in at that time). Also, it happened again a third time last night about midnight Eastern time. I only had one account logged in then, as well. A clanmate in Teamspeak also reported disconnecting at the exact same time as I did. No other internet services dropped for me, just Naval Action. If it occurs again, I'll make sure to completely log out of my sandboxed Steam account so that only one Steam account is running on the computer and see if that makes a difference. Here is a thread made about this (or very similar) issue previously: Perhaps its the same thing as then? Something with the Steam servers? (my knowledge of how that stuff works is fairly limited) Thanks for the help

Happened to me too...I had difficulties logging in (occurred about the same time as you) and then 2 accounts simultaneously booted and took a while to log back in. However, I saw a normal ping of ~130 each time I checked it. I'm in the game now, hopefully no more issues. Something similar to this happened several months ago to a few East-coast USA players I spoke with. We used VPNs for the rest of the evening and it worked fine. I'm just using a standard connection (no VPN) to play right now. EDIT: 10:47 PM Eastern, just dropped again....

...Magazine hits are a thing...they're just not that common because the powder magazine is pretty hard to hit (fortunately). Naval Action deserves skill-based combat. (temporarily ignoring the mod/repair meta we currently have) Anything that introduces more RNG into it, I'm against. No RNG explosions necessary. How frustrating would it be to spend a lot of time assembling the perfect first rate, only to have it go boom the first time you receive a rake from a frigate? "Realistic"? ...maybe (IRL, a 5th rate would never think of coming close to a first rate).... Good for gameplay? Nope. I am a fan of this. Bow/stern guns and lower deck guns on multi-deck ships should be exceptions (since logically the lower deck guns would not be able to send sparks into the sails and the chasers would have a gun-crew carefully ensuring that all flammable canvas near them is doused with water). Any upper-deck guns; and ships with single, open gundecks, should receive an increased chance of catching the sails on fire. Do this and implement lower mast HP (not thickness) for a ship with all sails set, and we'll see more battles happening with reduced sail.

No. It won't work that easily. 13kn LO/WO Connie = ~17kn Fir/Fir Connie tricked out with all speed mods. 11kn WO/WO Victory = 15kn fir/fir Victory with sail force mods. What was better, IMO, was when we had a smaller gap between wood types. Live Oak was -2% speed, + 4% HP, and fir was +2% speed, -4% HP, or something along those lines. But those times have long passed, RIP.

Even BR in a straight brawl, circles and points irrelevant. All brawling ships, nobody was fir/fir (at least hopefully not...); 24 hours to assemble a fleet for us, more for them because they were the attackers and had all the time they wanted to plan what and who to bring. The only reason you can call it 'lopsided' is because we played smarter and our guys who got beat up could fall back; we denied them that ability, keeping constant pressure on them till they sunk or got boarded (boarding Pavel FTW). US has been asking for an even battle with the Pirates for a while now (they usually insinuate that we have low skill and can't win without some sort of advantage...despite many examples to the opposite).....they got one and this is the result. Was fun, enjoyed it, hopefully they'll consider our offer to do more arranged fights in agreed-upon ship classes.