Aphilas

USS Constitution note does not produce USS constitution when used. Recieved from silver chest (or mission chest, not sure 100%). Firstly, icon looks like fir log, not a note: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1575588617 Secondly, when used it says "This item can't be used in port.": https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1575589719 I am in a port belonging to my nation and I have free ship slots.

Simply put, pirates have noticed swedish movements before Little River and we knew they are coming for our shallows. Once we saw Swedes raising hostility for US we knew we'll be facing 2 fronts (not counting MT side, since it's been decided over a week ago to abandon deep ports arount MT). Hence we decided to intervene in the north to delay Swedish progression as much as possible, which was a mistake - we estimated Swedish preparation poorly and did not expect 50+ swedes with shallow ships are already ready since we mostly saw 4th rates and up while spotting very few movements of shallow ships at that point. Generally speaking, swedes prepared and played very well on tactical level. And no, even if some of you claim it was coinsidences, I'm not buying it. Timings of events were to damn good to be accidental. Division of Swe forces was also close to perfect - just enough that combined with US forces could defeat Rubli/Podw/std and just enough at morgans that with Rubli/podw/std busy up north remaining pirates could not bring serious resistance. Well played. But you gained a long term enemy.

1. Grant Turk is irrelevant for pirates compared to shallows. 2. Everyone and their mom can afford mercury. 3. Even when fighting weakened pirates you still were partly coordinating with US (First Morgans Bluff and Nassau hostility raising day you had jointed fleet of US and Swedes fighting pirates in US waters - hostility raising started only after your scouts saw pirate fleet about 40 mins away from shallows, second Morgans Bluff and George hostility raising day US tried to raise at Ays and again had significant pirate fleet stuck fighting there - again hostility raising started after significant pirate fleet was enganged. Showing you didn't do it for fun, you did it to win.

1. Bellonas are available for pirates (well, with recent patch you have to be a monkey to buy permit for it). 2. As I said both PODW and RUBLI have stable numbers since wipe. Not many, sure. RUBLI doesn't actively recruit, neither does PODW from what I know. We were suffering more mentaly from shit state of PvP since the wipe than from state of RvR, since PvP is main drive of the clans. With invis boost last patch maybe we will finally get some enjoyable fights without knowing we will get zerged with 2v1+ ratio in revenge fleets until our repairs are out. Maybe, just maybe, game will reach state where zergs don't swim around with 10+ repair cycles of kits because they know they will be able to drag people into battles indefinatly.

Same numbers as we had for ages. Neither shrinking nor increasing.

Same reason why the 2 only nations with proper RvR fleets are allied. Or why 99% of people avoid engaging into equal fights. A chance of losing.

Sadly the fair fight bringers swedes didn't dare to enter and fight the remaining pirate ships...

Pirates started with bad wind at right most circle, with couple dedicated ships starting at left circle to harrass/cap left. USA approached pirate main fleet on right circle with the wind in single line which Pirates cut after 1/3 of USA ships passed @45 degrees. After that semi-brawl semi cat&mouse at the right circle for the rest of the battle with capzone switching hands all the time. The left circle pirate detachment of 3-4 ships (moscalb, dron and if I remember right 2 5th rates managed to cap and sink one or 2 US. Last 15-20 mins was chase and sink/cap as many US as possible as majority of their ships were badly damaged compared to only 2-3 pirate ships in bad condition.

Doubt it. Pirates lost 1 mortar brig, USA lost 8-10 4th rates.

I wouldn't say USA have big mouths. And they fielded full 25 4th rates at Ays.

@Busterbloodvessel #4 - getting reward in PvE is easy, yes. I am talking about PvP rewards which atm are non existant. For example I've spent a week PvPing around Habana, daily. Lost only 1 ship. My net +/- in a week was about as much as I get in PvE in about 2-3 hours. Have you heard about Risk vs Reward concept? Atm Naval Action Risk vs Reward is same if, let's say, EVE would give 5 times higher ISK per hour in highsec compared to 0/lowsec, or if WoW rewarded you with legendary items in lvl 20 dungeon and blue stuff in end game raids. #5 - I don't think you can say clan Rubli is carebaring with our neighbours. We are even at war with about half of our own faction and ignoring Sorry agreement with Spanish and USA. Yet getting decent PvP for small scale (1-3) or medium scale (3-8) is almost impossible and takes hours upon hours. By decent I mean not ganks and not revenge fleets. Big issue is that if you go PvPing out of neutral town, you are stuck there without possibility to even spend your craft hours or in any other ways to play together with your friend/clan unless everyone does the move. 24 hour cooldown ability to jump to your outpost in Freetown would provide more PvP possibilities as well as prevent large hostile fleets in a few mins all over the world which we've seen before with jump to Freetown without CD. #6 - what invisibility ganking? You are invisible and everyone else is invisible to you. Too many mechanics in this game are taken away because of percieved "abuses" which quite often are not even an issue or an extreemly minor issue. #7 - Quite self explanatory. PvE does not influence hostility generation at all. PvP does + blockading capital of the region does. Don't you think a fleet of 40 ships happily camping outside regions capital should increase hostility over time? Meanwhile, this gives plenty of time for "defending" nation to assemble a counter fleet and actually duke it out. Imagine large battles where blockaders actually bring even mortar brigs to deal with defenders hugging the forts. Pretty much PB battle scale fighting in actual generation of hostility. _Hostility_. #8. Instead of adressing issues, hide head in sand pretending everything is alright and prevent screening fleets from recieving their due rewards. Logic=false; #10. Using your own words " I would MUCH prefer to see port battle having a variety of ships with a few first rates being protected by a fleet of escorts into battle.". Not that I think that rates should be escorted into missions, but nation should ensure relative security for mission runners to generate income, not artificial greenzones and NPC forts. Sandbox game where it's up to players to ensure security, not themepark "you're safe". #11. Not complicated at all and already used in multiple games as stated above. But obviously we can try to invent a bycicle in NA and continue buffing/nerfing modules/skills, implementing hardcaps and other crap over and over for years to never get to the "acceptable" level of finetuning ships and their performance as well as ability to modify it.

Not so sure, personally I think that NA being MMO long experience grind is kinda alright. We all are a little bit spoiled by being max rank for ages now:) One of my clanmates decided to not redeem XP and he's playing the game daily enjoying the game slowly climbing up the ranks.

List of suggestions that would not require huge amounts of development time in no particular order of importance: 1. Significantly reduce cost of production of low caliber guns. - Reducing "cost" for new players to equip their 7th and 6th rate ships so that they can afford losing them while learning the game. 2. Reduce amount of repair kits needed for 7th and 6th rates. - reducing "cost" for new players to learn playing the game. 3. Make low rank NPCs more "stupid". - again, new player experience improvement to increase new player retention rate. 4. Implement significant scaling of xp, gold, mark gains in PvP based on BR. Current gains should apply for PvP in 7th and 6th rates, but PvP gains for fighting in 5th rates and above should be increased multiple times: 5th rate ship sinking gain increased 2 times, 4th rate ship sinking gain increased 5 times, 3d, 2nd and 1st rate ship sinking increased 10 times. This would give good enough incentive even for average skill players to not be too afraid of PvP while also preventing possible abuses of alt farming. 5. Implement 24h cool down to jump to/out of Freetown if you have an outpost in it. 6. Give 2x OW ship speed while in invisibility after exiting battle, invisibility timer 90 seconds. 7. Hostility generation only from PvP or from blockading capital of the region. 8. PvP rewards 1 hour before and during PB in the region of the PB increased 5x - to give incentive for screening fleets and to reward not only the lucky 25 who got inside of PB. 9. All modules craftable. 10. High rank missions (starting from 4th rate ship missions) placed only on "outer" regions of your nation. 11. Remove speed cap from ships, add stacking penalties for stacking same bonus with various skills/modules. Example: if you have 1 module with + speed equiped it gives 100% of the bonus, if you have 2 modules with +speed equiped it gives 80% of the speed bonuses from those modules, if you have 3 modules with + speed you get 60% of the speed bonuses from those modules. This obviously should apply not only to speed but to all bonuses. Like rate of fire, HP and so on. 12. Add ALL books to Admiralty store. 13. Deadmans chest event - make looting of the wreck take 2 to 4 minutes. To make people fight for them.

It's a mix of things really. But generally speaking the need to do boring, repeating tasks has increased and time spent to do "fun" things reduced. In pretty much every area - small scale PvP (1-3 people searching for PvP) is in poor condition due to no TPs to freeports and ability to indefinatly chase such small group due to "normalized" speed and tagging mechanics, medium scale PvP (4-10 people) is completely dead due to revenge fleets, large scale PvP (PBs) is close to dead due to tagging, alts, revenge fleets, rewards and cost of rated ships. Add to that non existing PvP rewards, need to mindlessly grind PvE to get books/modules and you get the whole picture of NA currently for experienced players. For new players, on the other hand, you have buffed NPCs that rape clueless newbs, high cost to equip 7th/6th rate ships with cannons+repair kits and entering and surviving the game becomes a struggle instead of fun experience. New players will not survive game economically simply due to fact that pressing "repair hull" in battle costs 7-10k gold worth of repair kits in bloody brig - half of what they get from successful mission completion or, even more funnily, almost half of their ship cost. Small caliber guns cost and repair kits amount needed for 7th/6th rate ships needs to be drastically reduced and low rank bots made much more stupid if devs want to have even half arsed new player retention rate.

1st rates were 1 dura before too:) Don't see = rare.

Online during prime time dropped to almost half what it was after major patch release. At this rate, there will be not many left to sail those ships by the time they are "finally" built :-P Devs plan "1st rates will be very rare" is working. Though somehow I have a feeling that in not intended way.

1. Fix PvP rewards - increase them 4-5 times compared to what they are now. At the very least. 2. Address issues of revenge fleets. 3. Address PvE issues - missions in greenzone/too close to capitals, non craftable modules that are in high demand.

Well, US got beaten in West End PB today. So I think in their case, any pirates matter.

Nice idea. I foresee 2 issues though. 1. Powercreep. The more you control the less chances opponents have to win. 2. Limited port battle slots. Also not rewarding those who pushed hostility up.

I'm pretty sure you can figure out what will happen with limited resource regions like, for example, live oak. Doesn't require genius to figure out that holding such regions lands and not selling them let's you inflate price of such resource to whatever you want. I'm pretty sure someone in future will be bored enough to cap such regions with twinks from enemy nation to simply deny ability for enemy nation to recap such region and deny vital resources.

+/- + Incentive to do attacking PBs - Incentive to screen for attack PB (if you're not getting inside PB, then it is more benefitial for you that you nation fails to cap it because then you have a chance to get into next PB) - Incentive to defend PB if you don't have land (better to lose port and hope to get into recapturing PB to get land) - Incentive to craft if you don't have time to participate in majority of PBs - Incentive to craft if you are new to game because nobody will ever take you to PB to get land - Time management: you either do EVERYTHING or you do pretty much nothing. If you want to craft, you have to attack PBs, defense PBs, haul massive amounts of resources from your lands, craft shifts, sell ships/resources. To top it of... Only ~50 most active players per nation will get to enjoy most of the games systems, the rest will be cut down to "run missions, buy ship, do open world PvP". - hello kittyed up economy: Those that do PBs will be oligarchs, rest will live on scraps. Meaning prices will be inflated due to agreements among those 40-50 players per nation that do PBs. To sum it up - don't feel offended but that is a horrible game design decision from pretty much every perspective. If you want to control economy control amount of resources that is available to be produced in every port, not amount of buildings that produces them. Egzample: Port produces 10k iron per day. If there are 20 iron mines, each mine can produce 500 iron per day. If there is 100 iron mines, each mine can produce 100 iron. As a bonus to this much simplier system (and much more controllable system since all you need is adjust numbers of port production cap depending on data gathered) you get an option for port upgrades - which you are planning for port defenses but now could do for port production too.

Going out and capping NPC frigate takes 5-15 mins depending on region. If I read correct it will be same as crafted frig. 1st, 2nd and 3d rates will actually matter and that's perfect. Tbh I'd add 4th rates and half of 5th rates to "not cappable NPCs" - we'd have almost perfect situation - easy to get into light frigs and have fun while rates and heavy frigs would require some effort and be prized. Good for newbs and for vets.

Good job giving us the fight - that's more than a lot of old "good" clans manage to do. And only way to improve oneself is to sink now and then.

As I said to Otto yesterday in /global... There are many Russian Groups playing in multiple nations. Accusing all Russians for something a single group has or has not done is narrowminded and I am pretty sure punishable for breaking conduct rules, since what you've been doing lately is constantly accusing and shitslinging based on nationality, not a player.

At least AI shot back :-P