Carljcharles

Capitals could become Capturable. Total victory should become possible (with the map reset afterwards) I am really concerned about this two points from a purely player base point of view. Given the time scales involved to play this game, having any nation wiped back to the capitol will inevitably push players out of the game. Even now on PVP1 the councils are forming consensus that no nation should ever be pushed back to even a single port because of the damage it does to the player base. The map reset could be just as damaging as nations and players will have worked hard to establish a position and created alliances and enemies they want to fight. The perpetual war situation can be addressed through the diplomatic update. It may be that the nation can also vote for Surrender. As an alternative way to win a war. Mission changes Missions will always be generated to the nearest enemy region to promote pve players meeting each other in action (Irrelevant for the pve server). I appreciate the intent, however, this will also drive PvE players directly into PvP players, as PvP player will just hunt in the nearest enemy region where mission will appear for that nation. I think a little more thought needs to be given to this as it is likely to put off some pve players before they feel ready to move into PvP on the PvP Server.

Love the top down two ship forms side by side. Perhaps football manager style representing crew spilling over to the enemy ship. Captains could then react to the situation with orders similar to what we have now calling for different type of focus for their boarding/defending crew. Alternatively, have a system similar to cards based games that is played in rounds - not dissimilar to Witcher Wild Hunt Gwent Card Game. Have a base group of cards but collect special disposable cards that have extra options. These could be loot, captured, traded and found on wreaks.

It would appear so. When starting naval action and selecting login - I get Authentication Error: UserID received from Steam is Empty. I also cannot log into Steam at present.

Hi Ink, Thank you for your reply. Not everything. I have redeemed just around half. After merge 128 items in redeem list, I now have about 64'ish left. I did a search originally, before I posted this but my search words didn't show up any results. I then read down a few posts in the forum and spotted that. I'll try and get everything redeemed and let you know if it turns up.

Hi Support, Thought the server merge went very well. However, I have just realised that my exceptional Trinc has vanished and is not available in my redeemables on PvP1. All my other ships seem to be present. Last thing I did on PvP3 the night before the shut down was capture an LGV with my trinc and go resource collecting and sent my trinc back to port when I captured the LGV. Game name is CarlJCharles, what is the chance of getting this back ? Happy to trade for a Trinc BP is that helps? :-)

I am very pleased to see the diplomacy mechanic now being considered. However, I don't see from the Admin original post in this thread how this process is sustainable. A small number of early game adopters from release (probably clan related) will significantly capitalise on the ports being natural and easy to take. They will accumulate land quickly. Furthermore Clans will become significantly more powerful and lock out players from this diplomatic mechanic because they could secure parliament and potentially a 'ruler' again as described in the OP. There must be a counter mechanic that allows new player in time to take a more involved diplomatic position, not just lock in a major clan because they managed to amass Land early on. I would therefore propose the accumulation of 'influence' through the similar way as was described for land. Crafting Exceptional Ships could also count towards influence. The key difference is influence - diminishes naturally over time. - Can be spent to buy a seat in parliament (for a set term!) - Seats in parliament could be perhaps bid for using influence - Money can buy influence - Players who quit the game for extended periods loose influence - Influence could be used to buy port governships. - Influence 'could' be spent to buy / switch nationality. A clan could then for perhaps one term' take over a parliament by out spending influence in one huge hit - but they are likely not able to do so continually. This approach seems to be a much more re-playable overall diplomatic mechanic then the locked in accumulation of land that never gets depleted. It also prevents continuous domination of ports by individuals.

The problem is the current exit timer is really short (1:30) between tags. Unless you chase in OW until you are very close to your pray u have little chance for an engagement. So unless you start or can very quickly move into long cannon range and have bow chasers, your pray will escape even if the opposition ship is slower. The other issue is there is often little difference in ship speeds in battle instance. Last night I was in my trinc chasing a player LGV. Trinc one of the fastest ships in the game only catching LGV very slowly. In OW my closing speed was still slow so went for battle instead. Unfortunately, I then started well outside long cannon chaser range. I tried to close and fire long range cannon but I only have just over a 1:30 to get a hit. Now consider this... The trinc is the only ship to have 4 bow chasers. Even the smallest light weight cannon take 30 seconds to reload. So even if I was in range I only probably have 12 shots and maximum range to hit him before he can escape, despite the fact that I have a faster ship (assuming correct sailing angle). So the escape mechanic is needed to stop the 'endless chase', but it feels too weighted towards the runner right now. And that's even when using a trinc with 4 bow chasers, only a few ships have bow chasers at all, and even fewer have sufficient speed and bow chaser to really be of use, (Trinc and Surprise). So that is the issue. I'm not pressing the matter until the battle start mechanic has been addressed which the dev's are working on, because that *may* help re-balance this. My thought was, is there sufficient difference in speed between the ships? Or is the battle exit timer the main fault? I'm not sure and we also now potentially have wind speed to affect things.

Really like the sound of all this. The only thing I would question is that the 'Land Ownership' mechanic and so voting and parliament membership (Basically Influence Level) should need some level of maintenance. The reason for this is that a player on the day of game release and who has played during EA will be involved in the most rewarding 'land taking' tasks and are putting the hours in. Fine. After a few weeks they play much less and perhaps just a few hours at the weekend. But the are part of the Parliament and a large land owner after early port battle captures. A new player starts some time after launch and is putting in the hours but now may not be able to utilise the best 'land capture' options. His 'influence'/Land Ownership will be rising, but the Other player who may now be playing very little should have his influence/land ownership rating dropping. This will prevent older 'inactive' or 'rarely-active' players from making decisions that the active players have to follow through on.

Please do NOT return the 1.5BR. that was a disaster. Just leave it off until the battle mechanic is fixed. Given the backlash over its original introduction I cant believe it was even suggested as a 'temporary' measure. We swarmed a cheeky pirate at the weekend hunting pray out side our National capital and he still managed to repeatedly escaped with us abusing the position re-enforcements. So just leave it alone for now and focus on the real fix. Really cant wait for this to be improved.

I am fully behind the Dev's intentions with this latest proposal. Just one query from me that doesn't appear to make sense... "Crew hire cost includes lifetime salary and insurance" Would it not make more sense for this to be an upkeep cost. It would stop 'Crew hoarding' unless you wanted to maintain it because of a short term campaign. You should return un-used crew to the pool when you aren't paying for them and would be incentive to do so because of maintenance cost. The continuous use and maintenance of 1100 men should not be financially sustainable within the game. You should have to build a cash reserve sufficient to use max crew for a short campaign. 'Buying' all your crew as a one of cost just means you can always sail your Santi/Pavel ALL the time. Ditch the game for two weeks and immediately go sail your Santi again, ZERO cost. You should be encouraged to re-crew from the pool. You should use a top rate for specific purposes and they should be a huge money sink. So I'm currently in favour of maintenance not one off cost for Crew. This would then also better support simple Crew Experience. All of which is much more reflective of real life.

Obviously because of the massive scale / time difference between ow and battle instance. That is why there is currently a timer as a simple way to keep battles localised.

We must all accept the very nature of this game has ganking at its core. That maybe 10 vs 1 or equally faster powerful raider on a crappy trader. No one likes getting slaughtered, but players must get over it. Sometimes you'll get ganked (running compass wood or supplies) other times you'll pop out of port in your trinc to find some poor player in a trader just left the same free port ahead of u and is going to be toast. That is this game, in ow, sometimes u get lucky and have a great multi ship close battle. Good times. Otherwise expect to get ganked and play accordingly to try and mitigate.

People who are against this idea please don't forget ow/os scale is massively different to battle instance and that is why there is a problem. If your mate is in port and you are at sea outside and are attacked. Tough! You missed the fight. This also stops hidden players in port ganking. Seems like an excellent trade off. Next, positional reinforcement, is good but should not allow others to repositions to an advantage on those initiating the fight. Easy fix, you all start whereever u are when the tag is first made. Next, show a list of all ships that could join the battle, they all have 5 seconds to decide join or ignore. DEFAULT ignore. Much larger tag circle as was suggested to and no need to 'sail' to join to try and make a timer. Now we may then need to look at exit timers because more of the chase will be in battle rather than ow. I am really interested to hear the problems with this approach because it's seems like a big improvement on what we have now and no BR limit

Why not just increase the 'catchment' circle as slamz mentioned. make it much larger. Give catchment players the choice to join or not. only 5-10 second to choose. No join after battle start, for those outside catchment. Positional start for all ships, based on their position at initial tag. Multi-tag in same area joins same instance. Cannon start loaded. Your in port Tough! You are in ship just at anchor - you can join. We must deal with the scale/time difference issue between OW and battle instance.

I understand your point Slamz. You make an excellent case when you describe the Pirate vs French encounters. I can relate to this as the best fun I've had so far has been Two large'ish PvP battles against the Spanish when they Port Defended and by chance we then had to port defend one of our ports. However, I do take issue with your PvE stance. I've have had some very enjoyable close PvE fights and the Fleet missions are excellent fun with friends. The PvE part of NA just keeps the game going when you want something different for a certain amount of their available time. A Port Battle takes up a HUGE amount of time in the prep - and co-ordination before the fight ever gets of the ground and then you hope its defended otherwise its pretty dull after all that those hours prep before hand. But, fundamentally, there does need to be an improvement on the PvP side. I agree with that, but trying to restrict PvE in the way you suggested I'm not in favour of. I do like the XP/Gold bonus for more 'dangerous missions' near enemy water though. Perhaps a mutual 'Kill this player' type mission is generated. Or hunt this player - could encourage more PvP without the need to reduce other aspects of the game. That would be a far more interesting option. Lets get imaginative to solve this.

Here is my suggestion for a serious re-work - after much reading of the complaints on the current system. Clearly a few of us are looking more at the 'almost' instant battle mechanic and that includes me... This is about battle start/initiation... Attack button enabled circle is something similar to what it is now. I don't know if this need tweaking. A new Catchment/allow join circle is MUCH MUCH larger. No Sailing OW timers. All players get a prompt to join or not (Ignore) 5 second timer before battle instance starts, but ships start position based on when attack was initiated 5 Seconds for all other players to select join battle or it defaults to Ignore. The PVP battle Initial attacker and tagged defender never starts closer than just outside long cannon range. OW Sailing position of all other ships is set as soon as 'ATTACK' is Selected not at end of count down to battle start. You should not gain an advantage by OW sailing to a different position within the 5 seconds. All Ships are listed that are able to join battle instance and their status (joining/Ignore) shown until the battle starts in the Join/Ignore dialogue. If multiple attackers target multi defenders within the 5 seconds they will join the same battle instance. Ships in port screen aren't considered In circle they must be in OW. cannons start loaded No BR Considerations - However ship numbers limits may need to be considered 25vs25 to prevent exploit. (I bring 35 players so only 15 of yours can join) Its not realistic but neither is the game limit of 50 ships max so we must have this restriction Current OW draw distance may need to be considered We must reconcile the huge scale/time difference between OW and Battle Instance You cant join a battle after it has started. You are in catchment or NOT This should more accurately reflects real life encounters Takes account of OW positions of ships SOL re-enforcements dont need to worry about difficult sailing conditions to make a small join circle. Pre-Port battle delaying by dragging EVERYONE into little battles - but the whole flag carrier PB things needs a review anyway.

I don't think the initial hostile responses were at all warranted. It was a suggestion and opinion and there was a serious points made and ideas that were worthy of discussion. The eye point made was how to keep the longevity of this game. The Eve model was obviously successful. NA potentially does not have that scope because of where it is set in a very finite space. But the long game must be considered very very soon and how to keep people coming back year after year not just month after month. We are already struggling with player numbers now.

In principal and if its more realistic then I'm in favour. However I can also see that it may cause problems as was mentioned for those with lower end pc's. I have also once or twice experienced the frustration of not being able to see the enemy and fire because of the smoke. At the time I loved the realism but I was also cursing the smoke. It's a great idea though and perhaps a tweak should be tried it increase the linger by say 10-15%. Obviously fps in larger battles would need monitoring and AI would also need to be affected in accuracy. But it strengthens this game as a naval action simulation rather than naval 'arcade' which some recent changes felt like.

"Can you please report the locations of where they don't exist anymore?" Seems like anywhere I sail. But pre-patch plenty of lovely traders of all types around Vieques and local ports. Post patch - one lone trader bring in about 40 minutes of sailing all around the area.

To wake up in the morning and find that patch 9.7 has been rolled back because the Dev were just messing with us and that Patch 9.71 has been released with land battles and Mortar Brig the only changes.

I'm on the forum to do everything I can to help the Dev's craft a truly fantastic game and there are great foundations here already. However, the forum is a wild place with ideas firing off in all directions and discussion ranging for page after page often with people at either end of the extreme argument making the sensible middle 'happy ground' hard to figure. Like me I believe that the vast majority of people are on here to make this game as great as it can be but the benefit of all this input is lost without the core principles of the game being stated and presented by the Dev. I repeatedly have held of commenting further because there are no boundaries (principles) outlined by the devs. This leave the forum of passionate players firing off in all directions and wasting hours of time arguing the toss over something that the dev's have no intention of implementing. I would really like to see the core principles of this games intentions stated by the dev. Any discussion can then be had on the forum about ideas that fit the principles of the game. If an idea if clearly outside the scope, lets not waste forum time discussing it. This will help keep discussions focused. These principles also keep the game development on course by ensuring the changes made to the game comply with the principles, which in turn the user base expects as reason for investing time and money in the game in the first place. Here is a few "examples"; Please note: I am not saying these are correct or what they should be - I want to know from the Dev's what the principles are they are working too; *Ships should be historically accurate in the way they sail and in relation to all other ships in the game. *Players should experience a steady progress through all the ships ranks *PvP and PvE are equally important *The environment should be such that your should at times feel like you are 'lost at sea' *All things being equal a lower rank ship will 'typically' be defeated by the next high rank ship. *Players should be encouraged to 'team up' with other players *Trading and crafting are equally important as ship battles The list could go on, but a long list can be distilled down to a relatively small number of principles say 8-10. If I have missed these already - then they should be pinned and stated as must read before being allowed to comment on the forum. This latest patch released today seems to shift us away from what I thought were some of the principles of this game but they aren't stated so I would like to know what they are.

Totally agree Long Beard! A PvP capture of the same ship against NPC should be more difficult and provide more XP. However equally, I also think your ship vs the opposition ship should also be a factor in the XP reward. So, you and your fast Pirate surprise capturing a player trader snow should result in a lot less XP than I you used a cutter to take the players Trader snow. This will then balance out the reward between NPC and Player enemies and encourage skill based PvP if you want high return on XP. It will also greatly reduce the return and interest in Ganking. What do you say to that Long Beard? P.s Could be fun to see a snow traders armed with high level marines and other boarding upgrades when you try and capture the ship thinking they should be an easy target. - If you haven't raked them to death first.

Agree with Mirror about the correct approach to pirating. On PvP3 pirates try raiding right outside PR then were moaning when lots of British ships piled in to assist and kill the pirate. Pirates should be acting like pirates and picking off lone slower traders in quiet sea lanes, or jumping traders from out of secluded bays. The counter tagging is a problem when used/combined with the other Mechanics. Bottom line is it is far to easy for a slower ship to escape a faster one simply by using game mechanics, which bears no resemblance to common sense. Therefore at least one of the mechanics in play here needs to be adjusted or changed. I don't see that this principle can really be argued against. The NA machanics just need adjusting to better represent the position.

+1 Fully agree with implementing he principles of Bounties. Can be both player instigated and National AI based on impact on a Nations fleets (Player and AI). This can also be a great boost to PvE missions. Go hunt this dangerous AI pirate. But its like a buff / very difficult mission maybe BR limited that you may need to attempt a few times. Also have a national lists of Most Wanted!. The principle is excellent, just got to sort out how it get implemented so it cant be exploited. What has been suggested sounds reasonable.

It should be possible to capture any ship at sea . 'Send to port' is problematic because:- It is instant It removes the ship from OW It has no negative affect on your current situation. It is exploited to send new powerful ships to far off destination by capping traders. It no where near realistic I suggest; Captured ship becomes part of your fleet but obviously is only sailed with a 'Prize Crew'. Until Crew is actually implement - your ship receives an equivalent Nurf to account for a portion of your crew now on the other ship sailing it. So any further battle your performance is affected. If you capture a huge ship in a mid ship - your crew will be severally affected accordingly This 'Prize Crew' cannot then Fight in any subsequent battle with the ship because as a Prize crew it has the absolute minimum to get it to sail. If you enter battle the cap prize ship would appear in battle but only just sail and would also be able to take damage and potentially get sunk or captured. **Even after visiting port it remains a prize crew until you sell it or swap to it - This should not introduce fighting fleets via captured ships. You could allow the send to port option with the prize crew but this would simply be the AI sails it back in OW with MINIMAL crew - if - its engaged as sea it can be re-captured and that's the risky option if you want to send it off. No calculation to risk involved based on route. You look at the map and decide if its risky or not. This option would also be based on the real time it will take to sail the ship.