Cutch

FWIW, if your using the outage as justification, the timing of it lined up perfectly with the Kerbs attack, which was the biggest DDoS attack in history, and effected pretty much every major CDN in the world. 620GB/s will do that.... http://www.businessinsider.com/akamai-brian-krebs-ddos-attack-2016-9 It had nothing to do with naval action. So yea, nothing new here.

The biggest problem that causes everyone to run full sail is how the boarding mechanics are implemented. In order to avoid being boarder, all you have to do is keep your speed up - so that's what everyone does. That's also the easiest way to avoid getting suck in irons - enter a turn with as much speed as you can! So FULL SPEED AHEAD! I'd suggest adjusting the conditions needed to initiate boarding. Instead of both ships having to be under a certain absolute speed, look at the relative speed. Ie, if I'm side-by-side with an enemy, both going the same speed of, say 10kn, then our relative speed is 0 knots and boarding should be possible. But as it is now, even if trade pain for miles, boarding isn't possible! Or as if I'm overtaking an enemy going 10knots, while I'm going 12kn - the difference here is only 2kn, which should be low enough to enable boarding to be initiated. However, it 2 ships are passing either in opposite direction, both going 2kn, then the difference is 4kn, which is too fast to initiate boarding. And then there is grappling... this take time, and should be something that is dependable. This would make a much more rich boarding dynamic, and encourage more diversity in sailing speeds. I When boarding is initiated, a grappling countdown would be nice, perhaps with a starting value based on the distance between the ships and speed differential. This could be modified by upgrades, such as thicker ropes for the attacker, or axes by the defender. The defender can break the attempt by increasing distance or speed differential. Other modifications would possibly modify the conditions need for grappling to be initiated (both offensively and defensively). This would change the way players sail for the better and would add a lot more diversity in ship layouts

We get it Taranis... you used to play on PVP2, and were duped by a bunch of jerks into thinking it was going to close, so you abandoned all your stuff there to get a 'head start' on PVP1. Now your realizing that decision was wrong, and that PVP2 seems to be more fun for US-based players. Sorry, but no need to go on beating this dead horse. You can come back to PVP2 at any time. Doesn't mean that either server needs to be merged

How is a hosting provider being attack a motivation to merge servers? Wouldn't that just consolidate all the eggs in one basket and create a huge single point of failure?

The solution you are looking for (at least until the next patch), is that the playerbase needs to embrace pvp and respond to every challenge to your turf on principle, not because they personally have something to gain from it. The US went through the same thing around CTOWN and it got a lot of players who avoided pvp involved. There seems to be on ok-ish turnout when there's action in Jamaica, but beyond that, its always the same half dozen or so players for the most part... if that. Use this as an opportunity to practice forming up with numbers and working together, then take the fight elsewhere before it'll come to you. ps - ignore the trolls in your nation chat. Again, US had that problem - a bunch of young unknown nobodys all of a sudden very vocal about their witch-hunt against anyone attempting to organize resistance. Odd that they came out of nowhere as soon as we started fighting the pirates, then vanished as soon as that quieted down. Makes you wonder with all those BLACK payers with 8 alts (as they publicly claim they have) are put to use doing?

iirc, it was each STACK = 1 click, not each item. And the EU mirror -> pvp1 merge wasn't optional/repeatable. It was a one-time deal., and a server shutdown The notice was too short to allow for much abuse, and the numbers were much lower (hence why it was merged). TL;DR version of all this - if you want to merge, do it all at once with a wipe, or not at all. Any of these half-measures just hurt some in favor of others, turn people away, and give the game a bad reputation before release.

I think allowing asset transfer from PVP2 -> PVP1 is a mistake. A game that depends on a market balanced by scarcity needs to avoid mechanics that allow the scarcity to be artificially removed. Supply is fixed by the map, regardless of player population. Lower population = lower demand, and thus lower prices. Everyone I know who has been on PVP2 for any time has at least an 8-digit gold balance with minimal effort, and more resources than they could ever use. Gold is arbitrary and irrelevant. This isn't true on PVP1 because of more competition for resources. Because less effort on PVP2 gets the same resources and more profit, what is to prevent anyone with an alt from constantly farming resources on PVP2 and injecting those low-cost resources into PVP1, deleting the character, and repeating? One solution would limit each ACCOUNT to a single transfer - ie, if someone transfers their PVP2 character to PVP1, then creates a new PVP2 character, that character will never be able to transfer. Even with a safeguard such as this, there will still be cases where people will buy an additional account (STEAM SALE BABY!) explicitly to get farm masses of cheap resources on PVP2 for eventual injection into PVP1. I guarantee that this announcement has ALREADY triggered a number of people create characters on PVP2 simply to acquire cheaper resources, in anticipation of those resources being transferable to PVP1.

The following is my honest assessment of how things have been going. Loco and gang, my intent isn't to offend, so don't get all butt-hurt over my perspective. Same goes to our allies. Everyone's right about the toxicity levels, and its coming from all parties - no need for anyone to claim to be on higher ground, cause there aint any (insert sea-level pun here). A little more honesty and humility can go a long way, but a lot of players seem to still have some enormous chips on their shoulders. PVP2 seriously needs more moderators! THIS IS WHERE I AGREE AND COMPLAIN ABOUT SHORTCOMINS OF MY NATION AND ALLIES (grab some popcorn and enjoy!) What squedage said x100. I've been harping about this in fleet battles for a long time, but it falls on def ears. Our fleet TS discipline is horrible. I think that's partly a result of having people from half a dozen clans that ultimately don't really work together all in the same fleet. When we work together within our clan, we can get our core group with up to 10 or so ships with players who practice together, and its pretty good (not perfect, as we are always training newer members). Add 10-15 others, and its chaos - 5 people talking over the callers about stuff that doesn't matter. No one needs to know that your sails are at 97% health, or that the pizza guy is here If you try to maintain TS discipline (telling someone to use battle coms/be quiet/stfu/remove from channel), people get offended, call you bad names, and undermine your entire clan in nation chat. You can lead a horse to water or something, right? For anyone who has played WoW, its the difference between an organized clan raid and a pick-up raid. Above 10 ships, and we function like a pick-up raid... Another big issue is piloting skill. Its fashionable to blame cheats or hacks on defeat lately. I'm can't prove that everything is 100% legit, but it's alpha... there WILL be bugs. More importantly, I've seen several cases of someone accusing players of hacking on TS during battles: "I just broadsided him point blank and only got 1 hit! dude is totally hacking"... meanwhile I just watched that 'broadside', and it was at a 45* angle, against a larger ship with thicker armor causing everything to clearly bounce, and most missed anyway. Then no one can communicate on TS for the next 5 mins as everyone's debating this kind of crap as we lose ships. Again, TS iscipline. There's a time & place, and its after the battle. I've tried to train on this afterwards, but receptiveness to constructive criticism isn't often there - if your doing something wrong, no need to be defensive when someone tries to help. It's alpha, and the game we play today may not be the same as yesterday! I know pointing this out will probably ruffle some feathers, but if it helps us be more aware of where we are deficient and want to improve, I can live with that... I also acknowledge that I own some responsibility for this myself. THIS IS WHERE I GIVE CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE (mind your egos) So yea, BLACK clan has their act together in large fleet battles. They can field 20+ first rates with just their own members, they communicate well in battle, and do a good job of training their captains. Congrats on that, its a major achievement considering our server population. I've seen you guys have almost 20% of the on-line players in your fleet at once, all in 1st rates! Your level of organization is impressive, and the execution shows that. Because of that, you guys are able to win the big battles. Great job! Would you guys be willing to record a fight some time and post a video with comms? It'd be great to show how things should be, but also to dispel some of the hacking claims THIS IS WHERE I HIGHLIGHT THE CURRENT REALITY But everything doesn't come down to who has the best 1st rate blob, and while you can win the big battles, your still losing the war. I think this is because of lack of overall numbers, and refusal to adapt to the situation. US and GB are still trying to get their act together in regard to large ship battles, and while we're having difficulty adapting to that, we realize its not worth losing another fleet of 1st rates to practice - so we dont. We know we're a long way off in that regard, but we also know we can reclaim any significant losses in the short term. And here's the thing: you don't get to dictate what kind of battles are fought. You can either decide to be the aggressor, taking 1 regional capital per day, unopposed, while losing a half-dozen or more ports (including other regionals, also un-opposed), until you are out of ports... then we can blob together over your last few ports assuming it happens before the reset. Or you can concede that you dont get to dictate the terms of everything, split up your forces, and get some good fights as they are. At the end of the day, you may be winning the head-to-head 25-v-25 battle, but at the expense of losing the war. Your like Sparta - a great force, but a (slightly) smaller one (and we all know how that ended for Sparta). I know... 'we dont care about ports' or 'wipe coming' - again, sorry but you also dont get to dictate the fact that this IS still a game of conquest, not self-contained instances; so can't we just try to play to have fun playing the game as it is today? I don't do much of the boring empty port battle stuff myself (yea, its boring), but look at it this way: why are the PB's empty? Why are there no defenders? Who decides to stay in a blob of 1st rates in your own uncontested PB, rather than spread out in smaller groups of other ships to CONTEST these otherwise empty battles? The attacker doesn't decide the response of the defender. Why are you avoiding the readily-available PVP that is right in front of you, then complaining that everyone is avoiding you? That's fine if its what you choose to do, but that soapbox just makes you look silly And please dont cry about zerg tactics, as BLACK used them more than anyone in the past couple months when things were headed the other way and is the cause of the current situation. Besides, it's not a zerg when you know its coming, are capable of defending and winning all the concurrent battles, but CHOOSE not to. And more importantly, it's a result of your decisions: BLACK clan has made sure to set ALL of their port times to a single window, so there's only 2 hours of port-based PVP per day. US and GB followed suit as a defensive measure, successfully turning the tide. As a result, all port PVP happens in a single 2hr window, allowing us to force you to have to decide between playing to your strenght as a single offensive uncontested blob, or to our strength as a split defense. It's up to you to decide how to best respond. Take 1 and lose 5 every day while avoiding PVP, or defend in multiple battles and have fun.... your call, but dont blame us when you don't show up. If BLACK is unable to cover all their bases in that time and refuses to realize that they don't dictate the terms, maybe that was a poor tactical decision by BLACK leadership to stack timers in a way that exposes your weakness so much? Again, no hard feelings and i could be totally wrong about all this - just try to have some thick skin if I struck a nerve and look at it objectively. But for now, that's how I see it. I really hope we can drop the pointless spin, get back to ignoring the trolls, and trying to have fun playing the game we have rather than get under people's skin. And send chat moderators please! ps - big thanks for Nyrtle's group for getting some timer diversity... 00-02 doesn't work very well for me

Skully - you, my friend, are a machine Great input. You have all your bases covered! I think we're all on the same page now. To be clear, I didn't mean to suggest that a mercenary mechanic REPLACE how pirates currently play, but instead add new gameplay option since they recently lost a lot so many. But we also have to resist trying to model the class after <insert your favorite pirate>. Play how you want. Want to a pirate in a 1st rate? Have at it... But that's off topic for this thread. As it stands since the latest patch, Pirates are against the world. They can technically take ports, but it's unlikely the can hold many for too long, as the alliance system will form major power blocks that have a huge advantage against them. The primary goal of this suggestion is give them options to participate in the big picture again, while still being different from other nations. It's a higher risk/reward game style, and that's how it should be. I get the argument that pirates shouldn't have any ports, but unless the devs want to make a cluster of free ports for the pirates to operate out of, its a necessary compromise to make the game playable for them. Although like I mentioned, that may be coming to an end with the way alliances seem to be going.... A pirate-specific port raid mechanic would make a lot of sense. No flags, no timers, no changing of ownership.... but that's a topic for another thread. On a related note, the devs mentioned wanting to add a flag for Pirates to be 'Outlaw Pirates'. That's confusing... why not rename Pirates to Privateers, and have a flag for privateers to be 'Pirates'? (other than because pirates sounds sexier than privateer)

I hear what your saying, but I'm not sure of your sources. Most of what you just claimed is false, so using it to back up an argument for historical accuracy is pretty ridiculous. I'm assuming at this point that you are making stuff up because you have some vested interest in not seeing Pirates be an enjoyable option for players in this game. Many privateers/pirates were given ships by national navies. Very few if any captured ships from nothing like you have seen in the Disney movies. If you want to play more of a fantasy-style Pirates of the Carabean game, there's already a bunch of those. That said, I wouldn't mind if pirates were not able to craft at least beyond a certain size (6th rates and traders?), but had to either capture ships, or be given ships by nations that hire them. Letting them craft smaller ships is mostly a sustainability/new-player-experience thing. Maybe give them an alternative crafting set that let them retrofit traders into more combat-focused ships, as that would have been very historically accurate. Pirates/privateers did take over ports in many cases, as I pointed out. They did attempt to form a sort of nation at one point, although it was short lived. However, they usually captured ports on behalf of a hiring nation, then handed it over after to their employer after taking their spoils. Most ports didn't have 'an army to defend it' since Europe was already stretched thin with wars, hence why they hired Privateers in the first place. The privateer fleets often included up to 1500 men that would take over an entire port! I don't think many Caribiean port cities could withstand an invasion force of 1500 even today! Can we stop the 'thats not how it worked according to Disney' nonsense, please?

What you are describing is also not 'how pirates work'. There were very few true pirate captains. Most were considered to be pirates by certain nations, but not by others. Many were Privateers, operating under the rule of law for their host nation. That's more of what I'm describing. I agree that 'pirate' isn't the best term, but lest be honest... when marketing a video game, pirates attract a heck of a lot more attention than privateers Again, research Privateers because if you open your definition of 'pirates' to include privateers, then that's just false. Also look into buccaneers, which were journeyman hired by the brits, french and dutch against the spanish. What I'm suggesting is much more historically accurate than what we currently have in the game. Here are some examples: Andrew Barton was a privateer hired by the Scottish to pirate against he British and French in the early 1500's. His ship, the Lion, had a crew of 260 men, but the armaments aren't exactly known. Either way, that's a pirate sailing a ship similar to a Constitution all 300 years before the Constitution was built! George Clifford, acting as a privateer for Britian, captured the citidel of San Juan, Puerto Rico. He sailed a 47gun galleon way back in the mid 1500's! Being that the game is set much later, its reasonable to concede that privateers would modernize with the times at a similar rate as navies. Clifford sailed the Bonaventure along side the british navy fleet against the spanish armada. He was considered a hero in England. In the late 1500's Christopher Newport was a privateer working for the birts against he spanish and portuguese in the caribbean. While the layouts of his ships aren't well known, it's known that he captured the Madre de Deus, a 7 deck, 32 heavy gun, 700-crew treasure hauler with escorts. He was considered a hero in England. Christopher Myngs sailed a 46 gun Centurion as a privateer/pirate in the late 1600's. He captured several ports. I believe the Centurion was officially considered a 3rd rate at the time. Edward Mansfield was a privateer for the brits in the caribean. He captured a bunch of ports. Henry Morgan was a privateer in the mid 1600's. He was also a pirate. He was also an admiral in the british navy. He took Providencia island and Santa Catalina Island while sailing for Edward Mansfield as a privateer/pirate. He sailed a bunch of different ship of various sizes. He was arrested, then released, then knighted and ended up serving as lieutenant governor of Jamaica. We could go on here all day.... Clear as mud? Exactly. So please dont try to claim 'pirates didnt do x or y or z'. It's wasn't that simple. I explained that pretty clearly in the original post. The contract would be issued to a clan, not to the entire pirate nation.

Yes, the players themselves would pay the contract. Either a clan (out of their warehouse account) or an individual. Each nation has a few major clans, so it'd be easy for them to collect from other clans if there's mutual interest in hiring a mercenary clan. In contracts that reimburse for activity, some limits and an escrow would have be in place to prevent accounts from going negative. Another thing I've been noticing on both servers is that nations seem to vote in the direction that favors less PvP. Even when the PvP clans lobby the nation to vote in ways that make the game more intersting, the masses always vote for the safest option. Ie, everyone buddies up with their biggest, nearest threats. This removes accessible PvP targets for those that like PvP. I personally think this is an overall negative trend, but it's a bit early to tell. Either way, if such a mechanic existed, I think we'd see a mass migration of PvPers to form privateer clans, leaving the rest in need of protection. Given the upcoming port vulnerability mechanics, I think this would be very healthy addition to how groups need to work together to do big things.

DISCLOSURE: I dont play as pirate. Never have.... I'm making this suggestion as a way to make the game more interesting for everyone The Pirates nation has enjoyed a very strong set of conditions over the past several months which have made them the strongest force on both PvP servers during various stretches in recent months. While the game mechanics at the time clearly aided this outcome, recent changes to game mechanics that reduced the Pirate nation's potential. This is unfortunate, as many players recently transitioned to Pirates, and are now in a difficult position. I feel these combined changes are bit too heavy-handed: * Players can no longer 'go pirate' at will * Alliances can not be formed with the Pirate nation * Pirates can no longer attack each other * Pirates can no longer enter battles between other nations Before getting into the details, lets be clear about one thing: I'm not suggesting any of these changes be reverted! They all exist for good reasons. The political system leaves the pirates out of forming alliances, and rightly so. However, the fact that pirates can't be involved in other nation's battles also means that they can't act as hired guns a la pravateers. They essentially now exist in a vacuum. Soon there will be stable large power blocks on each server that can reduce the pirates to minimal ports. When this happens, Pirates' only viable gameplay option will be to harass free towns (which is also less effective with the Social perk). This is annoying for everyone. The solution I would like to suggest is to enable the Pirates to play more of a Privateer role where they can be hired by nations to fight on their behalf. Think of it like voting for an ally, but with money. Keep them outside of politics as is, but allow pirates to be hired by nations, either on an individual or clan basis to participate against the nation's enemies. I am NOT suggesting that a nation can pay to ally with the entire Pirate Nation! Only individual clans (or players, possibly). Mercenary Contracts should be bound by the following: Duration - the start/end of the contract Targets Nation - who the mercenaries are expected to attack Cooperative Nations - who the mercenaries are expected to NOT attack Theater: A list of target ports owned by the Target Nations to attack, and/or a list of ports owned by the Cooperative Nations to defend. Compensation options should be as follows: Gold per contract: a 1-time payment for accepting the contract Gold per ship: A fee paid for each ship of Target Nation that is sunk or captures by the contractor which scales with ship rate. Port Access: A list of ports owned by the contracting nation that the contractor can dock in. This can optionally have a duration that exceeds the contract duration. Optional contract settings: Contracting Nation Provides Ships: the Contractor will receive ships from the Contracting Nation. Actions performed on behalf of the contract must be performed in ships with a 'Built By' attribute connected to a member of the Contracting Nation. Ie, a Pirate can't attack a ship of an Enemy Nation or enter their OW battles/port battles if not in a ship constructed by a player of the Contracting Nation. Loss Reimbursement: The contractor will be compensated a gold value for all ship losses to the Target Nation within the Theater. Values will scale with ship rate. As the game mechanics currently stand, this can somewhat be done, with a couple exceptions: * Pirates cant assist a Contracting Nation in port battles * Pirates cant assist a Contracting Nation is OW battles All they can do is basically blockade ports and screen flag carriers. This breaks the viability of just setting up such an agreement as things currently stand. In terms of implementation, I'd suggest making the Contract mechanic basically recycle the existing Ally mechanic implementation - contracts start/end at downtime, and essentially make you an ally in terms of RoE in open world and battles. The compensation mechanics would requires some additional development, as would some of the more advanced and granular contract options. Whats everyone think? I don't see how this conflicts in any significant ways with the existing development roadmap, and I think a quick solution could be implemented with relatively little effort. The Pirate nation has grown to include a significant player base in the past months, and I think a step in this direction is necessary to keep those players involved. Thanks!

replies in red

Right, if you want safety go to PvE. Don't just sit in docking range outside Free Towns all day avoiding real PvP. I'm all for ganking being viable, but when it involves no risk to the attacker and all the risk to the defender, and the gankers systematically tuck tail and teleport elsewhere when anything remotely approaching even odds shows up, then its clear that the mechanics are not balanced. Any time the aggressor has the advantage of safety AND surprise, something is broken. It should be one or the other.

Since the teleport timers have been removed and changes have been made in how long before you can join battles after undocking, the frequency in which gankers have been abusing port hugging game mechanics around Free Towns has skyrocketed. They are able to sit in docking range and gank without any risk of being attacked themselves. This seems like a clear abuse of unintended side-effects of the recent game mechanics. As it currently stands, a player can sail a basic cutter to a Free Town, setup an outpost, then slingshot PvP ships to the Free Town with no risk. Then they undock the larger PvP ship and never move until the 25 seconds attack timer is up, so they can always re-dock if anyone threatens them. They then wait at the docking spot, and never move unless they see an incoming easy target that they can charge out and try to gank. Since people undocking have to wait 120 seconds before they can enter battles, its nearly impossible for anyone else to enter the battle, let alone be able to tag the attacker if they choose to run once the tide turns. On the other hand, if anyone attempts to come challenge them, the ganker simply docks up, teleports to the next busy Free Town and repeats the process there. Its already to the point where there are entire clans of gankers organizing to do nothing but this. Here are a few suggestions as to how this could fixed: Bring back teleport timers ONLY when teleporting from Free Towns. Maybe less than an hour (15m?), but long enough to detract from type of abuse. This has the side benefit of encouraging more use of conquerable ports, which I think is a good thing. Make the time others can join a battle proportional to distance the battle is to a Free Town. Up to 5 mins if its within a 25 second sail and trailing off to 2 mins towards the horizon. This creates a tradeoff between the ganker's safety from other coming to defend and the safety of being near docking range. Instead of a 120 second delay to being able to join battles after undocking and 2 mins for others to join new battles, make the window for others to join the battle based on the time the attacker has been outside undocking range. Start at 5 mins and decrease to 2 mins after 120 secs. Similar to the above technique, this creates a tradeoff for the ganker to consider. All Free Towns get local defenders in a certain radius, like national capitols. The defenders will always side against the party that initiated the attack. Some care to prevent 3rd parties from being automatically being pulled in might be a worthy consideration to avoid exploitation by alts spies to get Free Town npcs to sink 'friendly' enemies. This is probably too much hassle to implement, so not ideal. Create a safe zone around Free Towns where players can't attack. That way, you have to move away from the docking point and put yourself at some risk in order to gank. The problem is that gankers will then just move to this edge and it'll essentially change nothing... Those are just some suggestions, anyone else have others? I'm sure many players don't see this as a problem at all (probably the ones abusing it...). so I'd like to hear what others think. Thanks!

Excellent, thanks a ton!

I appreciate that fact that the game has an option in the graphics settings to help color blind players. As one of the 20% of the population lucky enough to need this, thank you very much for the consideration! However, I have noticed some issues with it's implementation, which may possibly relate to a bug introduced in the past few patches. The colorblind option appears to change two things during battle: The color of ship names in a combat instance The color of the ship icons on the battle instance map ('M' key) The problem is that when colorblind mode is disable, I can see enemy ships on the battle instance map, but I have a hard time distinguishing hostile/friendly names above ships at sea in a combat instance since the blue and green names looks very similar. However, with colorblind mode enabled, I can distinguish names just fine, but enemy ships vanish completely from my battle instance map! I think they are a red-on-gray-background which is essentially invisible to players with common types of colorblindness. As it is now, I have to pick between losing the ability to evaluate the tactics of a battle in the map, or being prone to broadsiding my own fleet mates. The combat map thing is fairly newish, as it looked fine a few weeks ago. Another issue is enemy ship names in the open world: the red name/nation is difficult to make out on the dark background. If this could be tweaked in colorblind mode, it'd relieve some eye strain. Thanks!

Some simple ideas: Rank (or overall xp) modifies the price of the flag significantly, instead of being the absolute limiting factor. If alts want to burn flags, it'll at least cost them dearly until they rank up, while still letting other high-rank-but-not-admiral ranks do stuff. You must be in a fleet with at least <insert number> other players docked in the same port to purchase a flag. Say 2 for shallow, 4 for deep, 6 for capitals? This makes it harder to solo a port at odd hours, but I honestly dont have a problem with that. Make flag abuse a banable offense via tribunal, not only for the alt, but also for the main if discoverable (by admins using server logs, not via accusation - that just gets ugly).

Tonight on PVP2, British captain John Bernard Shaw Cable purchased a conquest flag against the regional capital Misteriosa slightly more than 1 hour before server downtime. He carried the flag to port alone in his Bellona, hoping to take it off-hours unopposed. However, the US defenders managed a small fleet of 2 Ingermanlands to intercept. As the fleet approached the flag carrier, JBSC turned away to run. As soon as his pursuers got in range, he initiated attack, ensuring that when they got in range, ensuring that the starting position would be too far for anyone to keep him in battle, allowing him to escape. By this time, additional reinforcements were waiting at the logout screen to catch the flag carrier again. However, he hasn't appeared after 30 mins. He logged off in the combat summary screen. Now I know that exploiting combat summary logoffs isn't tribunal material, but in this case it's a flag carrier. And the defenders have to camp his logoff spot until downtime, otherwise he can log in at any time and plant. In essence, they can force a defending force to have to stay up late while the attackers get to call it a night early. Not cool, a clear abuse of game mechanics, and against the spirit of the game! I would suggest a minor change to avoid this: if a player holding a conquest flag logs off, the flag is destroyed and the assault is ended.

its No Pants Guys Currently 59 active captains

Until the flood of gold upgrades from sealed bottles, gold Powder Monkeys and Marines were some of the highest forms of currency in the game. Several other noncraftable upgrades were also highly valued. It used to take (at least on average) months of combat experience to get those items. It was a reward for PVP. Now, you can sail around for a few days without engaging a single opponent and get the same reward. The value of these highly regarded noncraftable modules has already plunged significantly. And it kind of sucks seeing a lucky 1 week old players with better upgrades than rear admiral veterans of 100 port battles The role-play justification for some of the non-craftables modules used to be that modules requiring people cant be crafted because you cant craft people. But now we can hire crew and officers in any port. Additionally, in the past few patches, several other upgrades have been added that don't involve people (fireship, extra staysais, studded sails, etc). I suggest a mechanic that allows blueprints for these items to be earned by players, but not in the same way as ship blueprints. Instead of unlocking via crafting, I think it would be appropriate for them to be unlocked via successful regional capital port conquest. That would keep the modules as a premium item and would add some more end-game content for captains to strive for. The drops should be pretty rare - maybe a 25% chance for 1 captain in the battle to get the drop? The build requirements should also be pretty high and including the cost of a lot of crew and a significant amount of labor hours, That way the price floor for the modules stays high for those that find them the old fashioned way. With high labor requirements, it ensures that the recipient can't just gear up an entire clan without there being a tradeoff. Maybe 2-3 notes per quality level? I think it would be a fun new mechanic and restore a bit more motivation to conquest and adds some more end-game depth. What's everyone think?

Nah, I dont think changing the map is necessary, or realistic for the period. Simply make the skies in the direction of the inclement weather have a different appearance from a certain distance than the skies in the direction of clear weather. It doesn't have to be perfectly realistic in terms of function - nothing in the open world is really to scale anyway. The goal is to make the weather more predictable and add another element of skill involved in navigating the open world. Use of common cloud formations that can be used to predict weather would be great - wall clouds, shelf clouds, anvil clouds, etc. Not just useful, it'd also look amazing

I'm happy to see weather brought back to the game, but this does change the dynamics of some critical PVP activities, especially when the attacker is trying to aim for a port near the limits of the 1 hour flag timeout. The secret island and Flatts are good examples of this. A journey that used to be doable without much risk is now very difficult if you hit a storm along the way. It reduces your speed enough to make the trip impossible. The difficulty is that you have no idea where the storm is until your in it. The storm's boundaries are very well defined, where it's sunny one second, and hurricane the next. I don't mind the transition so much, but I would suggest altering the sky above the storm areas to allow captains to spot them and work around them if they like. There are lots of other mechanics that would benefit from being able to see storms from a distance. To illustrate what I'm imagining, any time I'm boating we often see sights like the one shown below. When trolling, its not difficult to navigate around the weather. Even in systems with multiple rain clouds, simply looking up help you plot a course around the harsh seas and winds. The addition of a similar graphics feature in game would help pilots control their environment more accurately, and better reward skill through planning.