Cmdr RideZ

Not sure if you have done already but... Make a db search, and check what upgrades people use, and what not. Moment of thinking that why it is like it is, and then balance the less used ones.

Probably not everyone, but I actually have built and upgraded traders. I play for pirates and rather many has lost their cargo near MT. Then ended up to craft a trader and upgrade for speed. Not sure if every pirate is doing that, but I know some. Also pirates do have pirates who attack their own members, so I do like my crafted traders. I once told about this for, was it US player. He was laughing that why to build and upgrade a trader. Not sure if it is just me and the guys I know, who craft traders.. Or, the pirates just have the most dangerous capital?

Your ship is sinking, and you press surrender. You exit the battle, and the ship sank. You saved your crew, and the enemy got nothing. Not cool. So... Your ship is leaking and you press surrender. Your men will be saved ONLY, if the battle ends before the ship sinks. If enemy does not leave the battle, they can watch your crew going with the ship. If you surrender before your ship is sinking -> Your men are free to go. edit... Just to clarify.. If you surrender when your ship is sinking.. If the enemy leaves, your men are free to go, and the enemy gets your ship.

Rather obvious that this one is needed.

5th rate restriction could actually make sense. It does not remove free ports, those will still be useful, but the enemy cannot teleport Port Battle fleets behind the enemy lines. But they can sail those there. Maybe 3rd to 1st rate ships could be only teleported in friendly regional capitals. 4th rates only to friendly ports.

Keep the combat open 1-2 min longer.

The best balance for 4th rate Port Battles would be that Ingermanland is a SOL and Constitution is a frigate.

Ingermanland is a sol or frigate for the perks?

You sail in a port. There is a tavern, and you can get some free men from each port. Your rank would help recruiting the crew as well. Indeed, like in Sid Meier's Pirates. The med kits would still be useful when S hits the fan. And if you lose a lot of men, you have to sail to many ports to "recover".

The shipwreck... Give us a map in the inventory, that we can look if we want. Showing the coastal lines, and you have to find it by yourself. No X in the map. In the same way as in the Sid Meier's Pirates. ... I know, wrote the same under the patch notes. But this might be the better place in the end.

I recommend that you test the rigging quality, like maneuver your ship, and define how much the rigging is benefiting you in practice. In practice, in this case, check how many seconds faster you complete a task, which has a defined goal. If you do some really neat tricks with sails, test with and without rigging. Measure the actual benefits in seconds, in this case 0.1 seconds, or 0.01 seconds. Lets say that you do something, and you are 0.4 seconds faster with the rigging. The task will take 10 seconds, and you were 0.4 seconds faster. The question is, 10 vs 10.4 seconds, can you really feel the difference? And that 0.4 seconds, not sure if you would get even that "big" benefits from Rigging. Ingermanlands yard turn, we were able to notice the difference. Rigging ships sails stopped and we still saw that the ship without was still turning the sails, but not sure if that was even 0.5 seconds honestly. If the sails turn 0.5 seconds faster -> It does not mean that the ship is turning 0.5 seconds faster. It only means that the other ship started it maximum turn rate 0.5 seconds faster. Measured from a video. Surprise takes ~70 seconds to make a full 360. Surprise has rather fast sails. Lets say that you got your sails with rigging in maximum position 0.2 seconds faster. In 360 turn, there are only some moments when you need maximum yard turn rate, after the initial yard turn. Lets say that 0.6 seconds faster in total -> 70 vs 70.6 seconds. Then you want to lower your sails, to avoid cannon balls hitting your sails, and after raise the sails again. So you were able to lower 10% more sails before the cannon balls hit the sails, and after to raise those again. When we made the sail raise test, the difference was not much. You can see that the ship with rigging starts to raise a sail, and very soon after that the ship without starts to raise, but the difference is not much. To say that Rigging would be actually better than BS, just because of this lower/raise move, I think that would be very questionable. So how about the big ships? Like 1st rates? Those do have slow yards, so maybe the benefits are better here? I have to admit that I have not tested this one. But.. You are anyway going to be ridiculously slow, so are you sure you want to exchange for example BS for rigging? If you were able to turn 1-2 seconds faster, and the enemy has BS... What would that 1-2 seconds actually mean for you? How well you would be able to counter the BS with that? I was blindly believing in this. Even when the more experienced players told that this is no good. I was thinking that why would the devs leave it like that then? (Maybe because it is early access, idiot) And indeed, I have ships with rigging because I did not believe the guys, and now I have been slowly moving those ships in different ports. Will wait there till devs fix the rigging. Or if they really think that rigging is good, I definitely would like to know how they do their testing.

Unable to find the other Rigging post that I made, so here we go again... We tested Rigging Quality in a duel, again, but this time with Ingermanland. So the sails do work that 10% faster, correct. The practical benefits to maneuver your ship are minimal, also correct. So I had my sails up when the other ship had those at 90%. Did not measure in seconds, but it was not long that the other ship had the sails up as well. For turning, Rigging ship might have the sails turned 0.5s faster, or maybe probably even less. When the sails are at maximum position, you get no additional benefits. Some people told me that Rigging is useless, but I did not believe them. Now I do. I may have to leave my rigging ships in some port, just to wait fix for this one. Light Robes and Blocks. I was also thinking that this would be useful, but I have started to doubt this as well. And more experienced players told me that probably just a place holder, minimal benefits. If you turn 360. You do not benefit from the rigging at all -> Because the normal speed is enough to turn the sails. I really think that the devs should check this one. Because I, like probably many others, thought that this would be a nice Trim option as well. I thought that blindly, and only started to test because people, more experienced players, told me that it is useless. If some player now thinks it is very useful. Take a duel with your friend, test the sails, how much helping with turning etc. Take a duel vs BS ship, test how it goes. I am rather sure that you end up to the same results -> Your benefits are minimal, epsilon probably would describe the best.

See in equipment screen, how many men you need for cannons/sails. Craftable labor hour contracts, that you can sell in the shop with contracts.

When Delivering something from Free Town to Free Town... Send AI ships to actually transfer those. Capturing AI ships after that, will be far more interesting.

There should not be mandatory upgrades. I have a feeling that at this moment the devs know that the boarding is not ok. The admin already said that will be fixed. Not sure if redone, but they should probably redo it as well. RPS system, that is not skill based like the rest of the game. I would not mind even if that would be completely removed from the game, if no better boarding mechanism is invented. I really do hope a skill based mechanism for boarding as well.

When a ship does not have bow chasers... You can build a permanent upgrade, that will add those.

Direct shortcuts to stop reloading a side. Would be just more practical, better UI I would say.

I have also understood that the system will be redone. But for now, something fast that makes more sense than what we have atm. Make it more playable for the "testers".

As this system of mainly 4th rate port battles, in my opinion is not good for SOLs. Port Battles to use higher variation of ships. 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th rate port battles, and/or a BR rated Port Battles. It can be even randomly set. Take for example seed from the port location, and use that to select which is the ports rate. Or use port name, which ever is easier for implementation. Probably would not be anything too big to implement. I also believe that people will be happier if there is more variation.

Belle Poule provides a: Good Change for: LGV Ingermanland Trincomalee Essex Change for: Constitution .... LGV with Indianman are the trade ships that are built by players. Constitution & Ingermanland are the ships used in Port Battles, and often the biggest ships in OW PvP. Trincomalee happens to be a very good 5th rate. Essex, just happens to be there as an additional bonus Blue Print. So by just building Belle Poules you can get most from the important ships we have atm. in the game. Most likely when you are crafting to get these blue prints, you already have ships like Rattlesnake and Surprise. I do believe that this kind of "mega-node" in BP tree, was a bad idea. Before it was the Frigate, because everyone wanted Ingermanland. Now it is Belle Poule, because you can get everything from it. + Belle Poule is now a lot bigger mega-node than Frigate ever was + Belle Poule is less useful than Frigate btw. The MT market has 4 pages of Belle Poules while I am writing this. The new Port Battle system, is making 3rd rates to be ~obsolete. Decreasing radically 3rd, 2nd, 1st rate prices, mainly because people do not need those anymore. The new system is simply over using 4th rates -> Belle Poule is built even more. Balancing the Belle in crafting tree, should be rather trivial and easy thing to do. Because of that, would fix that for the next patch.

This post is a bit late, but... I like that not all the guns can penetrate all the ships from all the ranges, or even from close ranges It just makes it to feel more realistic. Indeed, I am against more arcade shooting simulator. The small guns are always very efficient to rake or shoot the sails. Have even faster reload time for that. There are other ways to balance the small guns. Raking is and should be buffed, even more. Often I offer my stern to be shot at vs the side. Balancing between stern and sides, should be that you really do not want to take that rake. The gun decks were ~"long corridors", or so I have understood, seen when visiting the old ships. When rake hit this kind of working environment, it was devastating. Notice, when raking is buffed -> Smaller guns with smaller realistic penetration values will be far more useful. Now if you buff the penetration as well, and/or damage. Small guns can penetrate the sides, + will be able to rake well, + faster reload to shoot the sails as well. You easily overshoot here, and small guns will turn to be OP. Tweaking marines, I think boarding needs rather lot of improvements. Would not waste time to just and only tweak the marines. I think you should keep the realistic armor/penetration statistics. Tweak the HP/DMG instead. More DMG, less HP -> Shorter battles, with realistic penetration model. Why they build SOLs if every rowboat could sink one? If you now make it easy to penetrate SOLs, I am sure you kill the fun from the SOL players. SOL alone vs fast frigates, will get stern camped, and rakes are buffed, and should be buffed even more I believe. 2xSOL, should be already very dangerous for fast frigate fleets. If I can penetrate the SOL with my muskets, it just takes all the fun from the SOLs. Stick with the realistic penetration values. Medium Frigates are fun because those are agile? SOLs are fun because those are ~floating fortresses? In MMO gaming, when balancing the game, there seems to be one fact that always is defining the fun. Which ever is the current FOTM (Flavor Of The Month), seems to be a lot of fun. 99% of people just follow the FOTM, and declare that as a fun thing to do right now. I think that most of them do not even understand that it is fun just because it happens to be FOTM. So when you see that players say that X is fun, there is a very high change that it is the current FOTM -> OP.

It is not about turn rate, but it is... Additional maneuverability is gained only from period when the sails are actually turning. (Or raising/lowering). Because you are able to turn your yards a bit faster manually -> You want to for example help you to change your course faster -> Turn faster. Well, it is just 10% yard turn, then both ships are at maximum turn rate. Are you really getting benefits from it? Sure, accelerating from 0 speed to max speed. Your sails will be up 10% faster, but when you have your sails up, both are accelerating equally fast. So you wont reach the maximum speed 10% faster, but maybe 0.001% faster? There are multiple places where you can actually use the sails, not only the ones I mentioned. I have been reading also just that the rigging is faster, no other comments from the devs, and you cannot really see any hard values. I kinda trust that those are faster and that the devs checked that the benefits are balanced with the rest of the trims. But as from the field test, I do doubt that the benefits from the rigging are balanced with the rest. I am actually just the one to write this post, had conversation about this with others. Everyone seems to be doubting the real benefits. So yes, would like to hear what the fellow captains think about this, or send a message to the devs to double check this.

Ok, something new to test... Has someone tested the difference between, A: Rigging + Ropes&Blocks B: Ropes&Block How these stack? Or do these bug? .... edit.. The truth is that if you are able to turn 10% faster your sails. How much that benefits actually? The sails are rather fast already, and the benefit is just when you change your sails, in way or other. So it is far less than 10% to your turning rate, etc. But 1st would like to know how those stack with the ropes & blocks. Indeed, I am interested from the maneuverability, but as it seems to be hard to notice the benefits. It makes you to ask, if things are actually WAI.

NPC fleets with traders. Escorts + a trader. Trader full of gold and silver.

I assume this data is obsolete at the moment? Can you please update this post? There are lot of information about the statistics, and all are different in every possible place. Add the details in the game as well? Then there are 10 guys, who all say different things from the wood types. Would highly appreciate to get the facts directly from the devs/admin.