Yar Matey

As long as the player-base is split between having lockout timers and not, the 2 server solution is the only option we have. I will not go back to the EU server with lockout timers, because it was extremely inconvenient for me and many others who missed out on lots of port battles. I want a no restrictions server, and 51% of the people who voted in that pole thread I just linked to you agree with me.

I respectfully disagree 100%. To understand why, you must go back in time to when the new hostility system was first implemented. There were nations scheduling port battles in off times for players to which players on the other side of the world had to stay up late at night to defend their ports, and thus the night flip drama began! It started out with lots of drama in National news, but it blew up into a huge debate between the pro lockout timer camp and the anti lockout timer camp. Thus, @admin created a poll which you can see linked below. From this, you can see lots of QQ and drama as the player-base was split down the middle 48% to 51%. Thus, I came up with the idea to have 2 seperate servers, one server where their were no restrictions. The devs liked my solution and thus, that is why we have 2 servers 1 global and 1 EU, of which I now play on Global after switching to the EU. I switched to EU, because the player-base dropped off significantly after the implementation of the lockout system for port battles which made it impossible for some USA and Pacific players to even enjoy the PvP content of port battles on the old PvP2 USA server. I encourage you to take the time to read through the thread to see why the 2 server solution is an absolutely must have solution.

A dog eat dog way of thinking. What this eventually does is stagnate the economy and playerbase. What happens in practice is people actually going out to do trading are constantly losing their cargo and trade ships, thus all you will ever get is combat against players in trade ships trying to move up into a war ship. I cant even get myself into a 5th rate without running around and gathering mats. If people like you keep going out and taking my goods, you will never encounter me in a war ship because I cannot get myself into one. This also assumes that disgruntled players just dont quit.

This is something I brought up a few times, but it has become an issue yet again... There is a balance that needs to be maintained in a game like this between trading and PvE/PvP. This patch has gone WAY too far with the trading required to enjoy the game. For the last week since the patch has come out, 90% of my time has been spent trading and not enjoying the PvE and PvP aspects of the game (and all I wanted to do was sail my redeemable surprise). What needs to happen to fix this current problem: 1) Low tier cannons should be really cheap both to craft and buy Class 9: 10 gold per cannon Class 8: 20 Class 6: 50 Class 5: 100 Class 4: 200 Class 3: 300 Class 2: 600 Class 1: 1500 (36 lbs) Class 1: 2000 (42 lbs) 2) Cannon material costs need to come WAY down! Class 9: 10 iron 5 coal for 10 cannons Class 8: 15 iron 7 coal Class 6: 20 iron 10 coal Class 5: 25 iron 13 coal Class 4: 35 iron 18 coal Class 3: 45 iron 23 coal Class 2: 58 iron 30 coal Class 1: 65 iron 34 coal (36 lbs) class 1: 75 iron 40 coal (42 lbs) 3) Rum, Hull Repairs, and Rig Repairs should be sold by NPC's in the shop at every port but crafting them should be a cheaper alternative to buying from the NPC shop. 4) NPC ships should have better loot (more rum, hull repairs, rig repairs) and some random trade goods. These changes above will help players get into ships to join the action faster. If the costs of outfitting ships is too expensive, then it adds to the time it takes to get into the action and enjoy the game. Trading should be a minor part of the game and the combat should be a much bigger part of the game. Assume your target audience has 1 hour of game time a night to play your game. This means for a full week, 7 hours of playing (lets assume 8 hours for a week), 15-20% of that time should be spent trading and crafting and 80-85% of that time should be spent in combat. This means 1.5 hours trading and 6.5 hours in combat.

So I should just roll over and just give up when a fleet of player ships attack me in my LGV or Indiamen? I never do. I have escaped fleets of player ships chasing me with all kinds of variation in ship compositions and with enormous odds stacked against me several times, and I always manged to get away with my cargo. Its all about conserving your sail HP and using your repair strategically timed and knocking down the enemy sails. Much like the old pirate refit pre patch, these new bonuses are equally as bad. Some of them are so bad in fact, I cannot see how anyone can defend them.

Yes yes, the you shouldn't do this and you shouldn't do that argument! (rolls his eyes) Great way to keep casual and solo players active in this game, give them a strict disadvantage in any combat situation with their non-refitted trade and war ships. I have been doing trade runs and building ships, outfitting entire clans running solo trade runs for hundreds and hundreds of hours. What these refits do is make it so I stand no chance of ever escaping from a squad of players with these refitted bonuses. I am at a strict disadvantage. Your argument holds no weight when put into practice. A new player logs in does some missions in a cutter, finds out he needs to do some trading to get money and resources, gets an LGV, tries to do some trade runs, loses his ship and cargo to a small fleet of surprises, rinse and repeats this a few times, then quits the game after not making any progress in the game. Joke was on him the whole time, he never stood a chance, hes using a ship with no refits! HA!

@Hodo Its the combination of running a fleet of ships with these refits. For example, 1 player is in a surprise with a pirate refit, and 1 player is in a surprise with a elite Spanish refit. There is no way a player in a LGV or an Indiamen stands a chance of escaping. Take it from the guy who has been doing trade runs for a long time in this game, and who has outrun fleets of chasing player ships vs my solo indamen or LGV. I have never lost my cargo to a gank squad. But have lost plenty of warships to them.

Briefly looking at these, I can already tell that I am not a fan of some of these refits. 1) A 7% main sail force bonus is HUGE! and will give surprises and rattlesnakes designed for chasing an enormous advantage over players in ships that do not have an elite Spanish rig ship. I haven't run any tests myself, I am sure there are people that are going to test this soon and it will become the new pirate refit go to standard. I am going to throw out a number and estimate that its going to add ~1 knot to the top speed of a surprise or rattlesnake. 2) Same goes for the pirate refit. Upwind speeds will be way out of whack in a pirate refit ship. 3) Cartahena and/or floating battery will be the new go to standard for port battles giving players without these refits a strict disadvantage to players that do not. Elite ganking squads will now consist of 1 surprise outfitted with Elite pirate refit for fast upwind speeds and another surprise with Elite Spanish refit for downwind speed, and no trade ships sailing the open seas or solo player with a basic ship will ever stand a chance of escaping, let alone fighting their way out. What I would like to see changed: 1) No changes to sail force bonuses 2) No crazy changes in the base hull or mast thickness or hit points of any ships with a refit. Small Changes to reload bonuses, or boarding bonuses are fine. Small changes to heal and turning speed are fine, and VERY small changes to hit points are fine (maybe 2-3% for structure or mast) and a big fat NO under absolutely any circumstances should their be any changes to thickness in hull or mast. Thicknesses should be used strictly for balancing purposes. Remember, there is a fine line between progression and giving players who have progressed too much of an advantage in combat. If I buy an NPC ship, and I run into a player with one of these constructed ships, the player with the constructed ship should have only marginal advantages of my NPC ship. Do you think going broad side for broadside that my store bought ship of equal rate will stand a change against a ship with 7% increased hull thickness, or 20% more raw hit points? NO absolutely not!

Really great post with great solutions to solve our problems. however, I think cannon prices need a large adjustment. Cannon prices should remain very high on the 1,2 and 3rd tiers. Smaller caliber guns should be much cheaper. Large caliber guns should be expensive as they are the ones that go on 1st 2nd and 3rd rate ships.

The only thing the devs need to do to make ships like the surprise and indefatigable affordable is decrease the price of the cannon costs, and then it would be fine. The costs for lower teir guns should be dirt cheap and get exponentially more expencive as teir increases. 5000 gold for a teir 1 cannon is fine, but for teir 2 and 3, it should be in the hundreds of gold, not thousands. NPC ships have been made uncapturable so the market is not flooded with ships. However, players should be rewarded with gold for capturing ships as they are sent to admiralty. Conquest marks for higher teir ships are fine. The idea is to make them rare as they should be.

A simple solution to the expensive guns problem, is every ship you buy from port that is NPC sold with stock guns. If a ship can host class 3-5 cannons on a specific deck, then that deck starts with class 5 mediums as an example, so that the ship is usable as soon as you buy the ship. Just my 2¢.

First, can we PLEASE stop with the eye rolling "everyone is going to quit" and "this is going to fail hard" hyperbole! It is way too early to tell how the economy will function in this game. I dont care if you have 300 hours or 10k hours in this game as a level 50 crafter! All the devs need to do to fix this current market problem is increase rewards for missions as well as make captured NPC ships give you gold and have more valuable cargo. I dont know about pvp rewards yet, but increase those as well by the same amount, if need be, and increase the price of store bought ships at the same rate until it is more expensive to buy a ship in port than it is to craft a ship. Adjust rewards, adjust store bought ships, leave everything else as is for now.

1 durability ships, and a global server with no restrictions on port battles?!?!? The 2 things I wanted more than anything from this game, I think I just died and went to heaven! I have 2 questions regarding changes: 1) Ship transport between outpost removed, Resource transport between free towns removed, teleport to Freetown removed, and outpost to outpost transport is now only available between national towns. I am a little bit fuzzy on the details here, but how am I going to get resources from far away ports to where I am constructing ships? If I need say live oak to build some ships, am I going to have to sail all the way across the map and back in a trade ship to get live oak if I am say a Swede? I will be ok with this change if required resources like live oak are not throttled down to 2 ports and is plentiful all over the map. I haven't had a chance to log on yet and take a look but i am a little bit concerned about these changes. Remember, time spent in a trade ship is time not spent in a war ship. I do like trading and crafting, but I would like to spend more of my time battling than trading and crafting. The perfect balance between trading and crafting is when we just built ships at free ports and had materials we needed shiped there. Trading was something we did 1 or 2 times a week for an hour, and the rest of our time was spent in warships enjoying the combat. When I log on after my 8 hour day of work, I have maybe 2 hours to play, I do not want to be spending 1 hour sailing around in a trade ship to do crafting every night. (this is just my initial concern looking through your patch notes, I haven't had a chance to test it out yet) 2) Not sure if I am understanding the changes to regional bonuses, looks like I need a book now that I am assuming I get from a specific region to craft regional bonuses on my ships. Is this correct? Are the regional bonuses 1 time use then we need another book or blueprint?

As someone who has exceptional carpenter teams, exceptional powder monkey's, and did at one point have my hands on exceptional marines, I agree 100%. It is simply not fair that I have access to a module that gives me a such a huge advantage. I would be perfectly ok with these modules IF they were all craft-able so everyone had access to them. Powder monkey's used to be more valuable than carpenter teams until they got hit with the nerf bat. Your right, it simply cannot get any worse than it is now. This apparent/leaked changes Ink is talking about seem like a step in the right direction.

A 1 durability system does not have to be painful and grindy. All that needs to happen is material and labor hour costs need to be divided by the number of durabilities ships currently have now. All notes should cost 50 LH to craft (low, mid, high) and cost 10 copper, silver, and gold coins each, then remove the need to be at a specific region to craft a ship with a regional bonus and make all modules craft-able, and you now have a functioning 1 durability system that works for everyone with 4th and 5th rates plentiful in the game because it would only cost ~500 LH to replace my lost Trincomalee. We gain so much from a 1 durability system, captures NPC ships will have more use making PvE a more enjoyable experience. PvP will be much more meaningful as captured ships will have way more value. The thrill and excitement of battle will be more exhilarating because losing your ship is now felt as a real loss. The game will be way more immersive.