Yar Matey

Not it's not reasonable! You want to see what it's like with open battles, make a character on PvP1, go to the admiralty event and when you finnaly have your good almost evenly matched battle turn into a 6 vs 12 gank fest for the 10th time losing your ship that took you a week to craft with exceptional permanent upgrades you will see how infuriating open battles are like. It's not fun!

@koltes battles open for 10 min would be ok with really low server pop, but as soon as you try it on the EU server, it breaks down and does not work. Battles need to close instantly or as soon as possible. Too many good fights have been ruined because 10 more guys plop in on one side or another. The reason why the third outer circle is so large is to give players who want to join even though they are far away, the opertunity to play with their friends. Too many times someone has been left out of a battle simply because he was just outside of the second circle. If you are in OW with your friends but have some distance on you, you should not be prevented from joining the fight with your friends, hence why we have the very large outer circle with the option to join the battle.

@Wraith Sorry, if I knew you already created a post proposing this idea, I would have just bumped it instead of starting a new thread. I do search before starting new topics to see if the topic has already been started.

Only 2 inner circles count towards BR.

I would like to propose a slight modification to the 2 circle RoE system we have now and make it the 3 tagging circle. As everyone knows, NPC fleets are all over the place, and make getting a good tag in enemy waters very hard, and in some cases, impossible. I would like to introduce everyone to the 3 circle system. Proposal: Tagging circle stays as is Outer circle that automatically pulls everyone including NPC fleets in to be cut in half of the current outer circle size and lastly, a 3rd circle, that is double the size of the current outer pull in circle, where players are given the option to join the battle, but only have a 5 second window of opportunity to join. Pros: Less NPC fleets getting pulled into combat No more getting stuck out of a battle with your friends because he was attacked just out of range of the pull in circle Battles stay open for 5 seconds so players in the area have a chance to join Cons: Players may get pulled in that you didn't know were there at the time when tagging Players in home waters will have less help from NPC fleets (could potentially hurt newer players to the game and solo players, PvE'ers and, solo Traders) Thoughts?

I dont like the 46 hour thing. I would much prefer war fleets were used to generate port battles in a simpler way using hostility. use war fleets to create RvR in the here in now. Example: I log into Naval Action and see that most of my clan is on and I am able to muster up a 25 man fleet. I open up my map and see which windows for attack are open and I say "hey lets create a war fleet against (insert port name here) because we are within their 6 hour window, clan says "OK LETS DO IT!" so we create a war fleet and muster up all our war supplies, sail over to the port, and if we are not intercepted, an RvR port battle type battle commences. If we win, then we generate 50% hostility for the region plus extra for any ships sunk. If we attack again and win another battle, then 48 hours later is when the port battle will happen.

6 hour window? I guess I can get behind that.... I much prefer no lockout timers, but I understand why many want them. Your war supply idea with a war fleet is a fantastic way of stopping the frigate screening griefing that is going on right now, I like it! However, you lost me after that.... So Mordred forms a war fleet, leaves port, and everyone gets a warning saying "Mordred has left such n' such port" and they sail where exactly? I assume to the port they want to attack. However, when does everyone get the "Mordred is attacking Les Cayes at (2 hour window here)" message? I dont understand why that is even necessary, why not just make it so the war supplies only last 2 hours once they are sent to the war fleet, and the war fleet needs a designated target before leaving port that everyone knows about? Where does the 46 hour limit play into this? Everyone gets a warning that in 46 hours Mordred will be coming to attack us? Why do we even need a 46 hour limit? The war fleet is being created during the enemy 6 hour prime time. I'm so confused........................

This was posted 8 weeks ago, and nothing the admin posted in the OP has to do with how we get port battles, but simply rewarding people for screening at port battles or having more ongoing port battle type battles around the vicinity. Thus, the problem still remains, we need to grind PvE to get port battles. The current system was setup back in October, and it was evident after the first week that the system was flawed and most didn't like the new mechanics, yet here we are, now in February, and we still have to grind PvE to get port battles. I really hope that the devs have a working solution close to being finished up their sleeves. Also, a member in our community created a poll on this issue, and many (probably most) agreed that a hybrid flag/hostility system was the way in which the developers should try and steer the game. Yet the devs keep focusing on other things, and it can be frustrating to see that when we the community feel like the PvE grind for port battles is a much bigger issue at hand, yet they continue to focus on other things, like new damage models, and this OP.

1) The number one thing this game is severely lacking and I truly believe is contributing to the population decline is content, (PvE, PvP, and RvR). There were several posts not only by me, but others mentioning ways and ideas to add content to your game. Here are some simplified examples that was proposed by myself and others: RvR based content: Blockade missions: A modified version of a port battle where the blockading ships need to stay in a specific area (circle) to win the battle. If the defending team manages to push a ship out of the circle, then that ship no longer counts towards maintaining the blockade. (3rd rate battle, 20 vs 20) Destroy the Tower: A modified version of a port battle where the attacking team needs to simply destroy or capture all of the towers around the port to win (15 vs 15 5th rates and mortar brigs) Trader escorts: 1 Player in a trader ship needs to get from point A to point B and has a fleet of ships on his team defend the player in a trade ship and the enemy player tries to sink or capture the trade ship. (10 vs 10) Battle of Trafalgar RvR events: On rare occasions, historical battles should appear on the map not just Trafalgar, but many other historical battles. Open World PvP based content: Admiralty missions to sink x amount of player ships from a specific nation: You pick up a PvP mission from admiralty, and it says something like: "sink or capture 5 British ships", or any other enemy nation. Events that appear all over the map with different objectives: Just like the admiralty PvP event, these events should appear all over the map with different objectives, sink at least 1 line ship, or capture at least 1 4th rates ect...... The ship cap should be adjusted and randomized in admiralty events (4vs4) (6vs6) (8vs8) (10vs10).... ect... Events should have different ship limits as well, 4th rate and below, or 3rd rate and below ect... PvE based content: Capture x amounts of trade ships of a specific enemy nation: Pretty self explanatory, if you have an admiralty PvE mission to capture 5 British trade ships, you simply sail to British waters and attack and capture 5 British trade ships to complete the mission. Find and capture a specific ship with a named enemy (kind of like a wanted poster for committing a crime): example: Blackbeard was last spotted in (xx,xx location) heading west, find and capture him in his privateer so that he can be brought to justice. Shipwrecks all over the map you randomly find sailing around in open world: Find a shipwreck, read the captains log and get a mission. I could go on and on with different examples of different content ideas, but it is your game, and I am sure you can use your imaginations to come up with your own ideas. 2) Lobbies and built in game tournaments 3) Please make regions smaller, 3 ports maximum per region preferably 2. Capturing a region should not give you 6-7 ports. If you try and release this game without lots of content in your game like I listed above, it will fall flat on its face. Sorry for the harsh criticism, but this is how I feel. Please consider my post as constructive criticism.

He's messing with you to get you all worked up. Looks like it worked because you are on the forums posting about it.

To be fair, I did read somewhere that they are improving the AI.

1) Do you plan on re-balancing ships? (Specifically ones that are Overpowered compared to their counterparts of the same tier) Would be nice to see the Ingermanland and Constitution used again in 4th rate port battles. Belle Poule's crazy thickness, Victory slightly outclassed by the other 2 first rates 2) Do you plan on fixing the thickness/Penetration problem with ships right now? (More specifically thickness stacking with strong hull, regional thickness stiffness +Live Oak or Mahogany) 3) Do you plan on rebalancing regional bonuses so that more than just 2 are used? (the 2 being pirate refit and strong hull) 4) I would really like to know the devs plans for fixing our current port battle system that most of the community is unhappy with right now. Devs said they had new mechanics that would fix a lot of the problems we regularly see people complaining about. Can you give us some details?

Not all of the EU players that fight for Sweden knew about this and there were some EU players on that were going to go to this port battle. There were 2 players from Sweden and 1 from Germany, and then myself from USA East Coast. I am not sure where Silfarion is from, but his clan does not use the Swedish TS so I was unaware that he was at the port battle last night until I saw his conversation in Global Chat. I did not know that the port battle strike was happening until about 30 min before the PB and I was almost already at the port with my Victory.

Ohh Come on! I am a USA player, and I looked forward to actually participating in a 1st rate port battle last night at a time that is convenient for me in defense for the nation I fight for, which is Sweden. Myself and several other Swedish players were on and we were in the process of building our fleet to defend the port, all 4 of us, with Silfarion apparently at the port with his first rate when I was informed that there would be no defense of the port. My RvR experience is being ruined because no one wants to fight. I just want to log on and enjoy the game and I cant seem to do that anymore because my nation and allied nations have quit. Out of the 200+ or so people that play for Denmark, Sweden, France, or Spain, you mean to tell me we cannot get a group of 25 guys to defend a very important region that many of our players use to build agile hull bonus?! If Sweden loses our Strong Hull region because our nations refuses to man a group of 25 players to defend it simply because its night time for you, I am just going to stop playing this damn game.

One of the things I noticed that makes joining port battles a real pain in the XXX is having to click on the damn swords and then clicking join in the upper right hand corner. Sometimes there will be so many ships surrounding the swords I cannot physically click on the swords and I end up clicking a ship instead, or I click a ship and the swords and the information on the ship covers the join option, or there is just so much lag and low FPS that my game becomes unresponsive for a few seconds. This happened to me at the windward island port battle and 4-5 of our Agamemnon's got stuck in a screening fleet battle that should have never happened because we were all within range of joining the port battle and all 4-5 of our Agamemnon's that were supposed to be in the port battle got sunk by 3rd and 2nd rates and many frigates. Just give me a notification in the upper right hand corner of my screen that says: Join port battle. You click it and you are in.

1) 2 min no attack timer: Once you are plopped back into open world you cannot be attacked for 2 minutes. It doesn't sound like it would make a huge difference theoretically, but having 4x the amount of time (currently 30 seconds), will make screening harder as the attacking port battle fleet has more time to position, sail, join port battle once out of a screening battle. Screeners, in theory, should get 1 shot at stopping the fleet, maybe 2 chances. I think making the no attack timer 2 min would significantly improve the odds of a fleet to making it to the port battle and significantly decrease the amount of times fleets are attacked heading to the port battle. 2) Being able to join the port battle from a much farther distance from the port: Once you are in range (a certain distance away) of the port, you should get an option in the upper right hand corner of the map to join the port battle. However, you should also start in the port battle at a farther distance from the capture regions based on where you enter in open world. Slightly off topic but i think its important to mention: 3) Conquest has to be slowed down significantly: Individual ports should be captured not entire regions at a time. Flipping entire regions with tuns of ports makes conquest way too fast.

Yes and no.... Should port battles be queue based using lobbies? No conquest should be open world based and require open world sailing to actually conquer regions (or ports) Should lobbies exists? Yes! Lobbies should exist so people can enjoy the game without the need to sail in open world. Some people come here to play the game simply for the combat experience, and they should be allowed to have that experience without being forced to sail in what they would consider a "boring" open world.

That and also, nations with larger player populations naturally would have more ports, but the larger they expanded, the harder it got to defend your empire because it would be impossible to get to the port battle if you had an outpost that was simply too far away.

In my opinion, currently, the whole port battle setup and design is broken. The whole system is just dumb from beginning to end and it needs to be rethought. First you have to grind PvE for a few hours to get a port battle. Then wait 2 days Then sail out of a port at a specific time 2 days later and get tagged over and over by screening fleets. And if you manage to make it to the port battle, all you see are heavy rattle snakes or Agamemnons if they are shallow water or 4th rate port battles. Port battles themselves are good and fun, but the process to get to a port battle, all of that needs to change and ships need to be rebalanced badly.

The Devs put forts and towers all over the place and large patrolling AI fleets. Learn to use them to your advantage. I have only been successfully ganked once in my home waters since the ROE update and mostly because I was not paying attention.

PvP2US is DEAD! The playerbase has fallen out from underneath it because of bad development decisions. There used to be tuns of port battles going on even with a peak of 250 players at our US primetime after I got home from work, but because we are locked out and on the same schedule as the EU guys, no port battles can happen during US prime time. I was essentially forced to switch servers for any content at all. At least when I get home from work I can go to the PvP event for a few hours and maybe find some PvP. The current lockout system sucks really bad if you are anywhere in Canada, US, all the way across the world to Australia and possibly parts of Asia. Having a lockout timer to prevent players from participating in RvR is a terrible idea! I dont care if its your night time, its my play time, and I am getting shit on because many players think night flips are bad and they feel they are entitled to have immunity from having ports flipped. The solution is not to have lockouts to prevent people playing at any time of day from participating, it is to encourage good RvR! If the game had a massive playerbase, then finding 25 guys to defend a port would not be too terribly difficult. Also, capturing a region should be removed. We need to go back to conquest where we expanded 1 port at a time. Flipping an entire region that gives strong hull bonus is unbelievably stupid and locks players out from crafting ships they want from suffering one loss. All this tension right now in the forums is due to players being locked out of ports they need for resources and regional trims. If the USA had to capture a region 1 port at a time, not only would we have lots of RvR going on, but a loss of a port would not be a huge crushing defeat like it is now. We also need more resources production ports added across the map for silver, gold, live oak, and mahogany. @Sir Texas Sir and @Chimera please try and keep it civil and dont fall back on accusations and insults please.

Its not entirely your fault @Kloothommel. I believe many of the tension in this game right now stem almost entirely from development decisions. If resources were not so rare, more ports produced them more scattered thought the map, and we didn't have broken regional bonuses that make it so any ships you craft are inferior if you lose that region has made regions so important that losing them is a devastating blow to your nation. If regions were not as important, as in more scattered recourse distribution and no regional trims, and we had smaller but a lot more regions, you wouldnt care so much that the USA took Sunbury back and it wouldn't be such a big deal that the USA got your strong hull region. These game development decision need to be rolled back so that healthy competition is promoted and not the toxic kind we have now.

Total Annihilation is the only acceptable victory condition!

That is a pretty shallow victory then. If your going to declare victory better to annihilate your enemy.