Yoha

If all the ship holds were to be increased, that still won't make the lgv useful as the Indi will still outclass it.

I would like to see the "weight" limits of trade ships be more dynamic than just weight. I think there needs to be a volume and weight aspect to goods that make certain tradeships better at carrying certain goods. For example, indiaman could be great at volume but not as good at total weight...the lgv could be great at weight (like tools), but be bad at total volume. This would force tradeoffs between the trader you chose depending on what you plan on transporting. If weight is the only factor, the biggest hold is always going to be better (shallow:brig and deep:india).

1. PB BR limits are pretty diverse now. I like it the way it is currently. 2. Seasoned woods are fine, they are not game breaking. The slight S-wood advantage is almost never the deciding factor in battles. 3. If you are bad at fighting, a S-wood ship isn't going to change that. It will just make your mistakes more costly. 4. If you take an Oak/Oak ship to anything, you are doing something wrong. 5. If you never get picked for a PB then either get better ships, become a better fighter, or find a new clan/nation. 6. If you can't afford to lose it, don't sail it. Ships are cheap and easy to replace if you are in a semi-organized clan and willing to chip in to help others. 7. If you wan't to play a game like darksouls, then go play darksouls. NA should not try to be like darksouls. 8. Reals are easy to make, dubs are easy to earn, resources are easily found. Naval Action has never been easier for casual players like me to thrive. I don't even have to do trade goods runs to be able to afford all the ships and upgrades I could want.

I would like the game to be more focused on clans rather than nations. To do this there would need to be a diplomacy mechanism in game where for example two clans from two different nations could make a pact. I would also be ok with internal conflicts between clans in the same nation. A hefty admiralty fee for declaring a war on own nation clans would be appropriate in order to prevent abuse.

Major problems with your idea: 1. XP for surrendering can be easily exploited. 2. As an Admiral, XP is useless.

There would be reps at ports if players would start selling reps at those ports. So if you don't like the situation then fix it by selling reps rather than expecting others to fix it for you. We don't need a new kind of rep. What's next, free unlimited crew in the OW so you don't have to use extra crew, rum, or a port to replenish?

Battle XP for players who surrender without earning XP in battle can be exploited very easily. Someone could farm the XP by surrendering back and forth between a couple or more accounts. I don't think there is anything wrong with the current surrender mechanic. The spoils go to the victor as they should.

How is this relevant? You can cap/sink any AI and find dubloons most of the time.

What is broken is the KPR price for dubloons. I would use a major free port (like LaT) to gauge the price of dubloons. The best way to level up crafting is to build the ships you plan on using for yourself, or getting others to pay you in dubloons and materials in exchange for ships. I think dubloons are just fine being part of bigger ship recipes. They are not hard to get if one does pvp or pve.

This is the ideal solution. The defender will still have a material advantage but not the 42lb overpowered advantage.

Allowing players to almost immediately scuttle their ship is not a good game mechanic. It denies the attacker XP and a prize. The current mechanic of surrendering is the appropriate mechanisms for quitting a battle. Defender gets to quit and deny XP, the attacker gets their ship. You can still currently scuttle your ship by hitting the 8 key. It just takes longer and gives the enemy a chance at boarding you as long as the attacker has not put too many leaks in you...in which case they planned to sink you anyway.

I don't think punishing players from more populated nations is the way to balance the game. What smaller nations need is positive reinforcement...like maybe shorter hostility windows on their ports (scaled to size of nation/pop), the ability to fill a PB with AI reinforcements if needed, all main ports having the same development points (would decentralize production, incentivise more smaller factions).

One way to prevent most offensive names would be to allow only a predetermined amount of real words to be used for making ship names. To accomplish this the devs would need to load a dictionary of words and eliminate certain words from the selection.

The solution seems simple to me. 1. Move the connie/uss to 4th rate. 2. Nerf the connie/uss's structure/hitpoints to be in line with other 4th rates in game. 3. Adjust BR accordingly. The USS/Connie as 3rd rates feel very undercrewed, and the broadside weight is underwhelming as a 3rd rate. Maybe then we can hear the end of the Connie threads...

Just because things are the way they are now does not mean they can't be improved on. The "just buy an alt" line of thinking is what's limited. I'm not talking about dockpace or outposts, just the 10 contract limit when buying/selling goods, so please don't conflate the two. You have not added anything valuable to this thread. I'm giving feedback to the developers in the hope they will see it, like it, and implement it.

I don't think the AI ships reroll their composition after they are sunk or captured. I think they recently changed ship notes to allow you to select wood types and trim (have not tested it myself). They used to randomly generate a ship composition before (like elite notes). If you are having difficulty beating the final exam then look up some methods on youtube. As a new player with little to no experience it is almost impossible to beat the final exam.

I think most of you are losing sight of the point of my post. I want to see more commerce and economic competition and a good way to do that is to increase the contract limit. I don't really care why the limit is currently 10 (probably just a nice round number), if the devs wish to, they can change it. Until an actual Developer responds to my post with their rationale for the limit being 10, it is pointless to speculate as to the devs motives. This is not meant to be a bash the Devs thread.

I would like the 10 contract limit to be raised to 20. With the limit being just 10 it reduces competition. More contracts means people will have room to place contracts in more ports than just the biggest ones.

If your nation only has 10 active players then you might as well just operate out of a free port. Alternatively you could work with other nations by offering to screen for them if they screen for you. Most manpower issues in game can be fixed with diplomacy. This is a social game and sides are always fluid.

I would like clans to be able to declare a home port (one they control or a free port) and that port then be a guaranteed outpost for their clan members. Clan members of that clan will still be able to chose the normal amount of outposts + then also have the home port outpost.

1. EXP points should be redeemable for something once you are an Admiral. 2. Make the Indefatigable a 5th rate. 3. Ship notes should allow you to choose wood types. 4. Labor hour banks should be at least 5k without perks. 5. Tools need to weigh at least 10x less. 6. The USS and Constitution ship models seem way too big, I think they need to be shrunk a bit. I have seen the Constitution in real life and it does not seem as big as portrayed in the game. If I'm wrong then ignore this one. 7. Allow players to name their ships. 8. Make trade goods and materials have a weight and a volume component. Then calibrate trade ships to be specialized. Right now its Indiaman trade ships all the time because raw hold size is what matters. 9. Make victory marks more useful. 10. Make capital waters AI fleets not as fast.

Yes to the officer and overseer ideas, no to the individual player shipwright. With the current regional bonus system it would make having to rebuild a shipyard any time you want to build a ship in a new port, way too much work. Instead, have a shipyard in each port, that the admiralty owns, and you can pay a "fee" to use it.

I am still coming to terms with the fact that I actually liked some of Sir Texas' recent ideas in this post... There have been some great ideas thrown around. Everyone needs to be liking good ideas so the devs can see what the players want!

Bad Ideas: 1. Removing OW AI fleets is BAD: Casual gamers like AI fleets because they can get their daily NA fix; Newbies need AI fleets to learn how to fight, board, rank up, make money, and for protection from experienced gankers; Traders need AI fleets for protection from unrestrained ganking. The Only players who don’t like AI fleets are the PVP obsessed players who want easy PVP opportunities anywhere in the OW. I personally think PVP and PVE can exist on the same server. To be honest, unless you are in the capital region of a nation, there are really not that many AI fleets around, so AI fleets can be a great way of protecting those who prefer not to PVP and at the same time creating a challenge for the PVP player who really wants to sink that player. Making AI smarter in battles could also go a long way towards making players happy because then AI would be more of a challenge since right now they are pathetically easy. 2. Hostility System is BAD: I am with the PVP players on this one, port battles should not be generated by smashing AI fleets. Another bad part of the hostility system is the fact that once the hostility flips, it sets a port battle time days in advance. While this might give everyone a heads up so they can try to be there for the battle, most people do not have the same schedule every day so it really limits the casual gamer from participating in PBs, especially since most players are active on the weekend and if they flip hostility on the weekend they have then set up a PB for Monday-Tuesday which is a work day for most people. Solution– go back to the flag system with lord protectors… with some tweaks. This is how it would work, flags would be purchased with some sort of reward that can be generated from raids, like “keys”, depending on the port you want to initiate a port battle in, your clan would have to pay x number of “keys” to purchase the flag. You would have to then sail the flag to a staging circle semi near the port that only players invited to the PB event by the clan that purchased the flag, can see on the OW. This makes it impossible for alts to sabotage the PB by joining the enemy team, it also makes it harder to intercept players going to a PB so if each side fields a fleet, they are mostly guaranteed a PB and some nice PVP. Defenders would be able to stage within the port they are about to defend, and join the PB from the port. To win a PB you would have to reduce the enemy BR by X percentage of their beginning BR and the team that reduces the largest BR percentage wins. Defenders get towers and the map simply becomes a PVP fest instead of a stupid capture the zone point system and chase fest. The PB map would gradually become smaller and push all ships towards each other like it used to, ships outside the circle would sink. Towers would have BR as well, so if the defender does not field an adequate defense force, the attacker can still reduce enemy BR to win. Once a port is captured, the designated lord protector can select a PB time slot. Initially this PB time slot would be 1 hour, but the next week the time selected increases by 30 minutes in each direction. Then the next week it increases again, and again, till the window reaches 24 hours or another nation captures the port in a PB initiated during the PB time slot. This would make it hard to initially flip a port right after it gets flipped, and it will also make it easier for multiple time zones to play in harmony. An interesting aspect could be making ports cheaper to buy flags for if your nation size is smaller than the opposing nation. Each port would have a PB… makes it harder to zerg the entire map. 3. Useless AI resources are BAD: All they do is clutter the shop and make it harder to spot legit resources. Good Ideas/New Ideas: 1. Give PBs a BR limit to promote ship diversity instead of 25 1st Rates vs 25 1st Rates. 2. Keep compass wood hard to harvest… but maybe consider wiping the economy so we all lose our stockpiles of resources. This makes 1st Rates harder to craft which they should be. 3. 1 Dura Ships IF ship recipes for 5-2 dura ships are reduced and the note requirements for crafting upgrades is reduced and the LH cost of crafting upgrades and ships is reduced. Rare gold upgrades also need to be less rare. I would be also ok with 2 dura on all non 1st rates that way you can salvage upgrades before you lose them next time they sink. With 2 dura ships you may not need to reduce the ship recipe costs 4. Clan Pennants and Player Pennants on your ships. 5. Limit players to 5th rates and lower or traders in their fleets, allow fleet cargo holds to be used. 6. Allow battles to remain open for 30 minutes with later joiners starting farther away from battle in battle instance. No BR cap on Players from joining. 7. Allow AI fleets to be pulled into battle instances when a Player is attacked but only allow enough AI in to make the BR equivalent. Close these battles after 2 minutes. If Players do join and overly increase the BR for the side with AI, some of the AI will retreat from the battle to equalize the BR. 8. Keep missions, casual gamers like them. 9. Keep smuggler flags but don’t allow same nation to attack, only allow port entry. 10. Allow clans to pick which port they want to be their “Clan Capital” and have their warehouse located there. Require clans to pay lots of in game money to relocate Clan Capital. Things I like: 1. The regions bonuses for crafting, will make PBs more strategic. 2. The new ship redeemables we get on occasion... Just make it easier for crafters to get them without having to do pvp... Maybe from shipwrecks? 3. The devs, because they are extremely patient with some of the trolls that post on this forum. Stay strong my friends, not everyone who likes PVP is a jerk. FYI: If anyone wants me to clarify my ideas or find solutions to any flaws you might spot in my ideas, just send me a PM. I am a casual gamer but I like PVP and PVE depending on the day, so I think its in the game’s best interest to find a balance between these gameplay styles. My ideas try to achieve this balance.

Alts are a serious problem because they are being used to do things like defensive tagging, battle hiding, PB spot stealing, and messing with aggression. While most players playing do not have alts, there is a prominent handful of players who are abusing it and it is driving more casual players like me away from the game. A lot of games only allow one account per IP but this can prevent players who share the same internet from all playing the game, so I realize that might not be a good solution to the problem. What if there was a limit of 5 accounts per IP max (something like that) and only allow those players sharing the same IP to be in the same nation. While this would not stop the labor hours and resource harvesting advantage of alt accounts, it would at least help reduce some of the unsportsmanlike play styles that alts are currently being used to do.