Angus McGregor

Maybe offer a modest ship redeemable (Privateer?) for starting your character in a small pop nation.

I don't expect the devs to work through the weekend, so Monday it is. The pacific as a PvE zone would work. Just not sure how you'd get assigned to a Nat Capital port over there... add a PvP/PvE transfer function? And then there's adding code to make sure tow requests, and battle escape to friendly port didn't cross the divide.

Beyond advice for how to lessen heeling in any ship... what everyone seems to be side stepping is his suspicion that stiff build and optimized ballast don't seem to be having any effect on heel for his Vic's

I'll support any idea that makes your decisions just as important as the XP grind. I especially like the anti-griefing aspect that can demote you for questionable conduct. Not sure I'd have called it an 'efficiency' rating, but nothing better springs to mind at the moment My one concern is for the trading and crafting captains out there and how they would increase their 'efficiency' rating.

I have always been told by others that fleet ships are auto-equipped with their highest caliber allowed medium cannons and this will override anything you have installed on them. Never thought about your second question, but I'd guess you'll get the speed penalty from the above mentioned auto-equipped guns. Be nice to get definitive dev info on both counts.

I think admin has said that the craft and rank XP are Steam global values. As such, GameLabs cannot reset them, only Steam can. If true, the million dollar question is why GL implemented the XP's that way. Must've been a reason... dunno.

I'm tempted to suggest a national tax to the governor on all captains that increases with rank and number of controlled counties. This would include pirates in the form of a brotherhood loyalty tribute. That might also put a slight damper on alt accounts used for questionable purposes.

Geez yes. First - there hasn't been enough time, the jury should still be out. Suggest *tweaks* sure, but man we have got to stop asking the devs to change the world when something isn't *exactly* what we'd hoped or wanted. Guess what, they listen and then we're back to square one on figuring out what went wrong. I don't even do PB's but the video's I've seen look like a much more interesting mixture of planned tactics and utter mayhem. There's MUCH bigger and better fish to fry than an overhaul of PB's yet again. The only flat note for me is the inability of the attackers to actually begin the PB at a specific moment. Waiting for wind advantage? Not sure what admin was thinking when discussing that. Ain't gonna happen when the timer has started and points are accumulating from an exact moment determined 46 hrs earlier. For attackers to be able to wait, the defenders shouldn't be able to join and the timer shouldn't start until the first attacker enters the PB. Just limit the time window beyond the 46hr point to something like 15 minutes so the attackers can't dilly-dally waiting for *perfect* conditions.

No - I haven't read the PB entrance text since I've never attempted to enter a PB since I'm mainly a trader/crafter. I'm only asking with an eye to documenting it in the wiki, which is so far out of date it has info about the old flag system in it. I'd hoped someone could point me to a dev post with details. All we ever seem to get is addendums that assume quite a level of previous tribal knowledge. And yes I read, I read through the forums trying to find this stuff for the wiki all the time. No wonder people are saying the learning curve for new people is ridiculously high. I have >500 hrs in since late September and I'd be lost if it wasn't for Youtube mostly, and the wiki for specific numbers and ship comparisons.

Where is this documented???

I always thought the NPC ships were sailing at 'normal' speed. Not enjoying any of the speed boosting player ships get.

Okay - thanks for the explanations. Dispels a few myths in my head that have been there quite a while.

For the life of me I cannot understand why they would design warships with a completely glass... uhhh, derriere. Such an obvious and easily remedied flaw. At the very least put a heavy bulkhead between the rear cabins and the gun decks. What was the thinking of the time that made them keep doing it? Just so the captain had enough light to admire himself in a mirror?

Hmmmm - some knee jerk reactions and random thoughts... Good idea to require a majority of 'active' players vote for alliances... not just majority of voters. Suggest that voting be prompted during log in when applicable. Good idea to have alliances carry a cost with them. Maybe have alliance renewals cost a bit more each time (to discourage perma-block alliances). Reserving 5 port battle slots for alliance captains may be a bit steep... it should be a very serious handicap if they no-show, but not an automatic loss. Maybe 2/3 slots? Also suggest that the slots can be filled by a captain from any allied nation, not just the closest. That may cause disastrous confusion. Alliance partner that doesn't send aid to a port battle causes alliance to end sooner? National espionage (alliance sabotage) - an enemy dropping war supplies in national capital of either nation causes alliance to end sooner?

It feels like I'm operating in a total vacuum here in the suggestion section. A lot of ideas get written up, flamed by some - contributed to by others. What's missing is some commentary from the GameLabs side. It's been said before and it's true - a really productive early access phase includes more conversation between testers and the development team. Sometimes a simple - "Nope, we won't even consider this because the game engine would need to be completely reworked to handle it and that isn't going to happen." This would save the community a lot of time and in some cases spare us from bitter flame wars over contentious ideas that are going nowhere anyway. Other ideas - "We'd like to do something like this but the problem would be 'blah' and we don't see a way to prevent it." Then we can all concentrate on brainstorming a specific issue instead of just blundering in random directions. These kind of interactions won't take up much time and don't have to be made for every suggestion. Just shut down the dead ends, and solicit more discussion on stuff that looks really promising.

I daresay that a lot of people got tired of the endless bickering and same old suggestions being rehashed here in the forums and have stopped checking in. Some could maybe be prodded into looking at this poll, but don't get your hopes too high.

The reality is that they either play on PvP2 or they cannot play at all due to extreme lag when connecting to a European server. If they could play on PvP1, don't you think they'd have bitten that bullet by now instead of sticking with an empty PvP server? As a show of commitment to its players, Gamelabs continues to pay the cost of running PvP2.

not the country capital, the county (no 'R') capital

A thought I wrote about in a previous post has been kicking around and getting further refined in my head and I figured it's worth expanding on. The idea is to generate hostility through mini PvP zones in front of county capitals, very similar to the daily PvP event zones but smaller. They could be created through an additional 'Blockade' option in the missions menu. After coordinating with fellow nationals and allies, a player selects the county to blockade similarly to selecting the county for a PvE hostility mission. A blockade mission marker (crossed swords) is put in front of the capital port of the selected county, in the center of what will become the 'blockade zone'. That marker can only be seen by the player who launched the mission and will only remain open for a set period of time, maybe 1 hour? When the blockade mission player activates the crossed swords, the blockade zone is created in front of the port. The blockade is announced to the defending nation and is placed on all player maps. The blockade zone will stay open for 12 hrs, BUT only as long as attacking nation ships remain in the blockade zone. Hostility will accrue at say... 15 points per minute, 900 per hour, or the full 10000 points in just over 11 hrs. The defending nation can only break the blockade and stop the incremental hostility from continuing to increase by actively hunting and eliminating all attacker ships from within the blockade zone. While the blockade zone is open, hostility generated by all PvP and PvE hostility combat within the entire county is added to or subtracted only from the hostility level for the nation that initiated the blockade. The hostility is not tracked separately for each of the allied attacking nations as long the blockade exists. Defender victories lower the hostility, attacker victories further increase it beyond the minute by minute zone increases. Any PB triggered during the blockade will be 'owned' by the nation that created it. Optional: Pirates cannot be the ally of any nation, but they can affect the hostility generation purely by virtue of whose ships they defeat. Eliminate a defender ship or any of their allies, hostility goes up. Defeat an attacker ship or any of their allies, hostility goes down. Similarly, other nations may assist pirates with blockades by virtue of whether they are allied with, or at war against whoever is opposing the pirates. 'Enemy' status is not enough, they must be 'At War' with the pirate opposition. I know this can't be lashed together quickly, but I think it's a step in the right direction for PvP hostility. I hope the devs will consider it for later. TLDR: use mini PvP event zones to increase hostility for a county, where the defenders not showing up is not a viable option.

Thanks - that does a better job of filtering out the really old stuff. Just not sure how the old posts end up with an 'unread' status.

My 'Unread' activity stream keeps resurrecting posts from ages ago that isn't new or unread at all. But if I use 'Mark site read', that same stream will now be blank. Any idea why the old stuff keeps showing up?

Better prizes? Free (VRare) paint schemes and Ship redeemables, what more do you want??? The PvP events are a temporary bone thrown to the PvP people to try to offset the low server populations. And as I suspected would happen, a segment of players are just using it as a self-serving opportunity to gank instead of making any attempt to keep it enjoyable for the majority. A sarcastic "Well done" to them.

I'm guessing the focus now is the new boarding system that we were given a peek at. Its probably too late now to put that on hold. But yes, I have a short list of existing issues that I would much rather see fixed than get any other brand new toys. OW PvP battle (and PvE hostility mission) instances should stay open for 10-15 minutes (or longer) with the later entering ships getting spawned in at the pull circle perimeter like I've outlined before. (see below) kind of a new toy but RvR hostility given a PvP mechanic that kind of already exists. I'm thinking nation triggered, county specific, small PvP event zones that stay open for 24 hrs in addition to the PvE hostility missions. One county PvP event per nation per day that is shown in the Map. National voting on Yes/No for any PvP hostility for tomorrow and if yes which county? Idea for improvement on joining OW PvP battle instances

Same with "Send to Fleet" No idea why we're forced to deselect the ship in question first. It's a pain in the rump.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but NA already has a well established clan structure for RvR conflict. They're called "nations".