Raekur

So if I am understanding this complaint correctly, Despe you are complaining that 2 ships that combined have less firepower than yours did not close to a range where you could do more than take pot shots at them. They harassed and weakened your ship while preventing you from inflicting a large amount of damage to theirs. You chose the weapon load on your ship the same as they did, the difference is that they made a better choice while you were hoping to run across a trader who was slower than you that your carrows could tear apart with ease. So you got upset because they would not make it easy for you. There were several times where you could have chased Hardy down into an area that would restrict his area to maneuver in and you turned away. That was your choice not theirs. On other occasions you fired only on shot or two instead of all available, again your choice. Your ships can dish out over 1200 points of damage using mediums compared to their 500 and you expect them to just close in and brawl with you at point blank range? You must really expect everyone else to be utter morons to think that a ship carrying longs will close to 200m away from a carrow laden ship when it has absolutely no reason to at all. This is not a tribunal worthy thread, more of a whining fest because you were ill equipped to deal with 2 smaller ships that were fitted for dealing with you in a manner that neutralized your advantage.

What I am wondering about is the crews of the Raiders. Does anyone have a screenshot showing that the Brig (normal crew of 110) actually had 310 and the Trader Snow (crew of 65) were at over 200? I wonder if the admins are aware that the peace server does not have the same number of players that the war server does. At the time of this reply (server time 07:11) the current population on the peace server is 145. Maybe instead of being called Raiders they should take a page from Firefly and call them Reavers considering the number of men on board those ships.

How about a upgrade or perk that increases the radius for looting. Currently have to be close enough for a crewman to literally jump from deck to deck. For instance: Longboats Loot Radius +.50 Oak x50 Hemp x50 Cotton Sails x1 If you want a penalty included then the maximum weight is 100 that can be retrieved without closing to the normal loot radius. Cooldown timer of 60 seconds to prevent spam usage to retrieve multiple small items. Clan GA

Just to ask the obvious question, was the deck below water by the time you came around to loot it? There is a finite time to get to a ship before the looting becomes unavailable.

If the port went neutral it was from one of two things, either NPC attacked and won or the port owner released ownership of it. In either case, if the buildings were not native to the port (Hemp and Stone Block in this case) but were investments then these would be lost when ownership of the port switched to neutral. Hostility for a port is done via missions taken from another port. Since Gibraltar is a county capital it can be attacked from the nearest hostile port. Players take hostility missions from there and run missions and if successful it will generate hostility against the port. Once the hostility level reaches 100 a port battle is set provided the missions are completed within the range of the port battle timer for the port.

I dont think you quite understood my point. While yes there is upkeep for those ports you want a timer on, my suggestion would affect the amount of funds gained from taxes. So instead of a base 10% larger nations would be under a higher tax rate and thus would earn less from taxes. Imagine that even if the port owner set the tax to 0 there would still be a flat imposed tax of say 10% thus reducing the money earned by taking trade goods there. This could prompt traders to deliver their goods to other ports belonging to a different nation since the tax is nationwide. The only way for the affected nation to gain that tax level again is to reduce the number of ports they own.

I wasnt thinking of a large amount but 1 xp per min would be nice reward for evading 5 to 1 odds. And considering how difficult it is now to even rank up a mortar brig every little bit helps. As far as someone in a SOL rate doing this, (i only have data for the first box for a Christian as a reference) the first box of a christian would take over 35 hours to open using this method.

The main issue I see with that approach is that larger nations would aggressively go after ports just to gain more resources to counter the loss of available plots in their main ports. This would not curb the larger nations from taking over the map but actually give then just cause to do so. While yes it would force them to have more merchant ships in the open world to move the supplies I don't think it would be much of a hindrance to them as they would be able to form a large fleet to move the resources. Small nations would be choked to death for lack of resources and inability to keep up production to counter losses incurred defending their ports.

What about imposing a income tax based on the number of ports owned? This tax could be considered a maintenance cost for internal relocation of funds from outer colonies back to the capital and would be money not given to any player or clan. Even if a nation with a large number of ports wanted to compensate the loss by capturing more ports it would be a diminishing return until the large nation gave up ports to balance out their income. The only tricky part is determining what the number of ports are that establish a balance for the nation and how much of a penalty is imposed by having over this number.

Where are the patch notes that state that the battle closes in under 12 min? I hopped over to Truxillo today to see how many were in the battle defending it and there was nothing, no crossed swords or anything giving any indication the battle was even underway. In a normal PB defenders and attackers are able to join within the first 20 min or so, why is this being done so differently? Is this an intentional attempt to just drain money and resources from players? Maybe instead of calling them Raider battles they should have been referred to as Kobayashi Maru engagements.

I think the main thing that should happen is that ships within a rank should have more variety that would better fit into a players particular play style. Have one ship that is slow but heavy with moderate damage output, one that is fast and maneuverable with low damage output, and one that is moderate speed and armor but high damage output. What we have currently is ships that have very little in stats difference and thus needs the player to adapt to the ship and use upgrades in an attempt to get it to fit into their style. Some players like the brawlers which have a lot of armor and damage but take about a week to turn around while others like high speed and lighter guns and only take about a day to turn around. The turn rate nerf that was applied was a knife in the back to those players who preferred the skirmisher approach of out maneuvering their opponent without having to resort to using something like the snow and there being nothing in the frigate or lineship rates that could do the same regardless of what mods you cram into them.

The problem was that at that time the players around Truxillo either did not have a ship that could fight a trinc as we were still trying to build up our ship yards to build frigates or were unwilling to engage. I dont know what time you play in but I have seen you around in my later afternoon. At first there were a few that were willing to engage them using shallow ship in an attempt to drive them off but that eventually lessened after ship losses or being unable to catch them. By the time trincs were seen around truxillo the raiders started showing up in wasa's. I am proud that Britain has managed to rally and build up as well as they could and are managing to put up the fight they can, this was a forgone eventuality as once you can turn out 1st rates it evens the playing field. The issue now is that a large amount of players that were british after the wipe have moved to other nations and some have even been raiding the truxillo area. I think actions like this are deplorable at best and show a complete lack of honor. Leaving a nation because you didnt get your way is fine, but turning around and either getting another nation to start raids against it or attacking it outright is a bit childish. I know one particular clan that has done this THREE times and yet they still have clans willing to support them.

I find it absolutely comical that the Dutch are now complaining about their traders being attacked. I have seen dutch raiders well withing British waters for the last few MONTHS. You think that maybe your traders being hit are in retribution to the countless number of traders that have been destroyed by dutch captains? I guess you missed that little perspective.

With the front line mechanics it has become very easy for russia to defend key location should they chose to. Look at the last time George Town was captured by Russia. They did have an extensive fleet positioned there and thwarted 3 attempts to recapture the port if I remember correctly. One at least one of those occasions the british never made it into the port battle. Their holding onto this single port allowed them to capture Santanillas and Cayman Brac and turn them to available to all for use in raiding Truxillo and the entire southern coast of cuba. Within about 2 weeks of Russia getting established in the gulf there were daily raids from Belize to Truxillo which hindered many from moving supplies to ship building ports. Add to this the losses of ships who were attempting to defend the area (initially 6th rates facing off against trincomolee's and later wasa's) it more than doubled the slow progression of britain being able to defend the area. That trend has been ongoing to even today with 3 raiders who parked themselves between utilia and trux. The main thing that I think worked to stop the amount of raids is that the raiders have moved on to other areas and that truxillo now has defensive emplacements. They wont, I am confident in that. While I know the devs have claimed that the battles are able to be won and I know one ONE occasion it was, the only way that a small nation does not get stomped into a steaming cow pile is to make sure the algorithm that selects ports only selects the highest tax ports. This should effectively eliminate small nations from the list of possibilities. That is until the ones that are being targeted every weekend start complaining. I am pretty sure russia will stir up a stink if Vera Cruz is attacked every single weekend for generating over 70 million real (and that is IF the selection process is based on taxes and not development). If they do the selection process by a ports investment amount than even small nations can still be a target. Personally I think the selection should be based SOLELY upon the taxes generated by the port regardless of port points spent on the port.

I really cant see how lowering the BR is going to have any positive impact. Lowering the BR just means fewer 1st rates enter the battle not that the rate of the ship sent will change. The other thing is that the BR of the port currently means very little considering the size of some escort fleets sent with the port battle fleet. Even if you lowered the BR to 3000, russia would still send 20 1st rates to the port and then send in 2 or 3 of them. You still can not stop them unless you commit 20-25 equal sized ships. I think this is the point that most people are missing. Russia got such a huge jump in establishing an economy that a war of attrition mean absolutely nothing to them now. Russia losing 3 or 4 1st rates has less impact on their ability to field a fleet than Britain losing 1 1st rate. These NPC raiding missions is just going to make things worse for the very same reason. Smaller nations can not field enough ships/screeners/canoes to stop over 13,000 BR of ships approaching a port. Focusing on the mechanics of a port battle at this point is pointless due the the resources available to the larger nations, lowering the BR only helps them as they will need to commit fewer ships to achieve the same outcome. As to factions/clans/players moving to russia, what did you expect? How many months of getting raided every single day do you think is acceptable before someone says to hell with this and either switches or leaves the game (the online value dropping from over 900 to a little over 200 i think indicates what choice was made). Stop barking at the players to fix this issue. They moved to russia because it is easier to rebuild there than any other nation currently. Until the gulf becomes a focused hunting ground 24x7 nothing will change. The game is one of economics, how fast can you replace losses compared to other nations. If it takes russia only 3 hours to generate/gather the resources to replace a group of lost 1st rates and it takes spain a week to do the same, spain is going to get crushed and it will not matter the skill levels because eventually spain will not be able to produce enough to cover the losses. Think of it this way, China in one of their wars had over 50 men per rifle, so their tactic was to just overrun the target and every time the guy who had the rifle died the guy next to him picked it up and kept going. China could afford to lose 20 or 30 men to every defender killed just because china had the extra. That is what the game has devolved into at this point, russia got a massive headstart on establishing an economy and now the devs have undercut it further hindering the smaller nations ability to generate cash. At this point, there is very little that can be done to change what is. Players will change to russia just to hide and rebuild. What the game will become is a bunch of alts joining russia and doing trade runs and shipping the money back to other nations. It wont save the smaller nations, but it will at least allow them a chance.

I encountered a similar issue where I would select a knowledge to go into the slot and the slot would revert back to the + afterward. The fix is to make the ship your active or Main ship then select the knowledge for the slot.

The only right you have is to be able to play the game. To think that you have the right to tell the devs how to develop the game is mistaken entitlement at best. Just because you purchase a plane ticket to fly somewhere does not mean you have the right to gain access to the cockpit. Regarding crafting, a while back when you had to build components for crafting a ship it was actually very nice because even those that were not dedicated ship builders could actually help in the construction and gain crafting experience. Why this was viewed as a bad thing is beyond me other than the space in the warehouse that was used (granted there were ways to deal with it easily). Crafting was simplified I would guess is appease the pvp players that did not want to be hindered by having to wait for a ship to be crafted since component building could cause a ship to take a couple of days to complete if the crafter was having to do everything alone. Will the crafting be improved beyond what it is currently, I doubt it as it does not aid in what I believe the primary focus of the direction the game is going and that is making the game for the pvp players over all the rest of the player base. I have over 4000 hours into this game and have watched the trending the changes have focused upon and it is not to the benefit of the crafters or traders.

simple solution, on the PVP server bring back the duel option that was available a couple years back. Players enter a queue and are placed in a 1 v 1 battle when another player is available at random. The whole "we want pvp element added to the pve server" i think was what led to the loki rune being added and the disaster that followed. There should be NO pvp element on the pve server at all. Just convince the devs to bring back the duel and that way you can have your pvp without being ganked, chased, or being drawn into battle when you do not have the time to spend on it.

Will the NPC raiders still have a higher BR than the port permits? This screenshot is from Misteriosa today, a 10,000 point port.

While a lot of your suggestions 'could' help new players you have to consider the changes that have already occurred towards this very subject. There used to be reinforcement zones around the starter areas to aid players that were attacked near the port, this was removed due to a few pvp seal clubbers who claimed that admiral ranked players were hiding in the areas. While I doubt these claims have any substance to them, the end result was that the reinforcement areas were removed and only the capital zone remains which is quite tiny and limits new players to having to sit and wait for an ai to sail up to them and pray that some loki rune does not jump in. Best way so far to get new players to leave is that stupid loki rune.

On thing that would be nice is to gain XP from getting away from a fight. I had 4 battles against the same group chasing me back to port while sailing a mortar brig vs 5 russians. They eventually caught me and sank me but not until after 2 hours of pursuit...and i got 17 experience for it.

A: The joining player is not able to steal the ship since once he is out of battle he is returned to port not OW. B: Traders are typically slower than most other vessels, so this would be viewed as just gifting a reward to the host player. And it could be abused if the joining player is friendly with the host player, he would just sail the trader up to him and sit there. C. About the only acceptable option but admins may contest it since it is against the reasons they state that it was added in the first place. Though I cant really see anyone on the peace server actually asking for PVP, that is what the war server is for.

NPC ships are not buffed? Then they must have something helping them maintain speed once their sails are down below 70% and are able to maintain the same speed they had when the fight started. Maybe the NPC ships have acquired the mystical technology of Duct Tape.

Because if they add it to the pve server it would have to be added to the pvp server and you know what kind of crap storm that would cause.

No you are not forcing players to log into the war server, more like forcing players who want to gain ranks by attacking ai to now fight against veteran players. If you actually read what I wrote you might understand why the population went from 1200 to 200 in a very short period of time. So yes, you made your money and ensured that the idea of a refund was a very remote and near impossible process. Following this business model, it will be interesting to see how successful naval action 2 will be. So what exactly do you expect new player retention to be when the experience they have includes fighting an ai that rips them apart (due to loki), an economy that makes it take months to build anything (considering the lack of ways to generate a million reals), and there being nothing as an incentive for veterans to help new players? There have been several suggestions made to address these issues but since they do not benefit hardcore pvp players they were rejected/ignored/discarded.