Remus

It is the nature of ... well, certainly some of our player base ... to gang up on the weak. Liquicity is one of the good guys. With all his gold I'd hate to be on the wrong side of him if he weren't.

Having multiple limiting factors is great: gold, labour hours, resource availability (location and quantity), refit availibility (location), blueprint availibility, number of building slots per player, buidling capacities, drop rates for compass wood - it all adds variety and interest to the game, and I think this is something we both agree on. But they don't all carry the same level of importance. Gold isn't necessarily the most important, but it is the one everyone understands so generally receives the most focus. In this game, gold is farly easy to get hold of (admittedly this may well change), so the problem is not so much making sure ship click costs are affordable as making sure there are sufficient gold sinks. Again, I expect we both agree. Restricting the availability of certain resources: live oak and cedar spring instantly to mind, and restricting the availability of blueprints (or introducing writs or some other mechanism), makes it harder to make certain specific types of ships, but not ships in general, and you can overcome these limits with more sailing (collecting cedar from Bermuda), some convoluted trading (to get live oak from Americans), more grinding to get Marks for writs (writs is a PotBS term - I forget what they are calling the Admiralty ships on Testbed): very much like gold, you can get what you want if you are willing to work for it. But labour hours fall into a different category. They form a hard cap on production, on the number of ships being made. If players (for whatever reason) want more ships, then for an individual player is means paying more money so you get the ship rather than the other chap, but somewhere at the other end of the chain there is someone who doesn't get a ship. But this is a PvP ship combat game (ok, it's other things as well, but PvP ship combat is at its core). The last thing you want to do is place a hard cap on the number of new ships that can be made, for then you are placing a hard cap on the amount of ship combat that can take place. The game is called Naval Action, not Naval Conservation. My 50 players doing all the crafting for 2000 players is rather extrreme, but we must never be at the position where 2000 players cannot make the ships that 2000 players want (want, not need - there should be no 'need' in a game) however hard they grind, haul, conquer, scavenge or anything else the game offers that makes players work for their goodies. I'd much rather 50 players being able to meet all the needs of 2000 than needing 2001, or even 2000 where 500 of them really, really don't want to do crafitng. It's bad enough they have to grind to get money to pay for their ships without having to haul coal to their iron ore port as well. You are right, of course, but it doesn't have to be like this, and I don't understand why it is. Building ships surely costs as much money as mining coal. However it doesn't really matter as there is little point sinking money in iron ore unless you are going to use it to make iron ingots, and then iron fittings and carriages (for example) and ultimately making ships, burning hours in the process. Two of my five buildings have now been sat at capacity unharvested for days because I've got a month or more's stockpile of each resource, so I've stopped sinking gold there. I expect I could stop harvesting wood as well except I seem addicted to compass wood, even though I don't actually use any as I favour teak/planking over strength or stiffness and I'm not at a level to need knees. So I sell it at vast markup for money I don't need. I disagree. I suspect that more ships are made for players to simply to add to their fleets or to replace ships they no longer want than are made to replace actual sunk ships. If you only look at sunk ships, you are missing half the picture. Replacing sunk ships is less than the absolute minimum the economy needs to do, for otherwise after server wipe you are consigning people to just having the four ships they are given, and replacements as they are sunk. I don't know about you, but I want at least 20 ships spread around my outposts. We also need to consider captures from NPCs, but this is difficult as we don't yet know the difference between NPC and player-made ships.. I can tell, but only because we know (becasue of the high price paid for labour contracts) that at the moment labour hours are a limiting factor. If we were in the situation that 50 crafters could supply the need for 2000 players then you are right, we would need to know how many labour hours were actually being used. But right now I can assume everyone is using all their labour hours, farming all their resources or buying off NPCs in the shop (for almost exactly the same price - certainly this is what I find when I buy from NPCs). It seems a l'Ocean Gold, Live Oak Build Strength sinks the most gold per LH day at 70000, and I say it isn't enough. You might now say that only 1500 rather than 2000 players actually use all their labour, and I say, well, that makes the situation worse. 2000 players making gold Live Oak Build Strength l'Oceans (God help us!) would sink 140 million gold a day, but if only 1500 players are doing so then only 105 million is being sunk. Then you say some of the resources are being captured from NPC traders, so the gold isn't sunk after all. Situation worse again. I do say this, but I don't think this is any dispute between us, for if the demand isn't there players will eventually stop producing (as I have done). I do not understand what you mean by resource inflation.

I think I read a post about being able to use fleet ships' cargo holds, but its not in game yet, nor on Testbed. While I am undecided whether this is a good idea when leaving port, I definitely think you should be able to use the cargo hold of fleet ships when exiting battle. Possibly restrict it to ships you've just captured, but I see no problem filling up fleet ships you brought along with you as well or instead of the captured trader. It looks like resources will be rather hard come by after the wipe, and raiding traders (NPC and players) may become an important part of gameplay, for the economy as well as to satisfy the urges of the seal clubbers we have among us. But you have to be able to seize the cargo to make this work, and ideally you should then be attackable yourself. But if you are attackable you also need to be able to defend yourself, which is rather tricky if you are in the trader and the warship is in your fleet.

Have you ever sailed on a ship? Ok, so neither have I, but I have sailed several times on a brig, including an Atlantic crossing and an exhilarating passage across the Bay of Biscay in a force 10 with the wind dead aft. Rolling is much the same fore and aft; yawing is slightly worse fore and pitching is considerably worse fore. Okay, so the pitching angle of the ship is the same throughout its length, but forward you get vertical motion on top of the pitch angle, whereas aft it's mostly just the pitch angle.

I think we must be playing different games. I'd be happy enough if each playing session gave me three battles, one I won, one I escaped from and one I lost. Right now I'm levelling, checking out Testbed, spending time looking at game mechanics and such like, so I'm not playing quite as I would normally, but this whole game is about ship combat, and to my mind ship combat means someone losing a ship. Replacing these lost ships, and supplying bigger, better ships to players as they level up and acquire wealth (these are separate things, btw), should be both the principle driving force of the economy and the primary gold sink in the game. Not at all. Two things: The X amount of labour does not need to be generated by all 2000 players. It would be an entirely satisfactory economy if only 50 dedicated crafters generated the X amount of labour and everyone else let theirs go to waste. What really does not work though if it needs 2500 players to generate the labour to supply 2000 players with ships. Irrespective of how many people the X amount of labour is generated by, it should sink perhaps 75% of all the gold generated by those 2k players each day. I might have the percentage wrong, but 75% is closer to the mark than the perhaps 20% it is now. It cannot be 100% because gold disappears from circulation, either by hoarding (which pretty much everyone does, to some degree) or players leaving the game taking their gold with them. In an ideal world, the amount of gold in circulation divided by the number of active players should remain more or less constant over time. It is a mistake to think of a ship (or anything else) having an intrinsic value. It is also a mistake to think of an individual player's gold acquisitions and spending. I might get 10 gold by capturing an NPC trader and taking its goods. If I sell this to the shop I have brought 10 new gold pieces into the economy, which needs to be sunk somehow so as not to cause inflation. If, on the other hand, I sold the cargo to another player, I would still have 10 gold myself, but no new gold will have entered the economy and no new gold sink is needed. The ship I am sailing in could be sunk in battle (no new gold enters the economy), captured or traded to another player (no new gold for this transaction), listed in the shop (some gold sunk), sold in the shop (new gold into economy) or broken for parts (no new gold). The subesequent owner, if there is one, has the same options. This is why whenever I refer to sunk gold it is at the point the gold passes out of the game. Crafters harvesting oak sink gold. Crafters listing ships in the shop sink gold. Players buying ships from NPC sellers in the shop sink gold. Players buying ships from crafters do not sink gold and players sinking ships don't sink gold either, for the gold was lost to the economy when the ship was made. To me, this says much the same as I was saying, that there is a relationship between gold costs and labour costs.

You don't need to do anything if you want to continue playing only on PvE, unless you want to change nations in which case it is a little simpler to do it before the wipe. If you think you might want to play on a PvP server after the wipe and you don't want to start froim scratch, create a new character on one (or both) before the wipe.

Yes. You need to create a character (and have a battle) on any sevrver you might want to play on in future where you don't want to start from scratch PvP1 -> PvP EU PvP2 > PvP Global PvE > PvE On each server where you have a character you will get: an xp redeemable matching your xp last time you logged on that server a craft-xp redeemable (you don't get this on Testbed) matching your xp the last time you logged on that server four ships. These will probably be independant of xp, and will probably also be redeemables But no gold (at the moment).

I was delighted to find this game uses mast forces, yard angles and manual bracing, even to the extent of having negative polars (though the luffing angles are still far too forgiving). I don't really hope for each individual sail to be modelled, which is effectively what you are asking for. If you want the ship to sail differently you adjust the sails first. Square riggers have considerably more scope for this than fore-and-aft rigged vessels - just study pictures of ships sailing in different weather conditions and different wind angles. I suspect the model is actually quite simple; bowsprits don't appear to be modelled (I lost mine yet had no problem paying off the wind - I think I even tacked with impunity), and I'd hazard a guess that mizzen masts aren't modelled either. It is clear that the visual depiction of a ship doesn't reflect the modelling; the spanker does nothing, alternatively it always helps turn the boat into the wind whether you are at full sails or half sails (which is when it visually furls, iirc). But I would like intermediate rudder positions. I have been trying to work out whether rudder angle acts as a drag but haven't come to any firm conclusion, but this probably means it isn't causing nearly as much drag as full rudder should, which might in turn mean that rudder angle might not actually matter. I look forward to reading some replies from people who actually understand sailing mechanics in this game

Hmm. I haven't found a reference for Teak being grown in the Americas before 1913.

My reply was to a comment which I took - perhaps incorrectly - to be a complaint by a combat-orientated player that they had to spend time crafting. Personally I don't think players should be forced to craft, but at the moment everyone is because of the severe restrictions on labour hours. Two days for a light frigate might well be fine if everyone makes good use of their labour hours, but this doesn't make it right. PotBS did many things wrong but construction times weren't far off, in my opinion. What would you say the equivalent ship is to a Surprise? A Raa, perhaps? Well, a Raa took 0.37 days; a Raa Mastercraft 0.5 days. Combat-orientated players could make a bit of money on the side by using all their labour hours to harvest resources in one port and sell them to guild mates or in the Auction House, with just a few mouse clicks. But simply harvesting resources in NA won't cut it because this uses so few labour hours and it is labour hours that are the problem. Okay, so they could make planks, frame sections, ballast and such like, but even this is unlikely to make much dent in their LH. Or they could set up a slave market labour office in a (generally) inconvenient port and sell their labour that way. But - and I really cannot emphasise this enough - labour is of vital importance to gold balancing. Suppose we just had just one type of ship, there were no intermediate manufactured goods and resources were free and infinite. If this ship took 10 days of labour hours to make and cost 1 million gold, the most gold that could be sunk through crafting would be 100k per player per day. Furthermore these ships would be carefully preserved because it would take 10 days to make a new one. Finally, since it isn't too hard to make 1 million in a few hours playing, the price of these ships would be about 10 million, but this would increase over time because for each ship made - 10 player-days - only 1 million would be taken out of circulation. Now, suppose the labour time was reduced to 1 day, still costing 1 million. Now players could sink 1 million gold per day in crafting. Probably not everyone would, but then not everyone goes out hunting LGVs to make money, so money in and money out of the server might be pretty close. And if enough money isn't coming in, then it's not too hard for the would-be ship buyer to go and capture a couple of trade ships to get the money he needs. Ships would be reasonably plentiful and people would be more willing to risk them since it wouldn't be too hard to get a replacement. The selling price would doubtless be significantly higher than 1 million as the crafter would want reward for his work, but the price probably wouldn't increase much over time. Now set the labour to 2 hours. Every player could make 12 ships a day if they wanted. Well, even the most reckless player wouldn't lose that many ships, so many players would stop crafting altogether and do something more interesting (to them). Crafters can now each sink 12 million gold a day, far more than average income, so inflationary pressures pretty much die away. Oh, the crafter will still want reward so he may charge 2 million, but there won't be any pressure for the price to rise as so much gold can be sunk, and prices would be more likely to fall due to competition between crafters. Players can be as reckless with their ships as they like as they know it will be easy to get a replacement, and even if they have to pay 2 million for it, this isn't an unobtainable amount by any means. I use these just to illustrate the point; I don't actually favour the last example as it wouldn't provide enough interest for people who do want to craft, but it sounds to me a damned sight better for the game than the first.

Yes, true, but the main reason everyone has to get involved in running the economy is because everything takes so long to make. I'm crafting level 26 and I can basically make one gold fifth-rate every 2 days. I've got the materials for more and I'd happily do more hauling, but I'm always stuck for hours. If I bought LCs, I'd need 2 a day to double production and at 500k each I'd have to charge about 3 million for a Surprise to make it worthwhile.

Yes, I'm heading that way myself, that it's the upkeep (rather than building) of big ships that is the gold sink we need. And by upkeep I probably mean repairs as it has to be a usage-based system rather than a calendar-based system so as not to terribly penalise players who only play intermittently. However for it to work as a gold sink, repairs would have to be directly purchased from NPCs, not crafted, because otherwise you're up against the the same problem we have now that you can only sink so much gold per labour hour. Your second idea of towers/fort repairs looks like it's already being considered by the devs as part of a taxation system, but this will surely be low payments spread out over many players whereas what we probably need is large payments that affect just a few.

To me that sounds exactly right. Stern raking was for killing crew, not (as I understand) for sinking ships.

Bartering went out of fashion centuries before this game is set. In the nineteenth century we use gold.

Agreed, but that doesn't necessarily make it wrong or bad gameplay. And I can assure you there is plenly of randomness in real life manufacturing (it keeps me in a job!)

Totally agree on inflation pressure, and I strongly favour having some way to get high-level players to spend enourmous amounts of money with minimal impact on everyone else, but I don't think this is the answer. My main concern isn't the money but the use of labour hours and resource materials in this way. Both these things (well, probably not all resources, but some of them) should be regarded as valauble commodities that aren't to be wasted in this manner. Besides which, with current blueprints, you wouldn't actually be sinking any more money. A player making ships can only spend about 50000 gold a day on crafting before running out of labour hours (if he makes all the resources or buys at cost - not too difficult on the live servers). Even if he makes 10 ships to get the one he wants, he and his suppliers are still only spending 50000 gold a day, which doesn't really ease inflationary pressures. Blueprints will change and it might be worth looking at again when we know what the new ones look like.

The whole RvR system on the PvE server appears to be turned off, and in any case alliances look like being abandoned on the PvP servers so it doesn't make a lot of sense to keep them for PvE, and since players cannot engage in meaningful RvR on the PvE server I'd be inclined to make every nation enemies of all the others. But I'm the wrong person to tell PvE people what RvR system they should have as I play on PvP servers. My last post above was just an idea that came to me which I thought I would share.

The date of Easter was the first thing I looked at when the timing was announced. Of course it would be lovely to get the wipe just before Easter and we all spend the long weekend enjoying this revitalised game. However, I have played online games enough to know that patches often don't go well. Patches on a Friday often leave servers down all weekend and patches just before a holiday are worse. From staff posts, it seems April 20th may be a little optimistic in any case, but at least by announcing it as being after Easter we won't be planning on marathon gaming sessions over the Easter break and end up being disappointed. The timing is good, in my view.

Limiting production in a port is good. Maximum leases might be a way to go about it, but I don't like the idea of a port that the current holding nation current use suddenly becoming viable if it gets conquered. I favour a percentage modifier on building capacities depending on how much resource has been extracted in the previous month (say), applicable to everyone farming that resource in the port and recalculated at the same time each week (say), perhaps Monday's maintenance.

Gosh, you like things easy, don't you? For a resource to be rare, it has to be ... well ...rare. Do you want all resources to be available in KPR or Charleston? With two ports, it is quite likely all live oak will end up the same nation's hands, it being unusual to have equally matched nations, and with current placement the US have a geographical advantage. But what if there were three, four, six or ten live oak ports? Would US (I'll assume for the moment that US is the dominant force on the server) be happy with just their two LO ports? Of course not! They don't need to conquer ports to get more LO for their own use, but they'll want to deprive other nations of the resource. And if they are dominant, they'll get the ports. What do the other nations do then? There are some counters to this: for example a couple of LO ports in the Antilles will be difficult for US to attack so far from home, but if one of the other nations is dominant this won't help so much. But however many LO ports there are (assuming they are few enough for LO to remain 'rare'), how many do you think the Dutch might be able to keep hold of? I see the following: For any rare resource, it may be assumed that in time it will all be captured by the dominant nation, and small nations won't get a look in at all. The most likely reason a rare resource remains in the hands of a lesser nation is because of an informal alliance If live oak gives and advantage in port battles, and if only one nation can make live oak ships, then that nation's dominance will be reinforced Therefore, for gameplay reasons, it is vital that other nations can obtain resources they do not own, and I would concentrate my attentions on the mechanisms for this before looking at how many live oak ports there should be and where they should be placed. We already have a few mechanisms for distributing resources between nations, and I can think of a couple of others: Sail up to the port with smuggler flag and buy from the shop. But seeding resources in the shop is likely to be turned off, so the only resources on sale will either have been previously sold anonymously by crafters, which would be hopelessly uneconomical for them to do, or would have been listed by crafters with their name against the listing, something which might not go down too well with the nation's leaders. Attack trade ships (NPC or player) leaving the port, and hope they are carrying the rare cargo. In the case of the current live oak ports, attacking ships coming into St Marys is probably just as effective. There has to be a mechanism whereby the attacker can keep the cargo, and while I don't really like the idea of using fleet ship holds for long OW voyages, it does make sense to be able to add a ship including its cargo to your fleet when exiting battle. While I'd love to say you should only be able to exit to OW not the nearest friendly port, the different battle and OW speeds/timescales don't make this practicable. But exiting to nearest friendly port will most likely dump you in the free port you wanted to go to anyway, or (since there are no alliances) a port of your own nation where you may well have an outpost and be safe. I don't think the attacker should be entirely safe from reprisals, but should have more of a chance than exiting to OW currently allows. Players in the rare resource port's nation can ship the resource out for listing in foreign shops at a handsome profit, where they can hope their name won't get passed back to their own nation's leaders. This may well be attractive gameplay for some and in my opinion is perfectly legitimate (it is only cross-teaming if you play alts on different nations; here I am thinking of a single player without alts, whose motive is profit). Elsewhere a reputation system has been talked about. This sort of behaviour might lower rep with your own nation but would certainly gain it with the nation you sell to. If there is a reputation system with different nations, then some players might be able to gain rep with the port owning nation enough to set up buildings in the rare resource port. They'll still have to ship the goods out though ... Anyway, I hope this adds a little more food for thought than merely crying for more resources with less sailing to get them.

Oh, just that I prefer looking for my own enemies on OW rather than getting them handed to me on a plate. Also I have spent a lot of time crafting and looking through the economy stuff. Setting up outposts and buildings crippled me in the early days so attacking traders was my bread and butter (and in the first few levels gave a lot more gold and about the same xp as missions). Now I'm in frigates and have plenty of money missions are rather more attractive, but if I play this game like I played PotBS I'll be dividing my time pretty equally between crafting, studying combat mechanics and solo PvP hunting, with the odd PB thrown in for fun. Now, I wonder where I put that headset ... In answer to your other question, the mission rank is the rank at which you should be able to take them, if you bring a ship that's also of that rank. So a midshipman in a cutter shoud be able to complete a midshipman mission and an M&C in a Surprise should be able to complete a Master & Commander mission. Sometimes you can, but I'd generally recommend picking the level below the ship you want to take with you. But anyone can take any level, and xp and gold are rewarded on mission level not player level

Without any AI on your side? Midshipman missions usually give you a helper, and the one I tried on Testbed did too. I don't particularly like missions so I haven't done a great deal of them (and only up to M&C level as that's myu current Live rank), but Testbed and Live seem set about the same to me in terms of ships. Midshipman missions are pretty much impossible for anyone actually ranked midshipmen to do anything with except hide behind the AI friendly.

I've been mulling over how this might work for PvE, for I have seen a couple of other posts on the subject. Clearly players of one nation cannot attack another nation's port, for without PvP the defendimg nation would have to rely on AI shjips which hardly seems fair. So it seems the attack has to be AI-generated and players have to defend. So far, so good. If the player-defenders win then they will all have had a jolly good time and everyon'e happy ... but what if they lose? Does the port get taken away from that nation? This is quite a step removed from AI aggressiveness in Open Water - if you don't want to fight on OW you can pretty much run away, but running away from a port battle means losing the port. There's another, historically correct, approach. Still involving an aggressive AI attacking (or, to put it in historical terms, blockading) a port. There could even be an AI blockading fleet outside the port on open water which traders have to run the gauntlet of to get their materials in and out. Defenders can choose to sail out to join in battle or remain in port where they cannot be attacked. But still, although the defending players have now consciously decided rather than been forced to fight, they could still lose. What then? Their offline compatriots who farm resources in the port won't be best pleased that a handful of players decided to engage in battle they weren't compelled to, had their fun (presumably) and, as a result, mucked it up for everyone else. So where does this leave us? I think port battles where ports can change hands isn't possible in PvE, but blockading fleets might work: AI randomly decides to blockade a port with a suitably large fleet or fleets AI fleets appear on OW and attack all players entering or leaving port (if they can) Defending nation players can join together in the port - which can be organised like a port battle with a definite time, contention points and so on - to flight the blockading fleet If the players win, they get rewards and the blockading fleet(s) disappear If the players lose, they lose their ships (if they failed to escape) and the blockading fleet remains, but the port still remains in their hands. After a period of time (a week, perhaps) the blockading fleet disperses. Or you could just use existing events for large scale battles, but I do rather like the idea of blockading fleets, myself.

I suppose we need to know what they will do with smuggler flags. Trading is one thing, but the ability to set up outposts and buildings might be more important. I must admit I had forgotten about PotBS reputation. Didn't it only apply to European Traders (which were pretty useless)? As I recall there were no restrictions for port access or to the AH but no foreigners were allowed to build, but I mostly played FT and would have been careful to retain AH access. I must admit I had been thinking of loyalty / reputation as your standing within your own nation, and Admin's 'other organizations' I read as probably nothing more than 'or Pirate equivalent'

Admin's original post mentioned 'loyalty points'