Remus

I quite like the lidea of building level 2 shipyards in shallow ports, making frigates and listing them in the shop for the unwary to buy. Now, where's that devil emoji?

Perhaps they could seed a few smuggler traders (TBrig/TSnow) of the home nation in capital areas. These automatically lock (well, except pirates, I expect) and are a good starting point for brand new players.

Well, I'm just me and don't contribute a great deal, but for what it's worth I'm coming from PvP1 to Global. Despite being EU based I cannot abide the squabbling over night flips as if this MMO is a private LAN party where the game stops when we decide to go home. Also I suspect Global will be busier.

As one of probably very few NA players to have actually used a sextant to navigate I can tell you it would be impossible to use one in game. Even at real life speeds, taking a sight east or west at dawn or dusk you'll be amazed just how fast stars and planets move (yes, yes, I know ...). With 24 hours compressed to 20 minutes you'll never stand a chance. There are two key relationships. An error of 1 minute in reading the sextant translates as 1 nautical mile on the ground, and an error of 15 seconds of time translates as 1 minute of longitude on the ground, a little less than a nautical mile in the Caribbean. With the speed the sun and stars move (and, by the way, we don't seem to have accurate constellations in game, let alone planets) we'll be lucky to get 5 degree accuracy reading the sextant - that's 300 miles, and with the clock only incrementing in 10 minutes steps every 8 seconds or so, well, 10 minutes of time is 40 minutes of longitude, or 2/3 of a degree (which isn't unrealistic for the time, I might add). But knowing the time and shooting sights is only half the problem. The calculations aren't the trigonometry you learned at school, and it used to take me about 15 minutes using sight reduction tables to plot a fix. Now, there are two caveats to this. Most celestial navigation is difficult, but there are two ways of finding latitude which are easy, and one of finding longitude which is easy but unreliable. A dawn or dusk sight of the pole star gives you your latitude with no further calculation necessary, except possibly deducting the dip of the horizon if you are in an elevated position. You take readings at dawn or dusk because you must be able to see the horizon. A noon sun sight is a little harder because (a) you need to watch it rise and then start to fall so you can determine its highest point and (b) you then need to look up the sun's declination for that date and time and add or deduct this from the sextant reading (as well as deducting the height of eye angle as before) With the noon sun sight, if you can determine the exact time the sun reached its highest point then you can use the ship's chronometer and the equation of time to determine your longitude. The equation of time is the easy bit, but you'll need to be very skilled to determine the time of noon within 15 seconds (1 minute of longitude, remember) and then any errors in your chronometer also translate as 15 seconds per minute. Even these 'easy' methods would be very difficult to program in game, I imagine.

I'm not saying what you are dong is wrong or against the rules, merely that it gives you a flawed perspective when looking at labour hours. Yes, I know we could all set up to do cross server LH trading after the wipe, but is this how the game should be played, do you think? Alts aren't nothing but other chars/players, as you put it. There is only one Sir Texas Sir. There are some things that alts can do easily, like harvesting labour hours. There are some they could do but only with added risk/difficulty such as hauling, and there are some they cannot do at all, such as buy more teak when there is only 1000 for sale. But - and this is the important part - alts cannot fight any more battles than a single player can (or if they do - outside of testbed - it probably comes under exploits and is against the rules). Alts cannot lose any more than a single player. You put more stuff into the game through crafting but you aren't removing it quicker through sinking. Now I have no idea what is in the devs minds - too many recent decisions leave me baffled - and perhaps they really do want to quietly encourage econ alts as it brings them in more money and helps pay the bills. But I don't think a game should be designed around alts.

The 'average' player will lose as much as he wins. If he has a succession of losses - perhaps merely two on the trot - he may have to return to PvE to grind some gold. I think this would be a reasonable state of affairs. But this isn't where we are. Right now you can mostly win in PvP and still have to grind PvE when you lose. This is what is wrong.

And he's said he'll trade labour hours between servers: Oh, @Sir Texas Sir, don't you see that your even thinking of doing this shows LH are too restrictive? If LH were properly balanced you wouldn't have the need. I don't know how successful you'll be in your trades, but if I had 9x LH on my main, I wouldn't be complaining.

They'll be hiding in 9 Boarding (or whatever it's called) Edit: But 3 for sails seems very low. Did you remember to set replenish crew in port (or you can do it on OW, oddly enough)?

I don't want no-risk rewards, but a little fun. I don't expect to get any reward, I expect to lose. I'll probably get precious little reward if I win, but I'll enjoy it either way, This game has many frustrations for me, but one I have never had up to now is any fear of losing my ship. Cargo, sometimes, and on those occasions I have been particularly careful, but not my ship, my ordinary run of the mill ship. Not even a ship for that matter, but a topsail schooner (in today's terminology - it might have been called something else back then). Fancy being scared of losing a privateer! Yes, I have set myself something of challenge, but it will be the same challenge for everyone come server wipe, and I'm pretty sure most players won't have my experience of making gold in this new world, so they'll suffer harder. I really don't know what this last patch/wipe is supposed to achieve. How far they can push us perhaps? I dunno

One of the things I hate the most about this unannounced post-wipe Testbed patch - and by heavens there are enough of them - is that I feel I can no longer engage in specualtive ship combat that I'll probably lose. Or even possibly lose. I've not redeemed anything, so perhaps I am making it hard on myself (I'll redeem cxp when I have enough resources to build TBrigs - probably tomorrow). But we won't get gold when Live is wiped so I wanted to try it out, and didn't see much reason to redeem the xp either. It was okay in a basic cutter, but I need to make money for crafting so I wanted a bigger ship and now have a Privateer. In between - or even during - money-making hauling runs I've been happily attacking TBrigs, TSnows and Lynxes, but it came home to me on an empty outpost set-up run that I didn't attack an NPC Pickle+Lynx for fear of losing my privateer and I really couldn't afford to replace it. I've never been so cautious in this game before. I didn't mind losing a Constitution before the wipe as I had the wherewithall (except LH, of course) to replace it. But to be frightened of losing a privateeer - that's just crazy. How is anyone meant to learn if they're frightened to lose their ships, if they don't have money to replace them? A privateer with guns is abnout 46k gold, I currently have 57k and need that to harvest resources. At some point I'll need a fourth outpost (10k + 50k Permit) and of course I'll need 100k for the shipyard. All without haulers. What rubbish!

Agree whoelheartedly with the resources thing. I was thinking of a weekly calculation based on how much of a resource had been extracted in the previous 28 days (Weekly rather then daily change helps not penalise players who don't play every day; 28 day totals allows a prediction of what the following week's building % is likely to be, giving players the chance to move before the weekly change if they want). Extraction limits have to multiply up by something related to the number of players;I was thinking of active players on the server, but it could be per nation. It is building outputs which most need to be restricted imo. I'm not too botheresd either way about gold or LH increases. For shipyards I am less sure. The purpose of the shipyard seems to be to tie up a building slot so if you want to build ships you have fewer slots for resource buildings - which seems a decent idea to me - but is let down by being able to harvest everything you need for ships and guns by rotating just 3 slots with cheap level 1 buildings. Won't your plan for national shipyards encourage centralisation?

I often use mediums too, but always longs as chasers. This too is historical.

It looks like you can build shipyards in free towns. I don't have the oak logs to actually build one (and with cash the way it is I don't really want to waste 100k either - you can owe me the 15k for creating and destroying the outpost, eh?) Shipyard and workshop both appear in the buildings list. Clicking build just brought up the logs message, nothing about not being able to build in a free town.

Well, it's cheaper to make your own longs than buy mediums from the shop. Nevertheless I'd accept longs being something special/ But what about caorros? By very early 1800s, carros weren't special at all. My take oin this is that guns should normally be player made, but since players cannot entirely be trusted to make them and put them on sale then mediums are a fallback option, like NPC-built crew space ships. My argument, and I am sure it is @Intrepido's as well, is that there simply aren't the mechanisms in place (LH and sell contracts at least) for players to satisfy demand for guns, even if we wanted to.

I had foreman before the wipe but, despite probably being primarily a crafter, I'll forego it and all other crafting perks on Live as I found I missed combat perks too much. Getting 20% extra labour when you get bugger all in the first place is still not a lot, imo. I'd only dream of selling ships and guns in my nation capital. I used to sometimes sell in the starter port. But you're right - if we try selling anywhere else no one will expect to find anything so they won't look. One possible exception would be La Navasse, and there may be one or two similar ports. But do players actually want ships in other ports? I don't knoiw. Repairs you can probably sell anywhere, and I'd certainly try selling in free towns if I had any to sell and sell contract slots to do so (unlikely). I forget what sell contracts charge - 5% is it and 10% for ships? Yes, I agree, it puts people off selling through the shop. A bad move imo. 2% ought to be fine. But what I find far worse is the limit of 10 sell contracts. There are 9 sizes of long gun ffs. Six sizes of carros, and I'd quite like to undercut the NPCs selling mediums too. Even discounting anything bigget than 24s, that's still way more than 10 sizes of gun I'd like ot sell. So no chance of my being able to sell repairs at all.

Coal and iron? If all you're building is guns get 2 iron and 2 coal (all level 1) to go with your workshop. But leave a bit of iron and most of the secoind coal uncollected else you'll burn LH collecting resources you cannot use. And click out in 30s (iron) and 18s (coal) to maximise gold and silver drops, should you think of building ships (or you could sell them). LH I cannot help you with. What is it, a couple of days of LH to make all the guns for both ships? (just checked the long 24s on the Connie will take about half a day) It's rather a shame having set up to make guns that you've no LH spare to make them for anyone else , isn't it? None of this is as it should be, imo. There should be enough LH to make guns for other players, not just yourself. A dedicated weaponsmith should get a clear advantage from using level 2 or llevel 3 buildings. And we shouldn't have to risk RSI clicking out in 18s, 30s, 52s (stone), 16s (oak and fir) or 14s (lignum) to maximize rare drops. Fortunately compass wood isn't used much now, so no need to click out wood like this any more, but the mines are worse than wood ever was, for if you click everything in one, you might just get iron or coal.

I am in favour of keeping GPS, though there are three changes I would like to see: Write latitude before longitude Use minutes rather than decimal degrees Use nautical miles instead of whatever 'k' stands for (km?) However I understand why some people want to see GPS removed. Navigators of 200 years ago were not helpless or blind, they had several tools to help them and by the tiime of the game they generally had accurate charts (though I think Kidds had yet to be set down accurately ) Sailing from a port and within about 20 miles of the coast in daylight (except in storms), a navigator would know exactly where they were. So does the player, usually, so perhaps he doesn't need to be told where he is. Away from shore, at night or in storms, navigation would be by dead reckoning - which is basically what we think we are doing when using the compass without GPS to navigate. But we don't have currents or leeway, a poor helmsman or (except for dodging the daily sweep) continually changing course to follow the wind. Also it is clear from posts on here that most players have no idea how to calculate distances, which (currents aside) is one of the easier jobs for the eighteenth century navigator, though wasn't particularly accurate. I don't know how this could be done in game. Perhaps it could tell you you have travelled about 200 miles from Aves. You'll know the direction from looking at the compass (we seem to be pretty good at that bit, within certain limitations), but we need a way of finding distances on the map. Of course, 1 mile is 1 minute of latiude, but the map with it's square grid is obviously flawed (or perhaps it isn't square and it is my eyes that are faulty), but at any rate there could be a scale somewhere for those less well-versed in marine navigation Dead reckoning gets steadily less reliable the longer (time rather than distance) you spend away from the shore. This is probably matched by our own inaccuarcies in reading the compass. Away from shore, a ship can check its position using a sextant. You need to see a celestial body and the horizon - so you cannot take sights at night, in storms or even in overcast conditions. For game purposes, reasonably matching reality, we could have dawn, noon and dusk sights (but not in storms). As others have noted, latitude can be measured a lot more accurately than longitude (strictly speaking, longitude can be measured just as accuately as latitud if your chronometer is correct; if your chronometer is wrong then so will the measurement, and if you have to take lunars to find the time then any inaccuracies in taking sights are squared for the longitude measurement). I think for the game, we might be best off ignoring the difference between latitude and longitude and just give positions to something like 10 miles (10 minutes or 0.17 degrees) From this, you could get a display saying something like: Last fix. Time: Day 2 19:00, Position: 19°30'N 67°40'W (sextant) Distance sailed since last fix: 210M, or Last fix: Time: Day 1 13:20, Position: 20°15'N 74°40'W (land) Distance sailed since last fix: 72M The fix would only get updated at 05:00, 12:00 or 19:00 in open sea if you happen to have a clear sky, or if you are within sight of land. Approaching a new coastline, you'll be able to take bearings accurately, but might not be entirely sure what bit of coastline you are looking at. I have no idea how to reflect this in game

Shame if they have, imo. I'll maybe look at the freetown thing when I buy my next permit (someone else will probably get in first), but why would you? If your resource region is conquered then your free town is probably a poor location; you'll have to hauls absolutely everything of course, but the real killer in my view is no teleport.

On PvP I don't see how a pure trader role fits into the game (I have no idea how PvE players want to play). You trade to make money, but surely this isn't an end in itself. There's no Congratulations screen for successfully accumulating 1 million gold and you move onto the next scenario. Players trade because they need the money, and applies equally to PvPers, crafters, RvR and whatever types of players there are. They need the money, partly to afford things like first rates the devs want to make it difficult to get (quite reasonably so, in my opinion) but also for the essentials, like new ships for all but the best PvPers, outposts and warehouse slots for crafters and ship slots for pretty much everyone. Besides which, fleet perks appeal to a wide range of players, not just traders. After the Testbed wipe I haven't redeemed anything (I'll redeem cxp eventually, when I'm ready to build ships - if that ever happens), but I've still taken Fleet 1 as my only perk (forgetting I cannot crew two warships as an Ensign).

Blame me. I used 3 x LGV to make about 2 million in each of my return trade runs (about 2 hours each) - but I only did it four times for by then I had m starting capital for outposts, buildings, warehouse and ship slots, and after then my econ was self-financing, even with the low pops on Testbed. The devs seem to think this is bad. And yes, it would be if everyone spend their two hours a day playing time making 2 million, when there's no way of possibly spending this amount of gold once you've maxed out on outposts, ship slots and warehouse slots, but they seem to forget that if everyone were doing it then seeded goods would run out and consuming ports would drop their prices to 1. Seeding rates and price control against consumption are easy things for the devs to control, but they've decided that nerfing hauling capability is the only way to do it, regardless of what effect it has on other aspects of the game. Really, if they were to reduce one-time start up costs, I wouldn't want to go trading anyway. 200k or so I'd gladly get from combat. But four outposts and a couple of ship and warehouse slots, plus the resources I need to harvest before I have anything to sell, runs into millions, and for some reason the devs think trading is the best way for me to get it.

Gold is a big a problem as XP, in my opinion, As @Tiedemann says, the player who lost the Agamemnon got nothing - well, maybe that is fair enough - but nor did anyone else. The players who need gold are those who lose ships, but if they get nothing even for successful combat - and surely the two players in Victories were successful - then where does this leave them? So far as I can tell (I've only really being trying this out in small ships - it might not scale up to Victories and Agamemnons), you need about 8 similar-rated PvE kills in a ship to pay for the ship and guns; With PvP giving treble rewards (does this include gold?), it'll mean three kills. Well, clearly not every player will get 3 PvP kills in their new ship when faced with equal opponents. Fight-to-the-death battles with equal numbers of captains on each side clearly results in the average number of PvP kills per player per ship being 1. For many individual players it is 0. So where does this shortfall in gold come from? In the current game, I see four ways: Find PvP opponents you are almost certain to win against. Ganking and seal-clubbing will get you the gold you need - but is it really good for the game? Grind PvE. In some of the dev posts they mention the number of PvE players (90% is it?) and how they want to move them to PvP. Current game rewards push players the other way, and PvP players are forced into PvE simply to get gold. Go trading. Really, is this the best thing on offer? Now, I'm an econ player and don't much mind a bit of trading to get my start-up capital, but I stop as soon as I've enough outposts, buildings, ship and warehouse slots. But the poor PvP player will be forced to dip his wick repeatedly into this malodorous oil if he wants to keep his lamp burning. Craft. Crafting for profit doesn't bring gold into the game, it merely shifts some of the gold obtained from PvE or Trading (or possibly successful PvP, but the successful players won't need to buy much) into your hands. It also means surrendering LH you might prefer to keep to make your own ships, guns and repairs. And you've got all the hauling of resources and carrying your goods to market. Now, I like this style of play and I dare say a number of PvP players do too, but it's hardly a ringing advertisement for an OW PvP game: Experience thrilling ship combat against other players from the greatest era in the Age of Sail. Oh, and you'll have to spend time hauling logs in a lumbering trader with a gank me lamp on the main truck. Because that's what real navy captains did in the age of sail, innit? The devs' current focus seems to be avoiding exploits, to the extent they ignore the effect on the rest of us, on enjoyable gameplay. So we have rewards only for kills, the idea being that alts won't want to destroy their own ships to get gold/xp/marks (it's flawed, of course - were I that sort of player of course I'd be willing to sink a few brigs to get marks for a fourth rate - and I'd certainly provide opponents for an uncontested PB to get marks of conquest). But for good gameplay we need rewards for participation, not just for kills. Rewarding damage makes most sense to me, but it could be calculated from duration, BR, or any number of other things. Furthermore, combat gold rewards, even for those who get kills, seem a little too low. The average PvP player mentioned above will have 1 winning and 1 losing battle. If participation is rewarded and both battles give the same gold as the winner currently gets, this still won't pay for replacement. One way of balancing it would be for non-winning participants to get roughly what winners get now, and winners to get double what they get now. Finally, because this added gold will fuel inflation as the successful 10% of PvP captains get very rich, the game needs something for the wealthy to spend their money on. Perhaps some of the elite ships could cost shedloads of gold as well as marks.

I haven't merely painted gunports on strips of canvas and nailed them along the sides of the ship, I've actually cut gunports in the side and covered them with lids. Quite why I then open them, letting you see there's no actual guns, I have no idea

I pretty much agree, though I've not updated video drivers. Lagginess present in 9.98 and early 9.99 seems to have gone (freeze for a second or so, then jump to new position) However just recently - I've only noticed it since this week's wipe - there are some odd jumpy movements. I've only noticed them with distant ships rather than cliffs, but it could well be the same thing, Only on OW. Battle seems fine.

With regional refits gone, there's no reason to set up anywhere other than near your capital, as you say. Guns of course you'll build in an iron port (you weren't really thinking of hauling iron ore, were you?) but it's all a bit of a muchness where you build ships. Iron, oak and your preferred frame/planking wood port all make reasonable sense - for myself it'll be either oak or teak. But ... I think I will continue to run econ away from the capital. Not a Brit in the Windwards, France in Hispaniola or Dutch in the Antilles, not somewhere that's likely to be the first place attacked, but I sense an advantage in being away from the hubbub. I cannot think what it is yet (except better access to trade goods which, once I have econ set up, I won't need) but time will tell. I'll certainly take care to position myself near a free town, precisely because of the risk of having to move out. I've done an econ move before so I know what it is. However I'd suggest what @The Red Duke is saying is that a clan could build outposts, station ships and generally base themselves remotely from the capital. They'll doubtless set up to build repairs locally, but they could probably manage well enough keeping shipbuilding in safer waters; alternatively, if there are a lot of you then shifting a crafting hub may be easier. I don't think @Sir Texas Sir advocates holding distant counties because of the seeded woods - they aren't like harvested resources and the host nation gets very little benefit and I buy as much of mine from enemy ports as I do from my own nation. But they do give an incentive for crafters to spread themselves across the map. Probably not much of one, but we'll see. Populations on Testbed haven't really given seeded woods much of a testing.

Well, precious little sailing around carrying crafting resources (trade goods are a different matter) as the stranglehold on LH means no on one can make much, so they won't need to haul much. On the subject of Bridgetown, I'd assumed British clans used this port for Labour Offices, it being the only one that starts British. I suppose Puerto Escondido or Port de Paix are close enough for the Brits to capture. I suppose if Britain expects to lose the Windwards, France can expect to lose Haiti.