Doug Maoz

You are right, I should keep an open mind to meeting new people =] The language barrier may not be so bad. I am mostly concerned with performance due to latency.

Sure. Language is a big part of it, on the EU server people can play in their native language on that same nation's team. On Global pretty much everyone speaks (or attempts to speak) the lingua franca English, so we can understand one another better. I suspect this means people are more likely to change teams, for better or worse. Each server has their own political history re: the factions and historical slights, real or imagined. It is confusing politically to mash them together. Aside from all that, my ping is barely acceptable on the Global server (110), it would be very poor playing on EU (200+) or any compromise location (server raft in the Atlantic =p). Not sure why this isn't reason enough...

In addition to the simple timezone and player concentration differences, each PvP server has their own culture now, and it would be a shame to forcibly smash the two together. No comment on the PvE server as I have never been there, but I'm sure they would not like to be merged either.

I have ground up several ships to test the system out and get seed money, here are my thoughts. Some of this was done pre-knowledge tree removal, or I would never have ground the brig and cerb. 7th Rates are in a good place, anyone can grab one and become proficient in a day with some missioning. Not much to say here. 6th rates are also pretty good, it doesn't take forever to get the first 3 slots unlocked, and the others can be done with some small dedication. 5th rates are not so good. The cerb, frig, surprise, and pirate frigate all took me forever to get to two slots, and I did not bother with three on most of them. Pirate frig I have 4 since I love that ship <3. The rate at which you can earn xp vs how much it takes is rather broken, especially for the heavy frigates. Requirements should be reduced on these since this should be a very common ship class. 4th rates do pretty well, I can get Agamemnon up to two slots without too much work, but more takes a while. However the xp earn rate vs requirements are not broken like the 5th rates. 3rd rates are hurting. The missions they can do yield 650-1000 xp per, with a 46k requirement for the third slot on Bellona. Even if each mission + sailing was 30 min, that is 23 hours MINIMUM to get it partially unlocked; this is a bit much, perhaps you should be able to grind the 5th slot in 20hrs total? 2nd rates I have not done. 1st rates I looked at the requirements and decided not to bother. I have a clanmate who has all the slots, and it took him days and days and days of hard grinding fleet missions solo. We need to talk about the philosophy of upgrade slots vs how hard they are to grind. Devs have added tons of cool ship knowledge upgrades, and it saddens me that few get to use them; not to mention we can't test them very well without good access to them. Do you need knowledge slots to be successful? No. But they are good rewards for dedicated players, and I think the payoff should come sooner than it does now. I think all would agree and say that having 1-2 upgrade slots allows you to fight and grind much faster/more efficiently, so why not give the first slot away free on each ship? As it is, you feel like you are just getting started finally unlocking that first slot. The first three slots should be easier in general, but later ones are OK being harder. tl;dr 5th rates are hurting and need lower requirements, PVP should be given far more XP than it does now. Perhaps 1st slot should be free on all ships, a la green ships pre-patch. It should be easier overall to grind slots 1-3 so people can create builds they like without working their mouse to the bone. As a minor note, the limited ship slots make it much harder to grind up a pvp ship, since you will want a tough one for grinding and a different one for OW fights or PBs.

I think this post hits the nail on the head. Not to put words in anyone's mouth, but I suspect the devs were unhappy with both the complete evasion of screens and also the kiting type of screens which require little investment by the defender. First, they implement a login timer so you can't join PBs right after logging in at sea (this used to be standard practice on pvp2). Then, when any PB group can get picked apart by tag circles in OW, they introduce circle on the defender (excellent change). From dev reactions to tribunals, it looks like they are trying to have the previous battles be water under the bridge so that we can actually test the game going forward. I don't blame them for this, as they are still refining mechanics for this game we all enjoy. I would like to note that since these changes, pirates have been sailing up to port battles in a group in the OW; no shenanigans were used or attempted. I am wondering if a large fleet of 5th & 4th rates could tag in a 1st rate fleet and give them serious grief instead of letting them into the port battle, but sadly it has not been tested to my knowledge. Screening should still be effective, as long as you bring enough BR to have skin in the game. There have been no screening attempts to block pirates out since the change to tag circle on the defender, so please draw what conclusions you wish from that.

I was always curious why missions have positional joining, and attacking OW NPC fleets does not.

This is sadly why I left the British. They did not want to learn or improve, and it seems that trend continues.

I am in it for the fights. If the port battle fleet is successfully screened in the new system, it means that the defender brought enough people to truly engage up the attackers, as opposed to splitting them off into different battles artificially. This is a win for everyone, as the attackers will get a real fight and defenders may keep their port or weaken the attackers for subsequent fighting. When my group was screened at PaP the first time, the Brits in battle were ecstatic about how they would not have to fight us, and could simply split us off and tag sails from a distance. I know this because they said so to us in the battle; this attitude is the problem. The devs and playerbase were clearly unhappy with this style of screening, made changes to RoE (circle on the defender) and now there is no need for anyone who wants a fight to hide. I only gained skill myself by engaging in a variety of battles, not all of which I won, but all of which I fought if there was any chance of victory or fame. I would like to see GB come out again and try to screen port battles, as they will get fights, perhaps keep their ports, and gain skill (even if they sink) by participating in a real, large, engagements. In short, screening is completely valid as long as you bring enough BR to tag the PB group and a willingness to fight.

This is the wrong example I'm afraid. In this case, the Mercury was trying to escape while being ACTIVELY PURSUED by the larger fleet. In the GB screenings, pirates had no desire to pursue the smaller vessels, yet did not have a choice to continue on their original course. In real naval theory, they could completely ignore smaller vessels (to whatever detriment to their rigging etc) or have a running battle en route to the final target. Because the smaller ships were able to disrupt the larger fleet into separate realities (a necessary game feature, don't get me wrong), their smaller and more numerous ships were able to overwhelm the now-separated fleet. There is nothing inherently wrong with this, IF IF IF there was some counterplay the pirates could have made. We tried our best to stick together in one 4th rate blob (no ships were more than 3 ship lengths away from each other); considering we are on a multiplayer server with lag and different speed ships we did pretty well. The heart of the issue is the RoE, as 5 frigs and smaller could tag 4 Aggies right off the front of our group with their surgical tag circle. There was no counterplay to this, even through as a large, well-organized fleet we should have wiped the floor with anyone who could tag us together (as demonstrated at the recent PaP PB). In short, I am really looking forward to the RoE changes, as they are the core of this problem. We should not have been able to be separated when we were so close to each other. If we had been all straggled out, I see no problem with a screening fleet separating us into smaller battles but that was not the case here. I hope that with the new RoE, people will not feel the need to circumvent screening via obscure methods. I had a ton of fun at the PB itself though, I hope we have more fights like that, both inside and outside port battles.

This is all great advice, especially about attitude; there is no merit in getting salty when you go out looking for trouble and lose. Expect to sink, and using cheaper ships will help you keep rolling and absorb losses. I also enjoy the Snow for solo (and group) PVP, it is quite good while being replaceable for younger/less funded captains. It also has a very unique sailing profile, that I suggest any captain who wants to sail it (or against it) to study well. The Snow can almost always escape from a pursuer. Of course, take targets accordingly, you won't always be able to capture the same ships as a Surprise.