Bach

You don't think you might be crying wolf just a little to early on this? There is no functional pvp difference from you having x4 outposts you teleport your Trincomelee around and have x4 out posts with x4 Tricomelees stationed at each one. About THE ONLY functional difference is that you can't make that first trip out to your out post in a free basic cutter. Your actually going to have to risk sailing your valuable ships around. Which as a pirate, you should realize will increase your pvp potential when the 7 other nations start moving solo valuable ships, instead of basic cutters, to do the same thing.

This is why players will not want to use First rates for everything and lesser ships will become valuable to sail again.

I may be missing something, but does that particular he said she said past really matter anymore? What you gents need is an agreed upon fresh start taking the lessons from the past into account as you make a new way forward.

You will still be able to do it. But you will need to have a pre-staged ship of the models you prefer to sail at each out post. Your character can still teleport as much as ever. But yes, it's going to require you to build and maintain a few more ships.

I'm all for testing this new crew idea. It will be very hardcore. Which is not necessarily a bad thing as it will or should create battle front and theaters over random pvp. That said, here are a few things I would suggest right off. No ship teleports should increase ship building and Econ. Why? Players will need to pre stage specific ship designs at their out posts. Players can still teleport. It's just the ships that don't. Outpost coordination will become more important to battle fronts. Might need to consider making outposts cheaper to acquire and easier to pop up and break down. The game battle fronts will become more dependent on players having outposts on the battle fronts. This is a good thing. But if players have x3 outposts producing Econ and one at the capital. Then the remaining ones needed for RvR/PVP are very expensive to newer players. Sequential ship losses will become more devastating with the requirements of near full crew replacements. This will promote players to avoid taking risks. That is bad for pvp. Further, a nation getting pushed down to one or two ports would have even less insentive to defend ports in what would likely be losing battles. I would recommend that crew lost during port battle defenses be replaced by the admiralty at no cost. This would promote defensive play to challenge an attacker even if the risk of loss was high. Crew costs per sailor should be weighted by the total number of ports a nation owns. Making it more expensive to Zerg and cheaper for a victim nation to fight back.

Quite frankly, you work your strength to the enemy weakness. As a wise general once said "If you should suddenly find yourself in a fair fight, your tactics must suck!" Now if they have the 25 ship dread fleet and you don't or just have the same 25 ship dread fleet then going head to head isn't the thing to do. Pirates have a HUGE amount of undefended territory. They have as many disgruntled or dissatisfied players inside their own ranks as any nation. They have x3 other potential enemies in their own back yard. So tell your leaders to stop thinking linearly, get creative and get dangerous.

I'm not sure commerce raiding is totally ineffectual. It is difficult with the current heavy dispersion of raw materials during alpha. But it still has to move since they removed the ability to teleport with cargo. The trick is to discover where a target build ships. Then know the most demanding materials are Coal, Iron, Hemp, Silver and Gold. Then figure out a way to hunt that. Unfortunately most of the ships moving will only be trader Lynx and cutters. They will only move once every few days. This complicates things more but it's not impossible. Perhaps capture all the nearby ports of one material but leave one port alone. I know, getting your team to have the self control to leave one enemy port alone is the hardest thing in the game. But if they do then now you at least know one leg of their trade path for sure. Of course you have to buy up the port produced Mars in the captured ports to avoid smuggling.

British boredom or tired of fighting? That seems reasonable. They have been at it the longest and the resent defection of players to the enemy is always a morale blow in any game.Lack of new Content? Total load of bull pucky. It's a sand box. The devs aren't responsible for our entertainment. They just provide the back drop. We're supposed to be making our own content. That's how a sand box is supposed to work. World of Warcraft = Not a Sand box. It's ladder driven leveling, PVE centric and when devs want entertained players they have to ADD new content. A sand box is a bunch of players building castles THEY imagine in that sand. The players create the new content. Right now the pirate team IS creating new content in the form of the Black Flagged Menace. If the British response is to turtle up and wait for the devs to change something....well...your not very good sand box people. Time to own that. In the meantime pirates have built this big sand fortress over there next to the Spanish, Danish and USA kids and they are starting to take some of your castles sand. Time to hand out lollipops to the other kids or otherwise figure out a way to at least bulldoze some of their sand fortress. You know, create new content to best their new content.

The only thing players lose nation hoping is blue prints. Everything else can be traded over to the new character. BP loss probably only really matters to one in three characters. But those characters are clan members and a whole clan tends to defect to the same nation. If you wanted them to come to your nation you need to find a way to have spare blue prints ready for the few that need them and then you'll probably get the whole clan. Otherwise they are most likely going pirate driven so by their ship builders.

Although this effect is true and I agree that players should lose as much switching pirate as any other nation we have to be fair. For this mechanic to ever come into play the switching players must first be unhappy with their nation. If they weren't unhappy they don't leave and then don't pick the easy path to leave too. So the problem that gets this ball rolling in a nation occurs before the choice to go pirate is selected. You don't get to be a leader just by telling people what to do. You have to have the talent of also getting them to want to do it.

Nah, I'm not particularly happy about him either but it's time to face facts about how the black flag team is succeeding. Then figure out how to beat them. The top reason, even though they are pirates, is that they are making wise treaties and then only really fighting one group at a time. Britain should have seen the writing on the wall and been kissing Up with Spain instead of dueling over islands while the US fell. Similar with Denmark. If the pirates didn't have Spain and/or Denmark pseudo securing boarders the map would be a lot less black.

Um...it might be time to admit the pirates have you all duped into doing their bidding. Grab a flaggon of rum, a wench and just enjoy the ride. On the serious side: Pirates take the Gulf of Mexico. Only nation left here is Spain. Pirates ally with Spain. Pirates have secured the gulf. Pirates push into Haiti. Only nation left here is Denmark. Pirates ally with Denmark. Pirates have secured Haiti. Pirates destroy USA ports, USA breaks morale and shrinks. For the time being pirates have secured the Bahamas. So now pirates are free to march south into Yucatan Britain for the next conquest. Just admit it already, the pirates are kicking all your butts both militarily AND diplomatically. There are 8 nations in the game. Pirates locked up x2 with battles and x3 with treaties. That leave the Dutch and the Swedes to do anything about it and they aren't in a position too. And if they try, the pirates have France to keep them busy. Strategically it's brilliant on the pirates part. They aren't just winning because they have a lot of pvp players. You are getting out played in diplomacy. It's a sand box so that still counts as a win.

They did fix that. If you get attacked inside your capitals green zone your battle can be reinforced by your team indefinetly. I wouldn't mind if they made the green zone larger. But the system seems to work.As to other ports im not sure it should be so. Most if them are captured towns. They wouldn't have totally loyal populations of fisherman running into port to tell the garrison commander a ship was attacking one of his and needed help. Besides that the most NA players I see that aren't basing out of national capitals are all basing out of free towns. So I'm not sure how frequent the situation would be.

My experience over the last few days is that frigate battles are becoming more and more rare. With the current armor rules everyone is shipping up into invulnerable heavies when they see a frigate. Yesterday we sailed three Tricoms to the USA coast. They were out in Connies and Belonas. Later sailed off Spanish coast. They came to fight in 3rd rates and a Connie. To be able to fight we will now have to sail at least Connies. So my friend, as time goes by, there will be no more frigate battles as long as the armor tanks are so much more powerful as compared. You can't blame the players. Even in real 1800's, if every nation could sail free maintenance Rate ships no smaller ship could hurt they would have.

Good points. The Philly was the one Decatur burned. But even with a reduced 18# armament on the Chesepeake it still had the armor. Point being, that without the boarding it's not certain the Shannon could have taken it. Has there been any recorded events of a Constitution class fighting x2 40 gun frigates? The British admiralty put out an order not to engage one without two. So the indication is that the admiralty thought two regular frigs would be enough. I think the current armor rule set goes slightly beyond x2. We' re probably about x3 Trincs to reasonably have a chance. So I would think a slight scaling might be in order.

That's good that you like YOUR Connie. But before you can make a call on game balanced mechanics you have to play the other side of the fight and be in a frigate vs. a Connie a few times. The Connie is immune to even the 18# guns of the Tricom outside Coronades range. This creates a very limited set of situations that a pair or grouping of hvy frigates can even challenge the Connie. Now that's not to say a couple prepared Tricoms can't take down a Connie. The question is simply how hard should that challenge be? The USS Philadelphia lost to the much smaller Shannon. However the Philly was boarded by Shannon and that is sort if still possible. The Constitution fought Java in a battle where Java guns bounced off the hull. So that's a pro for the current system. One summer Constitution was chased off New Jersey by x4 smaller British frigs. One if which was also the Shannon. In today's game the Constitution could fight that battle. So perhaps it's just a little to easy for a Connie to fight frigates. But then again, if we want Connies to be able to harass 3rd rates in today's game we need to keep the armor value higher. So maybe it's a catch 22.

Testing the new armor a bit this weekend. Rate ships are essentially immune to small ships. I'm not sure if that is a good thing. One fight was x4 Tricomelees vs X1 Belona and they couldn't manage any hull damage in 45min or take down a mast. I think a 3rd rate being mostly immune to x4 hvy frigates is a bit unrealistic.

I see where you are going with this. I think the attraction is simply the desire to maintain blue prints that causes the shift to pirates vs. say France or some other nation. A simpler solution would be to have the shift to pirate result in the same losses switching nations does. So if on attacking that friendly player all outposts, gold, building and blue prints were erased I think we would see player choose nation switches more evenly. In the end only players that truly wanted to be pirates would go while others may instead choose to start filling up some of the other less played nations. It's not that they want to all be pirates. Most just want to keep their stuff. The stuff is the motivator.

Yes you are. Just one more pirate clan sailing 1st and second rates because it was easier to go pirate and save you BPs than to join a long term nation. Trust me I get it. I've switch nations twice and took the BP penalty each time. But joining the Zerg nation just because it was easy. You guys could have done better than that. In the long run you're probably going to be moving again anyway when the devs finish the pirate tweak. So it kind of makes you look like easy path fair weather team mates. Strap on a pair and join a struggling nation. The only BPs you really need to get up to now anyway are the Inger/Connie. It would take you less than a week to rebuild it with 20 players working together.

Quite frankly it's a sand box. It's supposed to be up to the players to determine what happens in the sand box. The devs just provide the back drop. If players want to create an arena then those choosing to are free to do so. If a group wants to Zerg empty port battles to color that map till they bore their own players to death then they are free to do so. Players that don't want to be part of either are free to go do what ever. All you need is for the game map to be BIG enough that there is room for all this at the same time. The map is pretty large now. Given a few more weeks the game will right itself again as the current Zerg team burns itself out. What we learned in testing is that the game probably needs a few tweaks to actually make things slightly more difficult for the zergs to help prevent/stall burn out and slow down play to crush effects from running victims off so fast. That's really about all that happened.

Marry Steelsandwich and grape shots suggestions together with making the only way to become a pirate is attacking your own nation and that is really all you would need to do to fix pirates. In addition to the level 2 shipyard restriction you would need to cap the number of crew a pirate can command at about 300 men. This would curb going pirate with a half dozen 1st rates or simple getting them from Alts in other nations. It will hold them down to the raider level. From there on out you just play test and tweak them along with everyone else. It's not rocket science. So what do you do with the current pirate players? Simple step process. Step one erase the current pirates. Turn all their ports to neutrals and make all their possessions redeemable. Let them pick what nation they want to play for. If they want the new pirate life they just need to attack their own nation. Otherwise the game goes on.

Anyone else ever wonder why it takes a hobbit weeks of dangerous travel to toss a ring in a volcano only to have an eagle pick him up at said volcano and fly him back in a day. I'm just saying maybe there as an easier way.

Currently the loss of BPs are the only deterant to nation hopping. Though it might be nice if we didn't lose them it's also nice when elite clans aren't changing nations every other month.

I totally agree. I would much prefer a more "piratey" and criminal nature to those players opting the pirate life style. But once that game change is made we will still have this mass of players that weren't weened on hunting cargo ships but in 1st rate naval tactics and port conquests. Do you expect these soldiers to just burn their rate ships hop into corvettes, hunt prey in solo and small groups? That's not what is going to happen. They will go through the necessary logistics to move 15-20 ships and stores to another nation. I've done this with 12 ships myself. It's not really as hard as Quinloe suggests. So in the end some of these players may become "piratey" but many will just become a high tech Zerg in some other nation. I will also agree with Mr. Quinloe in that the ease and lack of penalties for converting to pirate have contributed to their numbers and promote this nation. But those fleet minded players would still be fleeting and stomping out other nation under some other flag until RvR mechanics get balanced.

I understand your frustration but I'm not sure forcing an unrealistic situation just to get your way is all that warranted. There are 7 nations and one pirate nation with, currently, only slightly different rules. The 7 nations and getting RvR tested and adjusted for them should be the top dev priority right? The pirates, love em or hate them, aren't supposed to be the primary concern of naval warfare. Currently they are just another nation with a large population and a few odd abilities. Your frustration isn't due to the pirates being OP. It's simply that they are a Zerg nation. There is nothing they are currently doing in great effect that couldn't be done by Any nation with that same groups and number of players in it. So in effect it is national play that needs to be fixed. Not just the pirates. You could force the situation, the devs drop everything and fix pirates and then you just end up getting Zerged by a huge Dutch team (example) because the factors that allowed the Zerg nations unchecked success haven't been changed.