Bull Hull

The real point is that nobody should have to join a clan to get access to any benefits or advantages. Small clans should not have to merge with larger clans or other small clans to make a large clan large enough to get access to benefits and advantages. EVERY player - REGARDLESS of clan membership - should have equal access to the SAME benefits and advantages of every other player. EVERY player should be able to set up their OP production buildings and shipyard however they want REGARDLESS of whether or not they just happen to belong to a clan large enough to take and hold a particular port. The developers need to stop with the incessant efforts to manipulate us into hard core PvP and joining large clans or forever relegate Naval Action to an insignificant niche game that appeals to only a few hundred players.

In other words, the developers are concentrating more and more power into the hands of a relatively few large clans in each nation and so smaller clans will be thoroughly screwed.

Displacement alone is a terribly simplistic and arbitrary way to determine HP. HP should be a function of displacement AND how much of that displacement comes from its armor and its guns (i.e. how much of its displacement is due to its actual combat ability). Two ships with identical displacement should not have the same HP when one of those two ships has three feet of armor from its thick hull while the other has no armor because it is only a cargo ship so it doesn't have any more hull than what it needs to keep out the water. Not all displace is qualitatively the same. The ship with no armor can easily be sunk with just a few holes below its waterline and nearly all of its hull/structure (i.e. HP) still intact.

HP should be totally irrelevant to the rating a ship gets. In every rate some ship have the most HP. So, according to the poor logic of this HP standard, that ship should be promoted to the next higher rating. Using the number guns as the overwhelming consideration for how to rate a ship was good enough for history and so it should be good enough for this game. Making the Connie and her sister ships a 3rd Rate was stupid. The United States class FRIGATES were designed to be super frigates, or "Great Frigates" as the Brits called frigates with more than 40 guns. They were designed to be able to out fight everything they could not outrun, and to out run everything they could not out fight. All Ships of the Line had at least two gun decks below the weather decks for their main batteries and secondary heavy batteries with supplemental guns on the weather decks. All frigates had ONE gun deck, either below the weather decks or on the main weather deck, and they essentially had from 30-59 guns. Sloops of War (unrated) and Corvettes (rated) had less than 30 guns. Ships of the Line had more than 60 guns. The funniest thing I've noticed since this issue popped up is how the developers are trying to count EVERY gun, including bow and stern guns, to artificially inflate how many guns ships have. But the only guns that matter for a ship's rating are its broadside guns.

Kill (i.e. cap) an LGV in less than 10 minutes with a Basic Cutter? Preposterous. After 30-45 minutes of stern camping sure. But less than 10 minutes? Not possible; unless the new damage model now makes that possible. Haven't tried it since the change. Please post a video doing that within 10 minutes with a Basic Cutter because I would love to learn how to do that.

And your RATIONAL explanation for exactly how my comment is supposedly impolite is? ? ? You do recognize and can realize/understand that I am complementing most players, right?

We are way beyond the time for the game to keep treating our player character identity as someone who can magically move from port to port instantly while every "skipper" we have is functionally identical unless we change our perks for a specific ship or mission. We are way beyond the time for the game to keep treating our skill development as purely dependent upon the magical whims of the RNG gods. We have gone far too long without the game providing our alter-ego character with an actual staff officer corps to whom we can delegate operations. We have gone far too long without the game providing a decent RPG style of character development with which we develop skills through experience and the CHOICES we make rather than the pure dumb luck of the skill books we acquire. The perk system has been a great appetizer that permits us to simulate having staff officers we can delegate functions to when we need to briefly focus on doing something, but that system is woefully inadequate. To be bluntly and frankly honest, making skill development purely a function of the whims of the RNG gods and the books they whimsically choose to bestow upon us, unless we get lucky enough to stumble upon a book we want and need for sale in some port that we just happen to have luckily chosen to visit, is grossly unrealistic. Some might even say that is a little dumb considering what is possible by following the examples of many RPGs. What we need and should have by now is a character development system that treats our main character as the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) for a fleet who then has a staff of ships' captains to command our vessels for us. What we need and should have is the freedom to CHOOSE what skills our main character has and what each ship's captain has by earning experience. The pure luck of the skill book drop should a nice reward to speed up our choices, but not a substitute for real skill and character development. Far too often this game feels like the developers have never played an RPG and so they don't have a clue how to empower us to CHOOSE how we develop our characters or skippers who command our ships. What we need is/are the following: - NPC Officers we can assign to some specific ships to command those ships, but not necessarily one for every ship. Maybe 1 NPC skipper/player-rank-level +1. Through experience we could earn the choice to assign skills from skill trees so we can have skippers who are a master of a particular class of ship and/or style of fighting or be a jack of all styles. This way we could have skippers who are competent at all sailing and fighting skills (at least as competent as we are) but specialists/masters in a particular skill branch, such as branches for: Boarding; Sailing; Gunnery; Carronade Gunnery; Mortar Gunnery; Survival. While each skipper could eventually learn/select all skills with enough experience, we could choose to focus different skippers on different skills sets to use different ships for different tasks/missions. - NPC staff officers earn their own experience and promotions and have their own skill sets. All could command any ship smaller than their rank, but not a ship larger than their rank. Specializing in a particular class or rating is another possibility. - Naturally, each staff officer could also die (small chance when losing a ship they command) and then be replaceable. So, not only would we have to choose which ships we are willing to risk losing, we would need to choose whether we are willing to risk losing specific skippers. - Skills we can choose from a skill tree after we earn enough experience. These skill choices would be for both our main character who is the CNO and whichever NPC staff officer we assign to command a given ship. This way, if a staff officer dies when a ship gets sunk, we the player character is not losing the skills that skipper had. But just like real admirals we would have to train and develop any replacement staff officers to fill those specialist gaps when we lose a ship's captain. - Making skill development almost entirely a function of experience and player choice would naturally mean skill books should become a treat that is more rare, but a pleasant treat none-the-less. Finally, I have never been able to figure out why the developers seem to LOVE pure dumb luck and the whimsical benevolence of the RNG gods so much. Skill development and crafting, things that should be purely a function of experience and player choice, still depend way too much on pure dumb luck; dumb luck that is tedious and frustrating at best. Okay now, begin the brain storming because I have no doubt that more than few players are smart enough and objective enough to improve upon my foundational suggestion. So please, turn my acorns into whatever is your favorite species of giant tree. And yeah, I know not all trees grow from acorns.

That is a false dilemma. Having the option to do hostility missions doesn't necessarily have to mean keeping a port. Hostility missions can simply be nothing more than a way for players to set up opportunities for fleet operations to earn rewards. Win the hostility missions and get a reasonable reward. Win a port battle against a determined ai defender and earn decent rewards. Basically, port battles can provide a chance for players to raid ports to loot them. We don't have to keep anything other than the loot we earned by winning a port battle. Then there can be a significant cooldown of days to weeks before we can raid the same port because each port will need time to recover. So then players would have to raid a different port a little farther away, etc. etc. etc. If players from other countries can't interfere with our hostility missions or port battles then how could there possibly be an "unwanted competition"? There are soooooooooo many neutral ports on the map there are more than enough to go around to provide raiding opportunities for all nations and all players. The only meaningful competition would be against the ai defending a port. If that ai is as capable and competent as the ai in Epic Missions I have seen then that would be a decent fight. In other words, hostility missions and port battles can simply be a variation on Epic Battles except in a know location with more options on what we could bring to the fight within the BR limits of each port.

That rationalization about "forcing another player into a PvP Instance against his wishes" is a lame fear mongering straw man and false dichotomy. The developers can easily implement something like the smugglers flag that would allow players to freely CHOOSE whether or not any other player can attack them. Pure and simple with ZERO forcing of anything onto anyone. All we need is the OPTION to CHOOSE to fly a battle pennant. If I freely CHOOSE to fly a battle pennant then another player who has also CHOSEN to fly a battle pennant gets the CHOICE to attack me and that other player has freely chosen to permit to attack them. If I don't want to be able to attack other players or to permit other players to attack me then I just CHOOSE to not fly a battle pennant. Simple and easy. No forcing of anything onto anyone. Period. The PvP area ALREADY does this but limits the CHOICE to a relatively small circle - unless of course a player in the right class of ship just happens to accidentally sail through a PvP zone without realizing it. The bottom line is there is no rational reason to limit that PvP choice to such a relatively small circle. It wouldn't even be necessary to make the entire OW open to this PvP CHOICE. The developers could distribute a few large PvP circles and a few medium size circles and some smaller circles all over the map to facilitate the easy CHOICE to do PvP and do it ONLY with other players who want to proactively CHOOSE to seek out other players who have made the same CHOICE. Most of the Gulf could be a big PvP circle. Most of the Atlantic can be a big PvP circle or two or three. Other places for circles of various sizes are easy to see just by looking at the friggin map. But the sad reality is that the developers don't want to empower players with reasonable choices because they really don't care about satisfying as many players as they can satisfy. They want to manipulate us into an artificial and arbitrary false dichotomy of either hard core PvE or PvP with little room for any other styles in between that continuum of player styles and player preferences.

One of the bottom lines I get out of this is that large clans will totally dominate nations and smaller clans and solo/lone wolf players who have no interest in joining a clan are pretty much totally SOL.

LOL Yeah, right, creating my own game development company is the only option. Nice try with the lame false dilemma and preposterous red herring. And naturally the best you can manage is to resort to making a childish ad hominem attack to fabricate a lame genetic fallacy. The only non-adult here is the person who is resorting to the pathetic tactic of making childish ad hominem attacks. Get back to me if you figure out how to produce a rational explanation for exactly how I am supposedly not an adult and how I am supposedly throwing a tantrum. Get back to me if you figure out how to produce a cogent counterargument. When you people put all of your effort into attacking the messenger instead of the message you only prove that you have nothing. Your bottom line is patently false and laughably poor circular reasoning. Nice try with another ridiculous false dilemma.

That would definitely be the better option. But he developers are bound and determined to manipulate us into playing how they think we should play instead of empowering us with the freedom and choices to play how we prefer to play. And by we I mean ALL players who fall onto a wide continuum of many play-style preferences. But instead of respecting that reality and thus instead of respecting us the develops are trying to pigeon hole us into a false dichotomy of only two options - either full on unrestricted PVP or totally safe PVE with very little variety in between.

EXACTLY That is precisely why I submitted a bug report when I discovered that is indeed a bug. Ditto for the same bug on the Indiaman.

WOW Do you really not understand how circular and thus how incredibly lame that reasoning is? Those rules are a purely, solely, and totally the CHOICE of the developers. Consequently, the developers can also choose to tweak those rules in a way that would empower the players with MORE choices and thus possibly provide more players with more satisfaction. The developers can learn a lot, the developers need to learn a lot, about highly effective leadership and customer satisfaction.

WOW Talk about ridiculous rationalizing to produce some utter nonsense to rationalize some ridiculous red herrings. According to your preposterous logic a player who successfully runs instead of engaging when you chase them to try and tag them is interfering with your choice. According to your preposterous logic a player who sails on a part of the map where you are not sailing so you can't attack them is interfering with your choices. NOBODY is interfering with YOUR choices. You are perfectly free to make whatever choices you want to make within the set of possible choices, and everyone else has exactly the same freedom. Whether or not your choices and their choices succeed is a totally different issue. THAT success is NOT a right we have. The FACT is that per the process the OP suggests and which I explain further you would still be perfectly free to choose to try to attack anyone you want to try to attack. Whether or not that attempt succeeds would depend upon a variety of factors. LOL Where in the world do I say anything about anyone being special? That is YOUR distortion to fabricate a lame straw man and red herring. Whether or not anyone is special is totally IRRELEVANT to the issues I am addressing. FTR I'm not any more or less special than anyone else. LOL Nice try with the preposterous stereotyping and yet another lame red herring about me needing to grow a pair. Nearly all of my 4,499 hours of play are on the PVP server. I would be surprised if I have 20 hours on the PVE server (although that is likely to change if the developers keep trying to manipulate us as much as they are). So, I grew a pair a LONG time ago. I also have enough self-esteem and self-worth to find it insulting when the developers treat us like we are stupid children who they have to manipulate into playing the game the way THEY think we should play the game instead of empowering us with the ability to play the game how WE prefer to play it. LOL And your rational explanation for exactly how I am supposedly a greedy bastard is what? Me thinks thou doth project too much. LOL Your highly subjective and self-serving opinions/beliefs are not authentic facts nor authentic truths nor objective realities. Learn to understand the distinctions because there is a huge difference between justifying a belief by using authentic facts and independent RATIONAL thought to justify a reasonable and thus probably true belief verses rationalizing what you wish to believe merely because that feels better than the cognitive dissonance that would result from the alternative. Here are some inconvenient facts/truths/realities for you to try to wrap your brain around: Belief =/= Fact & Belief =/= Truth & Believing =/= Knowing P.S. - - I have more than enough XP to open the 4th slot on the LGV Refit (which per the name on mine is not the "Pirate Refit LGV") AND according to the 5th box I know how many more XP I need to unlock the 5th box. But despite the FACT that the boxes still stupidly IMPLY that we can unlock the 4th and 5th boxes they are still locked. The 4th box on my 7th and 6th Rate traders do not and never have implied that we can unlock them. P.S.S. - - Have you figured out yet how to understand the concept of implicit meaning?