Bull Hull

Well, well, well, here we are again. The players and developers are at a crossroads that presents a fundamental moral option. That is, to paraphrase the Bard, “To tolerate cheating, or to not tolerate cheating. That is the question.” Last week I started a thread about the obvious cheating that occurred after the map wipe. Surprisingly, or not, a few people tried to rationalize ways to excuse or even defend the cheating. Several people even falsely claimed that I didn’t provide any evidence to support my public claim of cheating, supposedly because I didn’t provide some silly video. For them, apparently, a video is the only thing that can possibly qualify as reliable evidence and so facts and truth are not sufficient. But the FACTS I presented last time ARE EVIDENCE OF CHEATING. The FACTS I will present again ARE EVIDENCE OF CHEATING. The unavoidable and irrefutable FACT/TRUTH is that I did provide evidence to support my public claim of cheating and I am about to do it again. To paraphrase an infamous Mexican bandit, “Video? Video! What video! I don’t need no stinking video!” In other words, just look at the damn map because there is the frakking evidence. The evidence of cheating can’t possibly be any clearer because, again, the evidence of the cheating is right there on the frakking map and so the evidence is in plain view for everyone to see. Or, maybe I should say the evidence is in plain view and crystal clear except to those who are willfully blind to it, and except to those who lack the integrity to admit the cheating is happening. So, here we go again. Per the new rules/mechanics for port battles the ONLY way for a nation to set a PB for a minor port in a county is by FIRST taking the relevant capital. Some Pirates figured out a loophole in the coding for a way to set a PB WITHOUT FIRST TAKING THE RELEVANT COUNTY CAPITAL. This is a clear and obvious violation of the new rule/mechanic. If that isn't cheating then NOTHING is cheating. Then some French figured out a loophole for a way to set a PB WITHOUT FIRST TAKING THE RELEVANT COUNTY CAPITAL. This is a clear and obvious violation of the new rule/mechanic. If that isn't cheating then NOTHING is cheating. Now, for the argument challenged, here is another way to see the argument: P1 (FACT) – Per the new rules/mechanics for port battles the ONLY way for a nation to set a PB for a minor port in a county is by FIRST taking the relevant capital. P2 (FACT) – Some Pirates figured out a loophole in the coding for a way to set a PB WITHOUT FIRST TAKING THE RELEVANT COUNTY CAPITAL. Then the Pirates exploited that loophole and continue to leverage that exploit. [FTR Exposing the exploit is good testing, so Bravo Zulu for that. Shame for using and leveraging the loophole.] P3 (FACT) – Then some French and/or some Pirates figured out another loophole for a way to set a PB WITHOUT FIRST TAKING THE RELEVANT COUNTY CAPITAL. Then the French exploited that loophole and continue to leverage that exploit. [FTR Exposing the exploit is good testing, so Bravo Zulu for that. Shame for using and leveraging the loophole.] P4 (FACT) – By exploiting and continuing to leverage the coding loophole some Pirate and French players violated the new rules/mechanics of the game. And, they continue to violate the new rule/mechanic as long as they continue to leverage and benefit from their exploitation of the coding loophole that permitted them to do something that is supposed to be impossible. P5 – Intentionally violating rules/mechanics and continuing to exploit and benefit from said violation of the rules/mechanics is cheating. C – Therefore, some Pirate and some French players are cheating because they are clearly and obviously violating the new rule/mechanic. If this isn’t cheating then nothing is cheating. Obviously, I don’t think much about that bogus warning I got. If using FACTS to truthfully, accurately, and rationally describe reality is something that can get me banned then so be it. If this forum has so little regard for facts and truth and rationality that posters can get banned for presenting inconvenient facts and truths, then this forum doesn’t deserve more my time. The developers can either continue to turn a blind eye to and tolerate the cheating by doing nothing about it, or they can finally do the right thing by doing something meaningful to stop the cheating. Some players can, and probably will, proactively tolerate the cheating by rationalizing ways to defend it and by lying with a false claim that I have not provided evidence to support my public claim of cheating. The evidence can't possibly more clear nor more obvious because it is right there on the map. Other players can passively and covertly tolerate the cheating by saying nothing. And some others can, probably will, and should condemn the cheating and the toleration of the cheating. So, this is, again, a crossroads that presents a fundamental moral option. I hope the players and the developers have the courage and integrity to choose the right path. I'm not even going to bother looking at any replies, IF this even stays up and open long enough for there to be any replies because the inevitable rationalizations to defend the cheating will be too depressing. Ditto for the childish ad hominem attacks that will follow.

600 players daily? Seriously? EXACTLY how many of those "players" are really unique individual players, and how many of those "players" are really alts that are artificially inflating the player count? Most of the players I know "personally" by speaking to them on TS have at least one alt, and more than a few of them have multiple alts. I bet the REAL player count of unique individual players is more likely around 300-400. 600 CHARACTERS daily is far more accurate and truthful.

WRONG! ! ! Per the new mechanic the ONLY for a nation to set a PB at a minor port in a county is by FIRST taking the country capital. The French and the Pirates did NOT take the relevant country capital first, thus they CHEATED by exploiting a loophole to get and keep an unfair advantage. Nice try with the lame straw man.

The PROOF is the irrefutable FACT that they took ports that should have been IMPOSSIBLE for them take. In other words, they found and exploited a coding loophole to get and keep an unfair advantage. That IS cheating. What friggin more proof could you possibly need? ? ?

LOL Nice try with the lame red hearing about hacking anything. If you can't figure out how the players did in FACT cheat to take ports that should have been IMPOSSIBLE for them to take according to the current rules/mechanics then willful blindness that severe is incurable.

See, here's the deal, I have been gone visiting my daughter and grandchildren so this is the first day I've had a chance to post a comment. Here's another deal, the MOST annoying thing about this is the way the developers are STILL tolerating cheating. Here's another deal - my comment is focusing more upon the incompetence of the developers for continuing to tolerate the cheating rather than the cheating per se.

We the Players, as in ALL of the players and not only the players for whom the developers are obviously showing a bias, should be able to trust that the developers will always be fair and impartial regarding how they treat ALL players and ALL nations. But by tolerating the cheating by Pirate and French players happening at this moment on the PvP server the developers are clearly showing either a prejudice against the players in the US nation or a bias for the Pirates and the French who cheated to take and are now keeping ports that should have been impossible for them to take (e.g Saint Mary's and San Mateo). Consequently, We the Players who are not benefitting from the way the developers are tolerating that cheating have ZERO reason to trust the developers to be fair and impartial with how they treat all players and all nations. Are the developers tolerating the cheating by Pirate and French players because they are playing Pirate and French characters who are currently occupying those ports? Do they have friends who are playing Pirate and French who are currently occupying those ports? Are they indifferent to cheating? Or are they simply prejudiced against the players (except the alts) in the US nation? Regardless of the reason for the developers to tolerate this blatant cheating the developers do not deserve a shred of trust from us as long as they tolerate cheating. Those players are lucky I'm not on the development team. First, I would thank them and reward them for exposing the flaw in the mechanics. That is the whole point of testing. So, Bravo Zulu to the players who discovered and exposed the flaw in the system. Then for USING the flaw to cheat by taking ports that should be impossible for them to take I would take back the ports by switching them to neutral and I would delete all ships, resources, and structures in the ports they cheated to keep. Yep, I have no patience and no respect for cheaters, and none for those who tolerate (and who will now try to defend) the cheating.

Of course it is cheating. Per the new rules/mechanics doing hostility missions and a PB at a county port before/without first taking the capital for that county is supposed to be IMPOSSIBLE. Thus, VCO CHEATED by taking advantage of the coding loophole by doing a PB at a port where it is supposed to be IMPOSSIBLE to do a PB. By keeping that port VCO is CHEATING (i.e. taking an unfair advantage to selfishly benefit themselves to the exclusion of all other players) pure and simple. There is no other rational way to put it. Exposing the exploit was the right thing to do because that is the entire point of testing the game. So doing the hostility missions to expose the loophole/exploit to show that was possible, setting the PB to expose the loophole/exploit to show that was possible, was the right thing to do because that is good testing. Bravo Zulu to VCO for finding and exposing that flaw in the coding. But actually DOING the PB to take and keep a PB when doing that was/is supposed to be IMPOSSIBLE is cheating. Cheating like that is dishonorable and pathetic. That the developers STILL tolerate that cheating is incompetent.

A Front Line system in naval warfare is unrealistic? Nonsense - as in of course it is realistic because that is an effective way to simulate the nearly impossible logistics of securing and supplying a port on a long term basis solely from sea while that port is under siege from land forces and possibly under blockade from sea. What is unrealistic is trying to ignore the realities of how land war operations would, could, and did influence operations at sea and what would, could, and did happen with key strategic ports. Just because the game doesn't include land warfare that doesn't mean the game should totally ignore simulating how land wars and sea wars are interdependent and mutually supportive. Granted, the issue is could be significantly different for islands, especially small islands.

One big exploit unresolved? Well that is certainly a nice way to put it. How about some blunt honesty by saying that the developers are flat out tolerating CHEATING. The developers should have put a quick end to that CHEATING within 24 hours, yet after several days they are still tolerating the CHEATING. This level of incompetence is. . .

You conveniently ignore the fact that it should have been IMPOSSIBLE to set that PB per the new PB mechanics. The only bias I see is the bias some players and some clans and some nations have for cheating every chance they get.

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?

Not only are the DLC skippers literally risking nothing more than the cost of their mods and guns, they are GAURANTEED to eventually get a gold ship. All they have to do is take any inferior "regular" or purple DLC ship out and get it sunk every day until they get the gold ship with the regional refit/trim they really want. The potential expense for a crafter to roll the RNG crafting dice to do the same thing is potentially astronomical not to mention all the time spent acquiring all of the resources and permits necessary to craft the same ship over and over and over and over again for however many times they have to craft it to get a gold ship. The DLC owner doesn't have to invest any more time that it takes to take their ship out to attack an ai target to have it kill their ship so they can replace it the next day. [edit] This issue makes it even more crucial for the developers to finally put an end to the stupid RNG crafting. Let DLC ships be subject to the whims of the RNG gods. But crafting should be the result of NOTHING more than the skills and expense invested into the process of crafting a ship. Nobody ever accidentally built a ship with a hull that was 36 inches thick instead of 32 inches. Nobody ever accidentally built a ship that had an extra birthing compartment so it could carry more crew. Nobody ever accidentally built a ship with masts 90 inches around instead of 80 inches around. Put an end to the stupid RNG crafting. Reward crafters for the time and effort and expense they put into crafting. Let DLC owners and ONLY DLC owners be the victims or winner in the RNG God's crap shoot. Well, them and people who get a note from a wreck.

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.

This used to be my favorite game. For years this was my favorite game. And then the developers started pandering to the hardcore PvPers, then the developers began trying to manipulate everyone into playing as a hardcore PvPer. I find that manipulation insulting and totally unnecessary. Instead of narrowing the paradigm by restricting the appeal to a very narrow playing style preference the developers could be broadening that paradigm by appealing to a wide variety of playing styles. Instead they are focusing on the two extremes of PvE and only PvE all the time or PvP most of the time with little room in between for a mix of preferences.

Why only 5th Rates? What about people who need to fully unbox their 4th Rates, and 3rd Rates, and 2nd Rates, and 1st Rates? Taking unboxed ships into the OW where they are subject to PvP against enemies who are likely in purple or gold quality ships that are fully modded with the best mods and using five of the best skills is foolish, especially if the ships and mods are not disposable and easy to quickly replace. Unboxed ships in the OW outside of an R-Zone are nothing more than targets to skippers in purple or gold quality ships that are fully modded with the best mods and using five of the best skills. Why only three ships? What about groups of more than three who want and need to sail together as a group so they can fully develop their squadron and fleet tactics to become a fully functional and effective TEAM instead of a bunch of individuals sailing together as a group? The former has a decent chance to prevail. The latter will usually die pointlessly. Making it impossible for all practical purposes for TEAMS of more than three people to effectively and safely train together REGARDLES of the class of ship they are sailing is grossly unreasonable. What you suggest is merely a way to manipulate people in bigger ships into becoming targets, especially unprepared people sailing unprepared ships. What you are suggesting is the equivalent of prohibiting college and professional football teams from having team practices because they got all of the team practice they needed before and during HS. Before a US Navy ship is assigned to any non-training mission or operation that ship and crew must fully train and qualify for that type of mission BEFORE it is eligible to get the assignment. So, for example, before a US Navy ship can be given an NGFS mission (i.e. Naval Gunfire Support) it must first qualify at naval gunfire. Or, before being given a mission to perform ASW (Anti Submarine Warfare) duties it must first qualify. Then, before a US Navy ship gets assigned to a Battle Group for a Readiness exercise it must be fully qualified in all operations and missions to participate with other ships for that exercise, unless the purpose of the exercise is for training and qualifications to do a particular type of mission. Finally, before a US Navy Battle Group (BG) deploys every ship/crew must fully qualify for EVERY kind of operation and mission that BG can get while deployed, and that includes passing a Readiness Exercise together as a BG. US Navy ships don't deploy so they can train. They train and qualify so they can deploy. My guess is that you never served in the military nor played a team sport because you clearly have no understanding or appreciation for how important it is for people, and especially for TEAMS, to FULLY train and develop BEFORE they deploy or play in a game against another team. This game, even on the PvP server, is not fundamentally much different from. Here is an axiom I learned in the Army, and then again in the Navy - Proper Prior Planning & Preparation Prevents Piss Poor Performance. For this game proper preparation at the individual level necessarily includes leveling up ships to fully unbox them BEFORE taking them into PvP combat. For this game proper preparation at the group level of a squadron or fleet necessarily includes a group of players sailing together enough so they can become a fully functional team BEFORE taking them into PvP combat against another squadron or fleet. Going into combat against other players without proper preparation is foolish. The choices in your above paragraph are grossly inadequate. And if you don't understand how your choices are in fact/reality trying to force/manipulate players into a particular paradigm then your willful blindness is incurable.

The only childish person posting childish comments or question is the person who is resorting to the pathetic tactic of making a childish ad hominem attack, even if that attack is covert rather than over. So, EXACTLY how is my question childish? Your RATIONAL explanation for how my comment is a rant is? ? ? Your RATIONAL explanation for how my question is childish is? ? ? I personally think a lot of your suggestions are worse than half-baked because of poor reasoning and are terrible for appealing to a wide variety of playing styles that CAN coexist quite well on a PvP server. And you are 100% allowed to rationalize those half-baked ideas however you wish to rationalize them.