Barberouge

I'd like a realistic open world (whole real world, full PvP, loss-based, complex economy and player diplomacy), and naval combat features based on realism (sailing physics, weather, crew management), but taking distance from it anytime when needed to provide an interesting and tactical gameplay - without throwing immersion over board.

I wasn't sure you were ready to go with a more realistic sailing model. Seems this one is more complex than the PotBS one. Glad to hear that !

Feels fine, although the first cannons noise doesn't sound like a full broadside. There's a little strange noise following each damage noise, half fire half hull cracking. Basically I'd like a fully customisable sound. Some sounds might feel pleasant to some people and annoying to others. We could change the volume of the birds, the hull, the wind, the cannons and so on... Same goes for UI sounds.

IMO the confusion in PotBS port battles was due to many factors. Participating in a PB involved grinding PvE. It wasn't needed to have participated to the flip, people could farm points afterwards. Many players were PvE players who just came here when their nation was winning. Those who wanted to learn the PB tactics, nations who wanted to create a common war effort, therefore had to deal with difficult conditions. The overall will to win maps often required charismatic individualities, and a fair amount of RvR societies. Nation leaders were often port battle leaders, but some advanced nations had a political organization and a bunch of admirals. The best fleets I've seen consisted of players who were used to open sea PvP, and who could fulfill the PBs. The pirate nations especially, included many casual players who were often discouraged by both the specific pirate scoring system and early defeats. The pirate RvR was close to perfect from my point of view though, realistic and requiring more efforts. However, it was based on the assumption that other nations would fight each other, which didn't happen so often. But basically the quality of the RvR and of the PBs was related to the atmosphere in nations. On the Rackam server, pirates won multiple maps because they had a united, motivated nation. On Roberts, the pirates won 4 maps out of 45 since game launch, and none since 2011. The British won the first 6 maps in 2008, and the rest of the conquest history can be separated into domination periods of the nation which had enough good PvP players, charismatic leaders and overall less PB players. There are logical reasons why everyone criticized PotBS RvR system, and why so few epic maps happened. NA conquest setup should be very different. I'd advocate more open conquest goals so that nations could choose what they want to fight for, tools to organize united nations, and overall more historical accuracy and epicness ! Also I fully agree about the need of command and control tools for groups.

I've been trying to clear my mind from using PotBS features or PotBS setup as a basis. Not because of good or bad, but because it's like a smoke screen. Then when things resemble to PotBS, its setup should be looked at. Naval combat especially, resembles to the PotBS one: ships moved by wind with batteries firing different balls. And if we remove the magical skills from PotBS, we still find a very good basis regarding gameplay. Furthermore I'd say that any naval combat game not only would, but should feature the same combat tactics (which were close to what happened historically). You used words (spike, block, formation) that fit to both NA and PotBS. I used other ones (line fighting, melee, maneuvers, sails or hull shooting, staircase formation, turn-as-one) that also fit both NA and PotBS. Those aren't PotBS examples, those are naval combat description. I like naval combat in games because it requires sailing characteristics awareness, ship control and complex group maneuvers and tactics. For example, I've ever met one guy who mastered PotBS 1v1 almost perfectly. That says a lot about the potential of naval combat. But that also had to do with PotBS magical skills. I've seen quite a fair amount of excellent groups though. In NA we'd have potentially the same tactics, but with different sailing characteristics and ship control. Also we'd have aiming, collision damage, friendly fire and flooding. That brings more variables in the table. NA will definitely not be PotBS.

Glad to hear that ! If you're looking for ways to make some money, maybe those types of convenience items would fit well. I didn't see any example of painted sails either, but the 70% sails decals opacity in PotBS made the feature acceptable (IMO) - Except some strange designs passed the comittee, such as exhaust pipes on fire and my awsome hardcore carebear decal:

3. Maybe a player could even setup a precise battle speed. I'd also like the option to actually setup the sail positions, not like in PotBS where we only had drop sails, battle sails and full sails with no other control.

I LIKE THIS PROPOSAL (BTW and on a side note, would it be possible to restrict player names such as K I L L E R, which somehow kill the immersion feeling ?) I like this proposal but maybe blocks would be going too far. Blocking is a very basic move in naval combat, which should be mastered by any captain. Maybe blocking wouldn't be an order but rather a signal triggered by the targeted player ? I have mixed feelings about speed and formations. Speed is mostly useful during sailing phases, and only requires one word. Formations can change in the heat of the battle, and hearing the orders can make them more quickly executed than reading a picture (as opposed to spiking which requires to find a name). Also fleet orders work quite well with SoLs or line fighting, but become less important as the ships maneuver faster or are in melee, where the players ability to read situations by themselves becomes more critical. Still they could be useful in some situations. I'm not sure however about the purpose of such commands. I don't think they could make voice comms useless, I'd rather see them as good additions to voice comms. Furthermore I'd question their ability to play a role in learning PvP. Naval combat basics might be about knowledge, but winning fights is about awareness. If PvP becomes reading picture orders, some players might not build their own experience of the fights. Also I think voice comms are good to learn to rookies. Some maneuvers, or the overall goals of a specific fight, aren't easily explainable by in game pictures (for examples, shooting the sails or the hull, or a turn-as-one in staircase formation). I agree that theorically the learning means should be the same for everyone, but in practice the use of third party software worked well in all the MMO games I've been playing so far. I don't know about the "faction warfare" mode though. During the first weeks of PotBS, having multiple people fighting for being the chief during the battle was quite awful and often did more bad than good to the fleet. Also I agree with Johny Reb suggestions. Furthermore I'd like some command tools given to group leaders. It would be very useful and historically accurate: admirals, fleet admirals, squadron admirals, vice-admirals, counter-admirals, rear admirals depending on the countries. I think his comment about tabbing was more about reading the state of an opponent ship rather than targeting for shooting. I'd rather have command tools given from the get go rather than unlockable. Maybe adding different target mark colors depending on the ammo type would be interesting.

PvP isn't a tedious activity which should be given incentives. People play PvP because the PvP gameplay is good. But I agree the stakes shouldn't prevent players from enjoying PvP. Maybe it's too early to discuss more precise stakes, since it also depends on the strenght of the ships (price/strength curve). It also depends on how we would craft ships: will that be exciting, or AFK travels ? What would be the kind of cost of high-end ships ? In PotBS, sinking high-end ships was an economic victory, and if done with low-end ships, great fun ! But the cost was long PvE grinding and hauling from point A to B. I believe in stakes which cost time as long as we spent this time having fun.

Just finished my second PS2 session, playing as solo zerg since my outfit disbanded. Instead of implementing an endgame they have been improving performance, which is a welcomed choice as my game doesn't lack FPS anymore in overcrowded areas. The game didn't change much since its launch, the UI is much better, spawn camping is less valuable, and some new weapons and vehicles have been added. The bigger change comes from the new alert system: every 3 or 4 hours, the AI proposes a specific server challenge, be it either controlling some specific facility types all over the world or conquering a whole continent. The challenge is time limited (usually about 2 hours maximum) which gives a game pace built around a succession of faction continent locking phases (as usual) and specific challenge phases. That brings some freshness to the gaming experience, although there is a disparity between factions on my servers, some being focused on usual conquest and some others on specific challenges. The conquest overall also has been improved, prohibiting the possibility of "ghost capping", i.e. using a fast small squad to conquer regions behind the front lines. The facilities still lack diversity though, after playing for one week the tactical gameplay is repetitive. Fighting against zergs is still uninteresting, but when one face a coordinate outfit, the fights can become epic battles since everyone now knows the field at their fingertips. I'll definitely play it again when the 4th continent and the endgame will come out.

Yoho !

A captain shouldn't be able to die. If his ship would be destroyed he would hold on a wreckage, until his mates would rescue him or he would be rescued by the opponents. Then he would have to pay a ransom, and would be transported into the nearest allied port. If noone would rescue him he would just build a raft (sailable). There could be different types of surrenders. In reality, I think a surrender just meant that the crew wouldn't be killed, but the ship and cargo would be taken anyway, and the crew put in prison waiting for a ransom. But maybe there could be surrenders like in PotBS: the captain keeps his ship, his cargo and his crew. Or maybe he would give a part of his cargo to keep his ship and crew. About the losing penalties, I usually favor low penalties, but I know many PotBS players advocated high penalties to increase the excitement of PvP. Maybe a compromise could be found, with low penalties to low-end ships and high penalties to high-end ships.

Whether it would be interesting regarding gameplay should be looked at though. I basically don't advocate a PvE world in a multiplayer game. Player governed ports open up economic and conquest options that can be countered by companies or states. I think the more is controlled by players the better, because players are usually less predictable.

Did you put crew on the decks already ? Nice ! The name is "Unité" which means unity.

I used the term "company" because from what I read it would fit the period. Devs talked about "society" and "corporation". I'm not sure they are ready to create multiple types of players associations though. I like the idea of making the markets more dynamic. Might be difficult to balance (especially with an overall growth parameter), but it would provide a more interesting gameplay to trade players (especially a growth parameter ). How would that work in the long run though ? I guess the growth should be limited. However, I'd avoid making defenses be passively upgraded when selling military supplies. I think the governors should be given the choice to build what they think is best. Especially they could decide which defenses to build (walls, forts, coastal batteries...). I'm not sure about specific trade rights given to individuals. Shouldn't that be done passively then ? Wouldn't that counter the possibility for governors or states to influence trade ? Or would that be included in a complex system where governors would be given access to individual selling/buying history ? Maybe such sytem would work well with companies trade rights though. The game will be developped block per block, so maybe some complex features couldn't be in the game quickly. Still it would be good to have a global idea of what the game could look like, and implement at the beginning a possibility to expand features later (devs didn't start to work on the open world yet).

Heyo Ten Night-flipping separated the salty grandpas from the freshwater fishermen

Shogun 2 UI and immersion combined with Rome 2 new features (and politics re-worked to actually mean something), would have given the game people were expecting (I still spent almost 500 hours on it already ). I'm playing LoL as well from time to time. Solo-Q mostly, trying to get gold this season as jungler - and it is a story of flames, insults, trolling and damn AFKs But the game requires tactics, strategy and knowledge, and the steep learning curve provides infinite playing time.

Good memories with the Russian Spanish community of Roberts BTW. Big Up to Ruslan, Paygelda, Captain White and all the team of hardcore RvRers ! Eric давай !

I sunk PotBS some months ago with a realistic 50$ bronze cannon broadside (at 700y with fishing mods) Any surviving night-flippers ?

Thanks. You shouldn't bother too much with that map though. Basically I just wanted to show the possible tactical effects of changeable tides and currents, and how a battle with troops landing can open options aswell as dynamic defenses building. Also I read that a leeward fleet is always at a disadvantage, but it's not necessarily true depending on the situation and the ships sizes. Any historical map could become a good basis, but once again how fights are working will tell how maps could be setup. Especially the islands shapes and sizes should be aimed at creating diverse tactics. So maybe this map wouldn't give as many interesting options. Looking forward to the first focus testing Also some "admin" already got my skype.

Difficult to propose a map without knowing the punch of a broadside and the maneuverability of the ships. 8 nautical miles map featuring a combined operations battle: dark blue is deep sea light blue is shoals light brown is land at low tide dark brown is land at hight tide red is attackers (showing a 20 ships main line sailing, with max range and effective range) yellow is defenders (showing a 20 ships main line in static line formation, with max range and effective range) black is forts (with 36-pound range and 64-pound range) 1 and 2: attackers spawn points 3 and 4: defenders spawn points 5 and 6: landing beaches 7: port 8: port fort 9: harbor fort 10: sea fort 11: channel fort 12: Kraken 13: harbor 14: channel 15: Bay of Death 16: islands The ranges and scales aren't excessively precise. The forts have to be built by the port owners, and cannons have to be put in the forts. The port and the forts have garrisons. Landing troops in 5 and 6 enables to attack and possibly take the harbor fort (9) or the port fort (8) - but it decreases the number of available men (and cannons ?) on the ships. Landing troop in the port (7) without having taken or destroyed the port fort (8) can be dangerous. The battle can be fought in low, high or mid tide with corresponding currents (which I didn't draw). Some dykes could be added. The wind can be 360°. It shouldn't change too much during the battle. Both defenders and attackers have a wide range of viable tactics at their disposal. Depending on the tide and the wind, the defenses, and their fleet composition, they can choose to attack/defend the harbor fort by controlling the landing points, to destroy the outer forts, to destroy the opponents fleet, or to use cheesy tactics with frigates. The harbor (13) can be defended by a static line, provided the line is heavy enough and there aren't strong forts that could be taken by the attackers. If it's mid-tide, the current might be too strong. The channel (14) is kind of a bet. A leeward fleet usually has an advantage between coasts. But if it's pushed downwind, it could end stuck in the harbor or in the open sea with no more advantage. Frigates can be sent through the shoals. The Bay of Death (15) is... a Bay of Death ! And the islands (16) are there to provide interesting tactics when the fleets sail between the landing point and the channel, or engage a fight in that zone. Ships of the line don't have all options open, and frigates can shape the battle going for the bows or the sterns of the opponents. More islands could be added. One of my favorite PotBS maps was Jawbone Bay. The purpose doesn't have to be taking the port. Some forts can be destroyed, and the attackers would come back before the defenders could re-build them. The sea fort looks like this But all this should be corrected after we know how fights look like.

For sure learning to rookies should remain important to be ready for the tactical possibilities. Maybe naval tradition wouldn't even need incentives in NA ? Also yes, devs have been speaking about a mode like WoT.

Glad to hear there will be different weathers. Maybe those could translate into the open world map. I got the requirement and am ready to crash

Couldn't it be possible to circumvent that problem, such as with adding a delay to the spectator view ? Or maybe an option to record the battle and then view it with free camera ?

Refreshing the gameplay with skills tuning can be a way to change the best tactics, but even when this happenend in PotBS, the veterans were the ones adapting the fastest. Also it shouldn't be the main goal of skills tuning, but rather finding a gameplay that offers better fights and more tactics. And there should still be data to change, such as for example the damage of a cannonball. But some kind of naval tradition (is that what you called trade of PvP ?) should still be there whatever the simplicity of ship management. However, for players who want a more complex gameplay, a possibility should be offered to choose a more detailed ship management. This would please historical fans and players only interested in battles. Also I forgot to mention that devs spoke about the possibility of introducing an aiming system. Not that I'm a huge fan of this one, but if done well it could add to the richness of the gameplay.