TheDread

Not that it really matters at this point, you'd just made it sound like they fought valiantly and tried to retake and were generally operating like a nation. After the first couple of battles, that entire coast were no shows. They didn't sue for peace then... but I think that was less 'resolve to fight to bitter end' and more 'knew Cid wouldn't give a shit if they did.' Once LAMA left for Russia... did they set pbs? I was gone at that point but didn't notice any?

Based on PB attendance for the two weeks prior... I just assumed there were no dutch left to make a forum thread.

Um, LAMA left Prussia. That's the only reason those ports were available to be returned. The Dutch didn't retake them or work out a deal with the strong occupying force. The occupying force evaporated and the guys who were left in Prussia shrugged and had a yard sale to get rid of their old roommate's abandoned toys.

Today Sweden launched their attack against GB's only RVR crafting port, and when the Swedish diplomat was queried on the matter his response was, and I quote, "Frankly after the way GB have acted as a nation i dont even care if sweden becomes nothing. But wiping you all out will allow me to leave this game and move on a happy man." Sweden has assembled a rogue's gallery of every nation hopping troll in the game... every insecure baby who has to flock to the winning side and hide in Redii's shadow. It's not the proud nation that Havoc built at Christmas time that stood toe to toe with Russia and almost took them... it's a pathetic collection of bullies who are using the collective strength to prosecute personal grudges. We've been informed that we have until the PB time tomorrow to 'make them a reasonable offer.' What offer does the world say is reasonable to bullies? What offer do you think would actually sate them, and not have them coming back for more the instant another clan decided they wanted a little more, or the instant we stuck our head out and tried to play the game after? I'm not going to be bullied and I don't think anyone else in GB is keen for it either. We will fight. We will fight until we're out of ports and then we'll fight from free ports. We will aid ANY other nation that is willing to take a stand against this army of evil... these trolls that won't be happy until the game itself is destroyed because of their need to pat themselves on the back. We will not surrender. It's time for all good men in this game... and for all who care about whether this game remains playable in a few months... to stand up and say 'No. This is not how we play. When one nation vows to destroy another one... especially one so important to the new player population of this game as GB... we will respond and we will do it overwhelmingly." I'm not asking for any specific party to play server police... but I am saying... if we let these people roll across nations one by one, demanding tribute or facing destruction... there will be a point when it's too late to stop them.

From: Just going to leave this here.

I'm saving my formal response until Redman runs the numbers too. But I think it's worth considering that the existing RELATIONSHIPS between woods ought to be preserved. People built ships with WO for the tankiness - it should stay in the same general place on the spectrum as far as speed and tankiness are concerned. Adding new options that fill in gaps or expand the ends of that spectrum makes sense! Spreading things on the spectrum further apart to force more interesting gameplay decisions makes sense. But moving things from one end of the spectrum to the other just renders player's hard work garbage. If things that USED to be a good and tanky build are no longer as good and tanky.. . there needs to be some sort of buyback mechanic. Give all players a week to break up crafted and note ships for 100% material and mod return so people can rebuild with the new woods? I know that seems silly and exploitable. So... probably best to just keep the existing relationships in place - Fir>Bermuda>Teak>WO on speed and the opposite on HP... whatever the new numbers need to be for your balance goals.

LOL. This. Who's tag was Redman wearing when he said this? Who do you think he was in comms with laughing their asses off as he answered? We were attacking ports in redoubtables last week. Do you think we were doing that while sitting on enough seasoned logs to afford to throw 100k of them at the Russians every time they loaned us 20 people for an hour? I love it.

If there's on thing GB has always had all on it's own... it's been hundreds of noobs willing to get sunk for a good cause. New players spawn here. We have gone through times when we were short on experienced captains, but we've never been short on people qualified to screen. The Russians have been irrelevant the few times they've come down to screen, because we've fielded more than 100 screeners of our own each time Belize was threatened.. Not alts. GB captains. I've seen ONE russian alt in a PB... and that was in Bensalem battle you no showed... so I'm not just CERTAIN he was the deciding factor. But sure. Whatever excuse you need to make for stepping away now that GB is finally getting on it's feet and starting to win battles. We sure as hell appreciate you, by the way. When this war started... we'd recently lost the majority of our RVR players. But throwing PBs every day has been exactly what we needed to develop the next crop. You've done FAR MORE for GB than the russians! Enjoy whatever you go do instead. We'll enjoy this more without you, from here on out.

MULTIPLE CLAN WAREHOUSES. The 2nd and 3rd can be super expensive to setup if you want them to be, but there are a lot of reasons a clan may want to share resources in multiple ports.

Mechanism for port handover/takeover within nation without losing investments There needs to be some mechanism to peacefully move a port between clans in a nation. It's the nature of the game that sometimes key ports will be held by a clan that has left either the game or the nation. There needs to be a way for that clan to voluntarily hand over their port to a friendly clan without destroying the investments. A peaceful change of 'regional governors' shouldn't involve enough cannonfire to damage the shipbuilding infrastructure of a seaport! I also wish this could be coupled with SOME mechanism for taking back a port when the owning clan has gone inactive, such as 'if the clan creator and diplos have not logged in for a week, the port becomes available for any same-nation clan to takeover, if they choose to initiate that.

I'd be okay with a lobby based system, without the TP element. It makes no sense that you can get to a port battle without sailing there, but I'd be okay with you being able to sail in and join the lobby for the 4 hours before the PB. That keeps the advantage with those who do the hard work - if you get organized and get the ships and reps there early, good on you. If a defender can afford to scout and screen for the extended time before the PB... and actually BEAT the PB fleet, not just waste 30 minutes of their time while the circles get points... good on them.

During the Port Battle for Mosquito Cay, Spain implanted operatives in GB for the purpose of throwing the battle. It's suggested by the way they allowed themselves to be killed in the battle, but the proof is in the attached screenshot from the Spanish stream of the port battle where player Mr Halo ( who was tribunaled once already this month for using enemy alts for screening purposes before a PB) instructs another player not to target Deathium from clan IJN on the GB side because his clan is 'friendlyish'. Planting operatives in a foreign nation to sabotage port battles certainly seems to be in the spirit of what's not allowed by the published rules on using Alt accounts for RVR cheating.

SEND FLEET TO DOCKS WHEN I CLICK THE TELEPORT BUTTON. Sorry, I feel strongly about that one. But nobody thinks they can teleport with a buc in their check luggage. Main ship gets sent to docks. Send fleet too! Also - if I have available crew, go ahead and crew up the fleet ships.

Yes, we were able to leave after it became clear we weren't getting the indiaman. In retrospect, probably should have stayed in just to make sure the rules didn't change if timer ran out?

Heya... We thought we were being clever on the Port Raid mission... and tried it with a handful of small ships - planning to kite the fleet and board the indiaman... and that part worked swimmingly, but we couldn't take control of the indiaman after boarding. The x didn't appear... and everyone in the battle came to a complete stop right next to it and tried... so it wasn't a 'someone did the most damage' situation. I have a SUSPICION that you can't actually capture that ship until the AI defenders are dead? Can someone confirm that's how the mechanic works and how it's supposed to?

This doesn't fix anything though. It just means that the attacking side has to move 10 alts rather than 1. It makes it more of a PAIN to pull this off, but doesn't address the underlying question of whether alt swapping ports is legal. Requiring them to have 10 alts rather than 1... or to waste a week leveling those alts up... makes the exploit more available to more active nations. That's all. It's like when you guys come out shitting on DLCs with seasoned wood... because YOU have the time and infrastructure set up to season wood, it would be more convenient if it didn't get easier for other nations to compete.

I don't see how it gets more clear than that - hostile clans within your nation taking ports and working against the national interest are a design feature, not a bug. It's dumb as shit. But it's allowed.

To be fair, we're not the first invulnerable fortress taken down by this strategy.

This. Nothing wrong with DLCs. There's a problem with the seasoned wood crafting situation, relative to the dlcs.

I'd love to know the actual numbers. But yes.. a basic cutter cannot tag ANY player ship. It's to prevent griefing in free boats. A basic cutter can be tagged by any ship in the game. There IS a ratio of attacker to defender below which you cannot get a tag. A higher BR force can always tag a lower BR force but a low BR force must have a certain percentage of the target force's BR to get them into battle. Again, I'd love for someone to tell me what that ratio is. The other day I was unable to tag a l'ocean in a le req by myself... but when a friend got his snow in the circle, we could. So that should give you some bounds to start narrowing it down.

Excellent. Create a mechanic for Nation X to retake Syria, just like exists in the real world. Why our wargame should be any different, indeed. IF there is a way for a nation to oust a 'friendly' rogue clan from a port, even if it's difficult or expensive... that's fine, and actually solves some other problems - i.e. what to do when a clan goes dormant or changes nations but refuses to drop their ports. With the old capital-based front line mechanic it was at least POSSIBLE to use your own alt clan or invite a friendly nation to take a couple of ports to get hostility on something deep in your territory. Now you'd have to hand over practically every port between the nearest freeport and the problem port. Fix this so there's a way that friendly clans can incite revolt in a port somehow and get another stab at running hostilities. Otherwise... in a few months... all of the 55 point ports on the map will be dead because alt clans will have hijacked them and rendered them unusable and there will be no way to recover any of them.

And just like that, everyone was off, following in Gregory's lead in an effort to collapse our nations so maybe the big mean AI would pick on someone else!

You can open 3 slots on a l'ocean in a couple of days. If someone doesn't have the attention span to run a few missions, I doubt they have the attention span to pay attention during port battles, and would rather not have them. Perhaps you ARE a special character who does not need the practice, but nyah, for every one of you I might pass over in error by expecting everyone to have actually sailed the ship they want to do PBs in, I'll weed out 10 of the nitwits I've seen in PBs lately who obviously still don't know how to manually sail a 1st rate. That's a trade I'll make. I'm sorry to the folks who, like you, since I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt, really are that good that you don't need to spend a few hours in the boat to master it, but overall it's good for the health of the fleet if we require that people BOTH open slots AND be decent at fighting against other players. Again, I'm agreeing with you that picking open slots OVER skill is dumb of a commander, but my point is that if someone hasn't opened slots... EITHER they don't have the skill or they don't have the attitude that I'd personally want in a captain under me. That's just my personal opinion and you may pick your fleets differently than me and that's okay!

Are you just grinding an axe? Maybe you've had a bad experience with bad PB commanders - there certainly are some that do it but shouldn't. Of course the commander should pick the best captains available and opening 5 knowledge slots is not necessarily proof of skill, but my point is good captains open slots on ships they plan to use, too. Both people should be doing their jobs. But if someone thinks they're just TOO GOOD to level a ship they want to bring into a PB, that tells me something about their attitude, and makes me less likely to pick them if I have other good folks to choose from. If I have my choice between two qualified people and one has opened 5 slots and the other 2... I'll pick the 5 slotter... not BECAUSE the little buffs will make the difference, but because that person has shown their willing to put the time into the boat to learn more about it.

You are obviously not tooling up with seasoned woods. A L'ocean's worth of wood costs 7 million to season if you wait 53 days. 9 million if you want it done in 40 days. And millions more if you want to make it go faster. That's where all of the multi-million dollar clan budgets are going ,at least for the big clans with the major ports. There absolutely ARE sinks built into the game for reals.