TheDread

This post needs more attention. Perhaps frontline system needs to have an exception for ANY netural port, whereby any nation can do hostility on it? That would make it possible to take an enemy port after an AI raider attack, and create some danger to doing neutral handovers within your nation as well, since the enemy could swoop in and use the time the port was neutral to open a new front in the middle of your territory. Speaking of handovers - and this is an old topic - there needs to be some way for a nation to take ports from it's own clans. Sometimes ports that have been held for ages by an inactive clan suddenly become strategically relevant, but there's no way to 'reclaim' the port so someone who actually plays the game can manage the friends list. Other times a clan goes rogue. Other times a clan defects to another nation but refuses to release their ports. There should be a way to police your own without having to beg a foreign power to take your port and hope they give it back... and that's not even always an option with the changes to the frontline mechanic... now you may have to flip 8 or 10 ports to gain hostility on certain ports.

Like most of the limits in the game... outposts, buildings, dock slots... it makes it that much more convenient to buy an alt.

I don't disagree with your sentiment that the captain is more important than a couple percent more reload or turn rate... but my counter argument is that you're NOT a highly skilled player if you haven't taken the time to open more than 2 slots on a ship you plan to take into port battles. The opposite isn't necessarily true - it's totally possible to open 5 slots WITHOUT becoming a highly skilled player, but it's NOT possible to become a port battle ready player without spending time in the ship you plan to sail. It's my opinion that you should BOTH - open at least 4 slots in the ship AND not be a total idiot before you're allowed into a port battle. Both requirements, not an either or.

I have some ideas why you're having trouble filling PBs. I don't think you had 3k worth of Dutch ships at Azua last night, let alone 10. I also don't remember seeing any Dutch names in combat news, btw... The swedes got 3 kills, but everyone else who died all night was Dutch. If Liam is okay with you claiming that 'we' got his 3 kills, that's between the two of you. One of the realities of war and politics and life in general is that you have to consider the consequences of your actions... and pick battles you can win. Simultaneously driving off all of your teammates and then attacking British ports was a strange choice, imo. You picked the wrong horse here - starting that fight without considering what anyone else might do in response. We had no intentions of attacking the Dutch when we decided that the Swedes couldn't treat us like shit and still expect our support. You did this to yourselves and I'm GLAD the other clans you've dragged into this fight are pushing back against you. Also - check your timers. The two ports that secure a 55 point port aren't where you save money or leave dormant clans in charge. We've all made the mistake of missing a timer. But when we do, we blame ourselves for doing something dumb, not beg for a game mechanic change that would have let us get away with it. In a more general way, since you're pretending that the timing of this is coincidental and the post isn't about last night... the same rules apply to any nation. If a player is CHOOSING to play in a nation that can't field a 10k PB fleet, they need to consider their moves carefully and secure victory before seeking battle, not the other way around... as Sun Tzu reminds. That's THEIR choice to remain in a weak nation, and they should be doing it because they like the challenges it imposes.

In GENERAL if you asked me to fix Loki runes, I'd suggest that the loki driver gets kicked out (and AI control resumes) if they get more than 750 or 1000m from the nearest enemy player for more than 2 minutes. That would solve the occasionally frustrating sail-away issues in Open World, and prevent abuse in hostility missions.

I definitely understand that those aren't the only two days people might have something to do over the holidays, but I'd wager those are the only two days that you'd have trouble filling a port battle. People can sit one out if they have a holiday party on the 27th, so long as MOST of their nation is still available to play the game. I think the week-long truce is boredom city... as I, like quite a few others, have MORE time for gaming over the break instead of less and could have made some of the EU time zone PBs that I'm usually working during! But it appears the admins have spoken, so I'll keep my peace and find other ways to ruin people's christmas via naval action, besides flipping their ports!

Each player. Have each player check the hostility percentage when they leave and you each see a different number.

I don't see why it requires an entire week? Disallow hostility missions on the 24th and 30th... Protects the two actual holidays while otherwise letting everyone have fun if they have extra down time?

Thank you! Which thing will be fixed, out of curiosity? The notification, or the loki being able to enter hostility missions in the first place? It seems ripe for abuse if a nation can start popping lokis when they see hostility going up on a port, then whoever gets in just sails away and keeps everyone tagged until the cavalry shows up...

For the second time, I've had a loki in a hostility mission. I believe this is unintended behavior. If it IS intended behavior, there's still a bug because the combat news notification isn't localizing correctly. Both times I've caught the loki because of oddities in the boarding. The time it happened today, he attempted to pull me while his crew was lower than mine. He also, once I did board him, counter-attacked even with lower crew than me. When I killed him, a notification popped up in combat news, but it appeared to be in another language (I play in English.) I believed Loki is only supposed to put you into open world battles, not hostility orders or other mission types?

Did you hear about the Polish Admiral who wanted to be buried at sea? A lot of good men died trying to dig that grave.

Loki runes don't usually have marines? When you won it, did you see a notification in combat news? We had a loki into our hostility mission the other day... which seems absurd enough... but the exams would be a new kind of stupid.

NO, you're not required to both login at the same moment. You both end up in OW whenever you log in. And the last time it happened to me... I was somehow magically fully repaired.

It seems like ALMOST every port has some trade value now... I just wanted to check and see if it's an intended behavior that there are a few that don't? Specifically, I noticed Les Gonaives USED to drop gold, but when that was removed nothing was added back? Are there others on the map with no drops? Can we by chance get drops added to any of these that exist? it seems weird that the folks who live in these few towns just don't do ANYTHING!

I'd imagine 500 screenshots were taken of this sentence, and will be reposted in almost every patch thread going forward. lol. Congrats also on the paternity leave, @admin! I do agree on the suggestion though! The Windward channel should not be ENTIRELY closed to traffic by the privateer fleets. There needs to be a path through.

Discussion of explosion damage and range aside... it seems to me the gamebreaking part of this is that explosions are too easy to make happen intentionally. It was not a common tactic to simply stop fighting the fire for the purpose of killing yourself and anyone nearby. Sure, a ship that was beyond saving may have tried to foul itself with a foe, but intentional explosion was pretty damned rare. Rare enough that it wouldn't be immersion breaking to just remove it from the game. Buckets protect your ship from YOUR fire. They don't do anything to protect you from someone ELSE'S explosion. (Can we put the buckets over our heads before the explosion? :P) A couple of suggestions for how to improve it: 1. just plain take away the #8 button. I think it would be fine if the crew acted out of self preservation and just always did their best to save the ship. As crew is required to keep the ship afloat or put out fires, other tasks become harder to accomplish. 2. If we want to keep an intentional fireship option - Add an abandon ship command! Instead of having MORE crew available for sailing and gunnery because you've stopped fighting the fire... we should have less because, well, the ship is on fire. The only way to stop fighting a fire ought to be to order the crew to jump overboard. Crew number starts plummeting... sailing and gunnery become virtually impossible. This would keep the fireship captain from being able to continue to steer into the enemy fleet with total efficiency... And that would be great coupled with the next idea - 3. Fire should be bad for your boat. Like... really bad for your boat. It should be causing structure and sail damage, and that damage should escalate as the fire grows. This makes people who DON'T want to be on fire stop and deal with it. And it makes people who do want to blow up plan much more carefully, since the hull and sail damage will bring the ship to a halt fairly rapidly. Some combination of 2 and 3 would leave fireships in the game as a playable option, while greatly increasing the skill required to use them and creating options to counter them.

I love this one, but don't think requiring a multi-million dollar book is practical! Reinforcing the bowsprit is a fairly simple operation, comparatively... so the mod and it's components should drop at about the same frequency as the various rig refits, I'd think? Actually, it may ought to use the rig refit icon, so it becomes another choice in that slot? So perhaps the 'reinforced bowsprit' would require 5 of a new resource called 'extra spars' and an elite version with better stats could require a new book that drops with the same frequency as the other rig crafting books?

The problem with a crew penalty is that we can see other ship's crew. It will make it blatantly obvious who in the battle is a fireship. Maybe that's part of the intention of that change... but it seems that maybe nerfing in two steps - 1st reducing thee effect and if they still see more use than they should in the meta, then nerf the crew numbers so they're easier to spot and avoid. I get what you're thinking and the historical inspiration of it, but historically you couldn't mouse over another ship to see it's crew number, either... so it probably is worth considering the gameplay aspect as well. The other gameplay effect it would have if it reduces crew - a fireship 1st rate would be operable by lower level players than a less flammable one?