[Patch thoughts.]

I think the best way of helping new players get used to the combat would be to avoid the 1v1 vs ai they have for their 1st battles at the moment. 

Spawn all new characters in an area of the map only navigable by the basic cutter, such as the pacific coast or a couple of special free ports etc, and let the newbies jump into fully open 25v25 battles (with very limited rewards). When they level up or feel comfortable with the combat they can travel (teleport) to their respective capitals and start to learn the OW side of the game. Beyond level 2 or 3 there would be no further rewards in the area but they could still train there before moving out.

Sometimes we forget how different the control system is compared to most other games out there and how long it can take some ppl to get used to it.

[Patch thoughts.]

I think it says a lot about the direction of the game when pvp on a pvp server is described as a grind.

#makepvpfunagain

[Decentralised Economy]

32 minutes ago, Remus said:

Won't your plan for national shipyards encourage centralisation?

I think it certainly would if resources were left as they are atm anyway but if there was enough of a push from lack of/cost of resources and the projects weren't too expensive to get started at the lower levels it could work. The Spanish, for example, would still have a central hub in Habana (for the largest shipyard with the most expensive resources/ships) but could also create hubs in ports like Ays, Trinidad, Salamanca etc as front line crafting areas (where resources may be much cheaper to produce) and reduce downtime between pvp battles etc. 

[Decentralised Economy]

After the return of shipyards on the testbed it seems the concentration of the population around the capitals will be even more pronounced than before. These suggestions might hopefully reduce this and create a more organic spread of players on the open world

 

Resources -- At the moment there are no limits on resources coming out of a port so the vast majority of crafting, trading and sailing is done around each nation's capital. This leaves massive areas of the map feeling empty (meaning a lot of conquest battles could be undefended for a while). While I'm against hard limits on the number of buildings etc in a port I think a soft limit of some kind could be useful. For example, after a certain number of mines/farms/buildings have been built in a port (depending on the % of players in a nation/a certain number with buildings there?)  the cost in gold/LH will be increased and the amount of resources will be decreased on a sliding scale (depending on the size of the empire/number of ports/buildings present etc etc). 

This will help create shortages in ports with massive populations and push people towards other regions, as well as creating lots of opportunities for haulers, traders and pirates. If those nations and clans want to continue crafting ships in one central area the resources will have to be hauled from further afield to make it economically viable.

 

Buildings -- While it's nice to see new buildings I don't think it makes good sense ingame to make each player individually create their own dockyard or foundry to progress in their crafting. Most clans will have dedicated crafters so dockyards will just become a nuisance (if you personally don't have one) rather than something which adds to the gameplay - resources will simply be passed over to the crafters creating even more downtime between sailing/pvp. The current shipyards also tie players and clans to one area, if you've spent the last week getting a level 3 shipyard built you're not going to want to move any time soon or use up another building slot for another shipyard somewhere else.

Perhaps a shipyard or foundry needs to be a national project? Once a certain number of resources are taken to any port and 'paid in' to the shipyard building project a shipyard will appear in that port and be usable by anyone in that nation. This price could increase exponentially with numbers of shipyards and distance from capital etc. These projects might also need upkeep in the form of resources per week but i'll leave that to another time.

This would also help create new trading/crafting hubs in areas away from the capital.  Any comments/suggestions/insults welcome  

[Probable Massive ALT use problem after the wipe]

Perhaps the barrier to gaining conquest marks could be linked to BR rather than the number of players enemy players - such as the winning side will only receive marks if the losers have at least 50% of the BR of the other side?

edit -  Personally I think conquest 'marks' (where each single mark is extremely important) is the wrong design. A points system would make much more sense where good play is incentivised rather than having a win only giving marks.

[Wipe patch to live servers slightly delayed.]

15 minutes ago, Mrdoomed said:

If there are cooldown like they used to have it will work great. 3 hours was fine and could have been longer. If there are still no cooldown teleports between friend ports then essentially nothing has changed and players who quit still will not play.

Im hoping they are puting in a long cooldown and learned from the mistake.  Instant teleports KILLED pvp it didnt save it.

Perhaps national teleports should have a distance limit rather than a cool down? Players would be able to move to other national ports in the current/next region but won't be able to teleport across the entire map.

[Partial removal of fast travel]

Would love to test no teleports at all after the wipe. One of the things I really dislike about teleporting to national ports is how easy it'll be/is to defend against raids and RVR. You might try a sneaky raid on a port with a small fleet but as soon as the enemy knows about it you'll be swarmed with players teleporting from all over the map.

Every free port will turn into gank areas (more than they are already) but I don't see how this would encourage players to sail in the open world more.

 

[Ships of the line in free towns]

Certainly worth trying it out. I'd also be a fan on disabling entry of SoLs into ports (the whole region) that have 4th rate PBs. It's much too easy to screen the port with a few 2nd/3rd rates and would make a nice change to the style of battles - obviously if people put in the extra sailing time and risk of being in a SoL in that region they would have an advantage.

[Flags or Hostility]

1 hour ago, Fenris said:

That is why is only option FLAGS OR HOSTILITY. You can not combine both.

Either conquest is static or dynamic.

Choose one.

Could maybe change the 'flag' into a battle marker which the attacker would place at sea in an enemy region.  For each hour the marker is defended hostility would increase by x%. 

The defenders would need to interact with the battle market location (or kill an AI ship in an always open battle at the location?) to stop the hostility increase. With any luck this would push defenders to actually defend and attackers could increase hostility quickly if no defenders were around.

 

[Forthcoming changes in the next testbed patch]

Some interesting things to test certainly but perhaps it might not be the best time to remove all the lobby based action? 

I'm sure it'll be changed before long but it seems the best (only?) way to progress though the ranks quickly will be to fight other players. The best ships will only be available to crafters (or ppl they sell to). If I want to play but I only only have an hour a night I simply won't be able to, which is a shame because I think the work done so far has been amazing. There will be plenty of people who can set aside an entire evening to plan out what they want to do, but please don't forget everyone who can't. 

I'd love for more people to see the work put into the open world but you need to give people reasons to explore it rather than not giving players a choice

[Limited economy slots - coming soon]

Sounds good :). Could maybe also see small amounts of land grants given out to people involved in upgrading the port/defending the area?

[Ship wipe - coming soon!]

12 hours ago, Wraith said:

Like you won't have more than one combat ship in an outpost somewhere you can jump right back into or at the very least teleport back into the action?  I find these arguments against 1 durability ships not compelling at all, since I and most players have since day two in the game had every outpost we owned filled with at least 3 ships of different classes...

At the worst, you'll have many more ships to choose from in ship markets in your capital. Just go buy one!

That's no problem if you have an outpost nearby but what happens if you need to go looking for pvp, or newish players who don't have outposts everywhere. Instead of being sunk and getting back into the action right away you're going to have to find/buy/move/outfit the ship every single time. This will probably cause less open world pvp/more running from combat. Players won't want to risk their ship if it means they'll spend the rest of their play time getting a ship of similar quality to the same location. Some of the most interesting fights I've had are the ones where I had almost no chance of winning and gone down causing as much damage as possible.

From a personal point of view I'm not against one dura ships but there might need to be a few tweaks to teleports/moving of ships, so that downtime can be kept to a minimum - especially for new players.

[Ship wipe - coming soon!]

Really interested to test out the changes but it feels like players might be much more careful with their ships. I remember reading a while ago that the aim for pvp would be to allow a player to play continually for a few hours without forcing them back to ports for refits or finding ships/upgrades etc. 

It feels like downtime is going to be much much longer after getting sunk -  any plans to reduce it with things such as a global ship list which can be used anywhere etc?

 

[Add BR-Limit to battles in PvP event zone]

Would be nice if pvp events were lobby based   *ducks* 

 

[Raids explained - forthcoming feature]

10 hours ago, admin said:

But there is a PVP twist. Raids can be invaded. 
Any player of the allied nation who owns the port can join the instance and take a NPC bot ship helping them defend the port from the raid.
 

Sounds really interesting  - am I right in thinking if the defending side has 10 AI ships and then 10 players join to defend the port   that those 10 AI ships will then be controlled by the players?  (rather than an extra 10 ships joining). If so will this mean those players won't lose ships/crew by doing this?

[New Pirate Mechanics]

18 minutes ago, sruPL said:

Weird propositions. I dislike the tax (Pirates kinda sell their loot on the black market, why put some weird tax on them?)

and 5th rate rule, it would make kind of a nation of frigates and shallow ships only, too big limitation, their nation would suffer a lot from that.

The tax is meant to represent the bribes/lower rates pirates would receive on the black market - so trading would not be a viable full time occupation.

The whole point was to make pirates a unique faction - not a 'nation' per se but a loose collection of captains who could cause havoc in the quieter areas of the empires (like the caribbean) but would find it difficult to stand up to a concerted attack on their ports. Rather than having 'national' waters and front lines against the nations this would make pirate locations much more fluid.

I'm not an expert but historically it was rarer for pirates to have complete control over a port. Even in places like Port Royal you had Jamaican governors turning to pirates to defend against the spanish/french.

[New Pirate Mechanics]

Seen a few of these posts but thought I might as well have a go

The aim of these ideas is to make the pirates a unique 'hardcore' pvp faction with interesting mechanics but also limited economic and military strength compared to the nations. These should also keep a nice balance of power between the industrial and pvp players in the nations.

 

Pirates

Economy

• One economy building per player

• 25% tax for all trades between pirates and other nations, including player to AI and player to player (bribes, mistrust etc)

 

Production/ships

• Largest ship produced by pirates will be 5^th rates

• Cannot purchase ships from other nations, any ships larger than a 5^th rate will have to be captured (1 dura)

 

Conquest

• Pirates will be unable to participate in the current conquest mechanics

• Nations will be unable to launch a port battle/flag against pirate ports

• New 'control' system describing the difficulties nations had at the time keeping the peace in their colonies

 

Each national port/region will have a base 'control' score (CS) which will naturally decay over time. Local merchants (AI) will create hauling missions for national players to take goods to any ports that need it (similar to the current missions) to increase the CS for that region. If the CS for the region goes too low the nation then has 24 hours to increase the CS above the base score or the region will flip to the pirates.

To recover a pirate port (any) nation can send goods near the port to reduce the pirate CS. If the CS goes low enough and stays below the base CS for 24 hours the port will flip to the nation that delivered the most goods. Pirate CS is increased by pirates transporting their own goods to the ports or by capturing/sinking enemy (player) trade ships in the region.

These mechanics should create a situation where pirates become strongest on the borders or quiet areas of the national empires. Finding opportunities where nations are fighting each other and playing them off against each other. Small groups of pirates will be able to harass areas and capture a region or two by raiding ports and shipping trying to supply those ports – but find it extremely hard to hold onto those regions when an organised fleet of traders and warships try to take them back.

 

 

(If technically possible)

Pardons could be purchased by a pirate player at any free port which will allow them to join one of the nations for a fixed time (7/14/28 days). The cost of these pardons would depend on the rank and fame of the captain (see Zooloo's fame system for ideas) meaning a famous Curse would find it stupidly expensive. At the end of the time frame the captain would revert back to a pirate (with xp and fame penalties) and lose any of the advantages of being a national captain – 5 dura ships etc.

Any comments welcome

 

[POLL: Which Nightflips Solution Would You Prefer]

The only ways to 'fix' it would be either to have enough people online all the time for each nation (unlikely) or spread the PB into a series of engagements over a 24-48 hours period. Each battle/engagement would gain points for each side, the side with the most points at the end wins the port. 

This would give a steady stream of pvp available all the time which could be balanced around the ships and experience of the captains available.

[Naval Action Developer Q&A]

Hey

One of the first things that pulled me towards NA was that a large part of the game was going to be 'skill based'. For the past 6-12 months it seems like the game has slowly been drifting towards a point where the side with numbers will always win in the long term - are there any plans in development for smaller groups, guilds and nations to have just the same chance at advancement as the largest groups/alliances?

Thanks!

[Caribbean Conquest - New Sailing Game]

Looks really interesting, good luck - and you're based about 10 mins from where I'm sitting ^^  Although I hope you stay away from the subscription model in the FAQs, I haven't seen a decent subscription launch in a while.

[Will you adress the elephant in the room?]

Completely agree - devs have mentioned before about having slots for different ship classes so there's a decent spread of ships . The only way this is going to be possible is if the port battle itself is moved to a lobby system (which a lot of the vocal people here seem to hate). No one is going to want to sail for 20 mins to a port to find out the slots for the ship they are in have been used up.

[Content plans for the first half of 2017]

Good to see things like hostility and officers get dropped as at the moment they just complicate mechanics which should be simple.

I think it might be a mistake to split the pirate faction. Personally I'd love pirates to be turned into a 24/7 pvp faction with minimal conquest options. With raiding and boarding buffs pirates could be made into a self sufficient faction where they would be able to build their own raiding ships as well as capturing larger ships when needed. There are quite a few ppl (me included) who don't get that much enjoyment from another port battle to capture another dot on a map and just want more small scale skill based battles.

 

.. and for the love of his oinkyness please don't force PvE on ppl - as we saw with hostility. Rather than having pve ships attacking (which just seemed to piss ppl off previously) perhaps have named privateers as rare spawns spread around the map?

[Little things you'd like to see]

7 hours ago, JonSnowLetsGo said:

Yo fell do you plan to bring back small battle challenge anytime soon?

Btw Im pretty sure they said they plan to release the game at the end of this year.

probably not for a while  but I guess it just depends on the next couple of patches

[Little things you'd like to see]

A better balance between short and long term events would be nice. Land in port battles, group pvp events and new boarding mechanics are great but there needs to be something for people to do when they have an hour or two on an evening/weekend.

Lobbies, instant access battles, skill based pvp challenges --- these are things while will massively increase the activities available for all players and won't take months to code for. Looking at the content patch plan (prep for release in Jan/Feb) and the direction the game seems to be going I'm finding it hard to recommend it to anyone atm.

 

[Concerned with UG's Promise/Game Probs]

If I remember right the time frame for early access was 2-4 months - if there's any problems with hitting the target I'm sure we'll hear about it closer to the time     Fredericksburg was only released a couple of weeks ago and the beta testing of the next battle is well underway so I don't think it'll be too far off.

I think the default key to toggle sprint is 'R' but all hotkeys can be changed in the options menu, just scroll down and you'll see them all under controls.