surfimp

^^ This is such an important observation, and one I have been giving quite a bit of thought to myself. The "Port Battle Meta" as I refer to it is really the driving force behind the vast majority of gameplay currently. That meta is defined as: 1) Grind NPC fleets & admiralty missions to level up as quickly as possible 2) Get into a 3rd/1st rate 3) Have more 3rd/1st rates than the other faction 4) Win Port Battles 5) Paint map with your faction's color 6) ??? ---- 7) PROFIT!! Unfortunately, as experience across all the PVP servers shows, owning ports just doesn't matter in terms of game mechanics beyond the "map painting" ego boost they provide. On those servers, we have seen nations reduced down to a handful, or even just one port, able to "come back from the dead" once they got just a little bit coordinated and organized (and, to be fair, reinforced by defectors from other factions). If owning ports truly mattered, this would have in theory been extremely difficult - but in fact, these factions were able to do so in very little time. Most damning of all: I have spent tens of hours sailing "deep behind enemy lines" in the waters of the USA and Britain on PVP1 and PVP2 to find nothing but generic NPC spawns... not a player in sight. These factions "own" huge swathes of the map, but you'll rarely find them actually doing anything in most of those areas. All their player traders focus on the ports near their capitols, because they can get everything they need there with minimal risk, and their supposed PVP players operate out of risk-free Free Ports near the "front lines" of whatever group of ports they want to paint next... grinding NPC fleets and admiralty missions to get as many players into 3rd & 1st rates as possible. The net result of the current mechanics is that the majority of PVP happens at port battles, where (as of this writing) you must show up with a 3rd/1st rate to even justify your space in the 25v25 format. But... actually owning those ports is almost entirely irrelevant to a faction's success, as they are able to easily satisfy all their needs from just a handful of ports - or no ports at all, as many have seen, since gold, XP, resources and ships are so easy to acquire from PVE grinding. I feel like a few things would really help flesh out the Naval Action experience, and help make PVP outside the "Port Battle Meta" actually matter to the game. Also, these suggestions would improve the pure PVE experience as well, as they encourage more player participation in all aspects of the gameplay. A ) Make resource acquisition truly important to the ability to acquire all-powerful 3rd and 1st rate ships => eliminate the ability to capture NPC 3rd rates, require 3rd & 1st rates to be available through crafting or PVP capture only B ) Make resources spread out enough that player traders will have to actually transit the open world to get them => eliminate the teleporting of ships (but keep the ability to teleport players between outposts), change the distribution of resources so that "everything you need" isn't inside or right next door to the capitol C ) Continue to reduce NPC resource spawn => if players want to have access to the resources of these far flung ports, they will have to create and defend viable trade routes and the ports they rely upon OR focus on privateering / pirating to take those resources (and ships!) from other factions by force. This worked for England and the Netherlands in real life, after all. D ) Reduce the cargo capacity of traders so that more trade ships will have to be sailed through the open world in order to satisfy a faction's resource demands => allow NPC crews to be hired to sail these trade ships on "autopilot" in case player traders don't want to personally spend the time doing so. Allow multiple trade ships crewed by NPC to form a trade ship convoy. Allow NPC and/or player warships to be hired to escort these NPC trade convoys, if desired. The implication of these suggestions: competition for resources and port ownership will become extremely important to RVR, but even if a faction, for whatever reason, is reduced down to a single capitol port + free ports, they will still have impactful means by which to fight back. It wouldn't be in the form of port battles at first - it would be widespread privateering/piracy to acquire those resources and ships denied them by port loss... a whole new gameplay mode that is currently irrelevant in an RVR sense. The corollary implication is that large nations will have a real handful trying to protect all conquered ports in their empire while at the same time preventing privateering and piracy from robbing them of the resources they need to sustain those empires. And the larger the empire gets, the harder it will be to sustain, even if the faction in question has a high population of players. Likewise, a small player population will still have a viable means of achieving access to the resources they need, by physically taking them from the larger faction via privateering/piracy. No matter what, lots of PVP would be encouraged, which for a PVP game is definitely desirable.

Fair enough, but - for sake of argument - one could reply: "Who cares!" With the way that gold & resource production currently function, owning lots of ports just doesn't matter that much. I don't mean that as a criticism - the economic situation is very work-in-progress - but since EA we've seen a number of factions get reduced to a handful or even a single port and it just doesn't matter. Which makes the whole "gotta level up so I can sail a 1st/3rd rate in a PB" thing kind of silly. Especially in the current case, where these grinders are going to have to do a ton more grinding to get back to where they were. Sad that so few people spend their time in Naval Action actually PVPing, as opposed to "getting ready for PVP."

Of course. But the current iteration of the map saw each faction having roughly equivalent access to all resources via the starting array of ports included in their default territories. Meaning there was no particular "need" to acquire new ports to get access to previously unavailable resources. In theory there is an RVR aspect to map painting, in the idea of depriving other nations' access to those ports, but in practice so far it hasn't meant much. Eg.: Spain on PVP1, Pirates on PVP2, etc. They find ways to work around the limitations via captured NPC ships, access to goods in free ports and via NPC traders, they have whole clans defect to fill their ranks, etc. Being diminished down to one port hasn't been that big of a deal due to a bunch of things both cooked into the current game mechanics as well as introduced via the actions of the players themselves. In fact, if you take some time to sail around in the more far-flung USA and/or GB holdings on PVP1 and PVP2, you will see there are very few if any players from those factions doing anything with those ports or the resources they contain. Besides theoretically depriving other nations of access to those ports, the captured ports are doing essentially nothing other than being painted the color of the conquering faction on the world map. It's still early days, I'd just like to see the core of these mechanics fleshed out into something more meaningful than the very restricted Port Battle meta, which in my view is currently dominating player focus to the detriment of all other forms of PVP gameplay. When in fact the map painting that results from it doesn't really matter in an RVR sense.

I agree. I am a surfer and a (casual) sailor, have been all my life. They really nailed the feeling of being on the water. On topic: I would love to see all teleporting of *ships* removed, including via the "send to outpost" feature. I like the idea of using NPC crews to sail the ship through the OW, and feel like that would be a great thing to replace the current port teleport feature. As for "send to outpost", I'd like to see the option of adding the capped ship to your fleet, and then sailing back together to a nearby port. Would make things a lot more interesting, IMHO.

How was the OW travel time on that? Too boring? Heh.

As more and more player traders get captured by privateers, you're going to see this change. It's a great thing for the game.

I don't really understand what "War & Peace mechanics" even means, so it's hard to vote for that absent some more concrete definitions. With that said... anything which provides meaningful RVR activities outside of the "Port Battle Meta" would be a huge improvement. The "Port Battle Meta" is what leads many people (and especially clans) to focus almost all their time on grinding NPC fleets, so they can get 3rd and 1st rate ships to win port battles, so they can paint the map with the color of their faction... at which point, they (presumably) realize how meaningless map-painting currently is, regret the hundreds of hours spent grinding, and go do something else with their lives. I voted for changes to the economy as I believe economic success is what should fuel the ability to acquire large ships, not NPC grinding. I'd like to see a system where map-painting / huge empires became more and more susceptible to being picked apart by privateering, and where attention and resources would have to be paid to protecting trade routes and the ships that ply them. This would make having huge empires become much harder to sustain, and it would give real and meaningful things (in an RVR sense) for small nations' players to do, even if they were operating out of a single national port, or a free port. In the real world, nations fight over access to resources, and gaining (or excluding) access to those resources is what allows a nation to thrive (or causes it to decline). I'd like to see more of that have an influence on the world of Naval Action, because I believe it would give something important for all classes of ships to do, as opposed to just treating those ships as something to be "gotten through" on the way to 1st rates and... boredom.

I play for Spain on PVP1, FWIW. And I do my privateering deep in the waters of USA and Great Britain... alone

The removal of reinforcements was a big fix for the importance of trading and economic production in the RVR sense. As a player who focuses on privateering, I'm finding much more and better PVP: player traders are actually vulnerable in the OW now, and their colleagues have a real reason to defend them, as well as patrol their local waters to prevent the free movement of privateers and pirates. This leads to more and better PVP and the expansion of RVR -relevant gameplay to activites outside of Port Battles and NPC grinding. In my view, it's a big improvement and I hope the removal of reinforcements becomes permanent.

With the removal of reinforcements in hotfix 9.67, I'm finding more PVP than ever before. Player traders are more vulnerable than before, encouraging players sailing warships to actively defend them as well as patrol their trade routes. These facts actively encourage more and better PVP and less focus on grinding NPCs. I would like to suggest the best solution is to make the removal of reinforcements permanent. This closes the exploit around the use of reinforcements, encourages more and better PVP, and puts a greater emphasis on the RVR aspects of trading and economic production, giving more interesting things for more players to do beyond the Port Battle focus. Please make the removal of reinforcements permanent. Poll removed by mod team for being non-essential to the discussion.

Again, I'm trying to achieve the same outcome you say you want: "My hope is that OW hunting will get better and better." Currently, even when I login on the weekend at peak times for Europe (i.e. my morning), I still can sail for hours and hours deep in enemy territory without spotting a single human player, let alone a player trader. I like the hunt quite a bit, that's why I sail small fore-and-aft rigged Privateers and Lynxes in what I understand to be a traditional privateering role. But the current mechanics really discourage that type of play, because they offer a way to avoid the OW all together (teleport) along with no incentive for sailing the OW. I believe that if these things were changed in the way I describe, it would make for a much richer, more thematic and much more fun OW experience with many more chances for PVP than we have currently.

My theory is that by forcing traders to move valuable cargo through the OW, you thereby force others - with armed warships - to escort them or face the loss of said valuable cargo. To the extent that the overall economy - including resource production - can be tweaked suitably, interdiction of this sort - and the prevention thereof - could become its own very meaningful aspect of RVR competition. Which, at least as I see it, would tend towards a lot more PVP happening outside of the Port Battle meta that currently overshadows almost everything else in terms of PVP. So I think we want the same things, I'm just trying to encourage the refinement of mechanics that will (as I see it) make PVP more likely & worthwhile for people outside of the Port Battle context.

Tell me more about this hardcore PVP which requires you grind hundreds of hours of PVE fleets in order to be able to participate in a setpiece battle where, if you're lucky enough to get opponents to show up at all, it's all but guaranteed that whoever shows up with the highest BR can win without sinking any enemy ship. Thanks but I'm hopeful that the inclusion of the Open World can be used for something a lot more interesting than just serving as a tremendously inefficient lobby system for Port Battles. Sir Francis Drake sees your comments about privateering not mattering and is laughing as he swims in a pool full of Spanish treasure fleet gold.

But I just love getting 400 gold and 23XP for grinding traders! At this rate I'll make Master & Commander in a year or two. WHOOHOO!

I don't think your intergration of Recluse's map looks bad at all, to be honest. But maybe I am not sensitive enough to the distortion you mentioned, because I don't notice it at all? One thing I do notice: the coastlines seem to better match what is actually in-game, as opposed to the realworld map used for your other project. Not a really big deal either way, but it is nice. And it looks beautiful, if you want my opinion. If it's not too much trouble to enable your other layers, maybe others could chime in, too? It's really not bad at all.

Whales and dolphins end game content: UNLOCKED

Is this the one where there's water coming in his boat because he hit a shipping container, and he just chills there, watching his boat sink? For like 10 minutes?

I'd love it, if when in the OW you zoomed all the way in on your ship - to that view just above the deck - you'd see a compass bearing of the direction you were pointed in. You'd then be able to take actual bearings on landmarks, and, with a ruler for use on the map, be able to plot your position, just like "in real life". It would be cool.

I am a huge fan of NPC-crewed trade ships as a solution to what I and many others perceive as the problem of ship teleporting and its negative impacts on the overall gameplay experience. NPC-crewed trade ships is a great solution to the claim that long-haul sailing is "boring" for the player trader to engage in. I'd go so far as to allow player traders to teleport themselves, *without* ships, between ports much more frequently, allowing them to engage in an almost RTS-like setting up of trade ships and routes. I mean, let the traders really focus on building up their trade empires - I'm all for that! And let them personally sail an extremely high value cargo, if they want. But also let them build up huge networks of trade routes, with hired/owned NPC trade ships picking up cargoes comprised of port and/or player production, most likely bought via a contract, and delivered to the player's destination of choice, completely without interaction other than to set it all up and then let it run. Have automated notifications when the cargo arrives successfully as well as notifications of when the cargo doesn't (because it was interdicted by a privateer or pirate). Provide insurance coverage as an option not only for the ships but for the cargoes, too. I'd even suggest making the existing, autospawning NPC trade ship routes be something that players can purchase, if they want, and take over to profit from. These changes would let pure economy players really dig into the game in a way they really can't right now. Yes, it would expose them to risk, but that's the entire point. They'd of course have the option of sailing as escort to these routes, or hiring clan mates and (ideally) NPC escorts to protect their cargoes. I really, strongly believe that fleshing out this part of the economy is the missing link that will make the entire Naval Action universe come alive. It will provide so many more interesting things to do in the world, whether you want to be a hunter or an achiever. And it will drive player-vs-player interaction in a way that's really not happening, currently. I feel it would really boost the game.

Then the solution above should work great!

It's a program that runs outside of Naval Action. It's as allowed as anything else. BurningSail.com is great too.

I just recently made Lt. Commander and have established close to a dozen outposts across three servers doing nothing more than privateering and a handful of admiralty missions. My gold earned per minute/hour is very low because I spend a huge amount of time solo-hunting player traders. I think the current system is fine.

Guys, relax. "Information wants to be free." Someone will make a sweet, publicly -available website / map incorporating this data soon enough. I have no idea who, but I've been around the Internet long enough to know that this is the way of things.

- There were no whales or dolphins, which for a movie about naval combat in the age of sail was an unforgivable oversight - The need to chase after the prize at the end (due to a feared uprising by the hidden French captain) was unnecessary because we all know that "Send to Outpost" never fails - M&C Aubrey had been sailing for the Royal Navy since he was a young boy, but was only leveled up to a 5th rate. The grind is too long.