_Masterviolin

... what? The game has changed dramatically in the past few months. One dura ships, a plethora of new upgrades, refits and crafting mechanics, xp-based upgrades, conquest mechanics, port mechanics? Either you haven't touched the game for like, over a year or you simply hold salt against the devs.

I demand Ultimate General: Austerlitz or I will protest outside the GameLabs office

yes

I am having the exact same problem, fellow Brits in nation chat just now seem to have it going as well. Took a full minute to load in, half of the UI loaded.

OH NIIIIIICE! I should have known, I played Dark Souls III with a friend of mine

Ah, well this is humiliating.

nevermind.

OMG THE RAMS ;-; The one thing that bothered me the most about AC4 was that the ships had these absolutely hideous iron ram things on their bows. They're impractical, hideous and warp the ship's lines and organic hull shape. And of course, this game has those too...

SORRY is without tedious, and it's no secret that I don't hold the clan and its leadership in high regard. However, trolls and immature players are simply a part of every multiplayer game that ever existed. You can't simply ban or punish everyone who acts like a two year old in game- though it may seem tempting. Such people feed on the attention those actions bring. We must simply put our heads down and ignore them- that is the only true remedy for such nonsense. As the forums are so highly public, this is quite difficult to be quite honest. The rest of the mature community must exercise maturity and avoid stooping down to their level.

I must agree entirely, the crushing costs inflicted upon the players can only really be mitigated by pooling resources, devoting numerous hours of rather boring trade and relying upon clans. Everything has very high costs, and it is quite painful upon the solo player. Cannons are ungodly expensive, lest the nation's cannon industry is very strong, consistently refilling the market and in a position to sell at low costs. Ships have had prices increased significantly as well. Meanwhile, missions are only so profitable. Loot from traders and sunk vessels is dismal at best. We can't capture NPC ships either. And we now have an XP system which seems quite fun to the veteran, but is simply too much for any remotely casual player. Grinding out three or more levels of XP knowedge in an ungodly number of ships that you may not even like just to gain extra slots on the one ship you like is not fun when combined with the extremely high price of buying and fitting out ships. In addition, no one is getting any ship above the Indy lest they participate in clans and fight port battles. That's cutting off virtually half of the game's ships to any casual players. It's also worth noting that once all of the nations have conquered their "home ports", the supply of conquest marks will decrease significantly as the only PBs won will be hard-fought battles that may rarely even happen or be entirely orchestrated by clans. The grind and huge costs in the game are fine as long as players are well rewarded for their efforts, and can enjoy themselves whilst doing the grind. Slapping insanely high costs on everything in-game whilst not adjusting profit earned by players in combat to adhere to more time-constrained players will stunt growth. After all, there is a reason steam ratings have plunged to the lower 40s over the past few weeks.

I can relate to this on both a physical and spiritual level

Aha! Little do you know that I kept my cabin boy hidden in the bilges! I instructed him to pull the seacocks once your men were aboard, looks like he did his duty

Aww... I really like that ship. I hope she becomes craft-able ASAP, I intend upon mass-producing them and rampaging around the Windward Islands ;)

Looks great! But I hope these refits are very rare or difficult to get, for I could see significant power creep in-game if these become too common! These are some pretty hefty buffs.

Had an absolutely amazing last stand in my Niagara yesterday near Basse-Terre against some Frenchmen! I chased and was chased by numerous 7th rates in company of a Surprise all around the Basse-Terre region before being caught in a final battle. Surprise and his friends were far closer this time, and I slowly got my rigging shredded as I led them on a chase all the way around the island of Dominica. I got reduced to 68% sail, and decided to put up a last-stand fight against the Surprise and his two 7th rate friends further off. I avoided a lot of damage early on, I think my low profile really helped with that! It was a good brawl, I raked the Surprise many times and did significant damage to his guns before going side-to-side with the three ships. I eventually became so slow that the Surprise boarded my mangled ship and captured me. The battle really demonstrated how deadly a Niagara can be, with those glorious 9pdrs, her low profile, great speed and awesome maneuverability,. Honestly the most fun I've had in a while! My opponents were honorable Frenchmen of "PURGE". I regret to say I did not take any screenies

Sir, with all due respect, the idea that players will supply all of the medium cannon in the game to combat high NPC prices relies upon an economy where a huge portion of the players are devoted to producing cannons. This will simply not happen lest the playerbase is HUGE, and will only happen in capitals most likely. Foundries should produce special types of cannons, they should not be the backbone of the entire cannon market.

The plain reality is that the cannon market is broken. Cannons on the market are so expensive that I cannot imagine any player would want to grind dozens of battles and numerous trade runs simply to arm their ship. The idea that the market for cannon will be supplied by a player-supplied economy is simply not realistic. Foundries are wicked expensive to build and honestly, producing the cannon to fully man a Surprise is rather difficult by itself. Even so, I think the only ports that would sell the quantities of cannon required would be the capital. How about this? The role of foundries should be to produce long cannon/carronade, not the backbone of the entire cannon economy. Reduce the price of cannons by at least by two-thirds so that players can try out more ships and not be completely devastated by the loss of their ship.

Coal is the backbone of the economy, you need copious quantities of it to do pretty much anything in-game. To make it so extremely rare and difficult to get will severely restrict the ability of individuals to craft, esp. in nations that lack coal ports, I cannot do anything with any processed metal in game because it is virtually impossible to get the coal I need. This will kill crafting and render weaker nations significantly hindered in their ability to craft. I wholly think using coal as the valuable and rare resources is a terrible, terrible idea.

Bugs gentlemen, bugs. I am sure that there were issues in wiping, or perhaps they're in the process of wiping the servers.

You were supposed to go onto all three servers and simply fight an action in which you gain any amount of gold/xp. This updates your "account" for each individual server so the devs have the data to give you your XP when you log on after the wipe. This was displayed in bright orange text on the sever page in game, and appeared on the forums numerous times.

Silence shall fall... -Brother of a Dr. Who fan

Though I am already part of a pretty neat clan, that sounds like fun! The 7th/6th rates are a blast really, especially the Privateer and the lovely Pickle. I still fondly recall when two pirate privateers (Hethwill and company :P) harassed me in my Essex Black Prince, so bloody small that I barely hit them! I imagine you folks could be quite capable in small port battles

Or how to avoid them. 'It puts the tiller hard-a-starboard or else it gets raked again"

I wish I could come to that battle in my Essex, weaving between the Santys, Vics and L'Oceans with 32pdr carronades- raking again and again, courses and topgallants going up and down, up and down as I maneuver... Sounds like an excellent way to send the old Black Prince to her eternal retirement

Armenian dollar. That way, we can have millions and millions of Armenian dollars and can feel rich. Just kidding. I submit the ducat, thinking of EU4. It's a third-party currency that does not show favor towards any nation in game, and it's familiar to many players. It sounds cool too tbh