Jacques de Montagne

Thank you for picking up things where Booyah and I left them, Olaf. For a long time the time and date of the Trafalgar battles havent changed, now going for more than 9 months! I will be back once I settle down again from a life on the road.

This is a relief. Besides some few brave authors this forum was made impossible to read. I miss the newspapers, the captain's letters which drown in a pile of bile. No warnings, topic closures, post moderation and deletion did help so far, so this is a logical consequence.

Ich möchte mich an dieser Stelle für viele gemeinsame Gefechte bedanken und auf eine weiterhin gute Zusammenarbeit in der Zukunft meinen freundschaftlichen Gruß hinterlassen! Makrian, ich habe dich länger schon kein Schiff gekostet ... irgendetwas ist faul! o7

Thank you Sveno for using the opportunity for some forum warfare. Next time you want to agree to a ceasefire with our entire faction, talk to the dutch council or at least its representatives, the clan leaders. My thoughts are with the victims, their families and friends.

Nice to see you had some good fighting over there! I also wish that a fun but risky activity as pvp would yield more xp compared to AI farming which is much less challenging.

I don't think that HP needs to change again, I like the prolongued battles in general. Some mod combations are just to powerful on the big ships. Especially since they can tank with their depleted sterns without limit! The latest changes, including those to the BR ratings have been quite helpful reducing the feel of a doomed battle. I was one to propose greater potential BR difference between the teams, but I was proven wrong.

What did you guys think about the last two Trafalgars? There have been lots of changes - two hotly debated topics have been the balance and the circle of death mechanics. While I am at this... 1. What would increase your fun in those battles with the current game mechanics? 2. What would be great to have beyond the current features? See also Booyah's http://forum.game-labs.net/index.php?/topic/7473-trafalgar-event-room-improvements/ 3. How do you like the current balance, should battle rating or number of players be the decicive factor? 4. Would you like a similar, second weekly event? It didnt work before, what do you think would make it work? 5. What made you stop attending the Trafalgars or why do you think people do not attend them?

Thank you! Last time is was already fine, as you can notice by the lack of the usual complaints, still this will remove some of the undue stress from the captains.

I also like to hear those news. Let's be bold and try 40% max imbalance for the trafalgars. Once we have a greater playerbase I suggest reducing it to 30 % or even less again. Right now we need to keep those events accessible and friendly to testing. In such large engagements, the effect of a numerical superiority is being reduced heavily by the small number of ships being able to engage effectively at any given time until the melee. Additionally factors as fleet cohesion, communication, leadership, tactics, lack of focus fire and whatnot reduce the influence of numbers even more. Small battles need to adhere to a better balance. I have not much experience with them, so I hesitate to suggest anything beyond a rough 20%.

I really do like the interface you are proposing Booyaah In my opinion the two admirals/organisers should be allowed to trade players if both agree in order to be able to create custom battles or balance the match even further. Going forward should not require everyone to ready up - with 30+ captains around, chances are high that several people forget to check ready or go afk, ... It should be solely up to the admirals to lock their respective team after a grace period, so that the battle can start once they are both done. The handicap feature is great but could be delayed if complicated to implement. Later on options to pick the type of map, time of day, weather and maybe even the wind gauge can be added. I could also envision admirals to pick a flag and a starting formation for their fleet, this would also save some of the set up time.

This is unsettling. When setting this up manually we knew that a perfect balance cannot be achieved. In my eyes it is more important to "leave no captain behind" while accepting unequalities of the teams - possibly by widening the margins of force balance for the events. When more players become available at later stages of development, match making will be ALOT easier to figure out, but right now alot of testers are waiting for just this singular battle each week. A stopgap measure could be allowing event organisers to manually allocate captains within the event menu - this feature can be evolved later to allow players to create custom battles. It would encompass an overview over the total number of ships of each type allocated to each fleet, the respective battle ratings and maybe the option to split a faction if the balance/players/type of event profit from it. While typing this I saw your new thread....good work, so I'll stop right here! While yesterday certainly dissapointed 16 captains, I am still glad we are taking big leaps forward to help shape the battle feature - look where we started a few weeks ago! Regarding a new location for manual battles, I agree that populations have changed and moving to cuba possibly entices more spanish players to join us. I just hope we don't need to go back to manual battles since they take a lot of time to set up and prevent us from expanding to other weekdays.

I personally think that we should help make the new feature work. The devs have already received some good feedback on how to increase the likelyhood of successful large battle events with current population levels. The convenience of joining such a battle from across the game world compared to a physical presence in plymouth is a huge improvement. I was there for the wonky first run which unnerved quite a few of us. Despite the actions of one sanctioned player we saved alot of time and work getting set up. Without those tests improvements to the system would be hard to accomplish. Let us be part of the process to splendid port battles! That being said, I will not have access to my gaming rig or even meaningful internet access most of the time as I am moving frequently during two years of training as a professional firefighter. Thus I will have to take a step back from this for a while. I am glad we got together as a team, bridging factions and overcoming conflicts to make these battles possible. I am truly confident of continued success (or else...!) Thank you guys!

We had choosen the new event feature on purpose to test it and I think it will work out just fine. The mechanism is already very convinient and we saved quite some time setting the event up! Maybe a starting (large) battle event should be announced to people docked in port, to attract more players who are otherwise not aware. In my opinion also need a longer timer duration specifically for the large battle so players can dock in time, as news of a impeding battle sometimes travels slow. What do you guys think about the event battle? Thanks for the footage Brandon! May I suggest you cut out more of the pre battle banter? Please also turn off your TS messages

As we get together once a week to play magnificient battles of grand scale, such behaviour is stealing other players time and twarting player driven content. Who wants to play another battle like this right after? There is nothing else but to call this intentional, malignant griefing.

Thank you, we are discussing the schedule at the moment. An early *poll* resulted in the best time for this being: 22.00 CET saturday = 9.00 pm england 4.00 pm USA newyork 1.00 pm USA las vegas 4.00 am Australia perth (sunday) 6.00 am Australia sydney (sunday) Thanks to Steel! What we are still discussing is another suitable battle slot, which would be 3-4 hours earlier. Additionally we have to think about the second battle. Do we still want one, do we want to pick specific ships for it? I am in the battle now and the first impression is that its quite chaotic since one side is not unified on TS and all kinds of ships are present. Because of the lack of comms and randomness, people drag out the battle by sailing away. The shrinking circle which kills people outside needs a comeback.

Yes. We will seize the opportunity to test the event mechanism on a grand scale tonight, be in port and join the large event battle.

Thank you Steel, I will not be home for the hole weekend as I said, I wish you all loads of fun. I really appreciate what you guys do for the event! I definitely want to be there next time

Thank you Snoopy and Niels, that time is indeed correct! As I won't be able to make it, I am looking forward to the coverage

Third time I sink first, I am doing something wrong! We started late but managed to have three battles thanks to a warm up skirmish. Losses in these fleet engagements are quite light (if you do not suicide your ship like me, trying to breach the line) and most ships lost are frigates being boarded or sunk by 3rd or 1st rates. One hour proved to be insufficient to end these battles decisively as the last number of battles showed. I like the pace of the battles, a big fleet engagement ought to take longer than a duel. One participant suggested an increase of time for big engagements, maybe time scaling with BR. I understand that not everyone has the time to do so. Let's think about that though! Here is the footage from the 1st event battle, fast forward to 6:00 to view the opening salvo. Involved Nations: US, Dutch, British, Danish, Pirate, French, Spanish in order of participating numbers. In total we had 39 players involved. https://youtu.be/7SSny0nOzmw?t=360 Thank you all for coming.

The Trafalgar starts soon. There is a small warm up battle going on right now. Get to Plymouth, get on TS. Be save and dock while you wait, you dont want to attrack AI or the vermin of the sea

I cannot really organise the entire event tonight. Although I am staying home, contrary to my original plans, I cannot speak and play that long due to a flu. We will still meet up and have at least one battle, same time same place. Feel free to organise a frigate fight for tomorrow, Chromey, I cannot help at the moment.

We had a discussion about all carronade fleets before the previous Trafalgar, since they were felt to be unrealistic and too powerful. We decided against implementing a rule since all carronade vessels ( shooting doubles) were maximising an aspect of the game mechanics back then. Their excessive use did help to change the game mechanic in a meaningful way and in the end the test-feedback-change cycle worked. We use these rather unique, massive battles to test mechanics and tactics, pushing the limit way beyond your usual engagements. The last Trafalgar did influence the way repairs are working now. So let us keep adapting and finding out what exactly needs to change regarding the current mechanics without additional boundaries, hampering our work. Btw. so far I only found Brandon's footage of the 25th here: Where did the rest upload theirs? I also like to see more feedback from the battles here

How did it go? Did you guys stream/record it?

Ich persöhnlich hege ähnliche Gedanken wie Styles, bin meist auf dem TS der Dänen/Niederländer. Mal sehen was sich noch so ändert, momentan habe ich wenig Lust zu spielen, da ich weder etwas mit dem Handel noch den jetzigen Kampfmechanismen anfangen kann.

I do not care if people sign up beforehand or not, by showing up they recognise the rules. Without a temporary truce there are no organised battles. Unless such an agressor compensates and apologises, he is excluded from attending these community events in the future. We have zero tolerance for drama here. Please provide me with greater detail in a PM Rekab and others who were there. Then we will form a decision. The details about the next battle will be given out soon. I will not be able to attend next saturday.