Proposal for Pirate mechanics

[Skully]

First, I'm not a Pirate, so I'm biased as hell. There have been many proposals already and I don't think this will be the final one. 

 

The goals I'm going to put down are highly subjective and I don't see yet how to structure them into better ones. Most likely this thread is going to serve more as potential ideas as opposed to an actual proposal.

 

Goals:

1. Provide unique and more challenging PvP gaming experience.
2. Make Pirates a bit more historical accurate in the sense that being a true faction is hard, if not impossible.
3. "Disable" the ever growing Pirate blob.

Implementation:

1. Make each Pirate clan a "faction" on its own. No more in-clan battles (and those abuses).
2. Remove capital and admiralty from the Pirates.
3. On becoming a Pirate you score a "Pirate rating" which is equal to twice the BR you attacked. This accumulates with each attack up to, say 720. "Pirate rating" goes down at 1/hour. Once your rating is at 0 you get the option in any freeport to join a nation.
4. When a Pirate clan captures a town, it becomes a freeport.

The alternative to #4 is making it a clan port. Maybe it needs to be an option for the clan that captures the port in the first place?

 

Can Pirates build structures and ships? I would say yes. Given the above mechanics they will be hard pressed to get anything together.

[vonKrimm]

under "implementation", #3:

 

sooooo I can stop being a pirate, join a nation, spy the %$^&* out of you and report it back to my pirate friends?  +1 sir!!!!

[DukeNasty]

First, I'm not a Pirate, so I'm biased as hell. There have been many proposals already and I don't think this will be the final one. 

 

The goals I'm going to put down are highly subjective and I don't see yet how to structure them into better ones. Most likely this thread is going to serve more as potential ideas as opposed to an actual proposal.

 

Goals:

1. Provide unique and more challenging PvP gaming experience.
2. Make Pirates a bit more historical accurate in the sense that being a true faction is hard, if not impossible.
3. "Disable" the ever growing Pirate blob.

Implementation:

1. Make each Pirate clan a "faction" on its own. No more in-clan battles (and those abuses).
2. Remove capital and admiralty from the Pirates.
3. On becoming a Pirate you score a "Pirate rating" which is equal to twice the BR you attacked. This accumulates with each attack up to, say 720. "Pirate rating" goes down at 1/hour. Once your rating is at 0 you get the option in any freeport to join a nation.
4. When a Pirate clan captures a town, it becomes a freeport.

The alternative to #4 is making it a clan port. Maybe it needs to be an option for the clan that captures the port in the first place?

 

Can Pirates build structures and ships? I would say yes. Given the above mechanics they will be hard pressed to get anything together.

 

So, if I go on vacation, I can become a Brit. Sounds awesome. And, if we cap a town, it becomes a freetown so the nations can't cap it back! That sounds awesome. Let's do it!

[Skully]

Good point, we need the option to cap back such a freeport.

• Nations can cap a pirate freeport. Lets for the moment keep existing freeports out of scope.

If you want to become a clanless Brit after your vacation, welcome back sir.

[Skully]

under "implementation", #3:

 

sooooo I can stop being a pirate, join a nation, spy the %$^&* out of you and report it back to my pirate friends?  +1 sir!!!!

Leaving alts out of the discussion. If you want to join a nation with your time invested Real Admiral, be my guest. You'll have a lovely gaming experience not doing anything sensible in the nation itself.

[Sir Robert Calder]

under "implementation", #3:

 

sooooo I can stop being a pirate, join a nation, spy the %$^&* out of you and report it back to my pirate friends?  +1 sir!!!!

 

I genuinely wouldn't mind this in a sense if the Pirate faction didn't operate along the same lines as another national faction. Abusing that sort of knowledge for your own benefit as a player rather than to better the "Pirate Nation" sounds much more pirate-like to me. Even if all the Pirates still work together as they do now, it bothers me that there is very little incentive for Pirates to do anything other than act as a cooperative national as it is. I'd like to see Pirates care less about holding ground with ports, grinding up crafting resources and so on, and rather be rewarded handsomely for PvPing against nationals as they rightfully should. Hopefully diplomacy in the future will make each "Pirate" his own nation in a sense, with Pirate clans acting as a larger arm of that. Each individual Pirate (or his group) should decide who their personal enemies/allies are amongst the Nationals and see then where the dice rolls.

 

There should be incentives for nationals as well to buy off Pirates or possibly hire other Nationals to attack a specific Pirate clan outside of the basic barebones structure we have now. I hope in the future the divide between "Pirate" and "National" offers a significantly different experience, in which both sides could potentially mutually benefit from one another --- so long as the Pirates are attacking a particular national's enemy. I imagine backstabs and betrayals that are so familiarized with the Pirate culture as we know it might actually happen in-game then. I'd love to see an instance where a Pirate-faction that has been known to raid Spaniards for the Brits suddenly gets an offer they can't refuse and cuts ties at a critical moment when Britain needed their support the most!

 

All in all, I'd like to see Pirates more individualized on a diplo-mechanic level, where as nationals should be heavily encouraged to work together similar to how things are now. Pirates/Pirate clans will begin to make a name for themselves about their actions, goals, and a unique reputation with who they feign allegiance to other than themselves.

[Hethwill]

1.Provide unique and more challenging PvP gaming experience.

 

 

This is totally dependent on player choice. You cannot force anyone to pvp no matter what.

Some of us ONLY do pvp already whatever the odds.

 

2.Make Pirates a bit more historical accurate in the sense that being a true faction is hard, if not impossible.

 

 

I agree with this IF nation are tailored historically as well.

3."Disable" the ever growing Pirate blob

 

 

This is not even a subject. Communities keep changing nations all the time, even servers.

 

 

 

_____________________________

 

I come back to my initial Pirate idea.

 

Pirate nests deeply encroached, and unassailable, in every Nation territory.

So for each Nation you have 1 Pirate Nest.

Raids - pirate attacks port. If successful It destroys every building and steals everything inside including parked ships, store stuff, etc.

 

There you go.

[Twig]

So, if I go on vacation, I can become a Brit. Sounds awesome. And, if we cap a town, it becomes a freetown so the nations can't cap it back! That sounds awesome. Let's do it!

Why freetown? make it a Neutral Town!

[CptEdwardKenway]

Not destroying ships or buildings but plunder the market/contracts and get unique loots.

Destroying the ships could mean you loose 25 duras and 5 ships which would be a big gamebreaking advantage again.

[Hethwill]

Not destroying ships or buildings but plunder the market/contracts and get unique loots.

Destroying the ships could mean you loose 25 duras and 5 ships which would be a big gamebreaking advantage again.

 

Okay. Not destroying, poor nation sods. Capturing 1 dura of each then. Should balance things until Pirates can "craft" modified versions from the captured ships

 

Can we have Nations with import ships from europe only then, with a delay from order to delivery ? Should not break the status quo that much.

[CptEdwardKenway]

Hm I would say they get just one random or no capture. You can't give all pirates a one dura ship. Or one dura of each ship. Imagine a nation has several clans parking their ships. The pirates could get 100 ships with 1 dura and if there are 40 1st rates they would be still destroyed. Still sounds gamebreaking.

[Skully]

This is totally dependent on player choice. You cannot force anyone to pvp no matter what.

Some of us ONLY do pvp already whatever the odds.

I agree and hence made the earlier assertion that these goals are subjective. We can not define a good PvP experience, just an unique one.

 

I agree with this IF nation are tailored historically as well.

The main problem I see with historical tailoring of the nations is player base. As you also assert we can not force players into certain nations, thus the balance will always be historically inaccurate.

 

This is not even a subject. Communities keep changing nations all the time, even servers.

The currently implemented mechanic is: once a Pirate, always a Pirate. These is nothing that can refute that except changing the implementation.

 

I come back to my initial Pirate idea.

 

Pirate nests deeply encroached, and unassailable, in every Nation territory.

So for each Nation you have 1 Pirate Nest.

Raids - pirate attacks port. If successful It destroys every building and steals everything inside including parked ships, store stuff, etc.

 

There you go.

I must say, your idea satisfies the goals I have outlined as well.

But what I've seen in the current implementation, it looks like there is a goal:

• Players should not lose assets if they are away more than x minutes.

I'm in favor of upholding that goal. It'll be rage-quit all over if people lose assets during their downtime, out of actions that were beyond their influence. The locking of assets does a perfect job of providing them with a counter-action.

 

The other aspect that is different and warrants discussion: do we allow Pirates to own ports, with all of its benefits of ship/structure building it provides?

 

I like the raids thing, but the loot should be carefully limited. I think it should go up as a separate suggestion. Maybe even allowing all nations into it and have port raiding battles with 24 hour windows. (Hmm, I'm getting lots of ideas here... )

[MacVaultDweller]

PIRATES REVISED

-Pirates first entry into the world should be by way of selecting a nation of origin.

-Pirate missions

Transport of contraband goods

Capture of trader ships

Engage combat vessels

Privateer missions (government sponsored and assigned)

-Pirates

Bribes and false papers

Can only be purchased in neutral ports and are the medium of exchange

for clandestine products and services.

Combinations and levels of bribes and false papers would be necessary

for Pirate missions.

1 Flags- Pirate flag, National flags.

2 Bribes- Cargo transport info, False papers.

3 False papers- For contraband transport missions, False national identities.

-Privateer

*Letter of marque and reprisal

Government license authorizing a person to attack and capture enemy vessels

Issued by rear admiral level players purchased with xp gained after obtaining Rear Admiral rank.

Privateers will be given letters of mark and reprisal, Given a ship for their missions and gold for expenses.

-Pirate reputation scale by nation

-3,-2,-1,0,1,2,3

3 Very good reputation (Privateer loyal to national identity willing to do what it takes to confound

and deter their nations enemies)

2 Good (reputation loyal to national identity and interests)

1 Fair (

0 Neutral

-1 Shady reputation (not trustworthy)

-2 Criminal reputation (know criminal)

-3 Nefarious criminal (Well known organized criminal)

Edited April 24, 2016 by MacVaultDweller

[Hugoka]

Might be good to get more opinions from those of us who Play Pirates,,  First step is to make nations act like nations,, right now they act like pirates, 

[Skully]

Might be good to get more opinions from those of us who Play Pirates,,  First step is to make nations act like nations,, right now they act like pirates, 

 

Haha, as wikipedia puts it very well:

 

Historically, the distinction between a privateer and a pirate has been blurred, sometimes depending on the source as to which label was correct.^[1] At times, pirates sought dubious government sanction to operate under a veil of legitimacy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privateer

 

So this is to be expected.