"Buy Passage" Between Free Ports, Reduce Travel Time

[Wesreidau]

As much as I enjoyed sailing a basic cutter from Port Royal to Plymouth to set up a freeport outpost, not a lot of people have the time to do this and so set up the outposts needed to facilitate long-distance trade (freeport deliveries) and reach enemy waters. Many people, I'm convinced, are complaining about long travel times to ship resources unnecessarily, because they haven't learned free ports allow deliveries, and that free port outposts let you teleport across the map.

 

So here's a suggestion to make getting across the map easy, without hauling ships and cargo around.

 

In all Free Ports, there's a new control to "Buy Passage".

 

When you "Buy Passage", you pay a gold amount proportionate to the distance between your free port, and another free port. Then you're teleported there. No ship, no cargo, no cooldown, no timer, just the player's avatar, at the cost of money.

 

Once at the other free port, you can open an outpost, or buy a ship from the NPC vendors, or anything else you do.

 

This very simple command opens up the entire game world to a player without having to spend hours sailing a throwaway cutter. With free towns as hubs, he can go out and explore the region around the free port, open an outpost in a distant national harbor, engage in some piracy or privateering, and learn how deliveries let distant cargoes be shipped between free ports.

 

And it doesn't teleport a single ship or cargo, only builds on the outpost teleport system.

[z4ys]

Should even available with ship but no cargo and with a cooldown. Like teleport between outposts and teleport to capital with ship.

[Diodo]

Yes! A must have for casual players, i can't see how this can go wrong.

[Jean Ribault]

Not a bad idea.  I think?  But as said elsewhere, I still think we are lacking a sufficient number of outpost locations.  Contrary to the TV show title Eight is Enough, I disagree with that simple premise.

[Sven Silberbart]

I don't like the idea, because of RvR and PBs.

A nation at the right buttom of the map can attack a nation at the upper left map with just some clicks.

A hole PB Fleet can magically teleport across all over the map.

I dont like those magic stuff. It should be hard to organise a big fleet to do such a thing.

 

Not everything in the games must be easy.

[Wesreidau]

I don't like the idea, because of RvR and PBs.

A nation at the right buttom of the map can attack a nation at the upper left map with just some clicks.

A hole PB Fleet can magically teleport across all over the map.

I dont like those magic stuff. It should be hard to organise a big fleet to do such a thing.

 

Not everything in the games must be easy.

 

 

Specifically why I proposed it NOT include your ship, but only the "captain" and his ability to open an outpost or buy a ship locally. I don't like teleporting ships around by any means, but I accept the need to allow one mechanism or another to do it. If its easier to move a captain without a ship to distant free ports, then perhaps they'll build up an outpost worth of captures there, as I have in the Antilles.

 

More outpost slots, absolutely.

[Jean Ribault]

I think it needs to be done.  Or else something else that makes the world smaller for more efficient gameplay.  You still have to sail, people, you can't get past that.  I don't buy that excuse above about being afraid of a nation organizing their players to all TP across the map.  Everyone has the same advantage or disadvantage, not just one nation.  And it still requires work, planning, and organization.  And if you were not able to do that TP, it doesn't have any real impact anyway because the more you expand your borders over time the closer you are to that part of the world.  It's no different than we saw before the big patch where certain factions took over most of the map simply through hard work.

 

I keep hearing all this crying on the forums about how we can't find pvp, and in the last few days there've been several constructive and useful suggestions on how to make this open world smaller and less time consuming to get that pvp, yet all those suggestions do is come up against pooh-pooh waah waah we can't do that.  Just sick of hearing the naysayers with the flimsy excuses.

[Bach]

It is problematic, when combined with the new PB rules it will artificially increase the number of out posts allowing a large Player fleet to project power to any region of the map in the amount of time it takes to sail away from a level 1 mission. Like it or not there is a reason we only have x8 outposts. You have to pick the x8 locations you value the most. This proposed work arounds would give us unlimited Free City bases.

what would most likely occur, and I realize this isn't the intention of the idea, but none the less where power players will go with it.

Players would stockpile all their stuff on one free city. They could use up to x5 ports for production. Now they would only need one of the remaining two to get them to every free city in the game. Simply keep one without items in a free city anywhere. Use the proposed teleport move, abandon old, build new outpost and then teleport first rates from the main free city hub to anywhere in the game. Up to x25 first rates could be moved in one level one mission close to the main hub at a time. It's true, players can do this now but having to sail between free cities is what restricts them to only being able to do it in just a few ports.

Now you could temper the proposed rule if it only worked like once a day or every other day. Then it just saves time for sailing and gets closer to the intent of releasing long sailing stress on casual players. But it can't be unlimited or it's as good as having an outpost in every free city. Cost in Gold is not a good limitation. Many of us have and will have useless millions. It's needs to be time limited.

Edited November 7, 2016 by Bach

[Ned Loe]

Good idea, but In order for this to work, Devs have to stack Free Port shops with basic ships. I would add small .5% increase in cost to 'buy passage'. So, with every jump price slowly goes up and resets every 24 hours do default. 

[Wesreidau]

Free ports are already full of AI 5th rates and I'm even seeing things like crafted Santis for sale in some free ports.

 

Bach, good points. However... the only difference between the scenario you describe and our current situation is how easy it is to bounce outposts from one freeport to another. Basically, everything you describe can already be done, given basic cutters and a little time. Dedicated PvP clans will find ways to exploit these things. But I think on the whole that getting casual, brand-new or time-limited players into the broader Caribbean is worth more than the "first rate fleet from a free town" scenario that we are, frankly, already living with.

 

It would be interesting to see the ship teleportation loopholes closed but freeport passage open, but people will probably deliver their ships in parts and assemble them in port.

 

Its a fallen world of compromises and less-bad choices, I'm afraid.

[Rebel Witch]

Sounds like a good idea. I hope the dev's implement things like this to take away the mundane aspects of the game (sailing too much with no action) and also give players options to be more mobile. Player mobility equals more time to go find action. 

 

The Dev's made the big decision to allow players to teleport for free among their ports as much as they wanted(I think before we could only teleport once every 3 hours?) It was a huge success among players and game play. I think Dev's would get similar results if they implemented changes like this, and some others we have seen on the forum such as Wind's suggestion and ideas for moving ships using AI.