Politics

[Niagara]

Greetings, I am merely wondering why you can first vote for a War with a Nation and then suddenly vote for a Alliance with the same nation. Either you want a War,Peace or a Alliance with a nation and not all 3 at once...

That it silly and should not be allowed within the system. Furthermore....

 

I think its time to change the Politics to stop this 2 block system. Its a stalemate system atm forcing nations to either choose Block 1 or 2 or risk getting bullied by both both blocks and its boring.

 

We need a more dynamic system that allows for changes in stances between nations to allow for more player driven diplomacy. To enable this we need to be able to have a Peace status, Hostile Status and a Neutral/Trade partner status with other nations.

War and Alliances should be voted upon. The same for a Peace treaty with a Hostile/War nation. Neutral is any Nation which you have no Treaty with atm. A Peace treaty allows for a reset on hostilties between nations. A Trade agreement may be implemented to allow trade between nations without the use of Smuggling.

 

Stances between Nations!

• War = Total War, Ships of this nations is tagged as Red on OW and should ofc be targeted to earn points to increase hostility levels and deny the enemy any resources/aid.
• Peace = Marked as Non Hostile(Blue colour?) on OW and cannot be attacked unless caught smuggling in hostile home waters. Can aid in battles vs Pirates/Privateers.
• Alliance = Total Friendship, Ships from this nation is marked as Green and can aid in hostile/friendly operations and battles. Cannot be targeted even if caught with smugglers flag in hostile waters.
• Neutral = Marked as Grey on OW, may be attacked in Hostile home waters and in friendly waters when caught smuggling. Repeted agressions towards a single neutral nation will raise hostility towards that nation and mark you as a privateer for players of that nation thus alerting to them that you are a danger / open target. Perhaps to be able to attack neutral nations you need to obtain a letter of marque from a nation that is hostile towards that nation.

Now to restrict the formation of large power blocks we should limit the number of alliances to 1 per nation at any given time(unless we have a developer event that changes it for developer reasons) and peace restricted to 1 nations depending on Voting between nations and very limited extra 1 from a change of status from War/Hostile for a very limited time after hostilities ends and it will change to Neutral. This should lead to some interesting diplomacy talks and perhaps war/peace status to be more fluent then it is now. Ofc checks to stop the 2-3 biggest nation to ally and just stomp out the other nations 1 by 1 need to be implemented.

Neutral is the stance towards most other nations, allowing trade access to neutral ports with a taxation unless you have smugglers flag enabled.

Pirates should ofc be free to attack anyone they wish and if they obtain a letter of marque they should be able to aid the providing nation vs the nation(s) they have a letter from in OW operations but not in port battles, but be able to do organised raids vs the nation(s) they hold letters for with the aid from the providing nations (Limit the % of participation of non pirate players to stop potential abuse), also pirates with letters of marquee should be able to use certain ports from the nation provides the letters to stage attacks from and resupply.

A Pirate with a letter of marquee should be marked as Blue vs players from the nation that provided the letter.

Pirates should also be able to do raids vs any nation without any aid from Non pirate players.

These are just a starting point to start a discussion on ways we can improve the game and the diplomatic system that is boring atm due to the 2 blocks...

With regards

Jason Niagara

[snowy2]

To answer only your first question,  the reason you have to use your war vote before your alliance vote in the current system is that it makes it impossible for every nation to ally every other nation. I guess if you're trying to keep a nation neutral it makes sense if you can vote both ways.

The current system is able to generate a neutral status, but for some reason this is essentially the same as war status.

Another quirk of the current system is that some votes are pointless.  E.g, we have a strange cycle where GB can vote about Sweden, but Sweden cannot vote about GB, making any GB votes for an alliance with Sweden pointless in that round.

Edited February 8, 2017 by snowy2

[Niagara]

38 minutes ago, snowy2 said:

To answer only your first question,  the reason you have to use your war vote before your alliance vote in the current system is that it makes it impossible for every nation to ally every other nation. I guess if you're trying to keep a nation neutral it makes sense if you can vote both ways.

The current system is able to generate a neutral status, but for some reason this is essentially the same as war status.

Another quirk of the current system is that some votes are pointless.  E.g, we have a strange cycle where GB can vote about Sweden, but Sweden cannot vote about GB, making any GB votes for an alliance with Sweden pointless in that round.

If you want to stay neutral to a nation then dont vote against it then. Vote against another nation and for peace select another nation unless you need to vote on a nation with either your hostile or friendly votes to try to create a balance or change a vote outcome that you do not want.

Voting for and against the same nation is meaningless.

Yes, the current 2 block system that requires you to time your voting cycles is somewhat static and as you wrote is strange.

It would make more sense if nation A voted for a treaty with Nation B and unless that nation B also voted for the same treaty at the same voting round A Treaty poposal gets added for a yay or nay vote the next round of votes is allocated for nation B to vote upon.

 

Edited February 8, 2017 by Niagara
adding content

[Celtiberofrog]

Hey Jason,

Thx for your good suggestion.

I fully agree with the fact that "diplomacy" is an issue that needs further development. So far it's limited and has indeed generated 2 coalitions.

While as you mentioned, several political positionning choices could generate lower intensity conflicts but more dynamism in diplomacy with changing wars nation Vs nation. The only tricky issue in that idea remains in the (politic) voting system that will always be difficult to control within a faction community.

I confirm 1 ally at a time could help a lot to resolve the current conquest problems.

(now, in order to go further in your sense i would suggest an hostility system that is linked & limited with sailing distance: The farther is the targeted port attack the longer is the cool down before port battle. in that way conquests could be progressive with Alliances or wars being rather streamed to proximity areas.)      

Edited February 9, 2017 by Celtiberofrog

[Niagara]

9 hours ago, Celtiberofrog said:

I fully agree with the fact that "diplomacy" is an issue that needs further development. So far it's limited and has indeed generated 2 coalitions.

While as you mentioned, several political positionning choices could generate lower intensity conflicts but more dynamism in diplomacy with changing wars nation Vs nation.

Yes, that is why actions also needs to be taken into account. Its is one thing to vote for a peace or Alliance treaty with a nation and then go out and do attacks on the same nation you just voted to make friendly relations with. That would also give players the feeling that the actions of me and my ship and crew actually means something and that the world id not that static.

However tbh, Changes to politics alone wont make this game better and lure the missing players back in huge groups but it is a step in the right direction, We also need changes to promote OW action and not just have gank squads sail around and try to find smaller groups of players to harass.

Events/Missions tied to the political situation would bring more content for the lower level players and the max rank players. These could be blockades of certain regions/ports to stop privateers from attacking vital trade lanes, Trade missions to bring goods needed for the defence of a region or to gather materials to support a expedition to attack the arch enemy of your nation. It could be to scout sea lanes for the admiralty to be able to plot the best route for a invasion force. Single or group missions that can either be given via the admiralty or missions found in seedy taverns from unscrupulous characters.

Most if not all of these could be in a chain of events that is tied to how the different nations view each others. There are quite a few possible things that can be added that will attract players into the OW and increase immersion and pvp content at the same time.

One thing to add more immersion is to bring back the life into AI ships, Towers and outposts. If you sail near a enemy fleet it "could" attack you if you are deemed a worthy target. Sail to close to a Enemy occupied Outpost/Tower and get fired upon. etc etc.

Much more ofc has been suggested before but I think that the game needs some more player driven content to drag players back from the depths they are lurking in.