Remove Basic Cutters from PvP

[Rhodry Heidenrich]

@Aventador

Did you make it home with that first rate, or did you wind up scuttling it because you were going to get it taken away again? So what kind of battle reports are there from all of the post PB skirmishing? How did all of that go? Good? Bad? Deadlock? Nobody's talking about that because they'd rather focus on the great Basic Cutter incident of 2017. I completely agree with what Sinister says regarding what happened. This is an early access game and these kind of mechanics need to be found, addressed, and discussed in an effort to better the game for everyone instead of using it as a torch to get people banned from a god damn alpha test. Good mechanic or bad, until it's decreed by the development team to be, in fact, a cheat.. it isn't. It's a grey area which needs to be ruled on by the makers of the game, and if they deem it to be a cheat they'll amend the rules or deploy a hot fix to make it impossible. 

There are a LOT of stupid mechanics in this game at the moment, quite a few of which people are more than happy to use to their advantage. See what Sir Texas Sir is talking about with the BR and tag-circle sniping. 

This whole witch hunt screams of people who are just being salty because they got out played for an entire evening, and no... Fail-capturing a first rate or two does not make up for the complete boondoggle that the US/GB vs Rat skirmishing outside of the Georgia ports was. 

Edited July 2, 2017 by Rhodry Heidenrich

[Aventador]

35 minutes ago, Sir Texas Sir said:

If the BR tag mechanics wasn't broken even if you brought a full 25 ships you shouldn't pull our fleet in any way.  Right now the mechanics are broken and Devs are working on them.  And this is only speaking of what the Brits brought. I have no clue what you numbers where but from what I saw was brigs to Connies so it wasn't exactly a big strong fleet in the first place.  Not vs 24 1st rates and if ya'll had tagged us and brought all us into one battle than we where more than welcome to fight it out and sink all you, but be honest ya'll brought trash ships and ships to grief in and not fight?  I mean there was a freaking Brig in my fight and that can't even get into the Port Battle.  Now the fight me and Jean got into we aren't complaining about and he still made it into the Port Battle.  I got the no click bug and was caught out side by three Brits.  One was in a BRIG.....so your fleet came there with nothing other than to grief not fight.   And you still didn't even do a good job of that.  We still got into the port battle and won by US withdrawing even though they had the numbers and advantage of Forts and towers and time.   The defender doesn't need 1000 points, they just have to prevent the other team from getting 1000 points.  We either made sure any captured 1st rates was than sunk or recaptured.  So other than the mortar brig and one first rate lost we did better than expected.  We now have prime hunting grounds right on the back door of the US.  We have no plans to conquest and push ports on them.  We pick our ports for hunting and OW PvP.   We have every thing we need to craft our SOL's and other ships right in Mort area.   

 

I can't comment on any decision or battle regarding the US. The British were there because we made a deal with the us. I still don't get your argument though... You exploited because you claim that BR tag mechanics are broken? 

[Aventador]

30 minutes ago, Rhodry Heidenrich said:

@Aventador

Did you make it home with that first rate, or did you wind up scuttling it because you were going to get it taken away again?

Oh I sank it. It was more of a prize anyways. Wasn't even the proper build

[Justme]

Sounds like Aventador has no issue exploiting certain  broken mechanics( BR) as long as they favor him, but has no problem complaining about other broken mechanics if they don't favor him.

[Rhodry Heidenrich]

26 minutes ago, Aventador said:

Oh I sank it. It was more of a prize anyways. Wasn't even the proper build

That was actually a loaded question. I know you sank it, but you didn't mention that your victory was rather pyrrhic in your post. We all sometimes forget that there's two sides to each story. 

Anyway,

The basic cutter issue is outside of your bravado, and my whole stance on it has been that it's good it's been brought to light so it can hopefully be addressed. I'm actually not a fan of any of the crappy tagging mechanics within the game, and I'd prefer if we as a community could come together to find a better way to do things because it benefits us all. 

Tag circle sniping is just as much of a bad mechanic as what started this whole crap storm to begin with. It's also used to circumvent other game mechanics, and if the whole idea is to weed out and eradicate exploits it's most certainly part of the conversation which boils down to this:

Bad game mechanics are bad, and should be fixed so that way we can focus on beating each other up with virtual cannonballs instead of keyboards. 

Edited July 2, 2017 by Rhodry Heidenrich

[Sir Texas Sir]

7 minutes ago, Justme said:

Sounds like Aventador has no issue exploiting certain  broken mechanics( BR) as long as they favor him, but has no problem complaining about other broken mechanics if they don't favor him.

Yah there is a trend with these guys.  Ever time they get out played they bitch and complain.  We used War Supplies to stop a double flip in the Bahamas, they come on here and complain.  We use a ship to tag which could been another pirate or AI so we aren't sitting in the open they complain.  Why didn't they join that battle than?  Oh cause they fleet wasn't all split up so they can jump in on who they use the broken BR mechanics.  I honestly didn't see very many big ships on either side screening. Maybe a few Connies, but what I saw was a lot of Surprises and smaller ships.  That is why I asked what the Brits brought, but I wasn't in those battles.  Can only speak of the one I was involved in and one of those guys when I got attacked by the British was in a Brig and the surprise was super slow so was prob some store bought. I didn't check it's crew but wouldn't surprise me that they where mostly in store bought ships.

 

[Christendom]

1 hour ago, Sir Texas Sir said:

If the BR tag mechanics wasn't broken even if you brought a full 25 ships you shouldn't pull our fleet in any way.  Right now the mechanics are broken and Devs are working on them.  And this is only speaking of what the Brits brought. I have no clue what you numbers where but from what I saw was brigs to Connies so it wasn't exactly a big strong fleet in the first place.  Not vs 24 1st rates and if ya'll had tagged us and brought all us into one battle than we where more than welcome to fight it out and sink all you, but be honest ya'll brought trash ships and ships to grief in and not fight?  I mean there was a freaking Brig in my fight and that can't even get into the Port Battle.  Now the fight me and Jean got into we aren't complaining about and he still made it into the Port Battle.  I got the no click bug and was caught out side by three Brits.  One was in a BRIG.....so your fleet came there with nothing other than to grief not fight.   And you still didn't even do a good job of that.  We still got into the port battle and won by US withdrawing even though they had the numbers and advantage of Forts and towers and time.   The defender doesn't need 1000 points, they just have to prevent the other team from getting 1000 points.  We either made sure any captured 1st rates was than sunk or recaptured.  So other than the mortar brig and one first rate lost we did better than expected.  We now have prime hunting grounds right on the back door of the US.  We have no plans to conquest and push ports on them.  We pick our ports for hunting and OW PvP.   We have every thing we need to craft our SOL's and other ships right in Mort area.   

 

Someone needs to teach this guy paragraph structure.  Good grief.  My 10th graders can write better. 

Basically the summary of this post is that because BR mechanics are messed up it's ok to bring alts in cutters. 

Edited July 2, 2017 by Christendom

[Macjimm]

3 hours ago, Aventador said:

You all misunderstood what I meant. I'm not saying remove it from the game i'm saying remove it from all pvp within the game.(you can still tag ai etc)

I think you misunderstood my question.

First: I like to sail a Cutter or a Lynx and trade or fish.  But I enjoy the the PvP servers.  The risk or danger from potential attack is an important part of the appeal of the game.  If the possibility of PvP is removed when using the Cutter the gameplay would less exciting.  I might as well just play on the PvE server always.  The PvP servers would become big PvE servers.

Question:  Is it the just the free Cutter that poses an issue?  Or are crafted Cutters a problem also?  Likewise is the Lynx a PvP problem?

Edited July 2, 2017 by Macjimm
structure

[Justme]

5 minutes ago, Christendom said:

Someone needs to teach this guy paragraph structure.  Good grief.  My 10th graders can write better. 

Basically the summary of this post is that because BR mechanics are messed up it's ok to bring alts in cutters. 

So it's ok for Aven to  exploit broken BR mechanics, but not Sir Texas and his group to use another exploit. Why don't you call out players like Aven for his use of exploits?

[Sir Texas Sir]

8 minutes ago, Christendom said:

Someone needs to teach this guy paragraph structure.  Good grief.  My 10th graders can write better. 

Basically the summary of this post is that because BR mechanics are messed up it's ok to bring alts in cutters. 

Oh look another one that goes to personnel attacks instead of facts.  Do you like making fun of folks with learning disorders? I'm not some English major just some Country boy that turns wrench for his living (though semi retired).   I found for  teacher your lack of compassion for others that might have issues with the grasp of English language structure and proper grammar to be very mind blowing. Instead do you attack your students that have issues with there writing in school?  Hell you do not want to see my writing, it's like a bunch of chickens running around with there heads cut off. I barely passed English in school cause of my learning disorder, but I made straight A's in all my other classes. Some folks just aren't that good at some things and for me it's proper grammar and sentence structures.  But than your perfect and you have no flaws I take it?

Devs have said there is nothing wrong with it as long as you don't us it to build hostility or to pull the other team into the fight to keep them out of the port battle.  We did not do either of those things.   You could of joined the fight if you wanted to, but no that wasn't on your terms.  Believe me if we had gotten a 25 vs 25 fight out side the PB it wouldn't be our ships that sunk.  The only chance ya'll had was to split us up as you did with a few ships and dog pill on us cause the games BR mechanics for tagging are broken.

[Macjimm]

1 minute ago, Sir Texas Sir said:

Some folks just aren't that good at some things and for me it's proper grammar and sentence structures.

Sir Texas Sir,

You communicate well.  I enjoy reading your posts ... most of the time.  Keep posting.

[Lord Amplify of Key West]

so wait, the  pirates come have 25 first rates but then hide in a battle with an alt afraid of fighting. And then start calling us out for not fighting them ~BLACK at it again

 

[Christendom]

7 minutes ago, Sir Texas Sir said:

Oh look another one that goes to personnel attacks instead of facts.  Do you like making fun of folks with learning disorders? I'm not some English major just some Country boy that turns wrench for his living (though semi retired).   I found for  teacher your lack of compassion for others that might have issues with the grasp of English language structure and proper grammar to be very mind blowing. Instead do you attack your students that have issues with there writing in school?  Hell you do not want to see my writing, it's like a bunch of chickens running around with there heads cut off. I barely passed English in school cause of my learning disorder, but I made straight A's in all my other classes. Some folks just aren't that good at some things and for me it's proper grammar and sentence structures.  But than your perfect and you have no flaws I take it?

Devs have said there is nothing wrong with it as long as you don't us it to build hostility or to pull the other team into the fight to keep them out of the port battle.  We did not do either of those things.   You could of joined the fight if you wanted to, but no that wasn't on your terms.  Believe me if we had gotten a 25 vs 25 fight out side the PB it wouldn't be our ships that sunk.  The only chance ya'll had was to split us up as you did with a few ships and dog pill on us cause the games BR mechanics for tagging are broken.

I am far from perfect, but I do hit my enter key occasionally.  If you're going to make us read your life stories, at least format them.  

So are you admitting that an alt was used to hide your fleet?  

[Lord Amplify of Key West]

the only excuses i heard was the devs say it's okay which is false since you were hiding your fleet from the fight and "we didn't have the people to fight you and get in the port battle" BUT THAT IS THE POINT OF SCREENING

[Sir Texas Sir]

3 minutes ago, amplify said:

the only excuses i heard was the devs say it's okay which is false since you were hiding your fleet from the fight and "we didn't have the people to fight you and get in the port battle" BUT THAT WAS THE hello kittyING POINT OF SCREENING YOU MORON'S

No one said you couldn't join those fights, if we where avoiding the fights than you couldn't been able to join what ever we tagged.   We used the game mechanics that we had to try to keep from being separated. Ya'll got a few of us separated and I don't see any one complaining about that. The only folks I see complaining and not entering fights is you guys. 

If ya'll had pulled all 25 of us into one battle we would of fought ya'll, but you where trying to us a broken system to separate us from a very tight convy that you wouldn't been able to pick stragglers from if the system wasn't broken.   Did ya'll have 25 ships? I haven't seen the other battles I wasn't involved in, but should 24 Line Ships be pulled into a battle with a fleet made up of 6-4th rates with most of them being 5th rates?  That is what I saw mostly of not a fleet of 4th rates.  Though I can not speak for the whole British fleet as I only saw part of them.  The screening fleet should be like ships and numbers not a bunch of throw way store bought ships.  Than come talk to us and we would of gladly forgot about the port battle and just had a fight in the OW instead. 

And remember folks we weren't the only ones that suppose to had an alt there.  So who exactly is he an alt of VCO/TF?  I'm going to guess TF since all his clan mates from HELL rolled US and joined TF and than went to Brits with TF.   Yah and if you used him to tag and pull in other pirates that is against the rules, but since it didn't get to that we didn't report it.  Though I would love to see if some one check the char to see who's alt he is and what he might of done to abuse his chars. This is the same one we caught running side by side with a US and started the BLACK vs HELL clan wars in pirates a few weeks ago.

[Lord Amplify of Key West]

since your clan uses alts to get marks your opinion on alts is of no value to me

 

[Teutonic]

Removing the basic cutter from all pvp is not the solution to the problem that is stated. 

[Skully]

If this turns into a shouting match "who is the biggest dick", then you'll all lose. Because that's me. At that point I'll just ask a mod to lock this topic.

I have already ruled out the usage of alts on this tactic and the usage of basic cutters on this.

Please enlighten me whether having the timed supplies would introduce problems or solve them for this tactic.

Edited July 2, 2017 by Skully

[Justme]

9 minutes ago, amplify said:

since your clan uses alts to get marks your opinion on alts is of no value to me

 

Love the hypocrisy

[Prater]

48 minutes ago, Macjimm said:

Sir Texas Sir,

You communicate well.  I enjoy reading your posts ... most of the time.  Keep posting.

Agree with Macjimm.

But, why did someone use an alt for this when they could have used ai or other pirates?  Alts messing with pbs in anyway have received harsh treatment, we all know this.  And just last week Ink said the alts were found to be guilty of supporting an enemy nation in battle.  Not guilty of taking up slots, not guilty of pulling others into battle, not guilty for being attacked, but guilty of supporting the enemy in battle.  While maybe a gray area because this exact case hasn't been used before, we all know there is a significant chance the devs will decide this isn't ok behavior.  The whole purpose of harsh punishments for using alts like this is so that people don't use them when a port battle is involved.  We all make bad judgment calls, and I'd say that the person who attacked the alt definitely made one if he knew it was an alt.

But taking cutters out of pvp completely isn't the answer.  Neither is taking away their hold.  Next, we will have yachts and premium ships being used the same way, and will those get these restrictions as well?  Then the argument will be cheap ships can't be used.

I can't think of any good solutions that involve game mechanics.  They all have too many downsides.

I think the devs need to come out and say this:

Using an alt who is in another nation means the alt is a spy.  This means the alt must keep the fact that he is a spy a secret.  Just like in real life, if the alt/spy is caught being an alt, the alt account will be executed, i.e. get their account wiped and moved over to the nation of their main account and not allowed to switch nations.  If someone accuses another of being an alt, they need proof the alt was helping the enemy.  Things that include helping the enemy are tagging pb fleets, getting tagged by a pb fleet, taking up slots in a pb, helping the enemy in any way during battle, and being reported in chat for admitting the alt is an alt account (the main admits the alt is his, or his nationmate says the alt is an alt and it is proven so) or of expressing plans to break the rules with an alt.

I say reset Master Baiter back to nothing and move him to pirates.  Same goes for Socialism.  Reset and change Socialism to British for admission that he is an alt and expressing plans to use him to break the rules (if he is indeed an alt, that needs to be made certain first).

Edited July 2, 2017 by Prater

[Skully]

12 minutes ago, Prater said:

But, why did someone use an alt for this when they could have used ai or other pirates?  Alts messing with pbs in anyway have received harsh treatment, we all know this.  And just last week Ink said the alts were found to be guilty of supporting an enemy nation in battle.  Not guilty of taking up slots, not guilty of pulling others into battle, not guilty for being attacked, but guilty of supporting the enemy in battle.  While maybe a gray area because this exact case hasn't been used before, we all know there is a significant chance the devs will decide this isn't ok behavior.  The whole purpose of harsh punishments for using alts like this is so that people don't use them when a port battle is involved.  We all make bad judgment calls, and I'd say that the person who attacked the alt definitely made one if he knew it was an alt.

Even the devs make bad judgement calls. Hence having the Tribunal deal with these issues isn't viable.

And as you yourself are labeling it "gray area", it simply means an acquittal.

So ultimately it can only be an in-game mechanic that deals with outlaws, something like http://forum.game-labs.net/index.php?/topic/16219-accusing-a-saboteur-marking-an-outlaw/.

[Powderhorn]

The second you can "vote somebody off the island," so to speak, trolls will immediately start voting random players to be outlaws.

[Ruthless4u]

1 hour ago, Powderhorn said:

The second you can "vote somebody off the island," so to speak, trolls will immediately start voting random players to be outlaws.

I can imagine the alt abuse with this

[Skully]

10 hours ago, Powderhorn said:

The second you can "vote somebody off the island," so to speak, trolls will immediately start voting random players to be outlaws.

Are you talking about my proposed mechanic or the Tribunal itself? 

Should a majority of a nation become fed up with a certain alt or player, it will isolate that player anyway until he leaves. I thought D4mi4n had proven this point already several times.

Almost any rule and game mechanic can be abused at some point. The only question is, can you get away with it?
Hmm, that actually sounds like the end-game most power gamers (/ alts) are playing at the moment.
Maybe cater to them by making spying and sabotage a proper foreground feature again how it was envisioned in the past?
(And before a casual can so no, it'll happen regardless.)

Bring back the hunt for those who are vicious and wolves in sheep clothes.

[Sir Texas Sir]

On 7/2/2017 at 1:52 PM, Prater said:

Agree with Macjimm.

But, why did someone use an alt for this when they could have used ai or other pirates?  Alts messing with pbs in anyway have received harsh treatment, we all know this.  And just last week Ink said the alts were found to be guilty of supporting an enemy nation in battle.  Not guilty of taking up slots, not guilty of pulling others into battle, not guilty for being attacked, but guilty of supporting the enemy in battle.  While maybe a gray area because this exact case hasn't been used before, we all know there is a significant chance the devs will decide this isn't ok behavior.  The whole purpose of harsh punishments for using alts like this is so that people don't use them when a port battle is involved.  We all make bad judgment calls, and I'd say that the person who attacked the alt definitely made one if he knew it was an alt.

But taking cutters out of pvp completely isn't the answer.  Neither is taking away their hold.  Next, we will have yachts and premium ships being used the same way, and will those get these restrictions as well?  Then the argument will be cheap ships can't be used.

I can't think of any good solutions that involve game mechanics.  They all have too many downsides.

I think the devs need to come out and say this:

Using an alt who is in another nation means the alt is a spy.  This means the alt must keep the fact that he is a spy a secret.  Just like in real life, if the alt/spy is caught being an alt, the alt account will be executed, i.e. get their account wiped and moved over to the nation of their main account and not allowed to switch nations.  If someone accuses another of being an alt, they need proof the alt was helping the enemy.  Things that include helping the enemy are tagging pb fleets, getting tagged by a pb fleet, taking up slots in a pb, helping the enemy in any way during battle, and being reported in chat for admitting the alt is an alt account (the main admits the alt is his, or his nationmate says the alt is an alt and it is proven so) or of expressing plans to break the rules with an alt.

I say reset Master Baiter back to nothing and move him to pirates.  Same goes for Socialism.  Reset and change Socialism to British for admission that he is an alt and expressing plans to use him to break the rules (if he is indeed an alt, that needs to be made certain first).

This is very well put and since I wasn't in that battle I don't know what the call was, I was with another clan mate fighting off a few of the US screeners that got us separated cause we didn't make sure every one was ready when they left the first battle we where in.  These guys act like that was the only battle we where in before the port battle.  I was in 3 myself and never made it into the Port Battle.  I think there was about 4-5 battles before the main group got into the port battle.  I don't know who Master Baiter was, for all I know he could of just been some noob, but INK made a call on what ever they found.  As in that chars cause I don't think set back would work since it looks like he was a new spawn.  Though I do agree that Socialism has been called out and he needs to be punished as there is a lot of evidence that some one can gather including the screen shot that he is very much an alt of a US player or more now British.  We have suspect of who it belongs too and he has been in two of our Port Battles.  Did no grinding and just showed up and enter.  One of the port battles he took one or our slots and meant one of our guys got left out and than tagged by a small group of British screeneers (San Lago when we took it from spain).    Some one that has all the data needs to compile it and post it.   I don't have all that info so I won't make the claim.

As for alts all mine are Pirates cause of the new system.  Yah pre-patch I had 2 pirates and one Dane, but that Dane is now my crafter char so I can keep the two Pirates free to be in the fight.