Preliminary discussion of the changes to conquest - clan wars are coming

[Genma Saotome]

I'll repeat a suggestion I made earlier, different thread:  adjust the pricing of building ships to the strength of the country.   The strongest pay the most.  The weakest pay the least.  Sort of like professional sports drafts where the worst team in the league gets the first pick.. That'll probably mean all ship building materials are owned by (and crafted on behalf of) the Admiralty. Maybe that's where tax revenue goes too.  Personal profit gets limited to trade goods and specialty war materials, like better gunpowder, special sail cloth, etc. etc. , while all armed ships carrying more than 4pdr guns are from the Admiralty.  Crafting remains as is but again, materials are Admiralty goods, not clan or personal as do gunpowder and shot (which should be inventoried by each ship... no longer unlimited quantities on hand.

Doing something like this is a helping hand to those who have been kicked to the curb and a leash on those who do the kicking.  If it works, no need for more map wipes.

 

Edited August 5, 2017 by Genma Saotome

[PongoNW]

Just a drop in to say its a solid idea, doing a way with ports changing hands did not occur to me, but is a credible start to making the game always approachable to starters and non dedicated players. 

 

[Georg Fromm]

For me it looks as if the DEVS have lost faith in filling the entire map with life.

The playfully interesting space is artificially reduced and concentrated on the center. Probably a sensible measure when I go out from 400-500 players. But what if we have maybe again 2000+ players? Then the center becomes a huge arena for the shooting-mad PvPler.

Instead of wasting time here to discuss the flagging system or other mechanics once again, perhaps you should have put more energy into the development of a meaningful economy or new content . Such as more possibilities for clans, a system for the management of ports or the revision of the pirates

Edited August 5, 2017 by Dominique Youx

[Lonar]

1 hour ago, Dominique Youx said:

For me it looks as if the DEVS have lost faith in filling the entire map with life.

The playfully interesting space is artificially reduced and concentrated on the center. Probably a sensible measure when I go out from 400-500 players. But what if we have maybe again 2000+ players? Then the center becomes a huge arena for the shooting-mad PvPler.

Instead of wasting time here to discuss the flagging system or other mechanics once again, perhaps you should have put more energy into the development of a meaningful economy or new content . Such as more possibilities for clans, a system for the management of ports or the revision of the pirates

we will not have 2k player again with that patch .... i guess a lot people will quit mainly the single solo guys i personally think i will look into the changes but in the end i guess i will be one of the quitter ...

Really not convinced that the changes are a good idea its possible iam wrong. :/

Edited August 5, 2017 by Lonar

[Archaos]

On 8/2/2017 at 2:57 PM, admin said:

War corporations will be able to change tax rates in ports (for example if the standard national tax rate is 15% war corporations will be able to reduce it to 0 or raise up to 30%) 

Can you please clarify how this will work in game.

My current understanding of this using an example of lets say Oak harvesting - it currently costs around 72g to harvest 1 log, so I assume this includes the 15% standard tax rate so rounding up it would be 63g base price and 9g tax. If the port owner increased the tax rate to 30% on a base price of 63g the new price to harvest 1 log would be 82g with tax of 19g.

If they reduced the tax to 0% the price would be 63g to harvest one log.

Am I correct in my assumptions and does the tax take go direct to the owning clan?

[Archaos]

On 8/2/2017 at 2:57 PM, admin said:

• Hostility changes will be done
  • Hostility grinding will be removed
    • Some kind of flag will return - but the placing time will be increased to 30 mins to give time to respond
• Potentially we can bring back timers set by governors

How about a mixture of hostility and flags. Hostility has to be raised in a region to over 80% before a flag can be pulled. That way you get some warning something is happening in the region and gives you time to lower hostility to prevent the port battle, rather than having to quickly gather defenders at short notice.

[Archaos]

On 8/2/2017 at 2:57 PM, admin said:

War corporations can fight other war corporations in the same nation ONLY in port battles

How will this work in respect to screening if both War Corporations are in the same nation, how can persons friendly to a War Corporation help in screening, or does the attacking fleet have unhindered access to the port battle?

[Skully]

7 hours ago, koltes said:

On top of that Workshop and Shipyard needs to be 10 times more expensive to build and must be clan's effort.

Lvl 1 shipyards should be easy to dot around the map. The churn of small ships must be easy and cheap.

The workshop could do with levels as well.

Then low level structures should be cheap.

How about a shipyard gets destroyed when lost?

(We still go on the notion of perpetual, so there must be an infrastructure sink.)

[Skully]

24 minutes ago, Archaos said:

How will this work in respect to screening if both War Corporations are in the same nation, how can persons friendly to a War Corporation help in screening, or does the attacking fleet have unhindered access to the port battle?

It's unhindered access, unless another Nation shows up.

In other words, there is no way the game can determine whose friend has showed up.

[twizt3dwun]

Some good arguments for and against, but still seeing clan people speaking for the solo casuals - said it before and i'll say it again, I like the proposals made as a non-clan casual player it'll make things more interesting for me personally, you guys gotta stop speaking for other people.. speak for yourself and your clan if you must but don't speak for the individuals here.. We may be insignificant little people in comparison but we still have our own voice lol.. I don't mind the taxes in place as it makes ownership of a port more of an achievement for the groups that win which I'm more than happy to have as it takes a fair effort to organise a bunch of people and you don't want them to invest time and effort into something and not achieve anything worth the effort so fair enough let them have their taxes. Unless you're still a kid you should be used to paying taxes anyway, right? Shouldn't be such a big deal. Maybe with taxes in place the economy won't be so inflated as people will make profit off other people's trades and we can have fairer market prices.. I mean probably not because people in general are greedy but one can dream of a lesser inflated market.. anyway, point made little guys have our own voices, people need to stop presuming things and yeaaah taxes might not be as bad as people think..  

Also whats with that guy going mental about definitions continually? one ranting post was more than enough to get his point across but he keeps going on and on lol. Act your age if you want to be taken seriously, damn lol I didn't even read the full rant as soon as I saw whole words in capitals I skipped it laughing at how immature some people are.

[Farrago]

On 8/2/2017 at 6:57 AM, admin said:

Hello Captains.

We would like to share some information on the potential changes to conquest. 

Current Problems
New player experience is uneven and heavily depends on the nation you join.

• New players who come into the game have completely no information on what is the state of their nation they just joined.
• Sometimes they join a happy strong nation, but often they join weaker nations
• As a result players who joined a stronger nation have a much better experience than players who joined a weak nation and leave the game. 
• Current national conquest system (take everything from your enemy) reinforces this problem. 
• Fluctuating online increases the problem even further - if you nation has 10 captains left you cannot play normally because you become completely uncompetitive in conquest, which in turn reduces quality of other types of gameplay
• As a result most new players (who did not join a winning nation) become unhappy populace and leave the game instead of having fun.
•  

[snip]

• Reinforcements in coastal ports will come back to game (as fleets no longer give xp)

[snip]

Do I understand the newest proposal correctly? All nations will have uncapturable regions on the periphery and war corporations will fight for ownership of basically the map's center. You may finally have something here. New players will have, not a safe, but at least a safer area to learn and small nations won't be oneported or hassled to the point of no return. Small nations just won't be able to effectively participate in the conquest aspect of the game but they can't really do that now.

Still, if you're concerned about new player experience, tutorials or at least an FAQ would do far more than any mechanics changes.

But regarding the last part I quoted "as fleets no longer give XP". I hope I misunderstand. New players will never gain rank if they gain no XP from killing AI. There just isn't enough PVP available, especially at their level. Please clarify. 

Edited August 5, 2017 by Farrago
Spelling and typos

[Slamz]

My prediction for how this will play out on PvP Global: total flop.

Pirates will form a War Clan.
France will not.
Dutch will not.
Spain will not.
Swedes will not.
Brits might but it won't work -- not enough people or coordination.
USA -- see Brits.
Danes will but they won't fight the Pirates.

French will simply avoid the RvR and use all the lovely French ports scattered around the map. Pirate war clan will take them and tax them but French do so little econ that it won't matter. From our perspective it's still a French port and we can teleport to it for PvP and that's awesome for us.

Pirates will be mad that nobody cares they're "taking" all the ports. Since the rest of us are not in a War Clan, we literally do not even notice or care about this activity.

Some French might want to start a War Clan but the first thing that happens when they make one is they lose access to every port on the map, because they are all Pirate and Dane owned and they have disallowed other nations access. No thanks. Nobody is going to join the French War Clan and lose PvP teleport access immediately.

British will want to play but current evidence suggests they simply can't get it together. 25 1st rates is just too high a bar for the remaining Brits to meet.

I think USA might want to play but again, they aren't going to meet the bar for 25 PB ships that I can see.

I just don't see this idea playing out the way the devs imagine. Maybe back in March 2016 there would have been enough players and competition to make it work but not on PvP-Global today.

 

...What if a War Clan can only own 5 ports?

This lets them compete over some hot commodities but they can't "take over the map".

This might allow small war clans to work, now that I think about it.

Pirates and Danes coordinate and grab the 10 hottest ports on the map.

USA has a small war clan and they grab, say, the Tampa area. Not exactly a hot commodity. Pirates want to go git 'em but in order to take the USA port they must drop ownership on one of their hot commodity ports.

If some real competition pops up, they will want to take those hot commodity ports and fight it out but minor clans can take the less desirable areas and still maybe get a little something out of the system instead of basically being encouraged to avoid it entirely.

[Jean Ribault]

4 minutes ago, Slamz said:

My prediction for how this will play out on PvP Global: total flop.

Pirates will form a War Clan.
France will not.
Dutch will not.
Spain will not.
Swedes will not.
Brits might but it won't work -- not enough people or coordination.
USA -- see Brits.
Danes will but they won't fight the Pirates.

French will simply avoid the RvR and use all the lovely French ports scattered around the map. Pirate war clan will take them and tax them but French do so little econ that it won't matter. From our perspective it's still a French port and we can teleport to it for PvP and that's awesome for us.

Pirates will be mad that nobody cares they're "taking" all the ports. Since the rest of us are not in a War Clan, we literally do not even notice or care about this activity.

Some French might want to start a War Clan but the first thing that happens when they make one is they lose access to every port on the map, because they are all Pirate and Dane owned and they have disallowed other nations access. No thanks. Nobody is going to join the French War Clan and lose PvP teleport access immediately.

British will want to play but current evidence suggests they simply can't get it together. 25 1st rates is just too high a bar for the remaining Brits to meet.

I think USA might want to play but again, they aren't going to meet the bar for 25 PB ships that I can see.

I just don't see this idea playing out the way the devs imagine. Maybe back in March 2016 there would have been enough players and competition to make it work but not on PvP-Global today.

 

But if forged papers become available by some means, all this will change and become a dynamic.

[Slamz]

1 minute ago, Jean Ribault said:

But if forged papers become available by some means, all this will change and become a dynamic.

If history is any lesson, people will use their forged papers to all go to the team that's conveying the largest benefits.

You might think they'd go to another team and form up a competitive war clan but please state for the record an example of that ever happening.

USA gets beat down by Pirates and Brits, half go Pirate, others go Brit.

Dutch gets beat down by France, most go Dane, which had a peace treaty with France.

Brit Aussies join the Chinese in the Danes rather than fight them.

Brits get a beating by the Pirates and a lot join the Pirates.

I have yet to see an example of, say, a bunch of Pirates going "we really need to compete with BLACK. Let's join the Spanish!" People never use their forged papers to create better PvP.

It would be hilarious to see the Chinese go "f this, stop joining us" so they all go Swede and kill the new Danes. Not gonna happen though.

[Archaos]

I will link this post here as well as I think some of the ideas would fit well with a War Company type game.

 

[Anne Wildcat]

48 minutes ago, Intrepido said:

If the devs are so worry about the new player experience, they should:

Fix the gold grinding Sure

Fix the xp grinding Sure, not max rank yet but I never felt the game as a grind

Make new pve content Yes

Make new tools for easier navigation Please no gps, part of the fun, for me anyways and probably for some others, was getting lost

Make some small rookie zone safe from gank squads (only active until they reach post captain rank for example) Sure, or maybe instead no rewards for beating those two levels or more below you.  

Make some tutorials. Yes

Make that people get crafting xp by doing materials, not only ships. Yes

 

 

[Anolytic]

4 minutes ago, Slamz said:

...What if a War Clan can only own 5 ports?

This lets them compete over some hot commodities but they can't "take over the map".

This might allow small war clans to work, now that I think about it.

Pirates and Danes coordinate and grab the 10 hottest ports on the map.

USA has a small war clan and they grab, say, the Tampa area. Not exactly a hot commodity. Pirates want to go git 'em but in order to take the USA port they must drop ownership on one of their hot commodity ports.

If some real competition pops up, they will want to take those hot commodity ports and fight it out but minor clans can take the less desirable areas and still maybe get a little something out of the system instead of basically being encouraged to avoid it entirely.

Sounds like a receipt for carebears, not an RvR-system. If every War Company can just sit in their own safe corner without competition, then there is no action, no war, no RvR, no fun.

It is better that people can converge into 2-3 war companies that compete over controlling the majority of the map. Every now a new war company will arise and challenge the big ones, maybe replace one of them, or if there is enough players and resources join in the tug and tow.

6 minutes ago, Slamz said:

You might think they'd go to another team and form up a competitive war clan but please state for the record an example of that ever happening.

On the EU server, all the time.

In the past, when brits were strong, I saw several Brit clans switch to other nations to fight back. More recently people joined historically small and weak nations after the wipe. Danes on the EU server have always sought friends and allies that were weaker and thus needed our help, even though we were always a small and struggling nation ourselves.

[Jean Ribault]

11 minutes ago, Slamz said:

If history is any lesson, people will use their forged papers to all go to the team that's conveying the largest benefits.

You might think they'd go to another team and form up a competitive war clan but please state for the record an example of that ever happening.

USA gets beat down by Pirates and Brits, half go Pirate, others go Brit.

Dutch gets beat down by France, most go Dane, which had a peace treaty with France.

Brit Aussies join the Chinese in the Danes rather than fight them.

Brits get a beating by the Pirates and a lot join the Pirates.

I have yet to see an example of, say, a bunch of Pirates going "we really need to compete with BLACK. Let's join the Spanish!" People never use their forged papers to create better PvP.

It would be hilarious to see the Chinese go "f this, stop joining us" so they all go Swede and kill the new Danes. Not gonna happen though.

 

So you see why so many suggestions have been made over and over again stating that distribution control is required for joining nations.  Whatever the methodology is, it's the only way to control this sort of thing.  The flipside is that people don't want to be limited, but you can't have your cake and eat it too, unfortunately.

[Anolytic]

Just now, Jean Ribault said:

So you see why so many suggestions have been made over and over again stating that distribution control is required for joining nations.  Whatever the methodology is, it's the only way to control this sort of thing.  The flipside is that people don't want to be limited, but you can't have your cake and eat it too, unfortunately.

If War company participation is not nation-specific this would allow us to forego nation balancing and just let the War Companies balance themselves. Make it so that the War Company founders need to distribute the wealth that the Company generates from taxes, and make it harder to distribute the more clans are part of the Company. Thus bigger companies will cause internal conflicts and factions will split off.

If the nation of Spain only has 4 players on one of the servers, that would only be more power to them, as their ports cannot be lost. They would have great access to PvP, and as nationals they have best access to Spanish ports, with fewer players less competition about resources and profits. Make economy balance the nations. A nation with lower population relative to its size will have better profits and economy for the players playing there, causing players to migrate to that nation from overpopulated nations with greater competition.

[Archaos]

4 minutes ago, Anolytic said:

If War company participation is not nation-specific this would allow us to forego nation balancing and just let the War Companies balance themselves. Make it so that the War Company founders need to distribute the wealth that the Company generates from taxes, and make it harder to distribute the more clans are part of the Company. Thus bigger companies will cause internal conflicts and factions will split off.

I do not like the idea of War Companies not being nation specific, it totally removes the need to have nations, you may as well start the game with no nations and everyone just joins a clan.

[Anne Wildcat]

Maybe bring international alliances to war companies?

[Farrago]

While the new proposal will help with the alt in port battle problem and perhaps help newbies and gain breathing room for small nations, it will not create the atmosphere for long term stability and growth of the game population.

That problem can only be solved with a functioning economy. A economy will not function with the only desirable things available to make or buy are war materials or useless goods that only a robot wants. Look at games where worlds or civilizations are being built. You have citizens who have to be fed, educated, housed, and entertained. Your citizenry expands or grows by accomplishing these things in an effective and resourceful way.

My opinion is Naval Action's groundbreaking graphics and combat model will only truly be successful and have wide appeal when they are joined with a civilization building model. Until then, we're going to be a niche, easily quittable or forgotten, footnote in gaming.

So much potential. 

[Jean Ribault]

13 minutes ago, Anne Wildcat said:

Maybe bring international alliances to war companies?

 

Maybe yes, but then you bring into play the complication of who can enter what port with a warship.

[Slamz]

30 minutes ago, Anolytic said:

It is better that people can converge into 2-3 war companies that compete over controlling the majority of the map

People can do that now.

Granted I guess what war companies really do is act as a method of excluding people -- an unfortunate necessity due to alt abuse, though.

[Anolytic]

13 minutes ago, Slamz said:

People can do that now.

Granted I guess what war companies really do is act as a method of excluding people -- an unfortunate necessity due to alt abuse, though.

What war companies do is not so much excluding people as separating them/their gameplay. To prevent those who care about RvR from messing up the gameplay of those who enjoy OW PvP, and vice versa.

And yes, people can do that now. But everyone has a reason for choosing the nation they choose, and they don't want to give that up. They want to compete under the nation flag they chose and have feelings for, not be forced to abandon it and pick another flag to get access to fair RvR. With war companies, especially if they are not nation-exclusive, they can still keep their nationality, while fighting in RvR under a company flag/symbol at the same time.

Edited August 5, 2017 by Anolytic