Solutions to ports lost to time

[Tiedemann]

1. Remove all defense timers during weekend, for example Friday after maintenance up to Sunday maintenance all defence timers can be ignored.
    
2. Exponential increase in port timer cost after 30-60 (?) days and is connected to the nation that owns it. This could be reserved only for the most valuable resource ports. And if the port goes neutral and then is reconquered by the same nation the cost should pick up where it left to force ports to change nation of ownership.

[Christendom]

2 hours ago, Lars Kjaer said:

The only thing that is small minded is to ignore the numbers. We have already tested nightflips and the serverpop were depleted.

Server pop has depleted over time in every iteration of this game.  Flags, no timers, EU/Global only timers and the current iteration with the merge.  Every single time.  Even now we have an option to mitigate night flips and the game can still not sustain itself.  Maybe 5% of the current valuable ports are owned by US based clans...the rest are EU based.  Night flip impact is minimal.  The game still dies in between patches.  Why?  Because we lack content and after hitting max rank it gets boring AF if you aren't a huge PVPer.   

2 hours ago, Lars Kjaer said:

100-150 ppl in the US TZ, 400-500 in the EU TZ.. Numbers doesn't lie. The real question is - why did the EU server function and the global server fail? - There's been a number of good reasons but as I see it the main reason is that the US playerbase for a very long time were treated like crap, servermaintenance comes to mind, and this has dropped US TZ playerbase below the breaking point. The stats however doesn't lie - EU server worked, global server failed. We have already tested timers, they didn't work. This has nothing to do with narrowmindedness but solely on numbers and functioning mechanics. 

EU server was barely cracking 400 on a good day just prior to the merge.  

5 hours ago, Gregory Rainsborough said:

So at the moment we have a rather steep price for the 3 hours window timer which has led to hiding behind timers by multiple clans across all nations for multiple reasons.

Whether this be,

a) To prevent multiflipping

b) Too afraid to fight for fear of losing

c) Port considered too valuable to lose

d) Other reasons

Whatever the reason behind this it's clear why it was introduced *whistles innocently* but it seems that we've gone from one extreme to another.

I would suggest that another timer in introduced that would at least alleviate the problem of an uneven population spread across the server across the various timezones for different nations; which leads to uncontested port battles from night flips because the port is not worth putting a timer on because the population isn't high enough to warrant bothering with it.

A cheaper timer should be introduced that costs 100k-200k a day that creates a 7 hour window from 11-18, 18-01, 01-08 or two timers that mirror the old divide in the servers, 11-22, 22-08 or something like that.

Those borderline (in terms of money) ports currently hidden behind timers might be dropped down down a bit but still allow them to fight, at weekends in particular when these things usually happen.

An interesting suggestion.  Here's a variation of your idea that I like.

A port has 3 options. 

 - No timer - 100k hit daily
 - Mixed use timer (20:00 GMT to 01:00 GMT) - 300k daily
 - Specific 3 hour timers - 750k daily

Mixed use timer would intend to try and overlap late EU times with early evening US times in an attempt to prevent extreme day/night flips, but still promote overlapping content for both player bases.  Think of this as a weekend timer.

Either option I think we need to address the fact that the game is spread very thin with 400-500 players in 11 nations.  We need to remove some and hope populations shift a little bit more and mix to help with coverage making the mixed timer option a valid play.

 

[Christendom]

7 minutes ago, Tiedemann said:

1. Exponential increase in port timer cost after 30-60 (?) days and is connected to the nation that owns it. This could be reserved only for the most valuable resource ports. And if the port goes neutral and then is reconquered by the same nation the cost should pick up where it left to force ports to change nation of ownership.

This is an excellent idea.  Navasse for example has been french since almost the beginning of the merge and hasn't changed hands once.  We need a mechanic to prevent long term holdings.

[Farrago]

When talking percentages, was the difference between the numbers of players lost on Global and numbers of players lost on Euro that different? I don't know for sure, but it seemed like both kept seeing a steady decrease at a similar rate. Euro server just started from a much larger number. At a certain point, numbers will drop off a cliff because there are so few, no one wants to play.

[Hethwill]

Upon capture of port, 2 windows MUST be setup.

No expenditure for timers. No cost for timers.

Every Thursday clans MAY change ALL their ports timers. Even if it was conquered on Wednesday, matters not.

Both separated, minimum by 4 hours and none closer than 2 hours to Maintenance.