The old system suggestion .

[Tomasso il Fortunato]

So yesterday I sailed with 3 Indiamans with 600.000 reals cargo to Vera Cruz . I got attacked in the middle of the sea by William Wade , I lost 1 indiaman the 2 others escaped and then I respawned in the same point with the second ship what I had in fleet so he followed me and sunk me another time and got respawned the 3th time and he left me go . For Indimans what i get sunk the system paid me only 16.000 (approximated) for each one . 

So I suggest to put back the old system what when you get sunk in Open World you got teleported in the nearest port and get a second chance to sail without getting sunk . Like this you will be possible to save money and ships . Only one ship is enough to get doubloons for the enemy player . For one trader like me or others is not easy to attack the enemy player and sunk him .

[Anolytic]

No thanks. Rewards are higher now. And so are risks. Don't sail with 3 undefended Indiamans. You can earn enough reals by sailing with less risk.

The old system was exploited by traders that put 3 indiamans in fleet and sailed a basic cutter as main ship so they could surrender their main ship and get teleported to skip the dangerous part of a journey.

Edited November 19, 2018 by Anolytic

[Tomasso il Fortunato]

Then make it only for traders not for battle ships . I mean what you couldn't put a fleet of Indiamans with a cutter or lynx or indefaticable , frigate ... ecc.

And until your Indiamans won't escape you can't surrender .

Edited November 19, 2018 by Captan Thomas Fremantle

[Palatinose]

I agree it sucks to respawn on the OW and get killed again - so adaption is necessary. Sail a ship of war and put the traders in fleet with repairs and guns on it. Fight with your main ship and let the AI help you. Switch ships if you're close to being killed. Try to change perspective: what does the opponent want? Depending on where you are on the map (own territory, distance to enemies territory), he will perhaps try to sink you once and cap the second ship. Make it hard for the enemy, sell yourself as expensive as possible. Heavy frigate as main ship and two Indiman are a tough nut to crack for a hunter in a 5th. Trade runs are highly profitable now, so the risk should be accordingly high.

[traitorous mctraitoro]

You could swap out one of your Indiamans for an escort ship, instead of finding a way around getting hunted. 

[Tomasso il Fortunato]

25 minutes ago, Palatinose said:

I agree it sucks to respawn on the OW and get killed again - so adaption is necessary. Sail a ship of war and put the traders in fleet with repairs and guns on it. Fight with your main ship and let the AI help you. Switch ships if you're close to being killed. Try to change perspective: what does the opponent want? Depending on where you are on the map (own territory, distance to enemies territory), he will perhaps try to sink you once and cap the second ship. Make it hard for the enemy, sell yourself as expensive as possible. Heavy frigate as main ship and two Indiman are a tough nut to crack for a hunter in a 5th. Trade runs are highly profitable now, so the risk should be accordingly high.

The problem is one . The AI of your fleet are so stupid so they can't even shoot a good hull strike .

[Tom Farseer]

@Captan Thomas Fremantle I get that this can be a frustrating experience. Being sunk several times in a row is not exactly satisfying.

What I don't get is, that there are still people in that area who sail with a full fleet of (often unarmed) trade ships when they must know by now that William usually hunts around there. He's probably also not the only one! This is like someone walking barelegged and with no antidote through a snake pit. At the very least arm your traders (a boarding fit T/Wo Indiaman as main ship can be a nasty surprise for smaller hunting ships). On War-Server there are always hunters about and if you happen to run across a small team chances are you will lose all four ships anyways.

The best way is just sailing a decent warship as your main. Take a heavy frigate (Endymion, Trincomalee or Indefatigable) or if you can spare the dubloons a decent 4th rate, maybe even a Bellona.

If you have no interest in sailing warships and seriously just want to trade you either have to live with the high risk or play on the Peace-Server.

[Tomasso il Fortunato]

Plus when you are full of cargo you don't have speed and the enemy can catch you every time you get back in Open World.

[Tomasso il Fortunato]

4 minutes ago, Tom Farseer said:

@Captan Thomas Fremantle I get that this can be a frustrating experience. Being sunk several times in a row is not exactly satisfying.

What I don't get is, that there are still people in that area who sail with a full fleet of (often unarmed) trade ships when they must know by now that William usually hunts around there. He's probably also not the only one! This is like someone walking barelegged and with no antidote through a snake pit. At the very least arm your traders (a boarding fit T/Wo Indiaman as main ship can be a nasty surprise for smaller hunting ships). On War-Server there are always hunters about and if you happen to run across a small team chances are you will lose all four ships anyways.

The best way is just sailing a decent warship as your main. Take a heavy frigate (Endymion, Trincomalee or Indefatigable) or if you can spare the dubloons a decent 4th rate, maybe even a Bellona.

If you have no interest in sailing warships and seriously just want to trade you either have to live with the high risk or play on the Peace-Server.

And what if you sink in the warship ? You get exposed and you will DIE in roll everytime you get in the Open World and the enemy will win a lot of doubloons .

I got sunk in the middle of the sea and I had no chance to get support from my friends .

[traitorous mctraitoro]

If you have a warship, you at least deter some hunters, you have a better chance of winning the battle, you make it a lot harder for hunters to capture your traders, and worst case scenario you can cover the traders retreat easily.

[Tom Farseer]

8 minutes ago, Captan Thomas Fremantle said:

And what if you sink in the warship ? You get exposed and you will DIE in roll everytime you get in the Open World [...]

 

Yes, you will. That is the risk that everyone takes when sailing with an AI fleet. If you sail alone into dangerous areas be prepared to lose ships. Therefore a) never sail what you cannot afford to lose, b) don't sail alone if it can be helped. An ex-Clanmate of mine regularly undertook high risk trade runs, when we had ports of every nation right outside Jamaica (when spanish still held the caymans). He adapted to the risk by paying people to escort him. Less reward but much lower risk.

Edited November 19, 2018 by Tom Farseer

[Tom Farseer]

3 minutes ago, traitorous mctraitoro said:

worst case scenario you can cover the traders retreat easily

That indeed no longer helps because if you sink in your main ship you spawn in OW in your next fleet ship... so it's still win the first battle or probably lose everything....

[Tomasso il Fortunato]

1 minute ago, Tom Farseer said:

Yes, you will. That is the risk that everyone takes when sailing with an AI fleet. If you sail alone into dangerous areas be prepared to lose ships. Therefore a) never sail what you cannot afford to lose, b) don't sail alone if it can be helped. An ex-Clanmate of mine regularly undertook high risk trade runs, when we had ports of every nation right outside Jamaica (when spanish still held the caymans). He adapted to the risk by paying people to escort him. Less reward but much lower risk.

And how much should i play for the escort especialy when you don't have a good price and you already payed all your reals to load you ships , nobody wants to do it . I asked before i sailed .

[Palatinose]

True, AI aren't of much help short term. That's why you sail the ship of war to prolong the engagement. In medium and long term you will discover that AI helps a lot if used correctly. Switch between the commands demast, destroy and follow to always keep them around you. Be unpredictable. Load fake boarding, try to use your numbers. Refill your own crew from your fleet ships when getting raked, don't repair sails too early, just stick with the slow fleet. Your not fast but outgunning. Use counter boarding mods like barricades and boarding axes (it's called differently now) or marines. Keep the opponent in the engagement as long as you can.

Edited November 19, 2018 by Palatinose

[Tomasso il Fortunato]

Then make AI fleet ships more inteligent ..

[Tomasso il Fortunato]

1 hour ago, Anolytic said:

No thanks. Rewards are higher now. And so are risks. Don't sail with 3 undefended Indiamans. You can earn enough reals by sailing with less risk.

The old system was exploited by traders that put 3 indiamans in fleet and sailed a basic cutter as main ship so they could surrender their main ship and get teleported to skip the dangerous part of a journey.

I was defended , becouse i had good cannons and repairs for main ship. But the Indiaman hasn't a good armour . 

Edited November 19, 2018 by Captan Thomas Fremantle

[Raekur]

I can tell from some of the replies here who actually sails a trade ship and who doesn't.

First of all, you can NOT fleet with a basic cutter as a main ship. Been like that for a while now.

Second, with the not transported to port after being defeated the ONLY way to not lose everything is to sail just a single trade ship that is built for speed and minimize the loss.

Sailing 3 slow trade ships without escorts is very risky as most of the raiders near Vera Cruz are in Bellona's and can easily take out any trade ship with little effort.

The game has changed quite a bit now and is more towards PVP and does not support commerce (as profits are very low and goods are scarce) and is now massively frustrating and a major grind for low level players due to the only way to gain experience is to hunt in open world until you get to rank 7 and have the crew to man something that can handle the missions.

For trade, setup a port at the origin point or nearby if possible and store the goods there and move as able. Moving all at once is a time saver but as you have seen can also be costly.

[Anolytic]

23 minutes ago, Captan Thomas Fremantle said:

I was defended , becouse i had good cannons and repairs for main ship. But the Indiaman hasn't a good armour . 

Indiaman has quite decent armour if you build it in Live Oak.

[Raekur]

That armor slows you down more then it is worth on a trade ship. Keep in mind that once a warship gets behind you all he has to do is deal with the very weak stern armor.

[Tom Farseer]

38 minutes ago, Captan Thomas Fremantle said:

[...]you already payed all your reals to load you ships[...]

That is the biggest mistake you can make. Never spend all your money on trade goods. Actually never spend all your money period. It is better to do a few half filled trade runs (or runs with fewer ships)  and keep a reserve at home than to go all in and risk going back to sailing basic cutter because you lost it.

14 minutes ago, Raekur said:

[...] (as profits are very low and goods are scarce)[...]

In my experience profits in general are higher than before. Profits of certain goods are no longer as extreme as they were before compared to the other trade goods (think parisian furniture or textile machinery). On the whole though trading is more profitable than it was before the patch. You just need to find the new routes. The new mechanic that ports that 'drop' certain goods actually are supllied by trade ships only means that your contracts may take longer to fill up....

Edited November 19, 2018 by Tom Farseer

[Raekur]

If you were looking as the amount of coin gained then yes it appears to be better. If you look at it from the perspective of profit / ton then it is not and a few items will pay more but in turn become a loss when the taxes are applied.

[Tom Farseer]

13 minutes ago, Raekur said:

If you were looking as the amount of coin gained then yes it appears to be better. If you look at it from the perspective of profit / ton then it is not and a few items will pay more but in turn become a loss when the taxes are applied.

That statement is simply false.

Example:

• Before patch 27, the profit per single weight unit on the best trading goods was around 100, with the exceptions of Textile Machinery at around 180 and Parisian Furniture at around 250 (maybe 300, no longer absolutely certain on that specific number).
• Since the patch, the top 25 trading goods have profit-to-weight ratios of 30 to 59 Reals. Which converts to 750 to 1475 gold pre econ-patch.
• Of my list of 70 Trading goods (not sure how much there are in total) HALF show profits above 15 Reals per tonne (375 gold pre econ-patch)
• Tobacco the good on my list with the lowest profit is at 0.79 Reals per tonne. (Obviously not a good choice but still marginally profitable)

All of these values are AFTER application of 10% tax on both buying and selling!

 

Edited November 19, 2018 by Tom Farseer

[Angus MacDuff]

Dunno about your math but I can tell you this....If I put 100k Reals of goods into a TBrig, I can sell it for 200k Reals less than 30 minutes later.  Because you are limited to only 17 items on a TBrig, NEVER carry inexpensive items.  Only carry the most expensive items and sell them at double (ish) your purchase price.  The math is very simple.  Selling 17 items at 600 Reals is not as profitable as selling 17 items at 14,000 Reals.  Weight of unit is now completely meaningless.

[Raekur]

71 trade goods so far (not counting goods used in crafting)

Tobacco on my list shows about 83 profit before taxes, reducing it to about 28 profit, not worth it to me considering the distance.

Of the 71 goods I show an average profit margin of 30.61.  This include destinations to hostile ports that would be impossible to reach.

I make more profit hunting AI trade ships (mostly because at this time I have a max crew of 240)

 

[Tom Farseer]

10 minutes ago, Angus MacDuff said:

Weight of unit is now completely meaningless

Of course it is meaningless now, because all trading goods are available in packs of 100 weight units, whatever that unit actually is (tonnes? unlikely. hundredweight?).

I simply refer it to get a direct connection to the profit one could make before the econ patch.