Letters of marque, privateering and prize taking.

[Laik]

A privateer - a private person issued with a letter of marque and reprisial authorizing said person to attack and capture ships being enemy of the nation issuing the letter. Letter of marque was a thing that differentiated pirate from a privateer, most notably in a way a crew was treated. If the crew of a vessel, attacking one nation's waters, was capture by said nation it would have to be treated as prisoners of war with all the honors, contrary to being simply hanged as pirates if they were not under the letter of marque. Also worth noting that a merchant, without a letter of marque, could not legally take offensive action against a vessel of enemy nation or he could be branded a pirate.

 

A line between privateering and piracy was a very thin one and in fact pirates often acquired letters of marque for the time of war to 'legalize' their usual activity. 

 

Interesting fact, US goverment still holds a power to issue a letter of marque and reprisal.

 

Ok, so much for brief introduction. Let's talk Naval Action.

 

Privateer vs Navy captain

 

Some of my friends have raised concerns about possible lack of distinction between privateer and navy captain in the game. Most notably, in the event of privateers being tied to a nation, there would be few differences between the two 'playstyles'. The most likely difference being privateers acquiring their ships through personal wealth, while navy captains being issued them by admiralty. Then players would probably just choose the route which grants easier access to the better ship. 

 

What I propose is to make privateering loosely connected to the nation. Leave possibilty for every 'civilian' of the nation be it a merchant, smuggler, shipbuilder etc. to acquire a letter of marquee if he gets bored with his 'civilian' activities and wants to go get some action. On top of that, give nations possibility of issuing letters of marque to pirates. I will elaborate on this one.

 

Pirates being issued letters of marque as balancing mechanics

 

I see this as a feature of helping out smaller nations stand their own against a stronger aggressor. Say Britain attacks United Provinces, having huge numerical advantage. It so happens that United Provinces don't have an ally to call on or their ally is also weak. Government of the nation then announces that 'every outlaw who whishes redemption can receive letter of marque from the crown and possibly win his pardon'. Then the pirate, now under the letter of marque, is allowed to use the issuing nation's ports and his crew is being treated as prisoners of war. After the war ends/letters of marque runs it's course pirate is free to remain with the nation or go back to piracy. This provides a way back for pirates (difficult one) while also provides underpopulated nations with regular influx of players.

 

Crew experience

 

Now that I mentioned crew. How to differentiate between crew being treated as pows or pirates? I have see somewhere on the forums a suggestion for introducing crew experience. The crews effectiveness would rise the longer it remains 'alive' moving on from green to experienced to veteran and so on. Then if your ship sinks you are back to green. However if you surrender, you do not lose the crew experience as it becomes prisoners of war and is being 'exchanged'. Now the pirates cannot surrender, because then they will be hanged. So whenever they are taken as a prize, their crew is always back to green, possibly with officers being executed too (pirate hardmode, right?). And thus we move to prize taking.

 

Prize taking

 

Age of sail was all about prize taking. A ship sinking was a disaster not only for the crew it sank with (obviously) but also for the crew that was on the winning side, because they suffered damage and casualties and it was all in vain, because their prize sank. Privateers and navy captains alike chose their career path for the exact same reason - money (fullfiling patriotic duty on top of that is just another incentive). When prizes were lost crews even sometimes mutinied, that's how strong of a drive was prize money. Prize taking was the primary way of making money, not even remotely comperable to 'wage' or anything like it, for the 'combat' career path. I find this hugely under-represented in Naval Action, with literally every fight ending in one side sinking. So how do you take prizes? Boarding, obviously or enemy surrendering. You can surrender in the game already, but there is no real incentive to do so. So how do you encourage people to strike colors? Firstly, crew experience system mentioned above, where you lose crew experience when sinking, while retaining it if you save your crew.  Secondly, I read EXCELLENT suggestion, author of which I unfortunately don't remember. It was like this: In group fights player can surrender when they can fight no more. Yet they don't immedietely lose the ship. The outcome of the fight determines it. If their team is victorious, they keep the ship. If their team lost, they are taken as a prize (obviously needs tweaking, but I think it's a right direction).

 

 

 

TL;DR:

 

Letters of marque:

-Can be issued to pirates by struggling nation to have possibilty to boost their numbers against superior enemy (also leaving the way back for pirates, to remain with said nation when the war runs it's course - would provide constant flow of people to underpopulated nations)

-Can be 'bought' by the merchants to give them ability to take a prize if the opportunity arises without being branded a pirate (historical, would give opportunity for merchants to make use of their Indiamen if they stumble upon an easy prey)

-Possibly give 'neutrals' ability to acquire letter of marque from any nation they wish for the duration of the war

 

Crews:

-have crew gain experience the more fights they take part in and the more fights they survive (loss of experience proporional to crew loss, 100% crew loss = back to the green). You surrender , you keep crew experience. You get boarded, you retain some crew experience, as not all of them die during boarding.

-pirates when being boarded/surrender always lose all crew experience and officers, as they are hanged (hard mode).

 

Prize taking:

-Primary means of acquiring wealth via combat, dwarfing others.

-Surrendering during combat, doesn't immediately means losing ship, the outcome of the fight decides that.

-Incentives for surrender (above and crew experience)

-Possibly prize crews with prizes being sent back to port (maybe with risk of being lost) - would also need reworking crew replenishement on the sea

 

 

Well, that was long. I only wanted to talk about letters of marque as balancing mechanis but I exapanded a little bit .

 

I know that some of this suggestions and issues have been already raised on the forums. I however feel, that this is a discussion which deserves it's own topic so I took the liberty of compiling others' ideas and augementing them by my own. Discuss.

 

 

 

[Schuetzengel]

love it, needs a tweak though so masses of ronin dont suddenly make an underdog nation to an invincible powerhouse only to do the same one month later with another nation.

[Chustler]

I think this thread has a lot of potential. I support you in this sir.

[kang]

As I understand it, "navy captains" in this game are more or less privateers.  We provide our own ships, pay for their repairs and more or less go wherever we want .  I suppose a civilian vs navy option might change that to an extent but then you start getting kind of close to a "class" system which I'm not sure fits into this type of game.  Could be interesting though.

 

The letters of marquee for pirates to help struggling nations is something I suggested quite some time ago.  Great idea.  I would probably go further and open it up to everyone not just pirates (assuming a navy "class" isn't in the works).  The devs could work up an algorithm to limit the number of letters a particular nation could give out based on its relative strength.  Throw an xp and gold bonus in there also based on relative strength and you've got a modest self balancing population system.  Obviously, peace/war status complicates the issue quite a bit for non-pirate players maybe even enough to kill the idea.  But, my original thought was that there wouldn't be enough pirates to significantly shift the balance.

 

Even so, a few are better than none...

[LeBoiteux]

About privateer vs naval officer

As I understand it, "navy captains" in this game are more or less privateers.  We provide our own ships, pay for their repairs and more or less go wherever we want .

Yes indeed. Our current status is that of a privateer.

I guess that the long term objective of NA is to make us be ships' owners and captains who can choose at any time to fight (with that status of privateer), trade or explore.

 

IMHO, what may be lacking is NA is, in fact, a status of naval officier, that is someone with much XP but no war ship (no money) who can be hired by his nation in the Navy at no charge to him. In other word, missions for navy officers could interesting. Thus, that would be a temporary status, the time of a battle such as a battle port.

 

Btw, it would be an interesting option for gamers who don't have the time to grind (casual one) or who don't want to buy and maintain a Ship of the line or a big frigate or who just want to have a try at it.

 

About letters of marque for pirates

Why not limiting this mechanism to that of temporary hiring (foreign) mercenaries, without the ability for them to become a citizen ?

Who would like to have pirates as citizens or neighbors ? Pirates are made to backstab you.

 

More seriously, I am for a rehabilitation plan for pirates but it has to be the hard way, e. g. confiscation of ships and gold, grinding from a basic lynx, special missions to undertake for the benefit of his nation (why not by letters of  marque ?). 

 

If it is too easy to become a national for a pirate, your underdog nation runs the risk to become a kind of Pirates' Nation or to be backstabbed.

For example, your new citizen and former pirate escorts your merchant ship just to plunder it in the middle of the sea... 

Edited June 27, 2015 by LeBoiteux