Ratline

Agree that 3 ships per day is too many. Limit to 1.

This is surely just as true of the current system and will quite possibly apply to all aspects of OW pvp now we've moved to one dura, especially given that they seem to have made crafting more time consuming and transportation of materials more risky. I still feel that having ports flipped in a few hours worth of activity is too quick, more so now that the impact on players of losing a port where they have buildings and assets will be really severe. I agree that the new system is an improvement on what we had before though. You make a fair point regarding activity and pve as the trigger. Personally, if I was designing from teh ground up I'd like to see a system which took all sorts of player activity into account but we're well past the point where that is feasible. Your last point, regarding nation numbers is also good, although I also always thought there were simply too many nations in this game and that splitting of the player base has been one of the constant issues we've faced. Which kinda brings us back to the op, in that further segmenting the players just doesn't seem wise. Amalgamating nations might actually be a way to lessen the impact of night flipping but people like their little national flags too much.

It's closer, but without the npc grind. What you claim to be an 'ordeal' I would see as multiple opportunities to generate OW pvp and emergent, player generated content. It does not need to be so long it becomes painful, but should be long enough to allow forces from each side to react and build rather than logging on and thinking 'Shit, Flash.. we've only go 14 minutes to save the region!', 'oh let's not bother and just fight the PB.' While the new system removes "PvE grind at X hour countered by PvE grind at Y hour" it does not remove PvE grind, which is my whole point. PvE is fine, but pretending it's a good part of PvP I don't buy. The new system also does not resolve timezone issues, at least not entirely so don't believe that. If a group of Russian players decide to grind hostility against a nation largely populated by W. European players while the latter are at work it's pretty much same same.. But nvm, you don't need to bother contesting hostility anyway, just show up for the arena match.

I don't see it happening either, but as I say removing PB does not mean removing conquest or large fleet actions. I love the idea of blockades etc being a part of the game, unlike now. It'd also negate all the sitting in port waiting for port battles to happen stuff. Enemy is blockading your regional capital then you put together a viable fleet and sail out to break the blockade... there's your 'port battle' right there, except now it has a meaningful relationship to what is happening on the OW.

And yet this is exactly what the current system demands. Look, I don't really expect them to remove PB, they're way too invested in the concept,so I'm being slightly facetious but I do think they're pretty bad. The fact that they're having to come up with ever more elaborate and gamey arena rules for them is clearly an indicator of this imo. Personally I've always argued that territorial control based on ships in the water (in OW) + kills for attackers vs kills for defenders would be simpler, lead to more and better pvp and would result in way less bullshit gamey cheesing. The only way to take territory would to be out and exposed to attack, the only way to defend would be to fight. All in OW, no stupid win circles. It would encourage real world tactics such as blockades, defensive patrols etc. Not just a couple of fleets grinding npc like true pve pros. Yeah, you'd still have time zone issues but since everything wouldn't be compacted down to a couple of hours hardcore grinding and a 90min port battle it would be less of an issue. One server would then clearly be the better solution. We're currently heading in teh direction of ever more Byzantine rules and mechanics and ever more localised and divided player groups simply to deny an issue created by the fact that the devs have hinged the entire game around a bad concept.

Indeed, and if anything port battles are far closer to the arena game than proper ow pvp. Perhaps it's the PB afficionados who should be holding out for arena mode so that the OW game can have some decent mechanics.

I never said anything about removing RVR. I've always held that port battles are terrible, unhistorical and simply lead to stupid gamey tactics. It was bad with fantasy flags, it's even worse with magical capture circles and meaningless, abstract war supplies. There must be better ways to encourage OW pvp (pb are rubbish for that.. people grind npc then sit about in port waiting for their oh so bloody important port battle). Territorial control could be done much better and in a way which negates the problems port battles create.

Get rid of port battles, no more night flipping

Not sure we'd need to go down the route of using marks, in essence it just means more grinding and as you say is potentially open to gaming (although almost anything is), It also makes the strongest tactic vs your enemy be to never engage, back to the original problem. Unless there are technical reasons, which only Admin could tell us, I really think the idea of ships in the water + kills (attackers) vs kills (defenders) is worth exploring. It's simple, which is always good and forces engagement. Yes the defenders can sit it out until the PB (they can do that with npc grinds) but that PB is guaranteed to happen if they do. Make hostility decay significant enough and attackers can't just play hide and seek.

Yeah, all this talk of 'X players grinding Y fleets for however many hours can flip a port' is pretty lame. I like the idea of player ships in the water or pvp kills being the only way to raise hostility (and fairly slowly) and pvp kills being the only way to reduce it. Can't see why we need this npc grinding at all, I thought the idea was to aim for more players in OW fighting other players. Maybe it's not technically possible *shrug*

Agreed. Increasing rate of hostility gain so that it can be ground out in one evening is not a good thing imo. The build up should be slow in order to allow forces from both sides to build up in the region. This is far more likely to give rise to more pvp.

There is not meant to be 'equilibrium' for ships above a certain strength.

You're completely missing the point, I'm afraid. Anybody hunting anybody else on OW is subject to the same time compression.. level playing field. People sailing to a battle site to setup a revenge attack are not subject to the same time compression. Nobody has an issue with being chased by other players in OW, even with being engaged by other players in OW. The issue is when people start exploiting that time compression to leverage cheesy, gamey tactics in order to force a fight that they logically should not be able to force.

Sure, I agree and tp to friendly port benefited both sides since it also removed the threat from local waters... you essentially forced the enemy to retreat. I actually saw that as more 'realistic' than the current paradigm. A captain hunting in hostile waters could relatively easily just slip away unless he was caught with his pants down. I don't think it's a bad thing to only have one shot at sinking an enemy. If they get away they get away. The choice for them is then whether they chose to remain and hunt in waters where the enemy are alerted and actively hunting for them. Risk vs reward calculations and all that... but it's a risk they could reasonably assess. Likewise the locals have the choice of whether they do actively hunt, or whether they go back to trading/pve/port hugging. If they chose any of the latter then it serves them right if more of their traders get sunk by the same hunter, right?

Also, just no to this. I used to hunt solo/small group in big alliance territory.. we flew faction cruisers/bs and the likes. Yes we accepted that we might well lose our ships but we fought every second of it and loss was never 'a favour'. We had refined tactics suiting our ships and skill sets which allowed us to largely negate the revenge blobs which were slow moving, low skill and lacked autonomy. We killed far, far more than we lost and escaped the majority of the time because we chose our battles well, had local knowledge and were prepared. None of those skills matter in Naval Action when your enemy can exploit compression of OW speed to be somewhere they logically should not be to set up a gank you have no way of avoiding. These are not the same games. I know you like to take EVE as a model in some regards, and it is a fine game... but also very different. If I chose to hunt in enemy territory in NA, and surely thais what you want to be encouraging otherwise we're all sitting at home doing nothing, then survival MUST be contingent on skill and preparation and not simply whether the enemy blob can be bothered to teleport to the area and camp your respawn zone. edit; again logical consistency.. what you say could be seen as true if ships were multi dura and cheap to produce.. but, wait.. you want ship loss to be painful, so how can it ever be a favour? =-I