Anolytic

Is it intentional that this link is identical to the Naval Action Discord link? nvm Shouldn't Dreadnoughts have its own server though? Like This Land Is My Land. The TLIML and UA: AoS communities have such a different tone to the NA community (SP vs MMO natural differences). Dreadnoughts deserves the same opportunity.

So, no more newspapers, recruitment, ship videos and other RP which once made the game and the forum great? Steam forums just don't accommodate that kind of stuff very well. Why not revive this plan?:

I'm all for suggestions to change the mechanics on this, but as of now this is just how the mechanic works and the accused didn't do anything wrong. It's the exact same thing Sweden did at Macao some weeks ago. So I agree, 1 low-BR ship joining and immediately surrendering should not automatically lock the hostility battle to 45 minutes.

The purpose of this tribunal is not to get someone punished. It is aimed at pointing out a flaw in the new "unexploitable" flag mechanic, and suggest a solution to it. Hence I will not point fingers at the names of any that may have utilised this "exploit", and I will have to describe the issue without giving specific examples. I also, with this, seek to get clarification that what I describe actually is to be considered an exploit by developers. While I would argue that it most likely is an exploit, the mechanics involved were discussed prior to the release of the new mechanic without being flagged as exploits, and those who have used it so far could argue that it was not clear to them that they were using an exploit. The "exploit" works like this: You make a fleet to farm Home Defence Fleets. You bring an alt that you have in another nation along. This alt joins the HDF-battle. This alt can join either side in the battle. He can join the AI side, and thus avoid any risk of being sunk by the AI as long as his friends on the opposite side make sure not to accidentally sink him. With this he can cruise around in any ship he would like, like a lynx or snow for convenience and speed. Or he can join on the player side, and stay out of trouble till there's something to loot that's free of enemies nearby. In either case he can wait for the players fighting the HDF to find a flag on one of the ships they loot. As long as they leave the flag on the wreck and do not touch it, they can call out the location and let the alt cruise over and pick up the flag. Your alt, which as mentioned is in another nation, now has a flag. This flag can be used for any of the old business that hostility missions, and the old-old flags, allowed to do, which was shady and which the new flag mechanic was specifically introduced to end. The flag can be used to take a port with your alt-clan. Preventing the enemy nation where your alt is placed from getting that port, as they cannot attack a port that is already in their nation. The flag can be used to trade one of your own ports into an attacking nation, preventing the enemy clan from taking possession of their spoils of war and keeping control of your port even if you have to hold it in another nation. The flag can also be used to plant a flag on your own port, creating a cooldown, and preventing your enemy from attacking your port on the day that they planned. Not only are these tactics gamey and shady. They specifically break the "Alts for Portbattle Activities" -principle. That alts in other nations should not be used to contravene, circumvent, avoid, delay or sabotage RvR. My reason for posting this topic now, specifically, is that I've come up with a suggestion for a solution to fix this exploit. Here's how a flag looks after you've picked it up from the hold of a HDF-ship. But before you pick it up, the nation & the owner name is unassigned. My suggestion is simple: That flags are assigned to a nation even before they are picked up, but to a player only after he picks it out of the hold. So once a HDF fleet starts, any flags found in any of the holds of that HDF, will be already assigned to the nation starting the fight with the HDF. Case in point: A Russian player-fleet engages a French HDFleet (Russian player attacks HDF-fleet or vice versa makes no difference). A French player joins on the AI side and a GB player joins on the Russian side. Player X is Russian. He loots a flag. It is assigned to "Player X - Russian Empire". Player Y is French. He loots a flag. It is assigned to "Player Y - Russian Empire" Player Z is British. He loots a flag. It is assigned to "Player Z - Russian Empire". The first player, player X, can use his flag, no hiccups. Player Y & Z on the other hand will be in possession of two flags that are entirely useless - unless they move their character to the Russian nation. The flag is assigned to each of them respectively, but it is also bound to the Russian nation, and can only be used to set a Russian PB.

You could easily achieve this without changing prices or balance for Woods by simply making it only possible to craft 1st and 2nd rates with seasoned Woods. Rather than changing the base prices of standard woods.

Correction: This is just the numbers for yesterday, not the whole month.

Tax on Crafting Every monetary transaction in a port between player and AI is currently taxed. With one exception. So it seems an oversight that when doubloons in crafting receipts were replaced with Reals, taxation was not applied. After all a good crafting port is the most valuable commodity a clan can offer. And the most expensive investment. So taxing crafting makes even more sense than taxation on random trade resources that the clan does not even control or affect. Who wouldn't tax labourers in their harbours shipyards? And shouldn't port owners get paid for players using their port to craft. Basic Mechanic: When you craft a ship, you pay 10% tax to the port from the Reals cost in the receipt. Like this: You could potentially lower the base reals cost for crafting a ship by approximately 9% accordingly so that crafting costs to the individual player would not increase.

Admirals, I present to you evidence of intentional green-on-green damage by the Russian player Cardinall in a battle that happened on July 14th. He was in battle with players Willem van Hamsterdam and Sinterklaas from REDS in an engagement against what looks to be an Elite AI and proceeded to shoot several broadsides green-on-green against said REDS-players. Here is the battle tab-screen: Here are some screenshots that show him firing green-on-green in the battle, on point blank range and nowhere near the direction of the enemy AI in the battle: ----- Now, nobody was sunk from this and we are not demanding some harsh reaction in this case. But the screenshots show clearly, by gunsmoke and muzzle flash, that the player committed intentional green-on-green in clear violation of the rules. This can no doubt be collaborated by server records from the battle. Unfortunately I am not aware of any F11-report from the battle, but you can find the time and participants from the screenshots. I therefore record his name here in the tribunal in case the player should be accused of similar violations in the future. I would also suggest the player be given a mild warning and his steam-ID recorded as is precedent. Note that the player is not anymore a member of the BFII-clan and has been kicked from that clan.

I like it. But what about when everybody sits in port all day only, doing their defence duty. Who will populate the Open World. I'm not saying this would be the nail in the coffin for OW, but if we make it too convenient to just sit in port and get insta-PvP, then we might as well shut down OW and make PvP lobby based. I know you wouldn't be opposed to that, but I think OW has its charm, and Naval Action Legends didn't do so well (for a lot of different reasons that might not be only about the concept).

I thought you planted more than 40 flags in the conquest flag test? Did you not once notice that the flag gets consumed once you take the hostility mission. Once you take a hostility mission, consuming the flag item, the flag is tied to your character. You can only trade flags before they are used. And that's not a problem. It's fine that for instance one trader can transport the flags of several players to the area of the map out of which it is to be used, because only the original acquirer of the flag can use it to launch a hostility mission and plant it to make a PB.

Admirals, Tonight we had the Tampico Port raid which BF and REDS defended together. Right as the battle was about to be finished, the battle instance crashed, our ships spun out of control, we got a connection timeout error message on our screens and a few minutes later we were kicked to the login screen. On the map the port raid is still listed as not yet completed, although for some (not all) of us the battle over screen came up when the instance crashed. Moreover, because of the untimely battle instance crash there were multiple sunken ships that we did not get to loot because we were on our way to do so when the battle instance crashed. Here is the battle still listed on the in-game map at the time of writing: Here is everyone that was in the instance when it crashed, as well as the disconnect message we got: I also have a video recording of the minutes just before, around and after the crash if it is of any use. I will upload it on request. Here are some F11 reports that were filed about the crash: NAB-102653 (by @Yettie ) and NAB-102663 (by myself). Our ships spawned back in OW after relogging, and we got a battle report with some rounded amount of XP (5400 and 3300 as concrete examples). However I'm still inconclusive if this XP actually got added to ship XP (can't say for sure) or character XP. There is no record of the battle or XP in our battle-"History"-log. But this could be due to the XP being registered before we got kicked to login screen as opposed to after we logged back in. Most importantly for compensation however are the chests lost to the sea because the crash kicked us from battle before we could loot/sink the last few ships.

I think this is a GREAT idea, removing conquest from freeports. /sarcasm

The problem with that philosophy is that once again you're actively discouraging RvR. Anyone who has actually played the game, tried to create content - for themselves and others - and participated in RvR, is being punished according to how successful they are. And who wants to do RvR now, and take ports from their enemies, when all it means is they get punished more by the game, and have to do more PvE? This is supposed to be a war game, but the AI is trying to enforce peace. I admit, that for the moment these raids don't feel so bad, but only because they're a small break from the horrendously repetitive HDF-fleet grind that we've been doing for months now. But the game should encourage and reward active RvR and PvP, not punish it. NPC raids is essentially a tax on RvR. And the rule of taxation is to tax more what we want to discourage. NPC raids is a discouragement to RvR, which leaves the game stagnant and removes the end-game content. Btw: as @Nixolai said above, the Arcas port raid was bugged. According to previous patch notes Raiders are supposed to try and fill the BR with as many ships as possible (up to 25), but importantly they are still supposed to follow the BR limit. In Arcas the raider fleet was 20% over the BR limit. Now, that had nothing to do with why the raid was lost (wrong positioning of one of the fleets and a careless approach to the battle) but it's still a bug that needs to be fixed.

This is way off topic, but since you bring it up: Spying is explicitly allowed by the game developers, even implicitly encouraged in the past. Moreover, at this point economic alts in other nations is practically a forced mechanic given that so many vital resources are available in some nations, but not obtainable at all in others.