Anolytic

Rather a rat than a *shivers* PvE-er.

If those clans are what constituted the difference between a strong nation and a nation in ruins, then maybe they are not the problem. And personally I would not presume to know why another clan changed flags. Most nationals should take a close look in the mirror before speaking too loudly about clans changing nations. The navies of most nations are made up in large part of players who have changed nations at least once. This is ancient news. You may stay, but if you don't fight then there is no glory.

Attacking is many times harder than defending. And I don't see your name in the battle.

I have had some time to think, and I see one way that this experiment could work out well. If all the current nations, that have historical footholds in the Caribbean are taken out of RvR. They have their safe-zones for PvE and econ. They have territories that cannot be lost, and they have safe areas. This is enough support for them to do PvE and PvP as they like. RvR however, should be reserved for only the new nations. If you want to do RvR, you need to forge papers from one of the current starting nations and join one of the new nations. The price of RvR is the risk of loosing all territory down to the capital, and no safe-zones. Players start out in one of the current nations and can only join the new nations after they started playing.

Does this mean that if the test fails you will remove again those nations? Because that seems problematic, seeing as people will get attached to their nation and not be happy if it is taken away from them again. To be honest I think this is a very uneccessary test. But if you're going to do it: Please allow some sort of clan alliances across national borders, even if just for pirate clans. I fear that these new nations will be very ethnocentric and therefore impossible to thrive or grow in for non-ethnocentric clans. Thus you will split up groups who like to play together. And I honestly don't think you're realising the ramifications to existing gameplay of this change. And these new nations will have a hard time to grow. Since all the nations with a safe-zone will be camping the nations without one. And the safe-zones are already very unbalanced between the nations, without reflecting in any way the difficulty ratings you have given the nations in the selection menu. What current large nations? Brits and Swedes? 500 people on the server, there are no large nations. Just small, smaller and tiny. I'm guessing you cannot start the game as one of these new nations? Because without an admiralty store from the beginning they cannot build a fleet to start with. So you can only forge papers to this nation after you have created your account in another nation, kind of like people have asked that pirates should be.

Did Britain abandon Guyama Sevilla and Portillo as some sort of scorched earth tactic to stall the Swedish advance?

I specifically said I don't criticise you for switching nations. In fact I commend it. You probably had good reasons. I was only concerned with the factual statements, not the subjective ones. And discounting pre-wipe history seems a bit misleading here, especially when you also talk about 2 years of game history.

Not to budge in here, but this isn't even the first time you switch to pirates, is it? So unless you don't count going pirate as switching nation... I have no problem with people switching nation for whatever reason, but I have another view of switching facts. Looks like going pirate is all the rage now anyway. Regardless of server.

Sad news for the Caribbean. Adding more nations to the game will split the small nations even more and strengthen Great Britain even further as the only nation that "everyone" can relate to. Moreover, what from the lessons we have learned from Spain and France being ethnocentric and difficult to get into due to language barriers, makes it seem like a good idea to introduce even more nations that will become ethnocentric and where no English will be spoken in nation chat? The thing that I most enjoy about this game is playing with people from all over the world and all different cultures, coming together and collaborating and enjoying the game together. Now we're all going to be sitting in our own little homogenous nations, with nobody to play with.

I can't speak for DreamMaker, but he clearly used the personal pronoun to indicate he spoke for himself. And the way I interpret him he is talking about the Danish RvR-fleet, not the nation per se. Precision is not always easy with language barriers and forum comments. We sometimes talk about the Danish "nation" and the Danish fleet interchangeably, but we almost always mean the fleet. A "Nation" in-game is just a flag. You may have a council, but there are still many many people in the nation that are not represented in your council. The Danish RvR-fleet referring to ourselves as the Danish Nation is not much different from players who never showed up to a port battle taking credit for the victories of their "nation". Oranjestad was a spontaneous and unprepared operation to help one of the other nations as they were grinding a port. And of course we would show up to a port battle we had set. We wouldn't just not show up to a port battle that we had grinded. Victory being highly unlikely is no reason for us not to show up and have a fight. *cough*Road Town*cough* I never claimed we did not plan the operation. We did, like we did with most large scale offensive operations during the Eastern Alliance as well. The other nations going to war with you is however not on us. We did not arrange a 4v1 against you. You did that yourselves. The other nations had come to us for a long time to help them by going to war with you. When war finally came, of course we looked for cooperation. Our goal in the war was never territorial expansion. We had more ports than we needed. Our goal was to help other nations regain their territories. However we could neither grind for them or fight in their port battles. So we planned an operation that would give them a chance to do so. We did our part and set up the distraction. They did not accomplish their part. And you cannot claim that we shied away from a challenge, just because we did not go 1v1 up against a nation with 3-4 times our active population. We did our part and we faced our challenge, and we fought the port battle with a fleet with only a handful of veterans and where some people had never been in one before and did not know how to enter. You can't really blame Swedes for fighting the second strongest nation on the server, or for being zergs against a nation far larger than themselves. At least they finally stopped going after the French. The game has shifted to favour high population nations a lot more in RvR, but that is not Swedes fault.

Sweden has been attractive to others and easier to organise in great part because of a significant homogenous population. Danmark-Norge never had that advantage. In Danmark-Norge we have had to work to unify communities that stood far apart from each other. And historically the population booms of Sweden were often less due to any work from Swedes and more due to the notoriety and proficiency of the Danish nation. Many players joined Sweden to be able to camp the back yard of Danmark-Norge, rather than being camped by us in their front yards. I do commend the Swedes for having players willing to waste their time in council meetings. Again something made easier by relatively homogenous clans and player base. However the Danish fleet just wants to show up to fight and not argue about when or where. We never tried to be or thought of ourselves as the strongest nation on the server. We have had the strongest 25 man fleet for long periods of time in the past, only weakened because most of those players have left the game now. But our nation was always small and insignificant. We only ever wanted to play the game on our terms, and do the best that we could do with the resources that we had. Danmark-Norge has always been a small nation, and we never had the population or organisation to support holding so much territory as we did. Danmark-Norge only had the ability to hold Puerto Rico and most of Hispaniola for so long because of our victories in Port Battles scaring other nations from attacking us. Our population was never large enough to justify holding such expansive territories. We always over-performed our ambitions and our means. We did not try to steal your ports, and we did not fail. We accomplished our aim. It is not our fault that the Brits and Pirates were unable to capitalise on our distraction manoeuvre to set their own port battles. We performed our task just as planned, like always. And we did not talk other nations into anything. They talked to us.

Yes they are. And they are also very unbalanced. For some nations they cover a large number of "captureable" ports, for other nations they only cover empty sea. The current safe-zones make the difficulty descriptions that devs have assigned to each nation, beyond inaccurate. And it is not like historical accuracy should be a deterrent to this. With the last map update, devs did away completely with historical national territories anyway. Yes. That was my point. Same with Road Town, although with the redistribution of production resources Road Town got slightly more valuable than before the update. Agreed. Taxes in uncaptureable ports should be 20% or 25%. Another measure to get players willing to leave safe-zones is what I propose here:

The teamspeak is mine. The licence is mine, the server is mine, I did the work required to set it up, and I maintain the Teamspeak. I can do whatever I want with the Teamspeak. However, I have made it clear that the teamspeak is for anyone sailing under the Danish flag on any server, wether I like them or not. DNP has not lost any rights or privileges on the Teamspeak. Lars still has admin rights on the Teamspeak. However, the highest admin rank on the Teamspeak, which enables someone who has it to do great damage to the Teamspeak should they choose so, is reserved for people that I find trustworthy. I was reluctant to give that rank to Lars in the first place, and I regretted doing so. What are you on about? The Christmas truce was not broken. Wilmington happened after the truce was over. And DNP was certainly not blamed by RDNN for something that didn't even happen. RDNN has always stuck to the deals that we make. Also, RDNN has never tried to speak or decide on DNPs behalf. We always made it clear when we were making treaties or agreements that we represented RDNN, RUS and any clans that at any time follows us. The compliance of other clans is signified by their actions, not by name-dropping. Savanna/Santo Domingo was not determined by priorities or judgements. Some allies joined where they were able or where they preferred, a big part of the ships we put up were alts and Santo Domingo had enough people, but not the right ships as well as tired and distracted captains. Organising a defence or attack properly takes a lot of time and effort and is a thankless task. And if an officer of RDNN cannot do it due to real life, nobody else in the nation will, they will rather just complain about what RDNN does or doesn't do. Close to all of the successful attacks and defences by Danmark-Norge the last year has been planned, organised, strategised and executed by RDNN with the support of RUS and with the occasional help from various other clans to fill up the slots in the Port Battles. And yet you go on about two ports lost in the middle of the night to circumstances RDNN have no responsibility for. You would have fit right in with SORRY, who won all their battles - until they met RUS/RDNN - because they never took on a challenge they didn't know beforehand that they would win. Our alts are not clan-less. I don't know how it would be possible to "take away" hostility points. We did flip our port before you flipped yours. And before that we came to you and asked you nicely to not sabotage the work we had done and you responded making it clear that you had absolutely no wish to cooperate with us. When you declared your intention not to cooperate with us in any way, we declared likewise - as seen in the OP. Any trader that is attacked will say so in National Chat to let others know where the enemies are and ask if somebody is nearby. There is nothing strange about this, no matter what clan-tag. But then again your knowledge is severely limited. When we are able RDNN will always help anyone with a danish flag in open waters. Ports are clan property now, and therefore clan responsibility. We help any clan defend their port or organise defence of their port if they ask us for help, except DNP. RDNN managed to help ACN flip Pasaje (not that they needed any help) without stealing the port. We did not have a problem. We asked them nicely because flipping a 1st rate port is a lot more work than a 4th rate port and we had started before them, and they were willing to cooperate. In return we helped them the next day to make the grinding of Pasaje speedy. How are we the traitors? The only thing we have made clear is that DNP will have to defend their own ports without us. We have managed to defend and attack ports without DNP help since long before DNP existed. You have been talking in the forum and in global chat about Danish victories like they were yours when in most cases you were not even there. Now you have the chance to prove your worth. More than once, when RDNN included DNP into our plans, we could read about our own plans in global chat the very same evening. It is very hard to cross us. Any clan can come to us and tell us what they want, or they can just do it. Unless they specifically seek to sabotage us by spreading falsities in nation chat or interfering with the operations we are doing we have no problem with anyone. Accidentally sabotaging each other is bound to happen, and causes us no headache nor quarrel. What promises have we ever not upheld? As you very well know this is not about one single incident. As you yourself conceded to when we talked, this is a pattern of behaviour - as you yourself admitted, yet declared unable to change - where DNP does something just out of spite, to provoke or sabotage. Then RDNN forgives and even make gestures to extend a hand, to try and mend fences that DNP broke. After taking advantage of those gestures DNP will quickly be back at it again. Now we forget no more, we forgive no more. To be honest we have tolerated DNP taking jabs at us, sabotaging us, blaming us and lying about us for far too long. We have never asked you to agree on our decisions or follow our plans. Only that you do not sabotage them or reveal them to our enemies. Yet DNP complains when we do not tell them about our plans to keep them from our enemies. We have no desire, and make no attempt to destroy DNP.

Trading is not my thing in this game, but it is for many players in all nations, and with the harsh pre-patch economy I was compelled to do quite a bit of trading as my clan always has expensive operations going on. Since the patch however, trading became very unprofitable overnight, or at least very much less profitable. The most profitable goods where the ones that was traded from capital to capital. And trading between capitals, taxes are always 20% now. That means that what used to be worth the risk and the time, is no longer. Most significantly because of PvE rewards skyrocketing. Trading can simply no longer compete with grinding, leaving anyone who likes trading gameplay at a disadvantage and with a diminished game experience. Profits have been buffed a bit since the patch, but not enough that I have been bothered to test the potential. I still sit on tens if millions worth of trade goods from before the patch that I haven't bothered to finish sailing or even selling to make back my money. My gripe is however not with the high taxes put on trade between capitals. In fact I do not want to do anything about them. Make AI ports have 20% tax even. My gripe is with the trade routes and trade resources distribution being stuck like they were before the map wipe. The trading economy is geared towards trading in capitals. Even if you buy stuff in other ports, the best price you always get from bringing them to a capital to sell them. This is the problem. In this economy where ports earn tax income for clans, trade should be geared towards boosting that tax income, not lining the pockets of AI by forcing traders to sell and buy in ports where AI gets all the tax income. Capital ports should not produce trade resources, and they should not offer the best prices on consuming trade resources. Where a profitable trade route before was Arctic Fox Pelt from Gustavia to Christiansted, Gustavia should no longer sell Arctic Fox Pelt, and Christiansted should not pay the best prices for it. Rather you should have to buy Arctic Fox Pelts in for instance Island Harbour, and sell them in Spanish Town, or maybe Vieques or Nassau similar to get the best profits. That way the trade route generates money for the clan that owns Harbour Island, and the clan that holds whichever port the trade good is consumed in. And clans and nation can stimulate trade and certain trade routes by changing their tax levels to encourage traders to sell or buy in their port. As it is now, trade goods do not contribute to clan or port economies, only certain valuable upgrade resources and woods do.

The huge reinforcement zones brought a lot of changes to the game. Some good, some bad. But some changes have to be made to adapt to the new system. First. Please make all captureable ports inside the high-sec areas into uncaptureable ports that no clan can hold. As of now, several nations have "captureable" ports that are within their reinforcement zones. This brings both great unbalance to the game, and it creates a fake feature. Second, change it so that hostility missions under no circumstances can spawn within the reinforcement zones. Why are captureable ports within reinforcement zones problematic, you ask? First off, for the clans that hold them, they are completely safe, high-income ports that give a huge advantages to the clans and the nations that have them, and that are virtually impossible to loose, except if the clan purposely abandons them. Take Road Town for instance, which is held by my clan and which is within the current reinforcement zone of Danmark-Norge. It is a regional capital with decent income, and virtually impossible for an enemy nation to assault because of the reinforcement zone. It, and ports like it, is a perversion of the RvR-system, of the clan-focus that puts clans into competition with each other, of clan economies and of the game economy. And calling it a captureable port is a fake feature. Every captureable port on the map can be grinded by PvE (hostility missions), or by PvP (provided there are players there), except for ports within the reinforcement zones. Imagine that as an attacker you want to grind Oranjestad, one of the most profitable ports on the map. First off, I do not think it is possible, even if you try, to spawn a hostility mission for Oranjestad that is outside the reinforcement zone of Sweden. So you go there to grind it. And on the way to the hostility mission you see some players. But you cannot attack them, because of the reinforcement zones. Grinding by PvP is out. So you resign to do PvE. You do a mission. Once this mission pops up with 20+% hosility, enemies start to congregate. They can sail safely around you, in any number and any ships, until they feel confident enough to engage you, because you cannot tag them due to the reinforcement zones. You do another mission. Someone jumps into it, you kill the AI and you kill the mission intruders, but you loose a couple of ships. The enemy are now gathering outside for you when you come out, force weakened from losses and used repairs, but still numerous enough that the enemy do not dare to engage. When you respawn in open world they are sitting all around you. You know there are more defenders coming, so you want to tag the ones already there into a battle, because you can kill these ones before they get reinforcements, only you can't tag them, because of the AI reinforcements they will get. The inevitable conclusion is that even with a big fleet for grinding, attacking any port within the reinforcement zones is impossible. And say you managed to grind a port. Maybe you snuck in and grinded it at night - another gripe I have with the game right now btw, why even double down on hostility grinding for PB creation when people can now just choose to grind at night (EU server) when there are no possibilities to counter-grind them or trying to jump their missions? But at least somehow, for the purposes of this thought experiment, you grinded the port within the safe-zone. Going to the PB is now the issue. Bringing a screening fleet to help your PB fleet get there, is useless. The attackers screening fleet cannot tag anything, because they will be instantly killed by AI reinforcements. And the defenders can bring whatever screening they like, with no fear, and no real need for organisation. Because if anyone messes up, AI reinforcements will save them. So I repeat my plea. If you are going to keep the reinforcement zones as they are, turn all ports that are within the reinforcement zones into uncaptureable ports. It makes no sense to have as captureable ports that aren't actually realistically captureable. It only means that after each map reset there will be a race between clans, to capture these valuable ports that cannot be lost. And any clan that is created or joins the nation later, will be at a disadvantage compared to the other clans.

I've never seen any "Bearwall" in the game either, so maybe you should hold your assumptions. We never demanded your support. We only asked you not to intentionally sabotage. And as far as keeping it internal, you have repeatedly brought your beef with RDNN to the forums and to Global chat. And if we let DNP in on our RvR-plans, we always knew that we would be able to read about our plans in Global chat shortly after. Who do you think clans switching nation approached first about making the move? Do you think any clans changed to Danmark because they heard DNP was here? They chose Danmark-Norge because of the notoriety of the RUS/RDNN fleet and because they had fought with RUS/RDNN in battles during the Alliance period. And as far as helping ACN, we started grinding before them, but we grinded a more time-consuming port, as it was a lineship port. However, had they refused to stop, that would have been fine. They did however agree and in return we helped them grind the next day, from the very first mission to the last. DNP on the other hand blocked them from taking their first port by taking it instead. With LO/WO you can't even keep up with the ships fighting in the front. No wonder you wouldn't loose your ship if you don't even get into the fight. RDNN is quite social and quite active, thank you very much. We may not thrive as much in a PvE-focused game as other clans, but our activity level is pretty consistent. And whenever other clans, like DNP, goes completely inactive for periods of time, RDNN maintains a steady activity level, both on Teamspeak and in-game. In the last couple weeks there have been more RDNN than DNP on Teamspeak almost every day, and not all our members are on Teamspeak every day. RDNN regularly has activity in-game and on Teamspeak from before maintenance till between two and four AM. That is the words of the US diplos. If North even said that, and I don't trust your word that he did, then he was mistaken or misunderstood. A truce goes from when it is agreed to start, till when it is agreed to end. You cannot break a truce after it has ended. And yet, RDNN has never broken trust or broken our word. That much cannot be said of you. RDNN was there to take Savannah, and we were there to defend it every time. And however much you try to imply it, the distribution of forces when Savannah and Santo Domingo was taken was not decided by RDNN. I remember several night-flips with not a single DNP present. And with DNP not doing anything useful during the day it is perhaps only fair that the well rested DNP pitched in and helped during the nights. RDNN was there both days and nights. Yet again you show that you have no idea what is going on, yet you criticise it willingly and without regards for facts. And RDNN has not taken any ports from Pirates nor the Spanish. Nor have we attacked Pirate or Spanish players in north side of Cuba. Read the OP yourself. RDNN isn't even mentioned there. And RDNN has done nothing to betray the Danish-Norwegian nation.

Why not just spawn it in all nations' capitals?

I don't want to play the game on very easy-handholding-mode. We don't mind loosing ships.

The war with Britain ended with the map wipe, like the war with Sweden did and any other inter-nation relationships. We talked to both Brits and Swedes before and after the map wipe to confirm this. Britain has no greater claim to Cartagena than any other nation - except by conquest. In all other map iterations Cartagena started Spanish. In this one it started Neutral. But we wouldn't have wanted it if it wasn't a hot potato. RDNN would still be down there grinding it if the rest of the nation wasn't solely concerned with attacking neutral ports. It seems there are not many left who seek a challenge.

We had ships there too. And we started grinding first. But yes, you beat us to capturing it, since you outnumber us by a lot. That was your war declaration.

I don't think any war declaration is needed from Danes. Action already dictates that we are at war since the Brits blocked us from getting Cartagena when Danes were the first to lay claim to it. The only reason it doesn't feel like we're at war is because everyone is too lazy to pursue it. And also nobody wants to pay for all the useless ports.

RDNN has never once failed to honour our deals. Your accusation otherwise shows you are the dishonourable one. I could ask you the same. RDNN was in many night-flips where there were no DNP. I don't think that any DNP was in any night-flip where no RDNN showed up. You need to stop with this stupid lie. RDNN never blamed DNP for breaking the Christmas Truce, and the Christmas Truce was not broken. How can you accuse RDNN both of being only 5 people, and of never being less than 8? Logic was never your strong suit. RDNN has solo hunters, players who hunt in groups of 2 or 3, and players who do mostly RvR. Your ignorance is only proof of itself. How would you know? You were almost never there. Nearly all offensive PBs by Danes in the last year has been planned and grinded mainly by RDNN. Every clan can do as they like with their ports. That is how the devs have made the game mechanics. The only way to convince a clan to do something differently than what benefits only them is to talk to them and convince them with reason, carrots, bribes or threats to do otherwise. This is the parameters within which RDNN always operated. We went to a clan and talked to them. We made suggestions, offered advice, asked for help or made a trade. We never dictated any clan and what they should do, however much some people tried to make it out as if that was what we did.

Do you usually die less when you play a game on very hard difficulty than when you play it on very easy-handholding-mode? Danes are the only nation for which the devs actually implemented the "very hard" option (Swedes safe-zone covers so much they never ever have to leave their safe-zone). However the greatest hardship being a Dane is how deadly boring it has become being a Dane. No RvR. Only the occasional gank fleet next to the capital.

I barely see you with my main either. I guess we spend our time on different ends of the map. Every now and again I see you when I sail an alt near one of the capitals.

It is no surprise that activity in DNP goes up when there is only PvE and ganking to do in the game, whereas the numbers go down in RDNN when RvR and PvP is dead. But don't worry. If the game caught life again or actual clan wars happened, we'd have a much easier time retaining people now that we can control who enters port battles and we also don't have to give up our slots to DNP through affirmative action.