Anolytic

I think AI are able to use double shot and double charge now, which might explain why you had that experience. But apart from that AI has not been buffed relative to players, it's just that the damage/hp has changed with the new structure and repair systems and we have yet to get used to it.

No. To the contrary, slower hostility means that the nations that can grind in shifts around the clock can raise hostility at their own convenience, while the nations without such coverage, can only grind in their prime-time and be the defender can just wait till the aggressors have finished for the night and grind it all the way down again every time.

Since hostility will be based on attacking NPC fleets, and defenders will need luck to find the enemy in their own vast regions to engage them in PvP, can we at least make it so that any battle initiated against NPC will stay open to entry for both defenders and attacking side for 30 minutes, 45 minutes or even the full 90 minutes? No need to give the added protection of quickly/instantly closing battles to PvE. I'm not quite sure how it is now on the testbed, but I don't think PvE-battles should close after five minutes.

That's the nature of a hotfix though.

How much hostility do you generate by killing each of these 6 fleets approximately? And in larger regions, won't they be quite hard to come by. Especially since currently, you usually end up with several fleets sailing in a column rather than spread out. Will their routes be made so that they will almost always spread out throughout the regions? And in the case of Bermuda for instance. If the fleets are sailing between Bermuda and the nearest ports 80% of the time any one of the fleets will not be inside the region of Bermuda, but sailing between Bermuda and Kidd's Island. Or will the Bermuda fleets have routes that keep them most of the time inside Bermuda waters?

But how do the attackers raise hostility if there's nothing in the area to attack?

It all looks very nice, but do you have any plans to switch out the hostility system with something like initiating PBs through successful raids, or "flags" that you buy for conquest marks+gold? Won't this just bring back the invisibility ganks that we had before? Where people used their invisibility to position themselves on top of unsuspecting players before initiating their tag.

This is how Danmark came up with our figure: Danmark: Hey, Sweden! Can I copy your homework? Sverige: Yeah, sure Denmark! Just change it a bit so it doesn't look the same, ok? Danmark: Nah. It looks fine the way it is. That's also pretty much how Norway came up with our flag.

You're arguing with someone who was there almost every time. You're literally telling someone who was there that maybe they are unclear about why and about their own situation. Who then is the presumptuous one? Clearly it's you who have no idea what you're talking about.

Instead of using max OW speed you could lower the speed significantly to a constant speed that would be closer to the average speed people would get. I think I used to use 9kn as the average speed when I calculated travel time using burningsails last year. Would probably be higher now since the OW speed increase. I think that we use 2935 seconds (48 min, 55 sec) for a N to N wind cycle. I am not sure how that number was arrived at, but it has worked quite well for wind calculations.

Of all buyers, yes. But only a small percentage of buyers also got past the Brig. Sure, PB players are not the majority of players on the PvP-server. Probably PvP-players aren't the majority on the PvP-server. But I would still venture a guess that a significant portion of the players with the most play-time in the game have been in at least a couple of port-battles. Edit: I'm not saying RvR is any more important than any other part of the game. In fact I have argued against making all other players too dependent on the ebb and flow of RvR, and I argued against the land ownership proposal that would force RvR on everyone. I'm just saying that RvR is part of the game and drives a lot of content in a sandbox game like this.

RvR might be a cause for a lot of grief and negatives. But it is also an important reason why scores of people play the game and keep with it. The game looses a lot of players when RvR dies, even when we had just a port wipe last year, a lot of players stopped playing because they could not do any consequential RvR. A lot of the players that are the most active in the game an in the open world, and even do a lot of PvP, are mainly here for RvR. I don't think removing RvR would have the desired effect. Without RvR there would be no point in such and extensive map. We could just as well constrain the map to just cover the Lesser Antilles. And we wouldn't really need more than 2 factions either.

Why do we need to have historical accuracy with politics? The politics are player made, aren't they?

lol

Your claim is ridiculous. Just because someone doesn't play on the same server as you doesn't mean they don't want you to enjoy a good game as much as they do. Players leave for all sorts of reasons. This is a game in Alpha. Just because we are loosing players now doesn't mean the game is dead. At release players will flood into the game again, whether we have 10 players online on the servers tomorrow or 1000. And if we want the game to be populated and enjoyable until then, the best thing is to get this wipe and patch done so devs can promote the game and have a discount. And splitting the servers will plug the hole of scores of players leaving the game because of nightflips and defence timers and similar issues which has driven away countless players since the beginning of EA. Sure. Players will still leave the game for other reasons, but this is an easy hole to plug.

Yes. Why? The plan to expand the map to the Pacific coast was abandoned by devs long ago. And the plan to put a PvE-are in the Gulf of Mexico was shut down by the players from the PvE-server. The EU server is completely inaccessible to a lot of SEA players. The US server is inaccessible from some parts of Eastern Europe afaik. In Spain, probably. Danmark-Norge and Sweden however will never have a sustainable US population unless active balancing mechanics are implemented. And it's not an assumption. It's an observable fact from one and a half year of testing. I don't get why we are repeating ourselves from a few months ago. Make a suggestion to actually make a global server work and I'm all ears. I wanted a global server to work and I would like it to be viable, but until devs have some brilliant idea to make it happen the best way going forward is splitting the servers.

You're not bringing anything new to the discussion that hasn't already been brought up a hundred times. Putting PvE in special areas on the PvP-servers was a good idea, but was shut down by the PvE community themselves. Player retention would be lower, not higher from your suggestion. And with only one server, wherever we placed it it would simply be unplayable for players from some parts of the world. A combined server doesn't necessarily mean more players. What we saw on PvP1 was that we lost a lot of players because of it. Both servers would be healthier if they both focused properly on their geographic and time-zone vicinity. Only because you could "nightflip" them back. But on one global server some nations will cover all timezones and some won't. So Night-flipping will only be available to some nations, the nations that already have every advantage.

Why though? Why is it a "problem" to sort out? Why constrict the devs, or us, to a specific year? Why not let devs, and us, pick and choose what we like and what fits their/our vision from the entire age of sail period? The 1717 date doesn't fit very well with the ship selection in the game. Afaik almost all ships we have were built later. The Ingermanland I believe is one of the oldest ships we have in game and was launched in 1715. Lots of people roleplay in this game. It was suggested to have a standard for the dates used. To take today's date minus 200 years. For obvious reasons this doesn't work for all of us. In 1817 there was no Danmark-Norge. Norway was part of Sweden. France had just lost the Napoleonic Wars. I know that a lot of brits use 1817 as their role-play date, but there was a US Nation newspaper last year that used 1806 as its date (current date minus 210 years), and Danes typically use a system of current date minus 220 years. In 1717, Sweden didn't have a colony in the Caribbean yet, and Danmark hadn't yet purchased St. Croix (Christiansted and Fredricksted).

PvP-players need targets. In a game that involves more than just shooting at each other, it doesn't seem that a PvP-only playerbase can sustain itself. If we say that PvE is completely unwanted on the PvP-server, then we risk loosing a lot of players who would otherwise help keep the economy and crafting running on the PvP-server, forcing those who just want to pew-pew each other into spending more time doing menial tasks that they don't enjoy. A lot of players like to take a break from PvP to do some PvE. A lot of players like that they can do PvE, with the risk of being dragged into PvP, but they don't actively seek PvP themselves. We risk forcing a lot of players who would be populating a PvP-server into the PvE-server. And they would probably find the PvE-server too boring without any risk.

If you're referring to this poll: If it was rigged the result would be completely opposite. As has been documented many times, devs think 1 dura is a bad idea and wanted to implement 3-dura. We the players insisted on 1 dura and we got our wish. According to the poll, the general opinion has not shifted.

Nicely done! Bookmarked. Edit: I'm finding it a bit hard to navigate it though. At least on my Macbook trackpad. Instead of scrolling around, apparently I have to zoom all the way out, point my mouse pointer to where I want to look at the map, and zoom in. And the zoom sensitivity is crazy high. Instantly from min to max zoom. Just something to consider.

You're pointing to a potential pitfall here indeed. However, as @Grundgemunkey says, from what we know about the mechanics so far this potential exploit will not gain anyone anything currently. Even if alts could get some kind of rewards out of it, that reward would be offset against the cost of transferring the alt in question back to whichever nation you wish to keep it after the map has stabilized. To your point on alts. Game-labs have no power to prevent people from having multiple Steam accounts. As long as this game is distributed through Steam, alts will be around and nothing that can be done about it. However, I am in favour of any mechanics that reduce the effectiveness and benefits of having alts, provided they do not negatively impact other gameplay. You didn't get what @qw569 said. He's not talking about alts. He's talking about Spain's ability to defend their territories by making a joke about their ability to mobilise forces.

Your newspaper needs a header. Something along the lines of:

I blame Disney. But you would still be able to play pirate, only you could only choose it if you were a certain rank or you had to start as National. We could get the "attack friendly to become pirate"-option back now that we will get an item to switch nations again if someone does it by mistake.

I think I know who killed your connie^^ Many Danes have taken up the Spanish Flag on the Testbed server. To the point of Pirates being hard: What if you couldn't choose pirates from the beginning. You had to start as a national and grind to a certain level before joining pirates?