Anolytic

Brace has always been very effective against attack if you have good barricades. The only thing that's changed is that for the past months AI always has good barricades. Attack against brace on someone with golden barricades is devastating to the attacker most of the time.

What you're describing is how boarding has been for months now. If you order your men to charge while the enemy is throwing grenades at them, that's pretty costly. You should charge during fire deck guns, because firing a cannon is neither easy nor fast, and your men can get to the enemy and cut them down while they are still reloading.

You did not capture Bermuda. There is no reason why a region should be uncaptureable (except capital region). If you loose Bermuda, capture it back. I have advocated certain regions, like Bermuda, being easier to flip, because of the rare resource and the effort just to get there. If you want it then protect it. And I don't give a rat's arse about Bermuda Cedar, but I am pretty proud that we managed to get enough courageous players to cooperate about raising hostility in Bermuda, and we would have captured the port if we were 25v25. Most importantly we highlighted some flaws in the game mechanics. And I don't raise the issue about British zerg very often. Sometimes it is a valid point for mechanics balancing, most times it is not. In this case it has nothing to do with anything. You did not reset the numbers every day. After the first day they did not go all the way down again. But you still had many hours warning that we were coming. If you're not there actively, how do you expect to defend it? And there is no reason why anyone should hold any region by default. If they are easy to flip, then let's flip them back and forth and have lots of good port battles and hostility raising PvP in between. Regions that you do not care enough about to have an active presence in should be easy to attack. If you always react after the fact then you have missed the point. People have talked about regions deteriorating if not maintained and actively used by their possessor before, let's bring that discussion back. And you keep talking about the Australians like they're some not-so-secret weapon you have that could break the game for us. If that is true, then please bring them out now while we're in Alpha. Break the game NOW, so that the devs have time to address it. Danes are testing the limits of the game, you're just making threats.

I think more freetowns is a bad idea, and I especially think that removing the long sail to capture Bermuda would take something away from the game.

That's definitely not what happened in Bermuda. Danes spent 3 days to raise hostility, most sailing up every day. There were at least 20 brits and allies up there doing missions, jumping missions or porthugging at the time that hostility reached 100%. We just had more players there, even though we had to sail all the way and couldn't teleport. And also we didn't have any ports to hide in while waiting for someone to report a mission to jump.

No. It's not. We already tested. The wording may be a bit misleading in the UI, but I'm pretty sure that it actually is that port battles can't be activated in that time period.

Port battles can only be activated between 08.00 and 02.47 server time. If you reach 100% hostility between 02.47 and 08.00 (I assume it's the same window on PvP2 as PvP1) server time nothing will happen.

About your suggestion. You ask for specific objections, so I'll give you some. First and foremost I am quite certain it would not be a simple thing to code (or to run on the server), and it is not a good enough solution to anything that it would be worth the effort. A lot of points on the map are simply not amenable to this solution, being narrow straits, shallow waters, lakes and so on. Apart from that. People who sailed into dangerous waters would be able to attack a trader, leave to battlescreen and wait for a while and have a pretty good chance of being out of those dangerous waters. People would be sailing a trader, have to log out to go to work, and log back in only to find themselves drifted to shore next to a busy port and get instantly ganked. People who sail together would not be able to take a break for dinner, etc because they would be spread out afterwards. Players would constantly get ganked because they respawned in a bad spot through no fault of their own. In a lot of situations you would be able to calculate where you would likely respawn. You go on about the Bermuda port battle, but the real issue there is that defenders can sabotage a port battle to create empty port battles with no attacker entering. And it doesn't even take a lot of players or a lot of effort. I love the new ROE attack circles, but until port battle entry is fixed for the attacker, they ruin RvR and log-off at sea is the only possible workaround available to players. A few defending suicide ships can easily attack both a screening fleet and a port battle fleet to prevent it from ever entering the port battle. After a nation has spent a great effort to activate a port battle, they must be able to enter that port battle. No way would an attacking fleet ever invade somewhere and then sail home to wait 46 hours before attacking again to conquer. The 46 hour wait is artificial. It is to make sure that both sides can get 25 players into the port battle. It is not to allow the defender to sabotage the port battle from even happening.

Did you already have 2 port battles scheduled? Did you reach 100% hostility after 02.47 server time?

David has no more right to exploit than Goliath. The issue here is that the port battles system is not fully developed. It was meant to get rid of empty port battles, but because it is now possible to ignore screening and sabotage the port battle instead port battles will either continue to be empty, or workarounds will have to be found. Until devs have time to fix it. I hope they do, because logging off outside port is crappy for all sides.

You guys are all conflating this new port battle system with the old one. There are no more flags. Screening and interception is now what happens during the time it takes to raise hostility to 100%. Once 100% hostility is reached, there is an artificial 46 hour waiting time for the port battle to happen, simply to make a defended port battle more likely. It is not intended to give the defender time to prevent the port battle from even happening. If they want to do that they need to prevent the invader from taking control of the regional waters by gaining 100% hostility. Attacking Bermuda was and is very hard. It required a long sail to be done several times and a lot of coordination of a large number of players. That is what we did to raise hostility to 100%. Defenders had every advantage then as well. That is how we won the right to have a port battle. However a flaw in the current game mechanics allows a defender to sabotage the port battle by preventing the attacking fleet from even making it there. That is what needs to be addressed. If you want big screening action then come face us once you see hostility raising in an area. Once you lost the screening action there are no backsies. And btw no port garrisons 30-40 1st rates plus supporting fleet, so that argument is moot. If you wish to argue this technically, then defenders shouldn't be able to put 1st rates in ports that are under attack or to teleport in or logoff inside the waters of that region. Since 1st rates generally wasn't able to sail into port and dock up, they were anchored outside and the crew shipped to shore in smaller boats. The defending 1st rate fleet could then be harassed just as much as the attacking fleet. You are asking for special treatment. That we have to fight twice (or even three times) to win a region. First we have to fight to win dominance in a region's waters - which is when screening and interception should happen in order to stop an invader from gaining dominance. Then you want to be able to have another opportunity to screen, but this time with a 46 hour warning - because any sensible invader would allow you 46 hours to call in reinforcements after they beat your actual screening forces, instead of attacking as soon as they were ready. This is not something that is "passively tolerated". Devs have clearly stated that it is not an exploit. That does not mean however that it is a good part of the game. It is a workaround to a bad mechanic, and until the mechanic is replaced the workaround is legit (but still boring). That bug saved the brits from the port battle being activated the first day.

It was a fun port battle. We got PvP and we sank a lot of ships. Unfortunately some of our 1st and 2nd rates was denied entry to the PB, even after it should have been open to all, players with hostility points or in group with a player with over 2000 hostility points who also didn't get in. To what this topic is about: The 46 hour time from a port battle is activated till it starts is an artificial wait to allow Port Battles to be defended and not empty like before. The screening action is what happens in the time when 100% hostility is reached. By the time the port battle starts the attacking force has already sailed up there and wrested control of the sea region from the defender in order to start the Port Battle. Any screening action that happens in the 46 hours after the port battle was activated is as much unrealistic and as much an "exploit" of game mechanics as logging out outside port (which has in fact been judged not an exploit). Some here say a port battle force wouldn't just materialise and jump into a port battle. But an attacking force also wouldn't wait 46 hours to launch the attack just to allow the defenders to teleport a.k.a magically materialise in a huge screening force because their actual screening fleet failed. If that's how people here want to argue this, then bring back the old Conquest Flags. I never played POTBS, but whenever it was mentioned I always hated the idea of having a port battle lobby that people got teleported into from far away, but this discussion here seems to highlight that something like that would be exactly what we need. Screening conquest flags used to be a great part of the game. The drawback in the old system was that usually it didn't happen because most port battles were uncontested. We had that system, and it didn't work. Amongst other things it was too taxing on the dedicated RvR-players. They had fun until they got tired of it and left the game. Now, screening the Conquest flag has been replaced with screening against invading forces trying to raise hostility points. But people have not yet accepted this and are stuck in the old mindset. If you want screening of the port battle fleet back, we need to do something about the 46 hour preparation period that defenders get, AND we need to bring back the cooldown between outposts. Both of these things would hamper other parts of the gameplay significantly. EDIT: You think attacking Bermuda was EASY? What you're saying is that attacking far away regions should be even more difficult - just because. But defending them should be as easy as defending - in your example - Tiburon.

It has been fixed. We reported it as well with F11. The lack of missions was really all that stopped us from taking the region to 100% hostility yesterday since we waited 2 hours with not a single AI fleet coming by.

So far I really like this patch. Some tuning and balancing needed, and for the first few hours I was overwhelmed by all the changes to the extent that I couldn't identify if I was happy or disappointed. Now it's starting to get familiar I am getting to really like it. Everyone complaining about the pull circle. Just kill whatever you wanted to kill and escape before the other ships/fleets catch up.

Best news for Swedes:

Finally! Excellent. Now only between 1 and 3 weeks before we are allies again.

Haha!

I for one loose crew all the time. I don't know where they go, but I assume that some of them keep falling overboard. Maybe some of them get knocked overboard when cannonballs fly and create mayhem, and maybe some of them bail out in the heat of the action. But of course, I get what you mean.

Call: -Man overboard!

I actually installed AC Unity 1 week ago. But after 10 minutes I got back to Naval Action. I recommend you move your ships already. No point delaying.

Patch should be right in time for my birthday! What exactly will raids be? Is this something exclusive to pirates, or now that it seems port battles are only for regional capitals, will it be possible to raid ports that are not regional capitals? I really hope so. Taking the majority of ports out of RvR entirely isn't a good thing I fear. Looking forward to testing the new two circles ROE. Nice! Very nice! One question: when do we get the danish SOL Christian VII? I hope it still gets in somehow.

So we only get one port battle per region, and only fight in regional capitals. Hmm.

Admiral Horatio Nelson commended Peter Willemoes to Crown Prince Frederick after the battle of Copenhagen, supposedly recommending that he be promoted to Admiral. To this the Danish prince firmly answered: "If I were to reward all my men for their bravery, I would have a fleet of admirals".