Anolytic

The battles are great fun indeed.

I think that the next patch will go a long way to solve several of my main issues with this game, but I'll still write some up. 1. Empty port battles and ports with no value 2. Unbalanced economy and ships (3rd rate being uncommon while 2nd rates are common) 3. Fireship mechanics makes fires too much of a cheap and easy tactic EDIT: quoting Wind This! And make fishing ships sail slower in OW.

I had this happen to me when capturing a player Indiaman. Couldn't figure it out until someone reminded me of the hold optimization perk. Then it all made sense. Haven't seen it with AI traders for many months.

All or Nothing (4 LGV vs 2 Surprise) I'm not sure this qualifies as a "good" battle. There's nothing very skillful about it, it's exceptionally short, and on top of that the video is laggy. And yet: I was hauling some goods. Estimated worth about 8 million, and filling 4 LGVs. One of those LGVs got tagged and I had a brief moment to consider whether to write off that ship and cargo as a loss, or if I was going to risk 3 more stuffed LGVs to save the one. Please excuse the laggy video. I was alt tabbing between 4 windows, steering 4 ships in battle.

I think that it's good there's bigger and smaller nations. As a player of a minor nation I like to go up against the biggest nations and make them cry.

I like all of this. Except I don't think we need stacking or insurance like you suggest. 1 dura ships should be the norm. At the very least 1st AND 2nd rates should be 1 dura, and 3rd rates no more than 2 dura.

I like your suggestion a lot. Particularly that about making ship quality invisible and something you can discover for yourself through experiencing the ship in action. I also like the idea of 1 dura ships. Alternatively I would at least want 1st AND 2nd rates to be 1 dura. 3rd rates and fourth rates could be 2 dura, and the rest could be 3 dura. That would make 3rd rates more useful and 2nd rates more risky to use.

So did the LG v RUBLI match get played yet or what? We need to start planning the next round or it will be severely delayed as well.

Nice!

Thanks!

Can we get a recording of the RUBLI v WO match?

The Dutch used flag trading when attacking Cojoro, so I guess temporarily it wasn't an exploit. But then it became an exploit again. Regardless, flag trading was reported to the devs multiple times in the forum and in-game using F11 to make sure they were aware and could address it if they considered in an exploit. I reported it myself when we first tested if it was even possible, by attacking Cumana from Pampatar. I couldn't very well waste mods' and devs' time by making a tribunal against myself for something as silly as this, but if anyone wants to tribunal this in order to get a ruling I will happily supply that person the screenshot proofs of the flag trading, flag planting and so on. I want the devs to rule on this. If they rule against flag trading, then I can assure you that Danish flag trading will stop. Flag trading has been possible as long as flags have been in the game, and devs haven't done anything to prevent or discourage players from using it. Before flag trading was first employed the implications were considered: Flag trading does not prevent you from knowing that a flag is coming for a port within 1 hour from purchase. Flag trading doesn't increase the number of times a port can be attacked in a defence-window. Even if they trade away a flag a nation cannot buy the same flag again the same night. Flag trading doesn't prevent you from finding and intercepting a flag. Flag trading doesn't prevent PvP, it creates it. Flag trading doesn't prevent people from defending, or attacking ports. It doesn't extend or change the cooldown on port conquest. Unlike fake flags, of which there are a lot (and which is endorsed as a legitimate diversionary tactic), flag trading doesn't waste people's time and discourage them from RvR. With alliances introduced, it only makes sense that allies would be able to operate from each other's ports, and the ability to do this is sure to improve with the next patches. If flags weren't already discarded as a feature and development of them stopped, I would assume it would be natural for devs to implement the ability for nations to buy flags from allied ports. Supporting this assumption is the fact that with the new conquest system, nations will be able to operate and do RvR and create PvP-zones out of allied ports. So nations will be able to jump allied territories just like flag trading allows. Flag trading is also a counter to the problem that allied BR does not count, so that flags can be spam-attacked, even when the flag is protected by a fleet. And lastly flag trading allows allies to join each others' port battles even when affected by the bug that has happened to alliance voting 3-5 times now where a round isn't counted and an alliance expires despite voting for renewal. What would definitely be exploits however, would be if flag trading was used to attack ones own port to extend the conquest cooldown, or to flip ports between allies to prevent attacks on those ports.

It's hit-and-run. You sail often at the edge of shot range, running away forcing the enemy to chase. Usually you will turn to shoot, but preferrably without allowing the enemy ability to shoot back. It's a leigitmate and very useful frigate tactic and OW tactic. But in Port Battles you're meant to stand your ground to defend an area, and kiting would mean leaving that area and forfeiting control. With the current port battle win conditions kiting is often a go to tactic for port defence, but the circle at least prevents you from running forever in the same direction.

It's the time it takes to send a message from your computer to the server and for it to come back to your computer again.

Yes. You don't loose your gold in the map reset. Btw, 20 million gold is nothing.

I'm not quite sure how relevant this would be to implement in the game. Although I see some uses for it like towing demasted SOLs as gunplatforms or dragging a prize or a friend away from battle. Anyway, I like your idea.

Been waiting all day. I don't have access to the game atm and haven't played for a week. Was hoping to get my fix from another LttK episode.

Did the two matches get played/streamed tonight?

I don't know anything about what happens inside Game-Labs, so I can only go from what I read, but what admin said was not what you represent his statement to be. He didn't say that he delayed a feature to punish someone or out of spite, which is how you seem to (purposely?) interpret him. What he said, accurate or not, was that the developers working on the specific feature (trading XP) got frustrated by negative comment(s), and (reading-between-the-lines) started working on something else instead. And because he sympathised with his programmers admin didn't force them to go back and work on a feature that they were now demotivated from working on. Simple as that.

Most of what you mention in the OP is not actually UI, but new features and content. Which is the point of why we have no news of the UI yet. As long as they are still adding features whatever their current design suggestions for an UI might look like, we can be sure that at release it will look completely and unrecognisably different.

It is indeed in the patch notes: It is bug that happened to me before as well. I though maybe it had been fixed by now as I haven't encountered it for a long time. Coquibacoa is nowhere near Vieques, so unless by "near Vieques" OP means an hour from Vieques, then I doubt he was meant to respawn there.

Wow. Nice! The next patch is going to be 'yuge. The delay is totally justified, although I'm really struggling with waiting.

Don't think you have enough crew for that L'Ocean. Wanna sell it? (jk) Any news on the RUBLI v LG and RUBLI v WO matches? What happens if they aren't played tonight? (I thought I saw a result of the RUBLI v WO match in the Challonge earlier today, but it seems to have been removed again)

Nice! Two redeemable Agamemnons and a redeemable L'Ocean.

How are the remaining matches this round coming along? And any links to recordings of the matches that already happened?