Anolytic

REDS was formed in Russia immediately after server maintenance the day that the new nations patch was released. Most of us switched from Pirates to Russia that very same day (October 16th 2017). And we didn't follow RUS, we decided in unison with RUS the week before that we would both join Russia.

A hard-fought battle from yesterday.

To Russia, no. To REDS, yes. We are a clan. We recruit. We have a recruitment topic. We recruit more or less actively, right now less. What do I do to unbalance the server? It is my "job" to grow and develop my clan. Others should concentrate on developing their own clans. We're not making anything "worse". REDS is not an elitist clan. We are not the best or the greatest. We just try to create content for ourselves and others. We're tiptoeing around other nations to not destroy their "crafting base" and when our enemies call for help because their "livelihood" is threatened, we've always lent what help we could. I know of whom you speak, and I've fought against those players and that mentality at every turn. Again, REDS have sacrificed a lot of our own effort and our own potential for fun, in order to avoid the destruction of other communities. Your accusation is patently false. Naval Action cannot be beaten, only destroyed. I have no power to change broken game mechanics. I can only try to create content. Content that I create for REDS, is content also created for the whole server. REDS is the ONLY clan that has actively created RvR-content continuously since release. The "neighbourhood" can do whatever they want. I don't demand anything except that people stop complaining about REDS trying to enjoy this game - without hurting anyone. That's not my fault. Then go somewhere else to complain. This is the REDS topic. I hardly ever go to the patrol zone. I went yesterday, only to be reminded why I don't go anymore - hello kittying requins running away upwind with <1 bar of structure left. REDS was formed in Russia long before Forged Papers DLC was added. I don't own the forged papers DLC and the same goes for many clanmembers. REDS is a completely different clan from HAVOC. REDS is a nation clan. We are loyal to our nation and to the clans that we play with. We don't go from nation to nation, vacuuming all the most elite veteran players one place after the other. REDS is as much about keeping newcomers to the game engaged as we are about keeping veterans interested. We recruit new players on their first day in the game and help them grow from first rank to last and we spend the time and effort teaching players the game.

Okay. You can transfer to me the money to buy 250 forged papers, thanks, reimburse us all our port- and shipyard-investments, and move all of our >1million units of resources (400k rare logs) to a destination of our choice. Or, you know, you can stop whining. It is not our job to balance the server. You do it! It is simple: Gather some players. Train them, give them content. Help them enjoy the game and play actively together. Make infrastructure, excel-sheets, guides and plans for these players to follow. Set up (and pay for) coms. Buy some alts to collect resources for clan-reserves. Play day and night to grow your group in different timezones. Spend time to make sure you are always on top of the game-metas as well as the best strategies for all aspects of the game. Or you can come here and whine and demand that others put their own fun aside and do what you want them to do because you cannot be arsed yourself. REDS is the oldest clan in the Russian Empire. We are a nation clan, willing to work with, assist and defend all other Russian clans. We have close relationships with other Russian clans that we would never abandon. We are not going anywhere.

It's pretty clear that they were in 3 trincs and captured the Bellona in the battle. Did neither of you look at the screenshot? 3 trincs vs Bellona & Wappen is on its own a pretty good result. It's no gank. Though screenshots tell lies these days with the 20 minute timer there's no way to say from them that this would not have been a great battle. At the very least a fairly unsuccessful trader escort... ..shit happens.

We reproduced the problem during our attack on Salamanca. A 3rd rate, player @Potemkin, who was in our main group, sailing in the middle of a fleet of 1st rates, was tagged by an enemy fleet of screeners, and ended up alone in battle against 9-10 British screeners, despite our whole fleet, 24 other players, being within his circle - and in the same battle group as him. He did F11 the issue at the time. This sort of thing seems to happen when a great number of players congregate in a limited area of the map. In the bay of Salamanca we had hundreds of players gathered that day, and in the minutes before when we were about to enter the PB we all experienced massive lags - in Open World. When we all clicked to enter the port battle on command, only less than half of our fleet actually ended up in the PB. On the command being given I clicked repeatedly on the join battle button for the port battle. Nothing happened for about 5 seconds, then I was spawned into an open world battle instead with a screening fleet. Others in our group reported the same.

Had the exact same problem whenever I used Teamviewer. Used to sometimes check my long range trade remotely back in 2016-17. It's always been the same way.

Ponce PB Disorganised battle, but very fun.

I like to use words with their right definition, but I see no reason to play dumb when there are so many actually stupid people. Pretty much, yes. We needed something to do, and Bluefields was the only area that was open within reach. How are we to know what ports are upgraded "as a nation" and what ports are not? Feel free to inform us which ports we may attack and which we may not. Sometimes I do wish you guys had some actual spies so that you wouldn't have to base solely on rumours. Now I know where (and when) you have your "information" from, but sadly you are way off. Just because something is proposed or joked about, doesn't make it actual plans. We've talked about much worse things than reminiscing over the good old days of the danish Panama Campaign, without actually planning to do them. Interesting. I would like to see that mail. Get your facts straight. The 30 minute PB-timer was introduced 6 months (May 2017) before Russia was added (October 2017) to the game. There was no logging off outside Belize. Hiding in battle, sure, but no alts. And keep in mind we were the first to ask for hiding in battle to be fixed, but it was made clear that this was allowed, even encouraged, gameplay. There is no dishonour in playing the game by the rules.

Fighting brits is like walking on eggshells. You can't go anywhere without knocking over somebody's crafting ports. Just don't build crafting outposts in Salamanca and you'll all be fine. Actually, it was the other way around (Philipsburg last), and they were only attacked to trigger a fight, successfully. Players tended not to show up to unimportant port-battles. It doesn't mean we intended to keep those ports. Read my past posts. I've always argued against what I call "RvR-importance". I'm all for "meaningful RvR" if defined as rewarding RvR (remember resource rewards for successful PBs?), but never win-or-quit-the-game RvR. That I've always argued against. I've NEVER argued for my playstyle to be the only one. Not even the main one. At least I tried to make suggestions for the game. Just because some of them were (partially) listened to doesn't mean I'm responsible for everything else that you think is wrong with the game. Most of the suggestions that I've written up are from listening to players who play differently than me and have different wishes for the game than me. I've suggested pirate-only mechanics even though I don't play pirate. I've made suggestions to ease the crafting economy substantially for "normal" players. And I've made countless other arguments and suggestions that go against my particular way of playing, but which I believed would be overall beneficial to most players. The truth isn't propaganda. Five players in frigates can flip a shallow port. Ask VCO, who owns Morgan's, if they felt threathened. I think you'll find that no agreement was ever actually made about the Gulf. You'll also find that the Prussian clans that left were mainly preparing long before Nouvelle Orleans was lost, and we were even approached by Prussian clans that requested our help in screwing over rival Prussian clans, requests we politely passed. I have no idea about Nouvelle Orleans, but in Salamanca it's not a hello kittying tactic. Get it through your head finally. It is only possible to get missions in one single location. We have literally no choice in the matter. Borrow Salamanca to us and you can try it yourself how it works. A. Multiflips don't mean an alliance, only common enemy. B. Multiflips weren't our idea. C. Multiflips didn't even have our approval (in the timeframe you refer to). The other nations got wind of when we planned an attack and made their own at the same time, which made it harder for us to get a decent fight. Brangmann's and Bluefields weren't multiflipped. They were flipped one after another (when we realised we couldn't make it to the first one), and there was more than enough time for the British fleet to sail from Brangmann's to Bluefields, except you got cold feet and turned back to harbour even though we ordered our screeners not to attack your PB fleet. REDS didn't steamroll Dutch. We took a couple of counties and let the rest of their territory be. Dutch abandoned the Maracaibo area after all of four battles, of which they won the first two and lost only the last two. Speaking for REDS, we were trying to make the point that a limited number of OP crafting ports are bad for the game. Apparently it didn't go through, maybe because everyone was whining about Russia this and Russia that instead of themselves suggesting better, more balanced mechanics?

Prussia is currently the 5th largest nation in terms of territory. It was ONE clan, not even a whole one, who got a OW fight. Shallow ports are so ridiculously easy to flip it could happen almost by accident. I'm sure pirates didn't really mind. No. You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. San Marcos was flipped only at the request of some Spanish clans. Then we received more information about the internal dispute and realised we did not want to step into the internal Spanish politics, so we decided not to go. In the meantime the port was unfortunately dropped by the owners. The whole affair was a waste of our time, but as already mentioned, shallow ports are effortless to flip. Belive me, that wasn't the intent. We realised we wouldn't be able to get to the first one, so we set the second one to be able to get a fight. Prussia is still very much present on the map, and what goes for Brits they were never destroyed by Russia. If anything they destroyed themselves. When we were done with Brits they still had more territory than any other nation. REDS has always been concerned with server health. This is why in the past we have helped the weakest nations when they were under pressure. Spain against Brits and Pirates in the Gulf, Poland against Pirates in Hispaniola, France against Brits in Antilles, and when we started out, half the nations begged for our help against Sweden, which we did. REDS don't want Truxillo. We don't even want Bluefields, or Brangmann's, or even Belize ever since we realised that some clan was upgrading crafting there. Although we're starting to wonder if Brits are making crafting upgrades in every port just so that they can complain about us attacking their crafting hubs whichever port we attack. It's the only way it would make sense not to focus on like a couple of ports for crafting. It's a not-so-new port-battle defence move called "whining-till-the-enemy-goes-away", not to be confused with "winning". Also, are you dense? It's only possible to take missions in a single spot for Salamanca. It's actually a major pain since each player can then only bring one mission. And you have no counter hostility fleet. We wish. First time we went for Salamanca we waited around more than an hour for you to show up and give us a fight and counter us. None of this is actually true. WTF kind of stupid shit are you on about?

Tall Ships Races are in town (Fredrikstad) and among all the generic 19th and 20th century barques and brigantines etc. I found the replica of Peter the Great's Shtandart. Unfortunately the ship is closed to visitors right now so I've only been able to appreciate it from land. I tried boarding the ship, but was denied by a defensive move called "crew only".

REDS is recruiting. We have members from all over the world, including Norway, Denmark, Germany, Russia, Australia, New Zealand, USA, Canada, Poland, Britain, Turkey, Spain, China, Taiwan, Brazil, Switzerland, Belgium, France, Finland, Sweden, Ukraine, Netherlands and more. We are currently working on improving our cohesion as a fleet. Yesterday we were at Salamanca and here is the biggest one of several battles: Some of our screening fleet also joined in a fight with other Russian clans and had great fun:

On the patrol zone, you are totally right. It should be auto claimed at maintenance. On the weekly challenges the rationale for leaving it as it is, is the following: If auto-enabled the weekly challenges would only count towards your position in the weekly challenge your first 10 kills in each rate every week. But maybe on Monday you go out and kill 10 7th rates in your 3rd rate, and you'll place 367th on the weekly Lineship event that week. Instead of being able to choose on saturday, that today I am going to do the weekly Lineship event, and I'll take my 3rd rate out and spend all day killing 1st rates with it, hoping for 1st place on the leaderboard this week. So there is a reason for being able to choose when we want to start the weekly events.

This is nothing new, it is well known, and it has been noted before in the forum. It is a feature or a bug depending on how you see it. However it is worth to mention it again to let Devs consider before release. The issue, if it is one, is this: In Port Battles against neutral ports it is possible for a nation to get an almost endless number of captains into the PB and earn Lord Protectorates. And thus earn Victory Marks. In other words, while normally a port would earn a nation up to 25 Victory Marks, it is possible for a nation to get 30-40 Victory Marks generated out of a single Port. That is per week. The system that makes this possible is a feature that was added some time ago: If a player leaves battle in the first 20 minutes of a PB without having inflicted or received damage in the PB to that point, his Battle Rating and his «slot» in the PB is restored to his team in the PB. In other words his side can join another ship to replace his BR and number without exceeding either the BR limit or the 25-player limit. Case in point, if you have 25 players in a PB and you are exactly at the Battle Rating limit for that PB. One player in Agamemnon can leave the battle, and another player can join the battle. But only if the first Agamemnon did not fire at anyone or get shot at, and it is within the first 20 minutes. So this would never mean that one side could have more than 25 players on their side. Nor would they be able to have more than the BR limit in the battle at any time. So it cannot be used in that way to gain an advantage in a contested battle. The feature in itself is a great and much used one. Introduced to us because it did, and still does, happen that someone joined a PB who was too eager and not supposed to. Or he was in the wrong ship. Then you can kindly convince him to leave the battle, and let the original member of your party join. Also there are, and were, cases where a player who was supposed to be in the PB, would discover in the beginning of the battle that he was experiencing particular lags or connection issues, or a ship could even disconnect and drop out. Then this player could, in the first 20 minutes, be replaced by someone better able to fight in the battle. This is a much appreciated feature. But it can also be used, in battles for Neutral Ports, where there is no dangerous opposition, to generate more Lord Protectorates than originally intended. Because a player that was in a PB, whether he left after 2 minutes or stayed till the end, will get a Lord Protectorate as long as his side won. The situation is demonstrated in this screenshot from Harbour Island: Note that in the screenshot I took, my character’s name is not on the list of the first 25 players to join the battle. He is way down the list from that. Now, we have been discussing between ourselves whether the core mechanic at work here, the replacing of ships in the first 20 minutes of battle, could be abused in some way. In theory an attacker could join an entire PB-fleet at one position in the PB, and after the defender has started sailing to that position, the attacker could literally replace their whole fleet for another PB-fleet that would spawn in a different position, unanticipated by the defender, who now may have sailed too far in the wrong direction. Personally I tend to believe there would be little or no possibility to gain any real advantage from this. Just a great risk of abject failure. To the problem of Lord Protectorates, there is an easy solution if we want this possibility removed. As this can only be done against neutral ports or in traded ports, and nobody is harmed by it, I am not sure a solution is really that urgently needed. But the simple solution would be to only count Lord Protectorates for players that stayed past the 20-minute mark of a Port Battle.

Reverse showed you his, so I guess I'll show you mine: WTT for Jamaica! The fact is REDS had seven port-bonus ships in Les Cayes. I crafted 8 for the battle but one of our players had to switch to mortar brig last minute and another REDS went in an old (but gold) Ocean. 7 out of 8 ships I crafted were plain 3/5 btw. BF had 0 Port-bonus ships and NN had 1. Did Port Bonuses have anything to do with the outcome of the battle? Yes and no. All our fleet was set up for brawling, and as soon as the brawl started, things turned south fast for the brits. We would have won the brawl anyway, but without port bonuses 2-3 REDS, including me, would probably have been sunk, and another couple of Russian ships would have been unable to take cover from each other when damaged without those speedy ships. This might have been enough for brits to win on points before we could turn the game around. It is true that our tactics for the first 20 minutes of battle, which I commanded, was mostly a series of bad judgements - from joining position, to formation, to the timing of manoeuvers. But after the brawl started, I got boarded, and Reverse had to take over command, things turned to the better. Brits already lost a lot of momentum when their lines split just before the initial engagement and a quarter of their fleet headed downwind of us. I agree with you, and argue for the same. But I still adapt to whatever system is in the game at any time. Which is why I spent 4 hours yesterday sailing 28 Indiaman loaded with resources to craft ships. As for further discussion of the port-bonuses, let's move it out of this topic. I suggest here:

It is my view that such arguments are best made with visual aids. So I was going to make a video showing the difference between port bonuses and no bonuses in surprises. However @dron (<3) put a stop to that by sinking both test ships… And I haven’t gotten around to making a new test. But the argument is already raging about the portbattle of Les Cayes, in the wrong topic. So I thought I’d redirect that discussion here and sprinkle it with a few facts. And these recent port battles will have to do as demonstration. Here is my ship from Les Cayes PB: Anybody want to trade? The fact is that for each of the battles of Nassau and Les Cayes I constructed 8 new ships with port-bonuses (only one was better than blue). That is, less than a 3rd of each of our fleets was new ships with bonuses. So, did they decide the outcome of the battles? In Nassau it’s a clear NO. In Les Cayes, the answer is both yes and no. Without them we might have lost some ships, but the brawl was still decidedly in our favour. But let’s discuss the particulars of the battle elsewhere. The fact is the stats on ships with port-bonuses are very high compared to those without them. Just looking at the stats it’s like having a ship with 10 upgrade slots and all elite upgrades. Just to highlight a few stats, the 5% speed boost of Sailing Bonus 4, or 10% armour thickness AND HP of Hull Bonus 4. Port-bonuses seem like a good idea for content in principle. But they need to be nerfed. And they need to be accessible to all, dependent on effort, not nationality. I know that port-bonuses will be changed next week. But I don’t think that it is enough. No ports should have more potential for greater ship-building than others. But the full potential of a regions should only be realised through the development of dependent ports in the county. Making other ports on the map more valuable than now. Notice how some nations have not even bothered to take the ports around their county capitals yet. If we want to have some special ports that are extra attractive for conquest like now, make it through convenience and profit. Give them more profitable trade-goods and make it so that ship-building in those ports require less hauling of resources and less logistics than in other ports. Right now a few nations can take all of the 55-point ports and monopolise the production of OP ships. Skewing the balance of PvP and RvR alike. People ask for something to fight for. But I remember in 2016 when there was no exclusive resources and we all fought more than any other time just for dots on the map and our names on the Lord Protector list. And I also remember other times in the game, and how troves of players, even entire clans, left nations or left the game over the loss of these pixels which suddenly had become more than just pixels, but prerequisites for gameplay on even terms. We should not go back to the times when RvR was about the destruction of communities rather than fun fights. If you loose one crafting-port, you should be able to set up your facilities in another one until you can get the first one back.

Keep in mind not all of this player numbers distribution is necessarily representative for what we will see at launch. The relative sizes of the coalitions are not fixed. Personally I think I would prefer the no-alliances system we have now, where diplomacy is purely player-created content. However our RvR-model should have some way for nations to trade ports. If we were going to have alliances I like admin's proposal. This is basically fulfilling the request by many of reducing the number of nations. In effect with this system we will have 5 nations instead of 11. There are certainly advantages to that. And at the same time we do not need to abandon our flag or our national identity. And it is still possible to form temporary, player-arranged alliances between coalitions. Player-made, mechanics-enforced alliances are too tricky. Even though our last test was not a proper one, it is right that it would be all but impossible to create a system where the strongest did not band together to destroy the competition. I voted for 11 independent nations, but I would support admin's proposal if settled upon.

I wanted to post in this topic, but it was closed before I could finish my reply. A moderator may merge my reply into the topic. REDS will not go to the currently scheduled Port Battle in Kidd’s Harbour and we encourage other clans, including the attacking clan, to refrain from doing so as well. For the record, REDS was fully informed and invested in the attack on Santiago de Cuba and we still stand by that action. Ciudad de Cuba was at the Russian frontline and but for a broken mechanic should have been attackable directly from Cap Francais. If we could have attacked Port-au-Prince first to enable an attack on Cuba next, we would have done it in that order. Kidd’s Island however is not at the Russian Frontline and should not be attackable by Russia at this time. We were approached by some US players offering us missions for Kidd’s Island, understandably indignant that ports were taken by other nations behind their frontline using this mechanic of sharing hostility missions. Though the current status in the tribunal seems to be that as of now any use of hostility missions is allowed, we refused this offer. Unfortunately this refusal was not communicated sufficiently and timely to all Russian clans. Russia has a clear and direct path to Bermuda and the Secret Islands and no urgency or need to utilise this «shortcut». Whether it is legal or not. We knew about this path since the beginning and if we had considered it a legitimate option we could have done so already and would not have needed to wait till after we had conquered Nassau. Although no alts were used and by the current standing of the tribunal it seems no rules were technically broken in this action, we have still requested that the SCUM-clan do not go through with the port battle for Kidd’s Harbour. We can still make our way to Kidd’s and Bermuda in the future the right way, which is step-by-step.

Please read my whole post. Especially this part: My point is that players should be able to survive and thrive on the War-server without ever earning a single Combat Medal.

Combat Medals in my mind, are supposed to be the PvP-currency/-reward. As in, the one reward in this game that can only be attained through PvP participation, and that should encourage players (on the War server) to try out and participate in PvP. Why else would we have so many currencies if not to serve unique purposes. Lately the age old concern about alt-/friend-farming has resurfaced regarding Combat Medals, as we had before with every attempt at a PvP currency. Yet it is ignored that, assuming the premise that Combat Medals are actually supposed to be a PvP-currency and reward players for getting into PvP, alt-farming and friend-farming are minor issues right now. The BIG issue is PvE-farming of Combat Medals. Anyone right now who tried to exploit by farming his alt for Combat Medals would be an idiot. It is a waste of the ship that is sunk, the cannons on it, and not least of time. It is much more efficient and rewarding to farm PvE Search and Destroy Missions for Combat Medals (I guess you could farm your alt to complete non-PvP Hunt-missions). In fact, actively doing legitimate PvP cannot even compare in profitability to doing a couple of hours of PvE per day. I know of players who have amassed more Combat Medals doing only PvE than any normal PvP-players in their nation. I approve of the decision to remove Combat Medal rewards directly for kills, and instead give combat medals only for missions. I have suggested this before - with some added modifications I would hope to see also. And the tracking of Steam IDs in counting kills should, depending on the parameters, efficiently prevent rewards for most exploit farming, as well as occasionally deny rewards for some legitimate PvP (this is probably a fair price). We have after all a limited number of active PvP-players on this server, and they tend to run into each other with some regularity. However, the best way I see to discourage farming, or reduce the consequences of it, is to change the rewards. What is the point of having so many currencies if they are all earned interchangeably? PvP-players are going to be happy with PvP-rewards that let them A. show off that they proficient PvP-players by displaying special flags, paints or other cosmetic items purchased only from PvP-currency, i.e Combat Medals, and B. gives access to some convenience features such as PvP-upgrades that are comparable in strength to PvE-upgrades only acquired through trading and PvE. Also some ship-notes for common ships, but without the need for crafting, including the ship-notes we can now get for DLC-ships. The reason people farm Combat Medals, whether through alts or now through PvE, is because they must. Combat Medals are used for «everything» and everything is very expensive. Several days are needed in the patrol zones, or doing PvE-missions to pay for a first-rate which an active RvR-environment we are hoping to have after release would require you to use it and risk it daily. The same with all the upgrades for it. Lineship permits need to again be purchased for Victory Marks, or we are going to have nothing to spend our Victory Marks on after we have upgraded all of our ports in a few weeks. It also would mean we had to be strategic about what to invest in first, ships or port upgrades. The Combat Medal economy needs to be deflated, so that we earn much less Combat Medals than now, but also all prices in Combat Medals are slashed significantly. Make Combat Medals a bonus, a reward for PvP, and a way for PvP-players to show off their proficiency. But take them out of the PvE and RvR-economy. Doubloons and Victory Marks are more than enough for ensuring that we need to grind to upgrade our port facilities. And please make assists count towards Combat Medal mission rewards. In a fleet-battle you could be the most important player in ensuring a good outcome, by tanking the most damage and finishing off damaged ships, as well as protecting friends. And yet if your own damage output was spread around to where it was most needed, you could be left with no rewards after.

For the owning nation it means they have to maintain their ports, keep their clans active and working together, and they should not hold more ports than they can actually use and visit with some regularity. I would prefer if it required some guesswork and/or intel so that it was actually a risky investment for pirates to probe a port. The profit should be great for capturing and holding a pirate infested port, but failed expeditions should also come at some expense so that they cannot probe all ports all times, or just take a traders lynx to find a sure target. I considered that as well. The only problem I would say then is the timing of the PB. Because unmaintained ports are unlikely to have a timer. It would be meaningless if the pirate clan doing the probing ended up with a PB at a time they could not be there. And I forgot to mention that the expeditions should take 24 hours (or even 48) before returning an answer, and only one expedition can be active per clan at a time. About defence. I obviously don't want this to be a PvE-feature, so yes, the nation can defend. But if the owning clan is inactive, then it could be a problem to get on their friendlist and join the PB. Another reason why hostility missions should be needed to prepare the attack. It allows some warning and some chance to push the pirates back.

...of unmaintained ports. Let’s face it. We’re not getting raids. Nor is black-on-black likely to come back as a RoE. But pirates should have some unique mechanic that distinguishes them from other nations without giving them an advantage or disrupting gameplay for the general populace. Here’s my on-the-spot idea for a pirate mechanic that I think would not be too much work to implement. I would welcome some input as to its viability or improvement. Pirate Infestation of Ports I’m going to try to explain my idea as simple and brief as I can. Essentially it’s this: Ports that are left unused, unvisited and unprotected by their national owners can become infested by pirates. To begin with this is just a stat, not an infestation of actual pirate players. If the pirate infestation reaches too high, a pirate clan can get the opportunity to attack that port, from Mortimer Town regardless of frontlines and regions and in any part of the map. If they win, they get a position behind enemy lines, to raid commerce and do other pirate activities. It gets an extra long cooldown before it is attackable again by other nations, but potentially it would not be possible to take hostility missions from pirate infested towns. On the other hand, the owning pirate clan gets a significantly boosted income from the pirate infested town, deriving from privateering and pirate activities like gambling, whoring and other debauchery in the port. What is addressed: Potentially, this mechanic would work to counter the cases of inactive clans holding ports behind frontlines because they never get attacked. Especially with regional conquest it is going to become a problem that dependent ports in a county will be held by clans that eventually disappear or go inactive, but nobody can take over the port. In the past this has also happened to important ports that were held for long times by clans that were not at all playing anymore. It would also mean that clans have to take care also of their less valuable ports and ports in the periphery, or risk loosing them to pirate infestations. How it would work: I am open to suggestions for how this mechanic could work, but I will give an outline of how I imagine it. Ports all have a stat of pirate infestation. From 0-100%. This stat can only be seen by the owning clan and clans allied to the owner. Pirate infestation increases with various factors, such as the port being unused. If it is free-for-all pirate infestation grows faster. If investments are active in the port infestation grows slower. When investments are made infestation goes down. Members of the owning clan trading to or from the port reduces infestation significantly. Generally infestations grow very slow, but if a port is not visited by the owning nation for a long time (weeks) it starts growing fast. If barely any members/officers log into the clan for a prolonged time, their ports all start growing infestations faster. If a port gets higher than 85% pirate infestation, then it can be attacked by a pirate clan and taken by them. But since only clans and their allies can see infestations in their own ports, pirate clans cannot know what ports have a high enough infestation level to be attackable unless they have a spy or a traitor in place to let them know. Instead pirate clans can, in Mortimer Town, pay for expeditions to be made to any port on the map. If the expedition they choose is for a port that has a low infestation level, then the money they invest is lost. If the expedition is for a port with a high infestation level - 85% or higher - then their expedition will infiltrate the city and increase the infestation rate to 100% and also send word back to the pirate clan that the port is ripe for attack and they will be able to take hostility missions for the port within the next 5 days.

REDS was well represented in the recent victory at Nassau:

Here is my recording from Nassau: