Anolytic

Battle in the Windward Passage yesterday:

Sabicu and Mahogany would be cheaper for one thing. Besides, in the last week I've sunk more sabicu/white oak and caguairan/white oak Rättvisans than teak/teak ones, so there's clearly some that prefer those woods even when they can choose exactly what woods they like. Even then it was a lot of useless afk-sailing in trader-lynxes that was easier to do with alts, was a time-sink and yet contributed nothing to the open world. The prices are the problem, not the supply of doubloons. I refer to that in my OP too, but I also offer some other alternatives to consider if we don't want to go back to the good old basics that worked in the past. The other options I suggest have their benefits too, and they would work much better than what we have now.

I know your concern. However ANY game with an interactive economy "promotes" the use of alts by that standard. ANY system that promotes the interaction and collaboration of players will by default be possible to cheat by players willing to invest in alts. We simply cannot let this stop us. The proposal will make hoarding easy for big cooperative clans and/or players with alts, sure. But most importantly it makes things possible for the average and casual player. If some power-gamer with alts is swimming in crafting logs because he spends 4 hours a day hauling woods and trading resources, that doesn't hurt or affect the affect the average player who spends 2 hours in-game per night - as long as he has just enough woods himself to cover his needs. This game has plenty of alts in part because at multiple times in the past we tweaked the game-mechanics so far into the hard-core extreme that the only way the game was playable was with alts. Some players left the game then, others gave in and bought alts in the hope to push through until things evened out for the better. I don't want that to be the state of the game still when the game is released. I want the game to be playable for all the average players in my clan, and others, with only a single account. No. That is why I said there should be 4-5 ports that drop each wood. That way hunters cannot simply camp just one single city to catch all traders going in and out. They have to cover multiple ports and multiple approaches. It also means that there will drop 200k-250k logs of each type each day. Even if somebody could manage to empty out one port every day for a week before running out of money, there would be 3-4 other ports where there would be guaranteed stocks of the woods. I also forgot to mention in the OP that for this proposal also, the prices of Live Oak and White Oak, and Teak, should be comparatively multiple times the price of the "lesser" woods. I'm thinking 20-50 reals per log for the "lesser woods" and 100-250 reals per log for the "finer" wood types. However there should be NO TAXATION on purchasing woods in this model, as the nation that happens to start closest to where a popular wood spawns should not be able to earn money on owning those resources by default.

This suggestion is part of a comprehensive review I have attempted on the Crafting and Economy currently in Naval Action. This part is where I address crafting woods. You can find my topics on Currencies and the Economy here, and my suggestion on Labour Hours here. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Currently most players barely craft any ships. Of course this has a lot to do with the impending wipes and release of the game, and that many players have a good amount of ships already stored up, enough to keep them probably till the next wipe. It also has to do with the (horrible) permit prices situation. But most of all, in my opinion, it has to do with how rare woods are now implemented and distributed in the game. Even if you have access to a clan-mission for the wood type you need, 50k doubloons for 5k white oak is just an abysmal amount of grinding for what amounts to enough wood for barely a couple of first-rates. The clan missions have so far to my knowledge not caused a single conflict over access to rare wood forests. No ports attacked because they had a clan-mission. All they do is lock down what are essential crafting resources, behind a wall of grinding, as well as a restricting them to a subset of the game population with the restrictions that are placed on withdrawing rare woods (i.e. members and friends of a clan where the mission happens to spawn). But there are exceptions to the clan-mission exclusivity. The rare woods are accessible to buy directly from the AI in some select few ports. You can even buy them on contracts, for reals. You can buy Live Oak (only) in San Augustin, White Oak (only) in Nouvelle Orleans, Teak in Bridgetown, and Mahogany in Santo Domingo to mention some. This is great for people with a French alt… And even better if you also have a Russian alt. With only two alts you can have access to teak, live oak (french) and White oak (russian). (/sarcasm) For everyone else it’s just a punch in the face knowing that it’s even there. There are always contracts for these woods, so good luck collecting any if you don’t have an alt to set the contracts with. As they are currently, the alt-friendly wood spawns on the map only compound the issue with clan-missions for woods. These are huge issues. With the current distribution of non-basic crafting resources the game is barely playable for most average players. There is no point in even trying to craft good ships. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Clan-missions and "RvR-Importance" With the forthcoming Frontlines conquest system, Clan-missions as they are now simply will not work. Rare woods forests could spawn miles behind a frontline, and simple RNG would determine that some nations would simply have no chance to compete in RvR. The nation for whom the RNG is lucky, will have strong ships to defend their forests, and the unlucky nation will be lacking strong ships to conquer the port that they need in order to build strong ships. It’s a problem that’s there already but for the fact that we have ships stored from before the system was introduced, but one that will be aggravated infinitely by the introduction of Frontlines. Port-Drops and Alts-importance The way that the map now has some very few ports that drop certain woods, and they can be bought on contracts, does not work for the simple reason that it HUGELY advantages alts. This system practically forces the usage of alts for the game to be even playable. This HAS to change. Grinding Lastly, the grinding needed to be able to afford woods from the Clan-missions is unsustainable. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Suggested Solutions I have 2 solutions in mind for how to make woods work. Neither is fully refined, but other solutions to replace the current system may be suggested by others. The most important thing is that the current system is completely scrapped. Short Distance Hauling The first alternative is to revert back to the good old days when crafting woods were easily available near capitals. Make sure that wood spawns, in the form either of ports selling the woods to the NPC-market or ports where forests can be built, are spread around the map so that each and every nation has all the important woods (live oak, white oak, teak, mahogany, caguairan, sabicu) available in ports within 1-2 regions from their capital. This way, as long as a nation can conquer their own immediate home-waters they always have access to the woods needed to craft the ships they need to defend them. There should also be other clusters of woods around the map for clans to make their base near, or for the three impossible nations to settle near. This model would encourage trading and hauling between the wood-spawns and the clan/national capitals, in turn encouraging hunting of those traders. At the same time as it would give all players equal access to equal woods for crafting vessels. Making RvR more fair. As previously brought up, I would shift the bottleneck in crafting from woods and permits, towards labour hours and labour contracts. But the amount of wood spawning, or possible to extract, depending on the approach, could be limited, creating the need to conquer more ports around the map with the same woods spawning in order to fully match demand with supply. If woods were extracted from buildings, we could be limited to 300 logs per day (and only one forest building per port per character), enough for a couple of frigates, but needing many days to make a 1st rate unless several people collaborated by all producing the same woods. Or if the logs were dropped in port the supply each day would be limited. Though I prefer the forest factory model over the port-drop approach which will be hugged by those able to set up the highest contracts. Also, the price of the woods would distinguish different ship-builds from each other. The base price for extracting/buying live oak and white oak would be multiple times higher than extracting/buying mahogany. Long Distance Hauling My other idea is this: To spread the woods out across the map and make it necessary for players and crafters to haul the woods back to where they craft from each corner of the map. It would look something like this: 4 or 5 ports on the East Coast of Florida would spawn Live Oak. Regardless of who owned each port, anyone would be able to go there, purchase all the Live Oak they could carry, and bring it back to wherever on the map they craft their ships. This would be possible because the port would always be stocked. The stock would either be literally infinite, or 50 000 logs would spawn each day after maintenance in each of the 4-5 ports. And it would be impossible to set contracts for the logs in those ports, so nobody could buy up all the stocks by contracts. It would allow any player to go there and get Live Oak, and at the same time it would be a paradise for raiders and hunters patrolling the area looking for traders coming and leaving carrying Live Oak. Clans would be organising convoys to go there and pick up enough stocks to last them for weeks, and even nations would organise hauling runs for non-clanned players to go together and collect their own supply of logs, as well as a supply of logs to sell in home harbours to those players unwilling to make the sail. Likewise, there would be 4-5 ports, spread around for instance the Gulf of Mexico, where similarly White Oak would be available to anyone who would go there to pick it up and haul it home to their base. Mahogany could be found, for instance in 4-5 ports in Panama. Caguairan could be found for instance near Orinoco. Sabicu on South-East Cuba. And Teak, as the preeminent PvP-wood should be found pretty centrally, and be spread to both south AND north of Hispaniola, or alternatively be found in 2-4 clusters around the map, including the Bahamas. There is a third solution: That rare woods forests are simply yet another expansion that can be applied to upgrade cities for a price. Say for instance that you can choose only one forest for each city, either Teak, white oak, live oak, mahogany, caguairan or sabicu. So to get all woods you have to upgrade six cities. I will not expand more on this approach, as it has already been mentioned by others elsewhere.

None of this addresses anything of what I write about in the OP. Of course an important aspect of Patrol Zones and even PvP in general on the OW is contingent on people going there for PvE and finding PvP when they are there. This doesn't change anything about my analysis or my suggestion. This doesn't make sense though. You can't say that you agree with me, yet in the very same sentence disagree with me. Sorry that I used a lot of words. I've tried cutting it into manageable portions. But I'd still ask that you try to read what I wrote before commenting, otherwise you might as well post in another topic or create your own. Rather than posting off topic here.

Permits and PvP-rewards economy Given that the circulation of Combat Medals would be much less than it is now, I would drastically change prices, something which is needed regardless. The other issue to address is what specific rewards can be exchanged for Combat medals in the admiralty shop. With PvP-marks we had the problem that very upgrades and books, that greatly advantaged the someone in combat, were only accessible for PvP-marks. Hence to be able to compete in PvP you needed to farm enough PvP-marks to buy those best tools. And this is a system that encourages farming - alt-farming and friend-farming. We had this issue massively after the introduction of PvP-Marks. I’ve had enlightening discussions about this with @HachiRokuand others, and you cannot base a system to prevent alt-farming and the like on players «snitching» on each other. You have to design a system that does not encourage exploitation, and the only way to do that is to make the rewards purchaseable for PvP-marks mostly cosmetic. So that great PvP-players get something they can show off, and less successful PvP-players have something they can work towards, but do not feel they need to acquire right now in order to be even competitive with the elite. I remember from when we had PvP-Marks, that those players who were the most successful PvP-players advocated for this, despite that the system as it was, greatly advantaged themselves. Therefore I would shift the currencies in the admiralty shop towards more rewards costing doubloons and Victory Marks, and fewer costing Combat Medals. Combat Medals should be used to purchase cosmetic upgrades, certain Upgrades that are equivalent to the upgrades that PvE-players and traders can collect, and convenience items. That is to say that with Combat Medals you should be able to buy: Special PvP-flags such as the Second Muscovy Flag in Russia, for 50 Combat Medals, instead of 50 000 doubloons as you do now. All of the upgrades that are roughly equal to other upgrades collected in-game. So for, say, 1-2 CMs you could buy Navy Planking or Navy Gunpowder, rather than trading and PvE-ing to collect Cartagena Tar, Guacata Gunpowder and Treatise on Saltpetre to create the roughly equal upgrades. All Lineship permits that as previously mentioned would should be available for Victory Marks, should also be available, at a very slightly higher price, for Combat Medals. That way captains who do not participate in RvR could still earn the right from the admiralty to sail Lineships through PvP, by exchanging their Combat Medals. So a permit to build a Lineship would cost maybe 3 CMs. Shipnotes should be reintroduced. And some few ships should be redeemable from the admiralty shop in exchange for some amount of Combat Medals (say 5 per note). Just like players were previously able to redeem L’Hermione and Bellona Notes for PvP-marks. This would be another great way to reward active PvP-players with a convenience feature that would allow them to spend a little less time crafting, and sometimes go out immediately again in a redeemed ship when they sunk. Even if they do not own the DLCs. Special Paints could also be added to the Admiralty shop for Combat Medals. On the other hand, all standard and mainstream upgrades that every captain should be able to, and afford to, equip their ship with, should be priced in Doubloons in the admiralty store rather than Combat Medals. That goes for all Bowfigures for instance.

My Suggestion First of all, when there are so many currencies, they should each have a distinct use and purpose. Secondly prices need to be within reasonable bounds, or nobody is going to feel they can afford spending them. When it comes to woods, I plan to address that elsewhere, but the short of it is to get rid of the clan-missions idea altogether. Reals They work pretty well as they are. The currency for trading on the market, and acquired mainly through trading with ports or with players. My only suggestion for change would be to slightly reduce the profits on the best trade-goods. Maybe reduce the base price of any trade goods worth more than 6k reals ( based on lowest buy price) by up to 20%, and increase the base prices of trade goods worth less than 5k accordingly. To reduce the largest profits and distribute profits more evenly. Doubloons I think looting is a mechanic that really need to be fixed, and I think PvP should reward more doubloons. Currently I end up leaving most PvP-battles with little or no doubloons, compared to easy thousands of doubloons if I resort to doing some PvE. You rarely can loot in chaotic and heavy PvP-battles, and even if you are free to do so, chances are low that enemies die in a position where you can get to them. As a currency, doubloons could make a lot of sense as the main reward for interaction. Reals can be accumulated fairly passively by trading, but doubloons are rewarded for interacting with the world of Naval Action. By doing PvE or doing PvP. If only the reward for PvP was higher, or less reliant on the flawed loot mechanic, then doubloons would be a very good mechanic. Victory Marks Victory Marks should be the valuable RvR-reward as they used to be. They should be exchangeable for permits for all RvR-ships. As they used to be. Prices per permit should be severely reduced. It should not be more than 2 Victory marks for a 1st rate permit. And one Victory Mark for 2nd rates. 3rd rates should not require any marks for permits. On the other hand, the ability to hoard Victory Marks through accumulation of Lord Protectorates should be limited. At the moment you can earn up to 5 victory marks per week by having enough Lord Protectorates. You should not be able to earn more than 3 victory Marks per week per character. Combat Medals Combat Medals should revert back to the PvP-mark offspring they were. They should again become a PvP-exclusive reward. However, the rewarding of them should change drastically. When Combat Medals were introduced I thought the name made sense, and my connotation is some collective terms for diploma or medals received by the captain and crew for bravery in battle. Hence it makes no sense to me how we can get so many medals for single actions like sinking a single ship? How much bravery can be shown by a captain in just a single battle. My idea would be to stop rewarding Combat Medals for individual kills. And there should be no Combat Medals rewards for PvE on the War Server. Instead, combat medals should be rewarded through these methods: PvP Hunt-Missions: Where you get from the Admiralty, say, 20 combat medals for accumulating 10 player kills AND/OR assists on 1st-3rd rates (in any ship). 15 combat medals for accumulating 10 player kills AND/OR assists on 4-5th rates - provided that you are in a 3rd rate or lesser rate when doing the kill. 10 combat medals for accumulating 10 kills AND/OR assists on 5-6th rates - where you have to be in a 5th rate or less for it to register. Why should assists count? Because the player who got only an assist could have shown more bravery with his ship than the one who got the kill. Daily PvP-leaderboard The top 15 players on the PvP-leaderboard every day should be rewarded for their prowess and fame by the admiralty with a payment of combat medals. 3 for top 5, 2 for top 10 and 1 for top 15. Weekly events Similarly there should be a weekly events for Lineships, Light ships and Frigates respectively where 10 player kills in a category within a week would give X combat medal, 20 player kills would give 1.5X combat medals, etc. I think Patrol Zone rewards should be given in Doubloons, not Combat Medals, but they would still be a good place to go in order to complete PvP Hunt-Missions and the weekly events.

This suggestion is part of a comprehensive review I have attempted on the Crafting and Economy currently in Naval Action. This part is where I address the Economy and Currencies. You can find my topics on Crafting Woods here, and my suggestion on Labour Hours here. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ I have two main concerns with the current state of the Naval Action Sandbox. Currencies and «rare woods». Given the knowledge that devs are currently working on changes to crafting, they may already be in the process of addressing all or some of my concerns, I still feel the need to give feedback on the current state of things as they are now. I know there are other topics also addressing permit prices as they are, but in this topic I try to look broadly at of all the currencies in the game. First of all, we now have 4 currencies in-game: Reals, Doubloons, Victory Marks, Combat Medals. Reals This currency is pretty straight forward. You earn them from trading, missions/battles (limited), and from selling stuff (upgrades, books, repairs, guns) on the market to other players. You use them to buy/extract crafting resources, and to buy upgrades, books, ships, repairs, cannons on the market from other players. Even to buy other currencies. So this is sort of the base currency. Doubloons You get them from PvE or PvP, and you use them for buying upgrades, books, labour contracts, and in ship-building. You also use them to extract essential woods for ship-building from clan-missions. They are more of a PvE-reward, but you can also get a fair amount of them from PvP - if you are lucky enough to be in a situation to actually loot. Because of their use in ship-building they push some grinding on players interested in participating in end-game content. But because of their use in extracting rare woods - also for shipbuilding - they force egregious amounts of grinding on players looking to participate even moderately in end-game content, i.e. RvR. Victory Marks Victory marks are gotten from participation in (successful) RvR. They are spent on permits for some RvR-ships. But a lot of important RvR-ships, including L’Ocean now require only other currencies and no Victory Marks at all. On the whole, Victory Marks seem to have lost their place. They are not a specialised currency anymore, but just a weird supplement. RvR-players hardly even need them. Even more, some important RvR-ships are now without obtainable permits except through RNG-drops from chests. Combat Medals You get them from PvP - AND from PvE… Even combat medals are no longer a specialised currency. And you spend them on almost everything. From upgrades, to ship permits, to books, to figureheads. Combat medals need to be grinded, and the typical players would need to spend 2-3 evenings in the patrol zone to buy a surprise permit. So some players farm them in patrol zones, others in PvE-missions, and yet again others in front of Mortimer Town or KPR. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Exchanges The only one of these currencies that are somewhat exclusive now is Victory Marks. They are acquired only through participation in RvR and no other way. They used to also be the exclusive currency to buy permits for RvR-ships. Now none of the most commonly used ships in RvR are purchased with Victory Marks. Only Victory, 3rd rate, USS United States and St. Pavel are bought with Victory Marks. In other words, the currency you are rewarded for participation in RvR no longer lets you replace the ships you loose in RvR. Two of the most commonly used ships being L’Ocean and Bucentaure, which cost Combat Medals. Not to mention Santisima which is now a rare drop RNG-permit and cannot be bought for any currency. In the current system, Victory Marks serve no meaningful role. They have become an utterly useless reward for anyone interested in RvR. Combat medals on the other hand need to be farmed. Because they are used for everything, and the prices are ridiculous. But even they have lost their place. Because it is much more effective farming combat medals through PvE than PvP. What seemed to be introduced as the new PvP Marks and a PvP-exclusive reward, has morphed into just a new type of Doubloons. When we had Combat Medals as the PvP-exclusive currency, it made sense that Doubloons was something in-between. Now doubloons is the less valuable sibling of Combat Medals. However, the problem with doubloons is mainly their uses. For woods and in lineship recipes. Leaving alone the fact that this means we seem to be paying twice (why not only use doubloons for the woods, or only in the crafting receipe?), the prices of 50 000 doubloons for 5000 white oak are ludicrous. That’s days and days and days of grinding PvE to build just a couple of ships, or weeks and weeks of PvP. Prices The wood prices are not the only problem. All the prices in the admiralty are heavily inflated. 15 combat medals for a surprise permit. In practical terms that means anyone who wants to craft a surprise has to buy the Hercules DLC and do patrol zones for three days. Or do approximately 2 PvE search and destroy missions. For L’Ocean permits it is 50 Combat Medals, which compared to Surprise permits doesn’t seem that unreasonable, but considering the effort needed to gather that, it is. The current price of woods, even through clan-missions, are such that gathering resources is meaningless. And the prices of permits on top of that means that for most players crafting ships is out of the question. If it wasn’t for all the ships that we had stored up from before these changes were made, and the knowledge that all will be wiped soon anyway, nobody would be sailing anything but DLC-ships now - if they bought those. On the other hand, I know many players that refuse to buy the DLCs now, simply because they believe unless prices for permits are completely overhauled and significantly lessened, the game will not succeed past launch. I do not disagree with them.

Please consider my previous proposal and make the Bahamas regions of Grand Bahama, Abaco, Andros, New Providence and Exuma an exception to the Frontlines mechanic and allow us to take missions for any port in any of those regions, regional capital or not, from Shroud Cay. Otherwise you are neglecting your previous idea that small clans should be able to go grab a small port somewhere for their own. Bahamas is better served being a free-for-all chaotic area where territories are constantly shifting, than being locked off behind someone's frontline. Thanks.

Some of us actually care about this game and make suggestions based on what we think would advantage the game, not just our own side. This post has absolutely nothing to do with Nassau, and nothing I mentioned here would have affected the outcome at Nassau, in fact we would have lost bigger, and with less ships surviving if any of my suggestions were applied. Please stop making insinuations about other peoples' motives when you have no insight whatsoever No need to call names - staff.

Forts now give only 1 point. Something which seems like a bug. They may have given too many points previously, and in some ports worked as an advantage to attackers. So they should maybe be worth less points than before. PBs are already skewed too much in favour of defenders, and points from towers and forts were one way to give attackers a chance to slow down the accumulation of points for defenders and give them time to engage. PBs are currently ended too quickly on mere points accumulation alone. Frequently there is not enough time for a serious engagement or any substantial amount of ships to sink. Therefore I propose to slow down the accumulation of points, especially for defenders. Since all the have to do to win is to prevent attackers from getting 1000 points. I think points accumulation for holding circles should be slowed down somewhat, particularly for defenders - maybe more than for attackers - and on the other hand kills should give more points in PBs than they do now. To increase the importance of engaging and sinking the enemy, rather than kiting. Circles should also be somewhat reduced in size to lessen the chances for small ships to kite on the edges of a circle to prevent points without actually fighting for control of the circle.

Killing forts and towers now give only 1 point in PBs. @Captain Reverse reported this already in the last La Navasse PB, and we noticed it again in Nassau. I find no indication that this was changed deliberately, and it seriously affects the flow of PBs as they are so heavily skewed in favour of defenders already that killing forts was an important way to slow down the defenders from accumulating 1000 points before engagements could even start. Another bug that happened at Nassau btw, was that the TAB screen completely stopped working for everyone (on the Russian side at least).

It looks so beautiful - and deceptively peaceful. Is "Spring 2019" release time or Early Access?

This is a useful tool, but not really what he asked for. You don't have to set up an outpost to find this out. When you are in the port, without an outpost, you can see what production options are available by clicking on the town name in the upper left corner.

This is a common issue. For the first battle all information about the battle instance needs to be loaded, but for subsequent battles a lot of information can be loaded from cache. I know several players with slow computers/slow hard drives (or who always play multiple accounts simultaneously) who will start they game sessions always by attacking an AI cutter fleet just so they can load the battle instance once before going out looking for PvP. I recommend upgrading to an SSD.

Alternative title: Make Labour Contracts Great Again Remember when your whole clan had to come together to share their labour hours in order to build ships? Clan officers had to call players to the capital to use their labour hours to convert raw resources into materials, so that high level crafters could use all their labour ours on producing ships. This could be hugely inconvenient and required logistics, but it was a system that involved great solidarity and collaboration, as well as the buying and selling of labour hours, and the trust it took to hand over resources and hoping that you got them back again as materials for a fee. Since then labour contracts have been implemented in the game, potentially streamlining this process greatly. However labour hours need and availability has also greatly changed and the crafting process greatly simplified, to go a long way towards removing this collaborative effort that crafting especially big ships used to be. The introduction of labour contracts is a great advancement, to streamline the sharing of labour hours. But the removal of collaborative effort is a big negative. I would wish that labour hours for ship-building would again become a bottleneck. That is, for ships bigger than 5th rates. Lineships could even require labour contracts in their crafting recipe, in addition to an almost full labour hours account. In return the collaborative effort of producing and sharing labour contracts should be simplified and emphasised. The recipe for making a labour contract should be simplified to include some limited reals cost (maybe 10k), the 500 labour hours (1-to-1, labour hours discount upgrade in a port should not apply to the production of labour contracts), and tools. Tools should be available for mining, exclusively, but readily, in any captureable, non-capital, port that is upgraded to the highest level under the new town upgrade system that you are planning to introduce. This should also be the only way to produce labour contracts (on war server). There should be no doubloons to labour contract conversion. This would create a market for labour contracts. And it would create collaboration within clans where members would use their labour hours to help produce labour contracts and put them in the clan warehouse for the clan crafters to use. Edit: Alternate method for tools production is production in forge building from iron, coal and oak. Labour contracts item should be made in workshop building rather than Academy.

I actually found a "source" of the flag named the "King's Battle Ensign": It looks like it might be a (modern) commemorative flag, flown here from a digital representation of the Vasa maiden voyage. From the website of the Vasa Museum in Sweden. I still haven't found any indication that this flag is historically accurate in any way though. Here is the Maritime Museum in Sweden flying historical Swedish flags and it is notably missing: I really hope we get the two first flags in-game, even though they are both too early for the time-period of this game. I also hope we will have a Swedish East India Company flag, just like we have East India Company flags for other nations. Same for Danish trading companies that didn't operate in the Caribbean. EDIT: Also a painting hanging at the Vasa Museum. Though it's a little dark at the stern is flying the flag with symbols from the coat of arms, but without the Gustav Vasa CoA detail in the middle.

As stated above, hostility requirements are still using the old system of 1st, 4th (and 6th) rate ports (almost the only thing stated above that wasn't wrong). Wherein only shallow ports are 6th rate, and all regional capitals are 1st rate (except shallows). Most non-regional-capitals are 4th rate, but there are exceptions such as Tiburon, Jacmel, Puerto Real, Cabo de la Vela, etc. which are not regional capitals, yet have 1st rate AI. You can check on the online map https://na-map.netlify.com/ to see what status a port has before attacking it. The old system was that 1st rate AI meant that you had to do 4 missions where 10 AI Victorys would spawn on the opposite side. 4th rate ports meant you had to do 4 missions with 10 Agamemnon each spawning on the opposite side. When the system changed to all hostility missions spawning the same rates as you would bring this model was translated into total BR killed to flip a port. For 1st rate ports this means: 4x10 Victory (used to be 800 BR) meaning 40x800BR So for 1st rate ports you need to sink 32 000 BR. For 4th rate ports this means: 4x10 Agamemnons (used to be 400 BR) meaning 40x400BR So for 4th rate porst you need to sink 16 000 BR. If you go to do hostility in groups of 10 1st rates, which is the most effective way typically, then for 4th rate ports you need to sink 20 AI 1st rates (2 missions) and for 1st rate ports you need to sink 40 AI 1st rates. In both cases it will be a little less given that the missions spawn a higher number of Santi/Oceans compared to Victory. This is not true. Current BR of ports is unrelated to whether they are 4t rate or 1st rate AI grinds. It has to do with weather they are regional capitals or not, plus a few ports that were made 1st rate grinds when the ratings were first introduced, even though some of them are now very low BR. Yes. We do. It is easily calculated. No. No ports require killing more than 40 Victory (32k BR) for fully grinding them (unless you loose ships/get boarded by AI).

My suggestion: Add Rättvisan, L'Hermione and Le Requin ship-notes to Tutorial rewards, alongside the Hercules and Rattlesnake Ship-notes. My reasons: The first, simple reason is advertisement. Allowing players to try the DLC-ships, will encourage people to purchase them. You get a Hercules note, you like sailing the ship - when you loose it you will likely want to buy the DLC to get to sail it more. I once sank a Swede who was hunting in a Le Requin. He was still sailing the redeemable Le Requin that we got for testing when the ship was first added to the game. And when he sank he said that he would now buy the DLC. The second reason needs some preface. I am not going to relitigate the decision to Rättvisan as a DLC-ship to the game. I have grown to accept it and believe that if crafting is made simpler as you seem to intend, it will all work out fine. My remaining concern is the timing of adding 2 more DLCs to the game before release. Because it could look a bit «intimidating» to potential buyers with a game that already has so many DLCs upon release. There are gamers like me, who when buying a new game typically buys all the available DLC at the same time, and considers this into the cost of the game (most typically for strategy-games, because I don’t want to start playing a game with a «limited» experience only to then progressively expand it with DLC later on). But other gamers will be buying just the game alone at first, to play it and then postpone the decision of buying DLCs till they have decided how they feel about the game. For these players, all ships being available in-game without DLCs, although limited to one-time use when you don’t have the DLC might help make the decision to buy a little easier. Then there is the issue of what the game will look like immediately after release. After release, veteran players will quickly be sailing DLC-ships. First Hercules and Requin, then L’Hermione and within 3 days the first players will have reached a rank where they can sail the Rättvisan. At this point, the division between veteran players, who already have the DLCs, and new players who are just trying out the game, is going to manifest very clearly. But if all new players have to do, to be able to progress through the ranks and ships, the same way as veteran players, is complete the final exam to get these ship-notes, then that will constitute an achievable path for them to follow to get the same progress as veteran players have. Of course, to get unlimited access to these DLC-ships they will have to buy the DLCs like others have before them, but by this time when they need to make this decision, they have already been able to enjoy the game for tens, if not hundreds, of hours. This could make all the difference. And importantly, the game will also be at a point where people are getting their crafting up, and the choice will no longer be whether to have DLC-ships or fall behind, but whether to rely entirely on crafted ships, or to supplement with DLC-ships for time-saving purposes.

So this idea is mainly a thought experiment. But there is a real underlying issue. That of players starting with 0 reals, and that of players going broke. My first impulse about this is this: Wouldn’t the admiralty of any navy ensure that newly commissioned captains (i.e fresh players/characters) would have at least some starting capital (through loans or a starting salary) to hire crew and provisions? So my idea is that instead of all new characters created (also existing characters after a wipe/release) starting with 0 reals, they would all start with, say, 10 000 reals. That is not a lot of money, but it is something to buy guns, repairs and hire crew, maybe even buy a sloop other than the basic cutter. Expanding on this, there could be simple insurance against going completely broke (I know about cargo delivery missions, but even they require that you have access to a ship with cargo capacity). Every server maintenance, captains with less than 10k reals in their money chest would be credited with up to 10 000 reals. These sums are small and far from economy breaking, yet enough for a startup captain or someone who mistakenly burned through all their cash on a failed venture. However, for the purposes of slightly curbing economic inflation, and also preventing speculation in emptying out the money chest of someone’s alts in order to «earn» 10k reals per account per day, I would suggest that conversely a «wealth tax» was applied. This would, for all accounts that upon server maintenance possessed more than 2,5 million reals in their money chest, they would be taxed 50 000 reals. This is not a lot for an active trader, but would slightly limit hoarding of reals. Add a rule that after 10 days of inactivity (not logging in), the wealth tax stops applying, to avoid players going on vacation for 1 month finding their fortune halved upon their return.

7 crafting ranks is because there are 1st-7th rates. Level 1 you can craft 7th rates, lvl 2 6th rates, ..., lvl 7 1st rates.

The (currently) 10 ranks for combat XP are named after historical ranks. Now that we are down to only 7 ranks for crafting, why don’t we add names for crafting ranks too? Instead of having only numbers 1-7. They could be (just a quickly assembled suggestion) something like: Carpenter Master Carpenter Assistant Shipwright Master Shipwright Assistant Builder Master Builder (Danish Rank: Konstruktør) Naval Architect (Danish rank: Fabrikmester) Ranks don’t have to be unique for each nation like combat ranks are. It’s just that Denmark had a notedly somewhat unique job title for their main naval architect compared to other nations’ navies.

Then recruit the new players in Brit chat into your clan so you can teach them what to do and where to go to be moderately safe. REDS is a nation unto its own. Other Russian clans, BF, RUS, NN, etc are our allies. Lol. Funny how perspective change (and blinders go on) based on where in the boat you sit. Russia got, what, one single clan that moved to our nation in the last 6 months or so, a clan that was leaving their previous nation regardless, and who (parts of) REDS have had a close relationship and friendship with since a year before Russia was even added to the game. Meanwhile, how many different clans joined Brits since HAVOC started winning PBs for them? I could start counting, but I want to finish this post today. Russia has recruited almost exclusively players and clans that we have played with before and wanted to play with again. How many of the new British clans since last September had a relationship beforehand? ------------ Back on topic: I wouldn't mind if there was a reinfocement zone of some sort near national capitals. But brits have survived in the past without Capital Area protection and will survive again if they have clans that are willing to recruit players and teach them how to survive in the harsh world that lies outside of their comfy and uncaptureable ports. Russia is "Hard" because there you have to build everything from scratch yourself. You have to work together, regardless of differences and language barriers. Britain is easy because a small empire is already there at the start, and expansion is easy in any direction. Just because Russians have learned to see past our own clans and collaborate, doesn't make anything easy. Only possible. ----------- You wish. No thanks. If clans had the view of new players as potential assets rather than liabilities, like clans in nations with less easy recruitment does, then maybe the problem would be less.

Why do we not have the "King's Colours" in the game as a flag for the Brits? I guess it may not have been flown from the stern of a ship in plain form, but there are other flags in the DLC that were not used at sea (French infantry-flag), and even a completely a-historical flag (Swedish flag "King's Battle Ensign"). And the flag was flown on ships, even if possibly not from the stern: Also based on this picture, if we want more diversity in flags, how about making another version of this: Only with the Saint George's Cross significantly larger? On the above painting it looks like the St George's Cross is about 1/4th of the flag. On the topic of Swedish flags though: While I hate the King's Battle Ensign abomination of a flag (just to make it slightly less horrible, could you consider even to rework it just to remove the Coat of Arms of King Gustav Vasa from the middle of it?), I acknowledge the need for more Swedish flags. I would advocate for more diverse flags however, and history provides some good flags to pick from. I've mentioned them before, but I would reiterate: The flag on the stern of the closest ship in the picture above. Also found here: and here: It is also similar to the current and historical (probably same origin) flag of Reval (Tallin), which during a (small) part of the historical period of this game was Swedish: An historical representation: Then there's the Riga flag, another Swedish possession in this time-period. There are some slightly differing representations of this flag, but all with the keys from the CoA of Riga on a background made by the Swedish flag: Then there's the Strahlsund flag: The town was Swedish inside the period of this game. So the flag is not out of question, and differs greatly from the other Swedish flags in the game. Lastly there's another version of the all blue, three-tongued flag: The Armed Fleet Command's Flag

Museum guide walks up to this display at the Naval Action History Museum: -And here we see a...