Obliterati

I would like to preface this with the fact that i like the ship knowledge idea. It allows players to modify their ships as they see fit and buff it in one direction or another. I'll break down some of the issues with the grind. Which is entirely to much. Part of the problem is that only battle experience is allocated. I encourage the Devs to spend a few hours determining the average battle experience yield and time it takes per mission. Then get a rough idea of how many hours it takes to unlock a full ship to 5 knowledge slots. A small ship will take 3-5 hours to unlock. While i first rate literally takes 60-70+ in game hours of constant grinding. Which is NOT fun. 7th and 6th rates are perfectly fine where they are. The typical ship takes 3-5k xp to max out. Which is not terrible even though it will take 3-5 hours to do. The reason is because the first 3 slots are unlocked within 30 minutes to an hour. 5th rates are much more difficult but still not completely broken. I believe the main problem is that the ships the 5th rates typically shoot yield about the same amount of experience that the 6th rates receive. Making the grind significantly longer. Especially when it takes 5 times as much experience as the largest 6th rates. The 5th rates therefore suffer from a grinding issue where leveling one ship to max takes longer than it takes to get from 350 to 650 crew. The primary reason for this is because only battle experience is allocated. You also have to consider the fact that a SINGLE ship takes that long. There are a lot of 5th rates that are used effectively for PVP. Without ship knowledge and only a single durability. People are unlikely to risk those ships. 4th rates are in a mission sweet spot. Technically they can earn significantly more battle experience per mission than the 5th rates. Since they sink much larger ships. However, the same problem occurs as the 5th rates the grind is significantly longer than it takes to crew up to the next level. 3rd rates don't even have a roll in the game. Why would you spend 30-40 hours in game hard core grinding to level up the ship knowledge slots? Simply put they aren't worth the time when a 2nd rate is faster, does more damage and tanks better. 2nd rates have a roll in the game but only 1 is worth sailing when you stack them up against each other. Even it takes upwards of 40 hours of constant grinding not counting sailing time to complete. 1st rates several of these ships are worth sailing however, i've yet to find even a single person with more than 2 slots unlocked. The reason is because its entirely to slow. People look at the time it requires and say hello kitty that. They don't even attempt to try. Seriously the total grinding time not counting sailing time to the mission is over 70 hours. So to recap. The larger ships all take entirely to long. The max experience requirements are way to high. In fact the 4th to 1st rates should likely be halved. With all experience counting. That way even if you don't do as well as one player and get all the kills. You can still level at a decent rate with the mission experience. Crafting on the other hand needs a serious pass again. Specifically. Why is the only way to gain experience with crafting building ships? seriously?

Since nations cannot take ports from other nations. This concept no longer works. Which is my entire point about nations are redundant with this conquest proposal.

What is the point of nations under this new system? realistically speaking it doesn't matter at all. Having nation specific rules just creates advantages or disadvantages that shouldn't exist.

Inversely this is a terrible idea. Because then it benefits the attacker way more than it does the defender. Specifically it will now be the norm to generate lots of fake PBs with no repercussions to the Attacker. This is a truely dumb system if this is the case. I'll be happy to use superior numbers to generate 3 PBs or superior funds to instantly warbomb. Then crush the enemy in a port they cannot show up for.

The victory battle point was not awarded to the British yesterday for the Cartegena defense. Also the -2 was not taken away from the dutch for losing the Port Battle.

Typically you need a minimum of 3 to max out a ship in a particular way. Additionally the last 2 equate to about 10-15% extra damage output or extra insurance for things like boarding.

The grinding for high rated ships takes entirely to long. Specifically it takes as more time to get 5 ship knowledge slots on a single first rate than it does to get max crew rank. When you consider the fact that all XP counts towards player rank while only battle xp counts for ship knowledge. Here is one example of a bucentaure 2nd rate just to get it to 4 ship knowledge slots. Assumption: you get 1500 battle xp per mission on average. Which is not likely for most people. Assumption: Average time per fleet mission 25 minutes. Xp required for 4th ship knowledge slot on a buc. 88,350 88,350 divided by 1500 = 58.9 missions x 25 minute= 1472.5 minutes divided by 60 = 24.5 hours of constant grinding, not counting sailing time or finding a partner. Just to get the 4th ship knowledge slot. Please consider reducing this time sink by at least half. After grinding 3 ships, Buc, Victory and Locean up multiple slots. I feel like nothing has been achieved and the game is getting incredibly repetitive. Especially when solo missions are even worse because you get 1 ship worth 700 xp at best. Even if you kill it in under 10 minutes. It still takes longer to level.

You get killed using the tactics you yourself use. then cry about quitting... AAA+ would cry again.

Green on green is allowed if both captains agree. Period. Technically lighting each other on fire to prevent capture is called scuttling the ship. This is a legitimate tactic.

All ships should be pulled in. Otherwise they'll fill non-hauling pve ships with low weight high value items. Cartegena tar for example. AI helpers are basically pointless anyway. Though it will give more value to the fleet perks. Which is good in my opinion.

And one hell of a lot more expensive Nice job pirates!

Honestly there would have been a lot more US sinks except the decision was made, correctly, to chase the victory. Leaving a significant number of US ships time to disengage and repair. Resulting in the eventual overpowering of the Dutch. Though when you consider time and effort 3rd rates are definitely disposable when compared to a victory. As a result its more of a win win. Most of the US players won the XP/gold system. The Dutch won the material victory.

If you were paying that before your an idiot. Oak logs cost 35g on average. However the sell prices are easy 75g+ at the right port, and if you look closely there is almost always a consumption port within a 15 minute trip. Even though i did exaggerate a bit. I would expect the median oak log price to be 100-120g. Anything less and it would be sold to a NPC port as a consumption trade good. Additionally producing 1500 a day is dumb as hell. Unless you have intentions of it being a purely money making opportunity. In which case more power to you. However, the reason this wont happen in the long term, if the player is smart, is because he wont be able to get high level ships if he doesn't partner with a ship builder. Because ships cost so many gross labor hours to produce. It effectively means gold is effectively useless. The real currency of this game is labor hours. Spending them in this fashion isn't smart. The only possible exception to this would be from a high population nation. Which in theory has enough people producing goods to keep a market going. Ala bet at a much more expensive rate. Though i can tell you right now on pvp2. The only nation this might be true for is the US.

I can guarantee if you don't have almost all ships of the line you wont be winning a fully contested PB in the very near future. Which is going to make the population imbalance between nations even more relevant. You also ignored my point about minimum buy prices of the new economy. Unless the NPC ports STOP consuming materials at the same rate they stop producing materials (meaning no NPC trade). The player driven materials market will have a minimum buy price set above the max buy price for every single item. I don't look forward to paying 200-300g for one Oak log.

I'm starting to think the Devs lack anyone who can do basic Math. Which is partly why we keep seeing a seesaw with the balancing. One minute it is OP and the next it is like we're getting shafted. The simple truth is the economy is a purely mathematical equation. Lets take the Victory for example. Under the NPC created market it cost just shy of 8k labor (multiple people + 2 real world days) hours to create. For a single durability ship. With the new system you can add an easy additional 3k labor to it for resource farming. Which doesn't include real-world time for travel and shipping. So to put this in perspective you basically need 5 people to dedicate all of their time and effort to a single ship builder. Which in turn allows them to MAYBE get 1 ship a week each. in exchange for no profit and only cost.This assumes of course that you can keep all 5 people playing every day. Which in turn doesn't leave much room for pvp losses or a healthy high volume market. Open world market selling will be outrageously overpriced, because of how the ports consume items. Since they buy at a higher price creating an effective minimum buy price at over the max sell price of an NPC consuming port. Otherwise you'll never keep a port stocked because people would buy up the material and sell it at an NPC consuming port. Which in turn destroys the material. Creating an infinite shortage and inflation driven economy. This will effectively eliminate a crafting teams ability to gather additional resources on the side to compensate for production losses. Certainly not at a viable market rate.