Christendom

so defend it? I fail to see the problem.

Also the front lines system prevented some nations from attacking nassau. As the front lines system will prevent nations from taking some of these lesser ports that you're talking about. AI raiders will need to adhere to the front lines system for this to be effective. Losing a random port in the gulf will mean nothing if no one can actually take it. This is assuming AI will ignore front lines of course. To use the AI battle at Santanillas for example. Why would sweden bother? No one else could pull the port. https://gyazo.com/8fc5d84661c0e3a37554a9967ed8aa6a Personally I think a smarter soluation would be to attack ports haven't changed hands in a long time. Would allow dead/inactive clans to drop ports.

Hi @admin would you mind expanding on the reasons for bringing back AI port battles? I believe you've said here community decision and popularity will influence future patch changes. I think the opinion of the community on AI PBs on the War server is an overwhelming "F*CK NO". So why are they back?

You able to do the nation distribution numbers again?

Sweden yes. Swedes also lost their 55pt port, though how much that matters right now I'm not sure. France is basically being allowed to craft because Russia didn't feel like taking Bridgetown. The same could be said by a few nations I think. The fact that weeks of work on a port can be lost in a couple of days is not a very good motivator to want to improve said port. The clan that owns the port can straight up decide to remove a clan from the list regardless of what that clans contributions might have been. The whole system overall is just poorly designed and not ideal for sustained and repeat gameplay. A system like hammy proposes above where each clan builds up in capital ports and creates some sort of community dockyard that their friends list can access is I think the better approach. Regular nations build up in the capital but have to haul in woods from player owned ports. Impossible nations build up player owned ports and the special woods....but have to run the risk of losing those investments. Seems like a happy balance. Overall the type of environment this game SHOULD create is maximizing the amount of battle content each player can experience. Easier to produce ships with easier to produce mods so one can get back into the action quickly OR like we had in the old days ship durabilities on harder to produce ships and mods.

Port bonuses was a mistake. Fine Woods 2.0 and 3.0 was another mistake. These new enhanced port bonuse are perhaps the biggest mistake of them all. The fact that a new player who is working on crafting and building ships can only craft basic non-port bonus ships in a capital port amazes me. For that player to craft anything on par or better than what he could redeem with a DLC he/she would need to join a clan or get on a friendslist. This is a mindbogglingly poor decision and probably one of the reasons why new player retention is abysmal. All apsects of crafting are tied to RVR in this game and yet the price of admission is so high to enter RVR that one needs to be in a zerg to do it. The dwindling player population is a result of the sheer amount of time needed prep the logistics of RVR is crazy and the winner take all design of the game also means that a clan/nation can lose weeks of work in the span of a day or 2. The goal of RVR should be to take ports. Not remove a nation's ability to compete in port battles entirely Being in an "imposible" nation means nothing now if all the other ones are required to craft and build up player owned ports too. Just seems absurd. Once we saw what the new changes were going to be a couple weeks ago I think we just collectively as a clan said screw it. NA is fun, but the juice just ain't worth the squeeze right now.

ah the old Russia abuses everything line huh.... (insert dead horse pic). A few of those alts from the "other side" that showed up in HAVOC/Swede battles occasionally must have been figments of my imagination I guess. Definitely. Only the Russians do such naughty things. In a game that has 6 or 7 nations too many and a population substantially less than 1000 players at peak it's bound to happen given the necessity of built up crafting ports and the ease at taking them. As long as they don't manipulate hostility or kill alts.....no harm no foul. At least I'm open about my other accounts.

I was in 3 or 4 Dane PBs vs RHB. Not a Kemo/REBEL in sight. The RHB players confirmed as much due to "internal struggles" aka you calling that clan a bunch of traitors. Not to mention a multi flip where REBEL failed to show up...again. Talk shit...get hit. While I agree about clans holding others hostage with the current stupid in-game mechanics your situation is of your own making. Enjoy!

Personally I dislike the entire clan > nation themed crafting and port ownership type of model the game uses. We need either a full clan based system (no nations) or a complete nation oriented one. Not this hybrid of both where it seems we get all the downsides and none of the upsides. The doubling down on crafting ports in the most recent patch means there won't be a resolution for you in the near future. Also the notion of pirates owning crafting ports and being involved in RVR seems bonkers to me....but that's a different discussion that's lonnnnnng overdue I think. However it's very much well known how disliked you are in pirate nation for a littany of reasons and you consistently fail to show up to RHB's port battles (owner of baracoa) or even regular defensive port battles. Can you blame them? They even hate you so much in nation that there was a bit of tomfoolery with personal info and such, which I think you remember. It would appear that you have a few options. - Make nice and play ball - Crafting alts - Leave and fight RHB from another nation. (as an ex-pirate this option is rather satisfying) Or craft in Nuevitas where you are still on the list even if we don't like you all that much.

A good opportunity to make pirates great again. Allow them to attack and remain enemies with everyone (including other pirates IMO) and then remove their ability to RVR and give them a couple of static ports that cannot be lost. A true reaving PVP nation as they should have always been.

so I mean I kinda get where this is coming from. Most MMORPGS have some form of reputation system that is a hard check on no limits PVP. I feel like this system would work if we had an alliance system in place that was only tied to RVR with Allies, Neutrals and Enemies. Allies would be hard coded with an RVR alliance, but OW PVP still exists with consequences. Neutrals would be all other nations that are not declared enemy. Sinking them also has consquences. Enemies are fair game - nation x and nation y are allied - player from nation x sinks players from nation y conistently and lowers his reputation. - player can no longer enter nation y's ports, OW battles OR port battles. And can't purchase goods from nation y players in the shop. If player continues to sink allied nations ships and traders his reputation gets removed and is automatically made into a pirate. Insert the same for Neutral (non declared enemies) traders. Players who sink them can, but will lose reputation and the ability to things in free towns like repairs, re-crew and buying from the shop. Eventually turning pirate once his reputation is as low as it can be. Basically if you want to be a reaver and sink everything, you can do that. But the game has checks in place so you can't have your cake and eat it too ------- Personally all of the above would be a game I'd very much like to play. The karma system seems like a watered down version of a real reputation system that will ultimate stifle PVP in a game that historically has population issues.

The ship vanishing but the fire remaining for a second is a nice touch.....

yet it created a need for additional crafters in the clan rather than alts + labor contracts. Also helped new players earn cash (that's how I started out) and allowed them to learn the ropes with entry level crafting.

I think you're missing the mark here. This is a conquest game with a winner take all mindset (old dogs like us call this full loot MMO) and has been designed to give nations an edge over others. A crafting system is necessary to this style of game. Personally I've disliked all of the crafting systems post fine woods patch. I thought that blend of modest difficulty, logistics and various bonuses for certain regions was the peak of NA crafting. The only downside was durabilities on most of the ships. Bringing back that system + removing duras would be a major success IMO. The flaw in the current system, which is why I support removing doubs, is that ships (and even more so with seasoned ships) are simply not accessible to the smaller clan/solo players with relative ease. We currently have a blend of expensive ships, cannons and mods and NO durabilities. We need either expensive ships + duras or simply cheaper ships. Having seen what goes on behind the scenes in the RVR juggernaught that is Russia, it's not all roses and daisies. Anolytic and company put in many hours on multiple characters to get things done. To compete you need to treat the game like a job, which I don't think is ideal for long term viability.

https://gyazo.com/232a36d5a742db16bc14a9dec4793796

who are you again?

This is a step in the right direction at least. Now let's get rid of permits and make shipcrafting dependent on various trade goods around the map as it was when the L'Ocean was first introduced (remember it needed french wine). Make trading great (necessary) again.

1250 wooden chests...... Cost of investments was already too high relative to the risk and ease of being able to lose ports (Take a look at how many times SdC changed hands). Now with wooden chests added into the mix the costs are astronomical and it appears flipping ports will get even easier. Also the trinc? Talk about underwhelming. At least giving us the ellusive Diana would have been appropriate I think.

Yea I'm with rediii on this one......sounds like a poor replacement for the amount of fights screening used to generate.

Winner take all system does exactly what it's supposed to do. It makes losing not fun and losing ones investments, which take a considerable amount of time and effort to build up is even less fun. Sure everyone plays games for the "mah immersion" and the challenge, but ultimately we play them to have fun. This game makes losing very difficult to bounce back from and it stops being enjoyable and starts becoming a full time job....which for most of us is not fun. Games that manage to check all the boxes...fun, rewarding, challenging and difficult.....keeps putting fans in the seats over and over. NA is missing a few of those boxes and we keep seeing the playerbase fluctuate as a result.

Winning the war > giving up after 3 days. BSTD owns San Juan. It would appear that someone new owns SD. PS - By joining GB....aren't you now a vassal of Russia too? At least Massimo was a vassal before it was cool 🙂

Did Sweden really earn that port though? Was there a great PB for it?

so the 50+ brits who showed up at Belize didn't care about losing yet another crafting hub? Or the Spanish trying to take the port really didn't care either? hmmm news to me. I know that I cared so little about the Swedes taking ports in the gulf that I showed up to screen every single time.... Does it really matter either way? The crux of my argument is that screening creates content. Without that content the game stagnates, as it currently is doing. Unless Admin has some very special ideas cooked up for this new variation of the flag pulling, I'll remain a bit skeptical given how some of the past improvements turned out.

I was outside Baracoa on my pirate account when Russia took it the last time. Pirates had at least 2 full screening fleets + a couple other clans that didn't join the big groups + a AI Patrol fleet + some swedes screening. Numbers were even. End result was...Pirates lost the PB anyway. Take all that away and you'll still lose port battles......but the content for the 60+ OTHER players that show up, won't exist. Now you'll lose them to 15 on 15 while the rest of us watch on twitch. Perhaps that's the whole point of this anyway. Screening is the great equalizer to elite port battle fleets. The Ram Dinarks and Reverse's of the game need another group of players to get them into port battles to win them. The rando Russian, Pirate or Brit that used to help out in screening and is trying to learn the ropes.....has no purpose. This is critical I think to the games survival because as we've seen with the slow down in the Russia vs Sweden and now GB vs Spain wars.....no port battles = no screening and the game pop tanks. Some of my more enjoyable fights have been 1st rate screening battles outside carta before DLC ships and Capturable 1st rates made screening a joke and slaughter fest and I'd rather see those change instead of just tossing out screening completely.

Screening has been one of the most...if not the most consistent source of content creation in the game thus far. One could also say that the current downward trend in game pop is directly related to the lack of screening opportunities motivating players to log on. While we don’t really know what the proposed flag system will end up looking like, I’m one of the guys who remember the old system and wasn’t too sad to see it go. The introduction of the hostility system and 24/48 hr PB was a big plus for those who wanted to plan content ahead and not sit around in port all night every night. If you think this will help against the Russia Zerg.... I have a feeling it will end up benefiting Russia in the end. Ultimately the flaws in screening as content were DLC ships, capturable 1st rate nukes and a rather unclear definition of what’s griefing and what isn’t.