maturin

Allow safe log off after 10 minutes of a Leave timer if you forfeit your fleet, loot and rewards. Then it doesn't benefit both sides. Invisibility is not a very good feature. Log off was an important safety valve.

Whatever the precise obstacle is, importing the OW seafloor into instances would not be worth the developer resources. The shallows in the OW aren't large or detailed enough to be that relevant, due to scale issues.

Those games have FTL drives, not sails. I think most of the pro-realism OW PvP crowd is in agreement that the problem was already mostly solved. Short timers and the option to log off after a battle (this is already a harsh tax for survival). 'Gank' is historical, and when it is historical it is fair. We just don't want time compression videogame cheese to make ganking even MORE common and easy than it was in reality.

Re-gank is a universal problem. The second tag (which requires quantum Spacetime manipulation to even take place) will always be more successful than the first.

Exactly. All this talk of some bright shining line between 'enemy' and 'friendly' waters is BS salesmanship that has very little to do with the real OW, nor realism either. I'm worried about running into a gankfleet with a failboat tackler midway between Cuba and Yucatan where no help is coming regardless of timers, and being tagged seventeen times in a row until they finally get lucky. I understand the rationale for not letting whole fleets hide in the End screen, but we need something to protect solo players. How's this for a compromise? Players should be able to safely log off after a battle, but only if they forfeit all battle rewards (including seized cargo) and fleet ships. This will protect the ganked but not the gankers.

It's long been planned for ships to close their gunports when they are low in the water from flooding, so this should be possible on the OW as well. Although generally only the lower batteries of two-deckers should be closed while traveling.

Well with 9 crew she's supposed to be safe to operate. With less crew things just get slower and slower, which means you take a risk or carry sail very conservatively in changeable conditions.

Don't be an arse. #6 has been needed for a long time now, and almost got included.

Speaking of Trafalgar, a lot of Spanish ships carried up to 50% of their complement with musket-wielding line infantry. Of course, this was an act of desperation, not a tactical decision. I rather doubt real marines were any more useful in boarding combat than your average jack tar . There's nothing useful about bayonets aboard ship. Grab an axe and get stuck in. Marines specialized in musketry, but nothing stopped common seamen from doing the same. 17th Century buccaneers were avid snipers.

Maybe we should bring back the crew cost, but for marines only.

Wow, the Trade button is gone? Seriously?

All port battles are already amphibious assaults, as forts never surrendered to ships. Just use your imagination. Havana was doomed because the Spanish fleet couldn't prevent a landing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Havana_(1762)

Not sure what you're talking about. Many ports in the Caribbean had no harbor, especially in the Antilles. Ships could never dock there, but needed to anchor offshore and lighter all their goods and passengers back and forth. Typically surf boats paddled through terrifying breakers by specialist slaves and freedmen. Observers concluded that they didn't fear death, for racial reasons. Even when islands did have semi-sheltered harbors, the roadstead would often become unsafe during certain wind and swell directions, forcing ships to make for open water until the weather shifted.

What about teleporting to a PB?

Strictly speaking, full crew on a trader should also reduce cargo capacity. 50% of max is usually more appropriate. They sent Dampier around the world in a 1680s 5th Rate with only 50 men and twenty months of provisions. With full naval complement he would have carried six months provisions.

We should be allowed to log off safely in a battle.

I also like the changes overall, just not the austerity. I personally have not seen any opportunities for PvP in the Windward Passage with the current player numbers.

Maybe things are alright on the income side. But in my mind, there are only two satisfying ways of acquiring vessels. Seizing them or building them yourself. You either pay the iron price, or you have the pride of a craftsman. If you don't craft, you either buy from the NPCs or from a player. Both options really stink, most of the time. Getting anyone to cooperate on anything economically has always been a PITA in my experience, unless you're in a clan. Even back when it was supposedly a buyer's market.

Exactly. The new player who has a 51% win rate in PvP is some sort of wunderkind. But even so, capturing an enemy is more difficult than sinking him, so even the most skilled newbie is still going to find himself scrambling. NPC ship capture is an essential way for players to opt-out of systems they dislike. Does the loss mechanic turn you off from PvP (now with added gank)? You can always capture an NPC ship to protect yourself from loss. Do you hate clicking out resources in econ? Capture an NPC ship to opt-out of econ. Now we're all doomed to play the way 'they' decide we should. Piracy is banned but the black flag isn't. No such thing as carefree buccaneering with high-risk and instant gratification with no rewards. Instead, everything needs to be a careful grind and progression. For the austerity-mad devs who worry more about inflation than players actually having fun, we have options: Only one captured NPC ship at a time No capturing NPC 4th Rates and up (except pirates) Refit/permit cost to permanently capture an NPC ship (no repairing hull or assigning crew until its made official) Seriously, if there's one thing that drives me nuts, it's ideas that are bad both for historical accuracy AND gameplay.

Note that the stern was smashed in by a paddle steamer. A fixer-upper.

Absolutely, why not. Although you should always be able to take over a ship if your own is too damaged and needs to be abandoned.

I think things have gone totally off the rails. Capturing ships is core gameplay. We still don't have a game where 100% PvP is feasible for most players, and the PvE server is a waste of time. This is an Age of Sail game. Pirates capture ships. Privateers capture ships. Naval captains capture ships. Any ship. But none of them manage f***ing sugar plantations or lovingly paint garden gnomes to sell at auction. Capturing ships is more important than economy. There, I said it.

In the current OW build, storm battles would be far less common than 1 in 20. And they required skill, not luck. But we've got the message that they cost too much money to run the additional instances on the server. And when it comes to the purse strings, testers aren't qualified to offer an opinion.

Hear him.

It's austerity, pal. Due to an engine limitation in the new version of Unity, the devs actually have to pay the wholesale market value of all the goods that are in the game. Global iron prices just rebounded (http://markets.businessinsider.com/commodities/iron-ore-price), and Gamelabs is a small studio, so that's why we don't have anything but miserly amounts of loot in the game anymore. Seriously, though. Imagine how disappointed Somali pirates would be to hijack a supertanker and find only 3 gallons of oil on board.