Garbad

Yes. I also posted a bit here a year or so ago. We haven't picked a nation or server yet. Looking for a good competitive match up.

A few friends and I want to give this game a look again. Can anyone suggest some good resources for beginners, including perhaps a good pvp clan/discord?

I think I'm ready to sink some time into this game, finally. If this game is anything like POTBS, I'll spend most of my time solo pvping while running a massive slave plantation on the side to fence my spoils. Any suggestions as I get started? Is there a preferred underdog pvp faction yet? Or a good community TS for pvp oriented people? Thanks.

The whole point is group play, to encourage people to form guilds and work as a faction for larger goals. Ideas might be: - Patrol a pvp zone for 15 minutes - Port X is low on Iron, ship in 5000 tons (more than one hauler) through a pvp zone, will need escorts to be safe. - Prepare to assault port X: blockade port for 30 minutes, intercept hostile convoy Y, or so on. - Attack Clan/faction X and fight a battle against them (winning not required, just trying) Or so on.

GW2 has a system where players form guilds for various purposes, like most games. GW2 guilds get reputation from players playing the game or just logging in each day, plus if a guild gets X players logged in at the same time it enables a guild mission that the players can complete together for more reputation and other rewards. This encourages players to log in regularly and play together, which in turn leads to more activity and more focus as a group. This is better gameplay for all. I think this game would benefit from a similar system. For example: - Factions get reputation for logging in, completing missions, killing players, etc. This reputation can be spent on things like lowering transaction costs (on the AH), unique skins, and so on. - Clans get reputation for activity that they can spend both on their faction and also on just the clan. - A daily mission or assignment that encourages them to sail together as a fleet, ideally in a pvp zone. The basic gist of the idea is to have a 1) daily system that 2) is based on faction and guilds that 3) encourages people to play as a group for the benefit of the group. This will build community and get organized factions rolling quickly, which in turn will make a better game.

Arty. It should be removed from the game. EDIT: Sorry, wrong game.

I want to participate and am interested, but there are only so many hours in a day. My gaming time is already split among several interests and its hard to get motivated to play a game that's not close to finished, will still get wiped, and so on. That's why I'm hoping to hear news and plans and updates so I can jump in sometime in the near future.

Hello all, I've been following this game for some time but haven't actually put much game time in. The UI has been really difficult to use and I just gave up for a game still so early in development. But I am very interested. Can anyone give me a quick summary of what's going on? I'd like to hear news and plans and updates so I can jump back in when its time. Thanks.

Good suggestion, but the problem with balancing based on cost is that sooner or later everyone will become rich, and thus, use the best gear.

Obviously we all want both. But if a decision has to be made, where do you stand?

Imagine a situation -- a 44 gun heavy frigate against a 32 gun smallish frigate. The 44 gun ship hits harder, hits further, takes far more punishment...and in reality, handles almost exactly as well. With two equally skilled captains, the 44 gun frig wins every time. This is exactly in line with reality -- the 32 gun ship is simply outclassed, to the point where it probably doesn't even matter how well he sails -- he will always lose. Right now, as I see it, NA is firmly in the historical camp. The heavier ship will always win. It may well be this is what people prefer, but I think its worth discussing. What about gameplay? Its bad gameplay if a supership always wins, even if they are much less skilled. Why would anyone sail anything OTHER than the most OP ships? It also would make the game more boring. Different games handle this in different ways. For example WOT magnifies the difference between old/weak medium tanks and more modern ones and created a tier system. But this still makes it so a T-34-85 often has to fight a much more modern tank against which it has almost no chance. EvE handled this by making large ships struggle to hit smaller ones, but small ships struggle to put out enough damage to kill large ones. This makes it so ships are largely compelled to fight their own size targets only. PoTBS tried a third route -- small guns have high dpm, but less accuracy/penetration, so both might work better depending on tactics. Likewise, heavy ships would have better armor and higher max speed, but smaller ships would have better turning/acceleration, so theoretically the heavy frigate could win playing like boom and zoom aircraft and the lighter ships might win by stern camping or otherwise outsailing them. IMO, PotBS is clearly the best system of the three. What do you think?

I have sailed a bit, but I didn't get a chance to try to stern camp any frigates last trip out. But seriously, in POTBS acceleration was a key stat. Certain small, quick ships like cutters or high performance small frigs could move quickly enough that in a favorable wind they could turn a full 180 in only a few ship lengths. This allowed them to on occasion use both sides of their ship to attack right after the other, gaining a firepower advantage. The same can be done in NA, of course, but in NA the ships bleed so much speed after a turn (and don't turn as tightly) that you might get off two broadsides and then find yourself at a crawl, exposed. The reason I think this is important is because it allows quickness to serve as a counter to toughness in some situations. For example, while a heavy frigate will inevitably overpower a light one if they sail parallel trading shots, this lets the quicker one sometimes get multiple shots and overcome that. POTBS was balanced somewhat like this (in jet terms): heavies = energy fighters, boom and zoom. lighter stuff = maneuver fighters, turn and burn. I want to emphasize not all ships should do this, and not all winds. But I think it should be on the table if you are in a quick small ship with the wind, moving fast. I could explain better with pics if needed. Its not just POTBS, its eve or any other open world pvp game. People hate getting ganked. They hate losing money even more. This makes people extremely risk averse, and thus, afraid to have fun fights. So everyone sits around bored. If open world pvp is unrestrained, very quickly you will find small groups of elite, high level pvpers in perfect ships. They will gank anything that they can find and run from anything that could possibly fight back. Combine this with high loss pvp and you get POTBS pvp -- pvp zones were a death trap for the common player, especially low level players (who typically were in slow ships). It seems to get a general problem with open world pvp. People would far rather club a noob to death with 50 buddies in super frigates than risk an equal 1v1.

Probably. I was a well known writer, pvper, and so on in POTBS -- I wrote the ship of the week threads. (FLS gave me the title of MVP -- most valuable Pirate). I'm also pretty well known in eve, gw2, and WOT.

Some of you have asked for more information about Naval Action. I preordered last week, but they only send out keys every friday 1800 kiev time. So 1800 kiev I started spamming F5, and soon, my key appeared! BACKGROUND: Its a ~17th century sailing MMO? game, similar to Pirates of the Burning Sea or Sid Myers' Pirates. Its very early in development, but will likely feature open world pvp, arenas or historical battles perhaps similar to WOT, and an eve style economy. I believe no boarding or avatar play is contemplated. Obviously a lot of that is a stretch at this point, but if even some of it pans out it could be a great game. Cost is $40 to buy into the VERY early beta/preorder, and long term monetization is probably going to be buy the box to play + microtransactions to buy premium ships/customizations, no monthly fee. I don't know much about the Game Developers. I believe they are a small, new company based in kiev with at least some former WG employees (I forget the guy's name, but perhaps the guy who was in charge of WOT balancing in 2012 who quit after the KV-1S-122 debate with serb?). My limited impressions are that they have their heads on straight. There are several very high quality discussion threads open on the NA forums where the devs appear to listen, discuss, and explain on a level almost unheard of in game design. They seem to be aiming for a good balance in game design (history vs sim) and depth. For that reason alone, I am inclined to want to support them. SETUP: You have to install through steam -- and I'm not a huge fan of steam (my ghetto internets hate the always on steam junk, plus it just seems to update slower and less reliable than direct downloads). But it worked fine, no issues installing. The game also loaded just fine, even on my very underpowered machine (too weak to run eve or WOT) -- it still clipped along at 45 fps on minimum settings. So that's kind of nice. On my much more powerful desktop, it oddly only gets ~60 fps on high settings (not max). No idea why, perhaps lack of optimization so early. But it looks fine in any event. GAMEPLAY: The only game mode available is pvp or pve arenas. You load in with a few allies and fight a few bots or hostile players in roughly equal ships. Players can switch sides before the match to balance it out. I used auto sail exclusively (you may recall the video tutorial I posted by ramjb? -- it is quite simple to use to gain an edge, but is by no means necessary). Its simple and easy to figure out. I was in a 12 gun cutter (a small, agile ship with a style of rigging that's different than a traditional fully rigged ship -- I'll spare you landlubbers the details of this, but it matters). I note the ship accelerates briskly, turns realistically, and handled well at all points, particularly 90 from the wind. I could handle extremely close hauled, but it would come to a complete stop and get pushed back if you steered straight into the wind and left it there. I couldn't exactly figure out wind conditions or current conditions (lots of numbers in the UI I don't really know what mean yet), but it was intuitive enough to not matter. So far, so obvious. You can have your crew focus on different things as you move along (repair, sailing, gunnery -- being garbad naturally mine have to focus on firepower and then consequently repair pretty much all the time). A timer to show how long between you when you could switch focuses would be nice. Gunnery was also easy to figure out, but at first at least I struggled to connect with my target. I was probably firing at too long range -- no idea how to estimate that kind of thing yet. So I got within musket range and just ripped into them. The potential for strategic gameplay, similar to POTBS but with more realism, is definitely there. Even with my clumsy, nooblike self I was able to use basic strategy and tactics to get off more shots than my opponent. As I grow in skill, this will likely vastly expand, as POTBS did. MY HEROIC FIRST BATTLE: So I load in for a 3v3, but one of my pubbies doesn't load. Its my 12 gun sloop and a 16 gun brig vs 3 16 gun brigs. I am much quicker than the brigs, so I decide to strategically flank them.... ...just kidding. I was like YOLO and sailed into the middle of all three and started blapping. It took me a bit to figure out how to shoot straight, plus I lost some crew...most of my armor...and one of my guns. I was connecting, but doing relatively little damage back. Then I dimly realized that blue thing creeping up on the inside of my ship status indicator was probably water, and I was about 90% to sinking. So I cut hard across the wind, outrun the brigs down the yolo with my crew furiously bailing. Before long, I got things back under control, almost completely patched back up my ship, and returned to the fray...and this time, I had the wind, and the brigs were unable to shake me. I shanked one right in the poopdeck, happily blazing away. I Sed back and forth, bringing both decks into play on his helpless rump. Then he suddenly sank. I didn't really know how to tell he was dying, but huzzah! The second brig was fighting my buddy, so I walked up and gave him the coup de grace to the bow, and sent him back to hell like the unworthy dutch dog he was. Its official. I'm a hero. MOAR GAMES: Over the next week, I played another ~50 games or so. I unlocked all the way to the Snow (the largest nonfrigate ship, perhaps equivalent to a tier 5 in WOT). The first few ships appear well balanced. For example while the brig has more firepower, including access to cannonades, its much slower and less agile upwind than a cutter, plus its larger profile means more hits. The snow, on the other hand, just seems flat out OP. It devours all other small ships. The implications of this are unclear -- in reality, certain ship types WERE op in real life, and in an open world situation this means instant death at the hands of higher level, higher skill gankers in superior ships. I am not sure how NA will handle this problem (perhaps arenas with balanced ships and open with anything goes, or who knows?). I also learned a good bit more about the game mechanics. I was also pleased to note that extremely stupid sailing can result in your ship missing stays or even getting stuck sailing into the wind, unable to turn out. Ships do not have HP, directly, instead they have armor. Once the armor is reduced, the ship begins to take crew/module damage and also get holes punched in it. As water builds up, you can bail but the ship will sink eventually. Naturally, shots in the pooper have little armor. I can see no effect in killing crew, but dismounting guns, smashing sails has an obvious effect. Angling your ship or adusting the speed as you fire has little effect I can see. Like PotBS, it appears to be a contest in using the wind/your ships firing characteristics to either force a brawl and knock them out or disable them. The downside to both is that people can pretty much run and kite at will, denying you the fight or the win no matter what. Few grief right now, but let's be real -- on release, people will grief constantly if they can, and in open world pvp how can you blame them? As for balance, carronades with double shot seem pretty OP. You can frequently cripple a ship in one blast, at least with these little ones. Long guns firing bar to demast their turning sails also seems pretty stronk. Once you lose your front mast, its practially impossible to keep them off your stern. Its also easy to lose a mast in a collision -- its pretty hard (for me) to do any real damage sniping due to difficulty in hitting the target and the toughness of ships, but if you get close its pretty common to accidentally ram each other and get masts tangled. I also found it pretty much impossible to S behind them, using both sides of the ship, unlike PotBS. That kind of disappointed me -- I would like to see quicker turning, and more of a speed gap in the quick ships and the slow ones. So in general, although I think the potential is there for pvp depth and balance, a lot will depend on the specific design decisions NA makes in the next few months. EAT IRON STEEDE! Compared to WOWS, I think NA is clearly better. Although I kind of liked the way WOWS dealt with ranged fire, and the random islands were nice, the game fundamentally seemed to lack any depth. NA has more, with the mechanics of where you hit the ship, how you manage your sails, and the simple fact that wooden ships/guns have a lot more meaningful variety than steel ones. And if the open world, pve, and economy is worth a damn it will be far superior to WOWS's bare combat model. Plus too WOWS seemed like you were throwing orange snowballs at each other instead of shooting guns. NA feels appropriately smashy when you blast each other and splinters go flying, a mast collapses, and your poor crew yell at each other (which sounds oddly like a group of men standing around a bus stop talking loudly). CONCLUSIONS: Stronk hype brothers. Its still very early in development, but it could be great fun. It appears to have very similar gameplay to POTBS, which had a lot of good pvp depth, but more realism. If other aspects of the game pan out as well, this will be my next game. I feel like they are striking a good balance in easy to learn, but hard to master (like WOT) and history vs. simulation/balance. Find it here: http://forum.game-la...al-discussions/ TL;DR: Sailing game highly reminiscent of PotBS. Very early in development, but appears to have great potential depth combined with a possible good economic/open world pvp type skin. Give it a serious look.

ALL IN, AND DEVIL TAKE THE HINDMOST!