The Geth

The ones you mentioned in this topic. Not really a rumour, it came directly from @admin. Was there some miscommunication?

No mention of those new flags?

Ayyy, G502 club!

This is correct. In most cases, the enemy player will simply leave the battle instance immediately after being sunk, resulting in their fleet ships surrendering. It's perfectly possible, however, for an enemy player to remain in spectator view after being sunk, watching as their AI continue to fight. If the AI win and leave the battle, their owner will assume control of one of the surviving AI ships, rather than losing them.

rEaLiSm

And what happens when the clan is full? Don't we already have an issue of too many clans per nation, in a game where we also have too many nations and little-to-no diplomacy? Why would we want to make existing factionalism even worse? If seasoned woods are truly the future of the game, every ship sold by the admiralty should be made of them, and every craftable ship in the game -- permit or not -- should be available for purchase from the admiralty. Then at least new players would have guaranteed access to ships of decent quality, while still leaving port bonuses and on-demand frame/planking combinations to crafters.

I think that's really the issue, though. If that's the only thing normal woods will be useful for, why even have them at all? It'll just create more completely unnecessary work for people who want competitive ships. Not to mention yet another barrier to new players who have none of the capital required to purchase/produce seasoned ships. For those new players, the only reasonable solution will be to buy DLC ships right out of the gate, immediately after finishing the tutorials. How is that fair? Or perhaps more pertinently: how is that not P2W?

One can hope. Incidentally, can we get a reply from him? I feel this topic is important enough to warrant one.

@admin has repeatedly demonstrated that balance changes are made with hardcore players in mind. Why should this be any different?

Does it matter? With that large of a sample, I'd say the forums have spoken; quite a few NA development decisions to date have been made on a forumite consensus. no u. Vote for what you want, but know the opposition will not be silenced.

It seems majority of the community would support this.

I know exactly what you mean. In either case, your mistake is refusing to address the points at hand.

Not really. A good Snow captain can make sudden, completely unpredictable moves at will. If you predict and move to counter, they can simply change their tactics instantly to put you on the defensive again. Against other 6th rates, the only true defense against a Snow is running.

Seconded. Just tried it for the first time yesterday, and it is beyond broken. Makes every other 6th rate look like a bad joke.

That's entirely irrelevant; any gap would be P2W. It would mean that two players of equal skill would not be evenly matched, because one of them paid for an advantage over the other. The advantage need not be large, its mere existence is proof enough.