DeRuyter

Vrolijk Kerstfeest & Gelukkig Nieuwjaar! Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and let's have a great new year in Naval Action! Thanks for all the hard work to Game Labs crew! Thank you for the gift ship!

Wind I respect your opinion but we should not be using mast thickness as a mechanism to balance or counter "ganking". You are advocating removing or altering an element of the combat model that provides an element of historical realism to enforce gameplay protections. It won't help you in the examples you suggest because as others have pointed out they will just use chain anyway. I would bet that is what most people do now. Your suggestion that this shouldn't happen in 1v1 is incorrect. In most well recorded single ship duals the losing ship lost masts and both ships had rigging cut up. I agree that it should be very hard to kite an entire mast down from long range but at closer ranges standing rigging got shot away and masts fell. Justifying a 24 lb ball not penetrating a mast at close range because it helps avoid ganking just doesn't hold water.

Here is my post from the other thread: Maybe people are conflating chaining with dismasting by shooting ball when they post that it is a ganking tactic or that it is easy? Anyway maybe HP buff ok especially for lower mast, but thickness is too much. I do think you should see upper mast sections falling more frequently than the whole mast. Those lighter spars could be taken out with chain and bar shot. Now just get rid of silly repair of the whole mast at sea

Thank you for your response. I was thinking about mast sections because watching the tournament fights you usually only see the whole mast fall and not the top mast or t'gallant mast. You should see the top sections coming down more often especially in line fights at longer ranges. Wind - wouldn't this be the same if they just used chain to chew up your sails? Dismasting is a lot harder than simply shooting up sails with chain - especially at carronade range. +1 Shooting to disable rigging - not aiming with laser accuracy at a mast mind you, but on the uproll at the rigging which took out control lines, standing rigging and spars was a historic tactic in the age of sail. One has to remember that masts often came down because the standing rigging was shot away not necessarily because it was penetrated by a ball and other types of disabling shot could do this as well. I am not sure this is modeled directly in game other than by mast HP so some form of dismasting needs to be viable in game. This tactic should not be nerfed because some players are very good at dismasting (personally I find it hard to dismast a player). When reading accounts of 1v1 frigate actions you often see both ships suffering a lot of rigging damage so for example a Trinc should be able to damage a Constitution's masts with long guns and certainly vice versa.

Mast HP was modestly increased (30% on average) Is this increased HP on the lower mast hit box only or distributed throughout the whole mast?

Exactly. Every time I go to a PB I see several "small" nations acting together to screen out the "large" attacking nation. Last weekend at Las Cayes the "large" nations of US and Britain attacked the French port and who was there screening for the French - Danes and Swedes. So your small nations alliances seem to be working. BTW - large nations lost that battle. I do agree that it should not be too easy to deter main battle fleet of lineships particularly with 3-4 small frigates. As admin noted a small group of frigates would just scout and watch the fleet - not attack it.

From the other thread. In the screen shot you can just barely see the edge of the attackers circle Attackers must be outside circle giving screening fleet opportunity to intercept. Also may be beneficial for attackers to sail in from several directions, depending on port geography. Example of entry circles and capture points attackers will be able to enter anywhere from the outside circle, defenders will be able to enter anywhere in the inner circle. Approximate time at good wind to sail through all capture points is 25 mins on the good speed frigate. Against the wind it will take up to an hour. Thus attackers will have to control wind carefully.

The new PB join mechanics will take care of this problem.

Great ideas for the screening battles. On point here through - The screening influence on the PB is to keep attacking ships out of the PB, so I am not sure that adding additional points for the defenders is necessary.

Elegant solution is also the hard solution = shallows and drafts. But as you said not in, too complex programing Still we need to test. I think new system will still add to ship variety - capture circle close to large fort = hard for 1st rate to stay there without Mortar Brig. Capture circle far upwind - need fast small ship to get points quickly. We shall see.

I did find it funny that the top players in the speed kill challenge had caused 0 damage! So a separate boarding challenge is a good idea. What about a armament challenges - event ship comes armed with only carros or longs. +1 for a Mortar Brig challenge- fastest kill on a tower, etc. Next ship - Surprise. Possibly also have a separate shallow water ship challenge.

BS Camping/Revenge Gank issue I like this proposal. A timer is necessary to limit camping and to provide notice to anyone outside whether anyone will be coming out. It still gives an option to those needing to log out of the game. I like sruPL's idea to add an official button so that you don't have to wait out the timer if you need to log out right away. I would add that you would get sent to nearest national port or free port. Log off before PB Harder solution on this one. You want to encourage PB and not make it too easy to screen off fleet, but at the same time leave screening as a valuable tactic. Really should not have Romulan battlecruisers decloaking right in front of PB to avoid interception. At the same time the defenders did have the opportunity to screen against the hostility in the first place. One point about screening though is that it provides something for players that don't have 1st rates or if a side has more than 25 players - more players from both sides can then participate in the screening/intercepting battles. What about a protection zone around regional capitols where you cannot log out at sea so the enemy fleet still has to sail some distance to the port?

+1 Like the idea of downgrading the Martellos in small ports to earthworks. In addition I think they should be destructible in battle instances. (I tried hitting one in a Mtr brig just to be sure!). Don't forget though they were added to help player traders or someone running from a superior fleet to get under the guns of the port batteries. Just a few too many far up the coast in some places.

I took this to mean all vessels including coastal merchants and fishing vessels, if you look at it that way he has a point.

And when "braced" they would also be ducking...

You can do either one. On the PVE server you may be better off getting Missions against AI using the Combat Missions tab. If you want to duel players of course there is always PvP server as you are more likely to find an opponent for Small Battle.

Are you sure it was in the Rookie zone? I was in a number of battles while screening for the Morgan's Bluff PB and none of them were in the rookie zone, at least based on the number of ships that got pulled in to the battle. Some of that region is in the rookie zone and some is out of it.

The OP does not specifically say where the events are to be located.

Having been aloft on a tall ship I can confirm that you can see further higher up

I think what you are seeing is groups trying to raise hostility in the Bahamas regions next to the rookie zone not necessarily seal clubbing. There are also a lot of valuable trade goods in the Bahamas and rookie capitols, which is good for new players but also used by experienced players. I do a lot of trade runs and rarely run into rookie players.

Yeah and the ship shooting should have run around too, talk about a shelf. Missed the supermoon -clouds

Exactly. So is the OP. He wants to play on the server closest to his location and wants the devs to fix the low pop on that server. Mrdoomed has rejected in no uncertain terms the suggestions that he play on the other server or that the servers are merged. Fair enough. There is no reason to continue the endless server debate. Some US/Austrian players are fine with PVP1 and others are not, some like Mrdoomed have a horrible connection and prefer a more local server. Merging servers at this time won't bring a massive influx of players anyway. The bottom line is the population and that is a bigger issue, maybe upon release there will be sufficient population for multiple servers. At the moment I don't see a solution for the low population noted by the OP. Maybe someday in the US the ISPs won't be gouging us for bandwidth.

Certainly nations had different watch systems and watch stations. IMO every system has lookouts on deck, especially the foredeck.

Just gonna be nitpicky here - The crows nest only exists in pirate movies. On a warship it is called the "fighting top". Usually a ship would station men in the bow as look outs (fog scene in M&C). Once a sail was sighted someone was sent to the mast head to try and ID the strange sail. An in game "alarm" would take out the risk of afk sailing and the suspense of sailing in enemy waters.

Can't wait for the Land in Port battles - I don't see a negative on this one, it will add much more depth to the strategy and tactics of PB and RvR. Some harbors should be much more defensible and some should be easier to take depending on the land, shallows and fortifications.