DeRuyter

You hit on the motivation behind the multi-dura system, ie; to allow for sequential battles. They wanted a player to have sequential battles without delay. A number of the mechanics are based this premise. Get sunk and you show up in a nearby port in the same ship. Same effect now with crew loss if you surrender.

AFAIK the light carriages don't effect sped just the number of crew required to man the cannon. If they nerf the mods/perks in the patch I would expect ships to be slower, but of course that would be across the board.

Clipping the gun ports? Ah I see. I saw that the ship model was riding low in the water- even may be taking in water through the gun ports further back than those highlighted.

I think you have it - essentially similar types of ships. I believe the term "Corvette" was used more by the French than the British or Americans. There may be some difference whether you consider ships with a quarterdeck and/or forecastle to be corvettes. I suspect it may come down to a 19c ship vs. a mid - 18th c ship. Good point about the Cerberus.

Flag exploits will be irrelevant in a couple of weeks, just sayn'......

Didn't the French use the term "Corvette" for a flush decked warship carrying the number of guns you noted? Very similar to the later American ship sloops like the Wasp? What about the Cerberus? ship sloop or corvette? Actually the Renommee was a frigate, just an earlier design. http://threedecks.org/index.php?display_type=show_ship&id=6154

We would need to have more designs from the first half of the 18th c. in game. For ships built before 1750 we have; Ingermanland, Renommee, and the Yacht. The Inger being the real outlier at 1075 because she has an older rigging style as well. Lots of very cool and ornate designs for the early ships but lots of work for the modellers at the moment!

Quick everyone to the port rail...

Well you actually took his post out of context. Let's go back up a few posts in summary: 1. Your point: Crew costs are one aspect killing the game for new players and causing them to leave. 2. Counter: IRL ships did not fight to the death they surrendered when battle was hopeless - so in game you save crew and gold. 3. Fox2run: No I want to fight to death and see ships sink 4. Vernon: Some players like more realism, ie; it is fun for them, referring to #2. Devs have fine line to walk. 5. You: As above. Realism does not mean ironman mode. Plenty of mechanics to have elements of realism and fun gameplay like free teleports, OW sailing capabilities, etc. I get your point and yes some people are leaving (including some veterans) because of certain game mechanics, but others leave after playing only a short time, why, because it is not their type of game or not what they thought it would be. So the question becomes how much do the devs change the mechanics because of these players? Should they change much at all or just add features and content? Some people will not be happy with any changes and leave anyway. In general I think you have posted well reasoned arguments and a concern that players are leaving. However some other posters rely on troll type rants like shouting that the game is boring which only serves to inflame the issue. Maybe the game is not for them.

I saw several posts about "Hostility" missions and yet there is nothing in the patch note that explicitly state or infers a separate mission type, quite the opposite: Mission changes. Missions can be taken for every region from any port. Missions will generate or reduce hostility - thus enemy should be able to influence the flow of events. Because of that missions will always be open for entry for all sides until 25v25 is reached. Unless admin added something later I don't see where someone got the idea that there is a specific "Hostility Mission" . Yesterday I posted that the solution for a relatively safe mission for grinding would be to take one away from a challenged region and certainly your capitol where many pirates will be waiting for you...

Wait, what? An individual Steam user who has written a Steam review can remove someone else's comments? That is nuts!

Can't wait! Lots of good stuff - thanks for getting this huge patch out to us. Lets get the full PB rework with land and forts in the next patch - Christmas present? It is nice to read through the thread and not see too many doom and gloom comments, whew I see people had questions and concerns about the 2 circle ROE - Here is a thread that may be helpful - check out #68 it is admin's thoughts on it: http://forum.game-labs.net/index.php?/topic/15737-rules-of-engagement-feedback/page-4?hl=pull+circle#entry295365 I am a little disappointed as a crafter that the Indy and Endyimon won't be craftable - but that said they being used for a temporary testing so no worries. But there is a lot of concern over the 1 dura idea. I wouldn't think that they could change to a 1 dura system without changing the cost of ships and modules so it would cost less in time and gold to craft ships and mod will have less affect now anyway with ship characteristics. Missions (being held open) - If I read that correctly missions will now spawn in a regions that you choose which could be anywhere on the map. So if you want mission xp to level up a player could take a mission in a safe area away from hostiles and not worry about it remaining open.

There you go again conflating NA with an arena game. The fact that WT has three game modes is not even analogous to the issue here. It is still a balanced, time limited, space limited battle regardless of whether you play arcade, realistic or sim. The different levels reflect progressively more "realistic" combat mechanics. Sure in the age of sail a captain might have one ship to ship battle in his career and even if he won his ship would be so damaged he have to sail back to port but it is obvious no one is trying to recreate history in that way. Still I am puzzled by your continuing inability to find action. Perhaps it is because you really do want something like an arena game queue? 5 minutes is too long for action? I am a casual player with maybe 4-6 hours to play any game in a week, yet using the casual friendly no cooldown teleport I can find pvp most of the time. Sometimes you don't have to sail much as enemies are called out in nation chat. But then I don't mind sailing a bit, maybe with friends in an attempt to catch traders or the enemy off their capitol. I agree with your general premise that we need more content to attract more players or bring back players that left, except of course the players that thought this was an arena game in the first place. The way I see the devs are working to bring more content that encourages pvp. such as the revamped Conquest, port battles and a new ROE. Bottom line though is that NA is never going to generate battles as quickly as WT or WOWS, because the search or strategic play is part and parcel of the game.

I agree that some of them look out of place or garish on certain ships (a Swedish blue Connie for example). However admin is keeping to generally historical ship colors based on period artwork or documentation. Look at this in perspective of players asking for total customization like being able to paint their ship like the Black Pearl or to paint their sails purple with skulls. The current paint mechanism is a good way to allow for some customization and potentially for micro-transactions down the road without having to actually put up with the fantasy pirate colors.

What exactly is a "mob" or "mobs"? Is that some sort of NPC character or group found in fantasy MMORPGs?

Here are some good shots of the current Niagara's bulwarks - looks to be about 4' exclusive of hammock netting. Assuming of course that replica is accurate as to the dimensions: http://www.superiortrails.com/duluth-tall-ships-tours.html I would think that the Mercury would be similar if not a bit larger considering she was a sea going vs lake ship. Either way those gunners would certainly be couching down as much as possible when serving their pieces. and often quarter deck guns would load grape + ball, especially if yardarm to yard arm fighting and boarding were anticipated. I don't see a problem with the smaller ships and grape especially the merchant ships which don't have any protection on deck, however I think the shots are too accurate if someone is sending grape through gun ports of a large warship and killing entire gun crews (on a relatively undamaged ship). Also anti-personnal shot whether grape or canister had a very short effective range, something to remember when sailing a Lynx!

All valid points and some good ideas. Just a thought on the letter of marque - that does not account for the national navies. Some players want to act as naval officers rather than privateers. They have already implemented voting for alliances with your number of votes based on rank. Hopefully by the end of the month we'll have the new conquest system and ROE so we can see how that will effect your concern about nations being wiped out. As for the nation of Pirates just search the forum and you'll find dozens of threads about pirate mechanics. I believe the devs have put off addressing the issue until after the RVR mechanics are sorted. Also having a pirate nation around now will help test the new conquest mechanics and they have said as much in another thread.

This seems to reflect what I mentioned in the other thread - It is more than just the distance, some people have poor connections etc. I get about 100 on the East coast but some people have 150. So I wonder with if the server(s) was moved west how would that affect the Europeans given their generally better bandwidth and faster connection speeds. An offshore server in the Caymans perhaps. Of course as you noted this might leave the Asian and Aussie players out in the cold.

So as a new player what do you think of the Rookie player area coming in to the Bahamas?

Well the way I read it is that deliveries of goods remains only from Free port to Free port so if a port changes to a national port you will no longer be able to use goods delivery. In your example all your assets (goods) in Plymouth will be moved to the new Free port La Desirade. So you will be able to use the delivery system from the new free port.

Okay so I am also on the East coast and I usually get 100-120ms. The only time I had over 200ms was just before a server crash! With all the different numbers I see it would seem that there are factors other than simply distance to the server, like ISP connection speed and bandwidth, etc. that go into ping and lag. Over the summer I had problems with serious lag and stuttering especially in large port battles and when sailing the Rattler - turned out that my system was overheating. Other than that at my usual ping I don't see a problem. On the other hand I have noticed lag at times playing WT on the EU server especially when being hit by autocannons. Hopefully there is a solution so people can play on the server that works best for them.

Okay fair enough. Those are ping numbers that the Aussies have to deal with!

Just curious have you played on PVP1 and if so what was your ping? Did you have noticeable lag from it?

Can't you do that now by deleting your character? As for the wipe - I agree with Henry - the devs have already promised no xp wipe so flip flopping on that could be a big issue. Also a complete wipe is disproportionately harmful to casual players, who not having put in as much time relatively speaking, nevertheless contributed to the testing. Sure one could look at this in a negative way. ie; having all these max rank players running around will only lead to seal clubbing even with the rookie zone that is being implemented, but having high ranked players around at release is not all bad. Instead of having a multitude of yacht clubs out pveing to rank up, we'll see a variety of ships on the OW with full port battles and an RVR system running at full speed. So in other words the full game will be up and running with content for players of all ranks.

A clan using TeamSpeak for voice comms. Back to the original suggestion which was to wipe all xp (or maybe not crafting xp) on release. That is pretty harsh for casual players or players who mostly trade and craft and so split their time. The solution to get people back is new and varied content and not just to give them the same old grind all over again, which for some would be the 3-4 time going up the ranks.