Thoughts on Port Capture Flag Cost

[Slamz]

Port capture flags are probably this game's real money sink, and the current system seems to just be arbitrary costs.

 

I propose a system something like this.

 

Ports have a "morale" value stored, one for every team.

 

At maintenance, every friendly outpost in the port raises morale by +1. So a French port with 10 outposts gets +10 morale (there may also be 10 British outposts from a previous owner but since it's not a British port, those are not generating morale).

 

Each "unique player" seen per day generates +1 point. So if you visit a port once or 50 times, you give it +1 morale for that day.

 

Any ship built in the port generates +1 morale per ship rating (7th rate = +1, 6th rate = +2, etc).

 

Every day the port is owned by an enemy is -10 morale.

 

Morale caps are +/- 1000.

 

So, for example:

France owns a port with 1000 morale.

Britain takes it and 20 players visit it and 10 outposts get made. A long time ago it was a British port and it still has 150 British morale from that time, in addition to the 1000 French morale.

 

After 1 day, French morale is 990 and Britain's is +20 (for the players)  + 10 (for the outposts) + 150 for the previous total = 180.

Next day, 10 British visit and a few ships are built. +10 (for the players) + 10 (for the outposts) + 10 (for the ships built) + last night's total of 180 = 220 British morale. French morale is now 980.

 

 

Conquest flag cost is based on your team's morale - enemy team's morale.

 

So 980 French Morale - 220 British morale = 760 in France's favor. This gives them a 76% discount on the flag cost.

 

After some time goes by, it may be 200 French Morale - 500 British morale. Now the cost is 30% higher than usual for the French.

 

 

 

The idea is that ports you have never owned or have not owned for a very long time will be the most expensive. If you capture an enemy port and don't use it, it will be cheap for them to retake for a long time. If you capture an enemy port and use it a lot, they will have to hurry to take it back or else costs will swing against them quickly.

 

[Francis Tabernac]

That's an interesting idea, I like that. Makes it far more difficult to use a newly-captured (in real-world terms a relatively un-secured) port as an immediate jumping-off point for another attack. Definitely an idea worth looking into, in my opinion, for tweaking the whole port capture system.

[mirror452]

It's an interesting idea. Additionally I would like to suggest to make the cost for the flag dependend on how many ports a nation owns. If it owns a lot of ports the flag should be more expensive, if it owns less ports the flag should be less expensive. This would prevent, to some degree, strong nations getting too strong and even wiping other nations off the map without any chance for them to recover.

[Francis Tabernac]

I've made similar comments about ways to stem over-expansion, mostly relating the cost of flags to the distance between their point of purchase and the nation's capital rather than purely on numbers owned.

[mirror452]

I've made similar comments about ways to stem over-expansion, mostly relating the cost of flags to the distance between their point of purchase and the nation's capital rather than purely on numbers owned.

 

This would give a huge disadvantage to Spain... Which is atm a nation with a small number of ports, but widely spread over the whole map.

(at least on PVP1. Don't know how it looks like on the other servers)

Edited February 20, 2016 by mirror452

[Francis Tabernac]

Well, yes and no. It would mean that Spain would begin a fresh map in the situation that, on PvP1, the US is currently in. They already started with a bunch of territory, and so further expansion should be difficult for the same reason that it should be difficult for anyone. I think I get what you're saying, in that Spain would start out in a position to be unable to do much expansion and would begin the game playing defensively rather than offensively like smaller nations would be able to, and that's true if the costs were related to number-of-ports-controlled. However if costs were related to distance-from-capital Spain would actually be in a very good position, as being fairly central would let them hit many places equally.

 

If anything, this system would be a detriment to countries that begin in a corner, like the US. However instead of simply being a point against them, it could in a way be a balance against the fact that they've only one real front to contend with at the beginning, whereas larger (in area) factions like Spain or Britain have many. It should always be more difficult to defend more territory.