Haven't played in 6 months, What's new/different?

[Hornblower V]

Hi all,

I am back after a long break. Could someone give me a brief run down on changes since August?  

Much Obliged,

Hornblower V

[Guest]

Oh boy, a lot has happened. I'll do my best to sum up the biggest changes, but I will definitely forget something. 

- Port Changes/Reset: All the ports were reset back to their historical nation, and regions were added. A region is a group of ports (normally 4-5) that are grouped together. Regions have special regional bonuses (i'll mention later), and if you attack the region capital (in a port battle) you capture the whole region.

-Hostility: The flag system is gone (although i've heard it may come back later). To generate a port battle, you must generate hostility in a region by killing enemy AI/Players in that region. The most most common method is to do combat missions there (similar to the old missions, except you choose which region the mission should be in). Once the regions hostility reaches 100%, a port battle is triggered and will happen 46 hours from that time. 

-Land fortifications: As you sail along in OW, you will see large forts and towers on the shore and around ports. When in battle, these defences will shoot on enemies of the nation that controls the region. This can give a nation an edge if they are attacked in their home waters. 

-Port Battles: The port battle system has changed. There is now land in port battles, and it reflects the layout of the port from OW. The port defences are also in the battle, and they will shoot on the attackers. There are two ways to win a port battle. Kill all your enemies, or win by points. There are three circles inside the battle, and whoever controls the majority of circles will slowly gain points. Whoever gets to 1000 points wins, although if you are defending you simply need to last the full 1hr 30min. 

-Crafting: There have been multiple changes.

1.  Regions give bonuses when crafting. So if craft a ship in a certain region, the ship ends up with that regional bonus. Ships can have two bonuses, one you choose, and the other is assigned by the crafting region (some regions don't give bonuses, so it's good to check).
2. You don't need a shipyard to craft anymore.
3. There are two new wood types, Bermuda Cedar (nearly as fast as fir, but no negatives), and Mahogany (2nd strongest wood behind Live oak, with a minor speed penalty).
4. No more RNG in crafting. All exceptional ships get 3 perm mod slots and 5 regular. 

-Rules of Engagement: This has gone back and forth a lot. The current setup is a two circle system. An inner circle for tagging your enemy, and an outer circle that pulls everyone inside it into battle. This will probably be tuned/change soon, as there are a few problems with it. Battles also close instantly unless you have a special perk (explained next).

-Officers: You can hire an officer in port. As he/she levels up, they gain points (up to 10) which you can use to buy special perks. These perks give combat/trading bonuses. This system will eventually change, as the devs have stated they aren't done with it. 

-Ship/Weapon Stats: There have been many changes. Lots of ship stats have changed (too many times to go into it). Weapons had a few changes, the main one being carronades now have their historical penetration. This means they are no longer effective at 250-500m. You need to get in close to use them now, which is how it should be.

-New Ships: There have been multiple new ships, many of which are quite nice.

-Towing System: You can now tow a ship from one port to another (for a small fee). This allows you to teleport ships around the map, but they don't happen instantly. Ships are all delivered during the server reset each day. 

 

I hope this helps!

 

 

 

Edited February 20, 2017 by Guest

[Hornblower V]

Thank you EliteDelta!

 

So helpful.  Are there still regular missions?

Can you still teleport your ship after capturing a trader?

Can you capture and sail any ship or just traders?

Any boarding/defense changes?

Thanks again!

[The Spud]

There are still regular missions, single missions or fleet missions, you can however no longer take missions in the capital area. You can take missions for every region in the game friendly or enemy (except capital area's) from any port on the map you can enter. The missions always count towards hostility in the region, it will lower it on mission succes in a friendly area or raise hostility on mission succes in an enemy area, losing will be in favour of the enemy.

You can still TP ships after capping them, you can cap AI ships up to 4th rates. SoL's can be capped but only give money, not the ship. However a new "Towing" system is in place allowing ships to be towed from outpost to outpost, they arrive at their destination at server maintenance.

There are no changes in boarding I believe, at least nothing significant I believe.

[Hornblower V]

What's the best way to make money at the moment?

[The Spud]

11 hours ago, Hornblower V said:

What's the best way to make money at the moment?

They'll all say trading, and allot of people have these "secret" trade runs they do, you know as short as possible with as high return as possible, but I don't need money so I don't bother with doing any of that, but some people will let you in on their secret, ask around. There is a nice trader tool in the game now, the data is not accurate on it (price and stockwise) but you can use it to see where they produce and consume certain stuff and go by that.

If you don't want to do trade stuff, I would recommend capping 1st rates in a mission (gives about 300 -350k I believe) or capping AI traders, they usualy carry around 60k, but sometimes you can be lucky and get 150k or so, sometimes only 20k. If you're into crafting, you can craft ships and sell em, still gives a nice profit. Compass wood is also in high demand, so if you put up a forest and sell your compass wood off, you should be making some money too.

A couple of months ago we all sold a resource called "Fine woods" (like fine fir, fine oak, etc...) for a ton of money (like 40-50k a piece, making a couple of millions), it was a resource introduced in the game to slow down crafting but it kinda killed the game, so the devs removed it and made us all sell it. So as a result everybody has a ton of money, and prices are rather high.