TO ALL: New Concepts - Name your wish!

[Maha]

fighting (with ships) is divided into three categories: plunder, patrol and skirmish.

the plunder board is visible without costs (turns) and shows fleets who have gained danger (through fighting or voodoo)

the patrol board shows 1 npc fleet per 2 turns invested

the skirmish board cost no turns but is hidden until clicked on. it shows all visiting fleets to that harbor.
skirmishing cost skirmish points, and the reward is unpredictable. more restrictions are in place to protect the unwary fleets who sail the sees.

skirmishing is not popular! only a handful diehards do it on a daily or regular basis. check the plunderboards or the battle reports and you now who they are. these players i consider the true pirates; the bane of merchants.

plundering is by far the most favorable form of fighting. one can calculate the plunder profit, knows the risk etc. players who mostly stick to plundering (Maha included) are of little concern to the merchants. let shark eat shark plundering the skirmishers only demotivates aspirant skirmishers what benefits the merchants again.

to entice more players to play a more offensive game, skirmishing has to become more attractive then plundering. the risk of skirmishing (no reward, enemy fleet too strong etc) is higher since the reward is unpredictable while the counter attack from being on the plunder board is an almost given.
without high tech for piracy, skirmishing is not a rewarding option. and yet, it is the only non-voodoo way to attack the fast majority of fleets which never appear on the plunder board.

ways to promote skirmishing are
higher rewards for skirmishing (e.g. basic reward x 1.5; downside, merchants will face 1] more attacks 2] higher losses per attack)
lower reward for plundering (e.g. basic reward x 0.75)
Harons voodoo reward idea, but connected to skirmishing, not to plundering.
voodoo reward with a twist; the skirmish points used each day somehow increases the possibility to get uncommon or rare cards for all daily presents. the more skirmish points used the higher the chance to get rare cards.

[Haron]

Skirmishing, while giving a decent income to those with a high piracy tech, is really not harming merchants much. Nor are they as "unpredictable" as it may first seem, once you know a bit about who's who. You learn who uses what kind of trade fleets, who uses escorts, and who trade in gold (this info will be available to guild as soon as I get the time to write down something proper, Maha). Also, each merchant is limited to being attacked 5 times a day, which is on average maximum 4 successful attacks, due to the 20% escape chance. Also, many nations have skirmish insurance, further protecting the merchants, making skirmishing relatively harmless. With skirmish insurance, if you run only trade galleons ("worst case"), and are skirmished 5 times each day (for a total of 4 successful attacks), then you lose only 60k gold worth of goods each day (the nation loses an additional 60k). Sure, that may mean 120k+ lost in trade income, but it's hardly gonna affect a medium trader with 200 ships and large warehouses.

Skirmish is also a nice option for the semi-new players; those who have gotten a small combat fleet, and to whom gold is still scarce. As long as they are thought where and who to skirmish.

So, skirmishes are not "proper" attacks. Plunders can be, though. But like Maha said, plunders requires voodoo. Which, in a sense is good - we want voodoo cards to be used. Remember that each player gets on average 5 cards each day. That's alot of cards being given out. If there is to be any reason to buy further cards through booster packs, then more than 5 cards per player should be used every day. Only players like Avery have such a rate of voodoo usage on average (other players have high usage during limited times, or because the nation funds their voodoo usage). However, the reward for the plunder must be worth the cost of the voodoo cards. Helping new players, this is usually the case, due to the 100 PvP win and 500 PvP win rewards. For others, it requires either piracy tech, an attack on a really big trader (with a LOT of fleets), or a well planned attack that also results in stealing some ships.

What I would like for skirmish, is an increase in the "maximum skirmish point reserve" due to skirmish tech. Ideally +10 per rank, for a maximum reserve of 272 points at level 20. That's a detail, though. I do not see "improved skirmishes" as the way to promote naval combat.

And patrolling is only for new players. It's hardly worth the turns for anyone else. That could change if the "GEMS" suggestion was implemented, I suppose. However, since patrolling is PvE, it can hardly be considered "action", and more benefits to patrolling would only cause LESS action (PvP) than today, since more players would spend more turns patrolling.

What is needed, are more options. A way to attack ports with fleets, to attack influence and steal from the national treasury, like I suggested in "Wars and Blockades", would be one such way. It is also tempting to suggest doing something with the "tail ship strategy". However, I fear that will make using "Big Ships" even more dangerous than it already is.

The voodoo market is a nice way to get the voodoo most suited for YOU. It also means that if someone else can get more profit out of a card than you can, he's willing to pay more for the card than it's worth to you. This results in "attack cards" being used only by a handful of players, since to other players, it's more profitable to sell those on the market than to use the cards themselves.

Giving more voodoo cards to those who actually plunder, and fewer to those who don't, is another way to cause more plundering. There are other "quick fixes" which are tempting to suggest as well, but many has dangerous side effects. The ideal way to promote more naval combat, is to include new ways to fight with ships. With BIG ships, so those become important again.

[Maha]

for experienced players it is a simple exercise to change nation. for some it just a matters of hours to race through the ranks.

this devalues the importance of the 'nation concept'. it is easier to join a nation who control ports and have nice hand outs then to make war on them to gain a port for your own nation.

changing nations and ranking up is a costly affair, but reasonably without risk and with a guaranteed outcome. warring for a port is more costly, more unpredictable and needs to be done with multiple players.

to create more strive between nations it should be more difficult to change nations.
at the moment it does not matter how many times one has changed nations already, the cost of changing stays the same. making nation change more costly each time (like the purchase of officers) could create this effect.

OR

make the cost to join a nation based on the number of ports that nation has. (free for new players who chose their first nation).

OR

make the royal stipend related to the ports gained after joining the nation. this would joining a nation for the stipend much less attractive.

[Haron]

Which is why I also suggested a "Nation Change Barrier" as a prerequisite for "Wars and Blockades".

When this is in place, if the admins really want more action, something along the lines of "External Political Events", which forces wars upon nations, could be implemented.

[Haron]

Links to previous suggestions:

Nation Change Barrier: viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2113&hilit=nation+change+barrier
Wars and Blockades: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=2151&hilit=wars+and+blockades
External Political Events: viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2591&p=32742&hilit=External+Political+Events#p32742

[Maha]

a way to create more strife is a variation of 'outside events' but more standardized inside the game.

to stay king one must increase the number of players of the nation (say at least 1 per week)

once a nation has more then 10 players, the nation starts to require to become more influential. king & Duke ranks within the nation are lost if the nations total influence is not growing.

once total nations influence reaches %level of total global influence the nation starts 'requesting' port control.

of course this would discourage the rise of new countries. it makes it harder to stay at the top of a country. yet when a main reason to join a port controlling nation (free gold) becomes harder to achieve, attacking a port with an emerging nation is a good alternative to get those stipends. the 'nations requirements to grow' form a base that motivates a hostile takeover of a port

if it becomes cheaper for players to join a non-portholding country and take a port than to join a portholding country , we will see more port battles.

[Sebena]

I disagree with you maha it would destroy game that way because we don't have that big player base to implement that... maybe something similiar when port buildings are implemented...

[PhoenixKnight]

I disagree with you maha it would destroy game that way because we don't have that big player base to implement that... maybe something similiar when port buildings are implemented...

I agree with Wolfie! Do you know how long it took to start having people join Egypt? Even now, people join and leave all the time.

[Maha]

although i appreciate feedback, i think that this thread is supposed to be more of an idea gather thread than the place to discuss them.

wolfies reaction makes sense, hopefully the next person gets some inspiration to take a faulty idea into the grant solution of all

[DezNutz]

I would like to see a push to get a lot of the smaller suggestions and fixes completed before any major items. While a major development would be nice to add game interest, there are a lot of smaller items that would improve the game quality that seem to be getting overlooked.