721

A quick look over the devlogs for upcoming 1.2 changes sounds like they’re fixing many of the things that finally turned me off, dovetailing nicely with the Pirates being a bit more organized.

Looks like 1.2 is due sometime this month?

722

This has been a direct result of the Pirates’ (lack of) diplomacy. The Pirates have (at least in the past) de facto allied with the British, thereby forcing the French and Spanish to ally with each other, which has been exacerbated by Pirates attacking both French and Spanish ports. Guess who the French and Spanish can get at most easily?

Attacking painful to lose ports that belong to weaker powers, like Havana, is just a bad idea if you’re not in first place or in a strong alliance with another nation. The fact that the French showed up to help defend really underscores this point. Moreover, succeeding would actually weaken Spain, and thus directly aid Britain.

It would be better to hold off a bit, until the French and Spanish are in deeper with the British, and then attack just one faction, probably France. Pick a lesser port that won’t be defended first, won’t draw in allied defense, and yet still nets the Pirates the same number of victory points.

723

Trust me - the pirates are in no way shape or form allied with the british. We can’t stand the brits, but we know we can’t take them right now. We’re picking on the spanish to up our own points, make it harder for the brits to win, and hone our pvp skills.

724

An actual alliance with the British would be better than ad hoc thrashing between attacking Spain and France…

Whether the Pirates actually believe they are in an alliance or not, is moot. Their actions have aided and abetted the British, and thus the Spanish and French unsurprisingly treat it as a real alliance. Besides, not only did the Pirate attack on Havana go nowhere, it was counter-productive – tying up French and Spanish ships that likely would have been hunting the British otherwise.

Put another way, being in second place, and pursuing actions that help the first place team more than yourself is not a winning strategy. The fact that the Pirate have been unable to realize that this is what they’ve been doing doesn’t bode well for them. This is why you get Spanish players shaking their heads and wondering, as politely as they can, why the Pirates on Bonny are such tools.

Ah, but what the hell! I signed back up anyway! Not sure yet whether I’ll burn my level 33 Pirate and switch to the Spaniards; I’ll wait a bit and see how things go.

725

I’m certain you’ll be able to show them the error of your ways, now that you’ve put yourself back in the toolbox.

726

Well, the French didn’t show up out of some sense of loyalty. They just didn’t want their nearby port going into the red. That said, yeah, the French and the Spanish feel very much hemmed in by both the pirates and Britain. We aren’t going to win, we know that, but we’ll just try and keep both powers from screwing up our respective economies too much. If they find an easier way to win, which there are plenty, maybe they’ll smart up and do that instead.

But there were Spanish out there fighting too. I chased off at least two pirates with other Spaniards myself. We’re hardly helpless. And we were all in the red, PvPing, before the French even showed up.

We still have so much wealth that after evaporating the pirate menace we went on to put Matthew Town into the red and fend off an minor attack on Maracaibo by the British. If we didn’t have to split our forces we’d have been all over Matthew Town even more than we were.

But nobody thinks we’ve got a prayer of winning. It’s not about that. It’s about backing folks off our last remaining assets. We need those. So we need to make people that mess with them hurt as much as we can.

727

That’s a losing strategy, when you’re fighting pirates. We honestly don’t give a damn about any of our towns. We’re fighting out of sheer spite, and after fixing MT, we’ll probably go attack another spanish town. Our national strategy right now seems to be “Oh yeah? Well FUCK YOU TOO, BUDDY!”

728

Good luck with that. Meanwhile, Spain will do what it can to fight back. But we’re the underdogs. If you do well it’s sheer inertia. If we do well it’s because we’re plucky geniuses. I kinda like that.

729

You’re kidding, right? We were in last place yesterday. We have no inertia. Don’t kid yourself - if ever there were underdogs, it’s the people who can’t even build SOL’s. The two country alliance with full flotillas of SOL’s does not, in any way, shape, or form, count as the ‘plucky underdog’. Of course, you’d know this, if you hadn’t deserted the pirate side for comfortable national clothing, you dirty scum. :P

730

The French and Spanish are clearly the underdogs at this point, not the Pirates, regardless of whether they can build SoLs. Rather a moot point now though, as the Pirates have gone from having a shot to just shy of handing the game to the British – who only need 50 more points.

Also, you’re wrong about Pirates not giving a damn about Matthew Town. As the primary Pirate port for selling/buying, all the pirates I’ve known who play the economy find it pretty damn annoying when it’s under contention. This is why you’ll find Pirates come to defend it, whereas they often don’t care about other ports.

Anyway, good luck with that complete lack of strategy. Consider your complaint about SoLs for example, and how easy they would be to come by if the Pirates were savvy enough to ally with anyone, rather than being the first place team’s cat’s paw.

731

Yeah, I’m such a coward I gave up free ships and ports that can’t be taken for the comfort of the smallest faction in the game! Ouch, it stings me! The words - it buuuurns!

(Hmm. I think I’m turning into a PvP asshole. This is a revoltin’ development.)

732

Hey, thanks, I appreciate the well wishes, what with me totally being the guy, at level 21, who sets the strategy for the entire pirate nation.

733

Unless you lost 20 PORTS overnight, I don’t see that.

I was having a discussion that the pirates capturing 4th Rates is a good thing. The number of Spanish 4th rates can probably be counted in one hand. If it keeps the Brit 6 SOL teams out of the seas, it’s good to me and the Spanish. I really haven’t seen any Brits in red circles the last couple of weeks. I was attacking NPCs in the Lesser Antilles for a few hours and the only people I ever saw were a few rats and Frenchmen. Skirmish will be fun for a PVP newbie like me.

734

You’re looking at the score for the wrong day.

735

Are you on Bonny? Today’s 3/12/2008 right?

736

TODAY is, indeed, 3/12/2008. Today is not yesterday, which is when I said that we were in last place yesterday, which would be the day before that. Have you figured out what you were doing wrong in that picture now?

737

I saw those same scores on 3/11 as well, and they’re not updated everyday either. How had the pirates gotten so far behind that Spain had more points?

738

I’ve started a new thread, in the hopes of getting a clearer picture of who’s still playing, listing everyone’s Pirate Handle, etc.

739

“I wanna see blood and gore and guts and veins in my teeth! Eat dead, burnt bodies! I mean: kill! Kill!”

Erm. What I mean is that I got my first PvP kill in last night and on an experienced PvPer too. I was running with some TCON, CC and Vanguardia folks in a hunter-killer PvP group off Cayo de Marquis. Brought an expendible ship (part of a Sekrit Plan I’m working on for our Society) to put through trial paces.

Myself and the group leader, Tymme Hunt of TCON, spawned right in on top of a pack of very big frigates. The other four were on the other side of the gang. I made a bee-line for her to form a line, only slowly did it dawn on me that two light frigates would not a line make against these Deliverances and MC Hercs. One, the leader we’d been hunting for - named Ditka (turned out to be a real good guy), turned to make a run at Hunt who’s a much more infamous figure and was in a more dangerous (in theory) ship than mine.

He spun his bow across my broadside and I bashed it in with one volley (Desperate Fire 2). That got his attention and he seemed to chase after me while still skirmishing with Hunt. In a normal version of the ship I was using he’d probably have caught me but between my buffs and my ship build I was working his bow like a cutter and getting into structure. Eventually he turned back to try and finish off Hunt, which also exposed me to a freshly armored flank and his broadside - so I tried to maneuver in on his stern.

Now I saw his friend closing in fast but I really didn’t care. Part of the beauty of the ship design I’m working on is that it costs very little. Losing it while taking out a bigger ship is the whole idea. Survivability isn’t a goal. So instead of scaring me off this maneuver just made me dump cannons to run all the faster at Ditka.

I didn’t quite make it though before they shredded my sails. Then Ditka boarded. Well, I was already nervous and this didn’t help but I’ve always enjoyed AvCom so I just focused on dealing with Ditka. And deal with him I did. Again, I’ve got an unconventional build for my Dirty Fighting and I’ve been very careful in equipping Grim to support my tactics. To make a long story short I didn’t lose even a wave and he never got my balance down. And I did engage him personally. To his credit he went toe-to-toe and slugged it out with me.

After popping out of the boarding action I hammered him with a broadside that brought him way down in structure (again Desperate Fire 2) but my guns just wouldn’t cycle before he’d get a chance to board again - so I boarded him! My masts were down, his buddy was swooping in! May as well go out with glory! Besides, I was curious as to whether my previous victory was a fluke.

History repeated itself in this second boarding action. I must have wiped him out just before his buddy sank me. And I zoned out onto a dock. But man did I feel great! I may have lost but I won two boarding actions against a rather famous pirate PvPer in my first outing.

It wasn’t until this morning it dawned on me that I did actually win. If you win a boarding action as an attacker you vanquish the defender’s ship!

That felt even better. And Ditka’s a pretty class act too. We congratulated each other on a good fight in the forums this morning. Nice stuff. May see more of me out there unless I get inspired to reroll privateer now!

740

My first kill ever was also against someone who’d demasted and failed his boarding action. My brave sailors boarded and scuttled his ship instead.

I am a bit conflicted on line battle tactics. It may be that privateers belong in relatively inexpensive ships to take out the free pirate ships. Not sure how superior naval officer skill sets are for line-battles in fat slow ships.

When we returned to Havana we were cheered on by the trapped merchants and given a bounty for delivering Ditka’s head (one woman offered 4000 doublons, and then another raised the bounty to 10,000 doublons.)