Roileon wrote:Reading that was like watching the creation of a star and solar system out of the dust of a nebula.
HAHAHA, you perfectly described what reading that was like!
I want to add a few notes:
Before voodoo:
When no one could add danger to other people's fleets it was possible for traders to grow forever in both fame and gold. I think the highest fame I ever had was about 83M. Now you can see pirates and wars have kept the highest fame player around 30M to 40M. All ships used to be 10 times less expensive and all captains were half as expensive as they are now.
Fleet evolution:
Before voodoo there was a bug that let players sail their ships with 0 crew! You only needed 1 ship in the fleet to have 15 crew and it could sail. So many traders would sail Tortuga-Tzogos with Trade Galleons using only 15 crew for the whole fleet. Also all sailing speeds were faster back then so it wouldn't take forever to travel with 15 crew like it does now. Since there was no voodoo almost trader sailed level 1 ships. Within a week of voodoo being introduced both Phil and I were plundered hundreds of times and we both lost most of our trade ships. After that people started leveling up trade ships (SGT Blue only ran level 10 trade ships).
Pirate evolution:
Before voodoo, everyone was a trader since plundering only happened when someone made a mistake. When voodoo started a few big players (mostly PK members) started plundering with their sotl fleets and and many traders had no idea how to deal with the incredible power of voodoo. Eventually traders would cast voodoo back at the pirates and could make lots of gold back by beating the big pirate ships. Then Skyhawk figured out a way to steal from traders but not lost it all to retaliation attacks. He sailed smaller fleets that could take on the undefended trade fleets but didn't cost much when crushed by sotls. He also made deals with multiple captains to let them commandeer the ships he stole and he would commandeer them back in a few weeks when he needed the gold. Since then many pirates have taken to this strategy with relatively good success.