[Implemented] Skirmish

[Slindur]

Those are good thoughts Greythorn. The next round in the Tavern is on me!

[Roberts]

Those are good thoughts Greythorn. The next round in the Tavern is on me!

Ahhh second that... May i have a large rum please captain?...

[Stan Rogers]

The man posts 12 times in 3 years. I don't think he speaks to hear himself and when he posts, it pays to listen carefully.
I like all the changes he proposes. Well thought out and certainly worth strong considerations from the dev team.

[Lefty]

I dunno. I think that this will continue to erode the player base. Suggest adding anti skirmish voodoo cards before implementation.

[Xanadu]

I haven't done this in a while so my thoughts may come together coherently, or maybe I will be totally off base but here goes...

I don't mind the cargo loss. That would come with any plunder of old. All the swag worth carrying would be taken, clothes, silverware, the kitchen sink if they thought they could sell it. I do have an issue with the plunder of the players purse under the proposed skirmish rules. If a rich trader had a large purse on hand would that same amount of gold be on every ship all the time?

One possible solution would be to tie the amount of gold carried to the cargo capacity of the ships in the fleet. The larger the ships in the fleet, the higher the amount of gold able to be plundered.

Another way to do this could be to base it on the value of the ships in the fleet. The higher the cost of the ships in the fleet (including cannons) the bigger the percentage of the purse. In this case level 10 LMM's would give more gold than a fleet of level 5's and fluyts would grab a bigger prize than howkers.

I do understand that coding this would be more work than a flat percentage from all fleets hit. It would also make the "fat" traders like me more likely to get hit than someone starting out because we have the larger ships that would be worth more gold to hit. On the other hand we could be harder to hit because we have the financial means to arm those fleets and buy escorts for them. Just an idea to throw out here. It would put more of a wrinkle in the game that will interest everyone, not just the pirates, and make people think a bit more about fleet sizes and arrangements on both sides of the plunder/trader line.

I wouldn't mind seeing something like a + 3 or +4 danger per skirmish on the attacker. Enough to be on the board if anyone is hunting, but not for 4 hours. I do believe that if a ship or fleet was pirated within an hour of a port, there would be some sort of response by a pirate hunter if there were any in the port at the time the pirated ship arrived. I also think that pirates in fast ships with a lead could lose their pursuers in an hour or two. Especially if the idea of this mod is to give people more encouragement to plunder. There also has to be some balance, in the form of no "free" hits.

[Barnabas Sackett]

Good points xanadu

[Captain Jack]

We are trying hard to find the correct setup. It seems that our biggest problem here is what happens if a guild or nation decides to use skirmish to target someone?

At one hand, someone might claim that this is fair, as a group should have the power over an individual and the individual in extend should not provoke the group.

At another hand, this already happens in other ways. Skirmish does not need to be one of these ways. Especially by the time that there is no defence (for now at least) against skirmish.

No matter how hard we have tried to find the correct way, we always return to this issue. How to nullify this chance. It seems that the only way to do it, is, unfortunately, a limit.

The limit could well be 5 Skirmish attacks per player per 24hours.

This limit is good for a starting one. An average player with 200 ships should have about 38 trading fleets that conduct about 456 trading trips per 24hours. Losing 5 trips cargo value * 2 = 5 * 7200 * 2 about 30k total loss on average. For an average trade profit of 2500 per trip its losing the profit of 12 trips (1 of the fleets, works for pirates plunder) or about 2.65% of total profit.

So, these metrics are more than good for everyone.

For Pirates:
-Making 14.5k per Skirmish on average.
-Making 24k per Skirmish when they find a fleet carrying Tools.
-Making up to 2,175,000 per Skirmish with they find a fleet carrying Gold Bars.

For Merchants:
-Losing a maximum of 30k per skirmish, from which only 15k from hand.
-Losing a maximum of 150k per day, from which only 75k from hand.
-On an average player, worst day will mean he will lose 2.65% from total profit, on average.

For Hybrids:
-Posibility to catch Treasure fleets
-Many fleets to hit at ports under normal rules.

For Goldsmiths:
-They make great profits already, they can afford to lose some profits, eh?
-This will create room for another feature, where goldsmiths will sell their production in BULK to merchants who will then take the risk to sell them overseas .


The first post has been updated with all final details. Please, give us your feedback now, so we can finalize this. We can implement it till Saturday.

[TheLoveTiger]

We are trying hard to find the correct setup. It seems that our biggest problem here is what happens if a guild or nation decides to use skirmish to target someone?

At one hand, someone might claim that this is fair, as a group should have the power over an individual and the individual in extend should not provoke the group.

At another hand, this already happens in other ways. Skirmish does not need to be one of these ways. Especially by the time that there is no defence (for now at least) against skirmish.

No matter how hard we have tried to find the correct way, we always return to this issue. How to nullify this chance. It seems that the only way to do it, is, unfortunately, a limit.

The limit could well be 5 Skirmish attacks per player per 24hours.

This limit is good for a starting one. An average player with 200 ships should have about 38 trading fleets that conduct about 456 trading trips per 24hours. Losing 5 trips cargo value * 2 = 5 * 7200 * 2 about 30k total loss on average. For an average trade profit of 2500 per trip its losing the profit of 12 trips (1 of the fleets, works for pirates plunder) or about 2.65% of total profit.

So, these metrics are more than good for everyone.

For Pirates:
-Making 14.5k per Skirmish on average.
-Making 24k per Skirmish when they find a fleet carrying Tools.
-Making up to 2,175,000 per Skirmish with they find a fleet carrying Gold Bars.

For Merchants:
-Losing a maximum of 30k per skirmish, from which only 15k from hand.
-Losing a maximum of 150k per day, from which only 75k from hand.
-On an average player, worst day will mean he will lose 2.65% from total profit, on average.

For Hybrids:
-Posibility to catch Treasure fleets
-Many fleets to hit at ports under normal rules.

For Goldsmiths:
-They make great profits already, they can afford to lose some profits, eh?
-This will create room for another feature, where goldsmiths will sell their production in BULK to merchants who will then take the risk to sell them overseas .


The first post has been updated with all final details. Please, give us your feedback now, so we can finalize this. We can implement it till Saturday.

This seems like a pretty solid formula in my eyes, +1 from me.

[Most Lee Harmless]

Not sure about these 'great profits' from gold-smithing.. I think that only kicks in about level 10 or higher... I'd say most struggle to break even or make a modest return just now.

But, that said, have at it : if ti come sup as being too unbalanced, it can be tweaked further... to more outrage, of course.. but then a little outrage goes a long way

[Stan Rogers]

Aye, I do question the 'great profits' on gold bars perceived to be made. Although selling bars appears to produce big numbers, the only time a 'great profit' is to be realized is if one were able to steal a shipload of bars from someone else's hard work.

A goldsmith will sell at a loss up until the smelter reaches lvl 5 and then, the actual profit works out to about 200gc/bar at the next lvl 6. The loss of a shipment would set an aspiring goldsmith back many thousand gc and it would take many weeks to recover that loss when the profit is only about 200gc/bar when a smithy builds for market sale.