[Implemented] Skirmish

[Captain Jack]

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.

That's a bit off topic but I will respond.

Goldsmiths turns profitable or break even at Level 3 where the production of a Gold Bar crate costs 2,862 gold pieces. Since you can sell for 2910 at least (there are also duke bonuses, voodoo bonuses etc that rise the final price), thats called profit. But lets call it even.
At level 10, a goldsmith will produce 4800 gold bars a day at 2,337 a gold bar piece (with full crew) for about 2,75M profit.
At level 20, the profit will be 12,5M a day, if gold bars keep selling away at around 2900 gc price per crate.

So, I consider these great profits but this is mostly a skirmish discussion.

[Stan Rogers]

You are correct CJ and I apologise for allowing myself to get off topic.Also, yes, indeed the numbers you speak of is great profit. To expect great profit, the road is both expensive and fraught with danger and risk. That is a good thing !
It is also a slow journey that should take many months.

When Skirmish comes, the danger of plunder will make a low level goldsmith extremely cautious as pointed out, loss of millions of gold bars could also halt development by weeks and will cause the owner to take extra measures to avoid such a loss.

All good, because the sword cuts both ways. Perhaps a enterprising gold smith will plunder his first load of bars to give him a boost in development. It is also understood that this is not meant to be a quick way to easy profit and we must enjoy the journey, not the destination.

[Greythorn]

1)Evasion Probability
-There is a 20% chance that defending fleet will evade the skirmish (Chance percentage will surely change later and it will be Based on Speed and ship attributes that will be introduced with Ship Specialization). In case of an evasion, no battle takes place, attacker receives the normal danger penalty (+6 Danger).

Is the Danger penalty still +6. If so, the larger traders would not participate in the skirmish feature. As example, an average large trader carries $2M plus in gold. In would not be worth the risk to be on the plunder board and lose 100K+ when you can only make 14-24K per attack.

-Gold Loot
If the defending loser has gold coins at hand, then he pays extra the gold equivalent generated above (these gold coins are removed from the gold at hand). It does not apply to gold bars.

Not sure what this means, can you explain?

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

This is a good solution and balanced.

[Captain Jack]

Agreed, Stan Rogers. Also, goldsmith profit is dependable to demand and competition. A risky business indeed.

I see your point for large merchants, Greythorn. You are right too. You think that the +4 solution would help more people participate?

Gold loot is equal to cargo. If you carry 25k worth of gold cargo, then attacker gets 50k. 25k from your hand + the gold equivelant of the cargo = 50k. This does not apply for gold bars cargo though.

Later on, we could remove the skirmish limit with the introduction of Insurance laws for plunder where country will pay the gold loot instead. It makes more sense to have the nation paying for Skirmish attacks rather than Plunder attacks as no fun will be spoiled in this way.

[Greythorn]

You think that the +4 solution would help more people participate?

For a small or mid-sized trader, yes. For the larger trader, probably not. Here's why. With a +4 Danger, their attack fleet would be exposed on the plunder board for 2 hours. To help this, they could attack right before the top of the hour update to get that -1 Danger drop. Now the attack fleet has a +3 Danger for 1 full hour. So they have exposed 100K+ of their gold. Plus, because they are a larger trader, they have a very real chance to have the last ship in their attack fleet lose a level. So that cost has to be figured into the risk as well.

If I was going to go pirate, here is how I would play this under its current suggested format. I would park my attack fleet in one of the tool ports. I would attack to my daily limit on skirmish first. Remember, I do not care what my danger rating is, I am a pirate. Now, when those small and mid-sized traders start popping up, I would hit them for all I was worth. The plunder on a mid-sized trader with 1M in gold can run to 50K. More than double what I can make on Skirmish. Then I can attack 3 times for each counter attack (+6 Danger x 3 = 18, counter attack = -18)

So how would I do. Most pirates carry about 500K in gold. So lets figure 3 wins at 50K = $150K. Loses equals 1 counter attack at 25K. Net result is 150K - 25K plus Skirmish 24K = $149K

[Captain Jack]

Here comes a big messy post, read the statements in bold for the main points.

500k is a large amount for a pirate to carry I suppose. A pirate especially with no trading fleets has zero need for such a sum on hand and banks should hel him in this venture.

Pirates have this privilege, to manage their treasury easier and cheaper than anyone else.

If he has a cutter last then the standard loss per hit is 1k.
Let's suppose that he has 120 Danger and one enemy that hates him wants to see him lose and he also decides to cast Disfavor on him. In this case, which should be the worse case scenario and difficult to happen, he will have to defend 14 attacks.

14 losses amount a standard 14k. This means that he can have about 50k more for a total of about 65k. If he loses the maximum amount at every battle, it will go like this:
1st attack -4.2k, 61.8k left
2nd - 4.1k, 57.7k left
3rd - 3.9k, 53.8k
4th - 3.7k, 50.1k
5th - 3.5k, 46.6k
6th - 3.3k, 43.3k
7th - 3.1k, 40.2k
8th - 3k, 37,2k
9th - 2.9k, 34.3k
10th - 2.7k, 32.5k
11th - 2.6k, 30.9k
12th - 2.5k - 29.3k
13th - 2.5k - 27.8
14th 2.4k - 26.4k

The maximum loss at a scenario that is difficult to be reproduced, is about 40k for 120 danger (or 240 without Disfavor).
Of course, you could sail with even less than 50k, lets say 25k but 50k should be better as they will protect you from about 20 Booty Masters, making you in fact immune to such a tactic. It's a low cost in order to play it safe.

So, Pirates do not really have losses, if played right.
Hate voodoo cannot be taken into account - although a reality.

Now, for income, Pirates will have means to make more skirmish attacks than anyone else. We will find the ways. I estimate that the number can grow considerably for those that want to feed mainly on player fleets and disregard NPC plunder. About 24 points daily is perhaps the minimum I can imagine at this time (for pirates, not for Beta period but for a little later).


For merchants, right now, NPC plunder is a good way to make gold, with earnings yielding about 10k on average to 120k on max for large fleet owners. For a starting player, average if about 5k to 25k for Treasure fleets (coastal Piracy assumed). Which means that a large merchant, with a good war fleet + Pacifism + Coastal Piracy can already make a good amount of income using NPC plundering ( a couple of millions). These will be increased slightly with the reduced turns costs for some voodoo cards, such as Pacifismi/Coastal Piracy. I guess we can afford to leave the big traders out of the every day skirmishing - perhaps they can only use their points spontaneously when they think they have located a treasure fleet. It will worth the try then. The maximum pool for skirmish points will always a multiplier of 3 (which means 3 or 6 or 9 or 12 or 15 or 18 or 21 or 24 or 27 or 30 and so on) just to allow someone to do 3 skirmish attacks for 1 defend. This will surely tempt everyone. Or we could find more uses for Skirmish points, for those that do not want them, even trading of Skirmish points could be allowed.

Therefore, we should maintain the +6 Danger. We already have too many special rules for Skirmish (not that many actually) and it is always best not to mix things so much.

[Lefty]

Skirmish is the worst idea (yet) to be implemented. I would suggest a trade option that adds time to one's route. Perhaps a penalty of 15 minutes to 120 minutes depending on the class of ships, can be added to trade routes that enables a fleet (to avoid skirmish activities) to trade safely without showing up in port gossip and therefore be vulnerable to attack. We already lost Capt's Davinci and Dungeness from the list of profitable prospects. How many more will quit/revert to being a worthless target? Jim Hawkins and crew is the only one who seemingly asks for attacks now. What will be left after skirmish is implemented? Here is a list of the top ship masters as of this day. Lets see who/what is on the list after skirmish.......

# Name Ships
1. Jim Hawkins 803
2. Kart 550
3. damn the torpedos 480
4. Lodswe 420
5. Sir Henry Morgan 401
6. Joe_Boot 377
7. Wally 362
8. trixikilikili 354
9. Ben Scarlett 325
10. Loki Greathall 324

[Captain Jack]

Regarding ship numbers, these are mostly a result of the 25 fame limit and fame formula not working as intended. We, as original developers never wanted anyone to have that many ships.

Regarding pirates/attackers profit, ship numbers do not really play a role. In fact, skirmish will allow profit off merchants in a more direct way where voodoo will not be needed.

[Roberts]

Regarding pirates/attackers profit, ship numbers do not really play a role. In fact, skirmish will allow profit off merchants in a more direct way were voodoo will not be needed.

In what way will this stop direct voodoo casts? This will be a way to detect how much a player is carrying , if he/she is worthy of voodoo attacking : It will increase the voodoo casted...

Why should people stop casting voodoo? What would the profit per day be? 20,000?... Meanwhile you can earn 3 million per raid?... Bit of a difference?

[Captain Jack]

Who said that this will stop direct voodoo? I said that skirmish will be a way to attack someone without voodoo.