Greetings all,

You currently are free-to-war anyone. Either another player or another guild or etc. This however has some drawbacks with the biggest being that one may find it difficult to open a direct war; most players will try to avoid intense clashes for the sake of logic and the necessity to make good economy.

The game is pretty realistic here but this costs in fun. Wars can be very interesting and as Heraclitus said: War is the father of all.

To encourage wars, we are positive into creating Rule-Based wars. This can be realistically explained as the Pirate Code.

Guilds or individuals will be able to call to the code whenever they want. Of course, we will make sure that there will be suitable reasons to keep to the code, for any player.

So, let's suppose that there is a friction between John Rackham and Black Sparrow. They may want to fight each other to settle the deal but they would not want to risk themselves wide open to all the rest. The Pirate Code will have the solution.

For a war to be established, the following must be agreed:
Victory Conditions (Both parties must agree to this)
*Set victory condition (Equivelant of gold loot only, we will create a system that will track exact gold loss/gain)
*Set a fame bounty; both parties will give an exact amount of fame that will be deducted from them and added as bounty (if it is a guild, then it will be deducted automatically - proportionally from every member).
*Set a gold bounty; Optional
*At the end of the war, the winner will get the bounties.
*Parties will be able to raise the bounty or change victory conditions during the war (always both must agree).
*Parties will be able to end the war prematurely with an agreement on % of the bounty.

-No fame losses or gains from the battles in a war. You play for the bounty or else use current system.

Additional rules which can be decided independently. One party proposes and the other accepts or rejects based on its own will.
1.No danger penalty when attacking.
2.No Voodoo allowed ( if selected, all fleets will be able to be attacked - even if they have danger 0 )

Feel free to add your bit to this. It is a feature that can be carefully planned. It can get a good priority but surely after newcomer missions, guild missions and coutnry missions/ranks/control.

Sounds like a really good idea, though I agree with the development priorities you mention. I have a few ideas...

1) A reasonable time limit (eg 7 days or less) to any Pirate Code (PC) war so that there in no way players or guilds can be left with unresolvable wars (because an opponent has sold all his ships and gone inactive or whatever).

2) A way for a guild to exclude members below a certain guild rank from the PC terms so that eg new players aren't automatically involved in the war.

3) A way for guild members to exclude themselves before any war is started (I am going offline for a few days and set a flag so that I don't get into a war in my absence).

4) As a nice-to-have, create battle honours and victory trophies to decorate player and guild profiles. It would be an incentive if these could ony be won through PC wars.

5) Issue batches of special PC-only voodoo cards if a PC war allowing voodoo is declared. This would ensure that players had the means to engage, and wouldn't be counting their cards before accepting or refusing the challenge. Would also reduce the advantage of senior players with vast card collections vs less senior players. Or a player could pay gold for a random set at the start of a war, or get PC instead of normal cards daily while the war lasts.

6) Add an economic dimension. For instance by creating a blockade move (or voodoo card as above) I could exclude enemies from trading at a particular port unless the blockading fleet(s) were defeated. I or my guild could blockade the tool-producing ports hoping to stop the enemy from building new ships. With a voodoo card or whatever to reveal enemy warehouses and a looting move I could also try to strip the enemy of shipbuilding goods. This sort of thing could also be incorporated into port ownership and international wars.

John rackham,

You never fail to come up with some insightful information to be considered when a proposed game enhancement is entered. Perhaps you and several hand-picked players/forum members could be selected as an advisory council to the developers. I would also nominate Black Sparrow and Captain Dungeness for their extensive experience and love of the game.

I would love that.

I would like to help the devs grow the game but it seems they already have a lot on their plate right now.

Nice John Rackham.
I especially liked the Flag for someone who goes offline for a couple of days.

I'll create a new suggestion based on this

Future Reference
Add-on idea which combos with Privateer idea (summarized here: viewtopic.php?p=2978#p2978 )

Contracts offered to Privateers will be:

• Confidential - The player name who offers the contract will not show at the pirate who receives the contract (ie you send some of your trusted crew to do the deal confidentially)
• Prepaid - The contract offered will be paid in advance from the player that suggest it.
• Proportionate - Rewards will be proportional. Which means that if the contract value is 1 million and the pirate has conducted half the objectives, then he will be able to get 500k.
• Paid anytime - The pirate will be able to receive the rewards of a contract anytime he wishes. This will add flexibility to pirates. So, a pirate will be able to complete a contract but keep his money somewhere safe. He will also be able to stack such contracts. A brilliant way to ensure a pirate's longevity. Although we might combo this with the treasure feature + player bank feature later.
• Contract bidding - An add on feature (will not be included in first release) , could be the ability for the one who offers the contract, to add it to a bid market instead and receive messages from the pirates interested to undertake it (in the way jobs work in the internet). So the contractor could choose among prominent pirates. Only pirates will have access to the list of offers and contractors will be able to choose ALL or SPECIFIC pirates from the list.

may i ask when well this future be implemented

I hate to be a grave digger but since the idea has been brought up again, I'm wondering if this could be part of the next major update after the current one is done. This idea was suggested 2 years ago.

Which one? There are like 20 great ideas here:)

This was one of the options we voted on awhile back. We voted for what the next major update would be and Nation Missions/ranks won. Pirate code wars was one of the choices along with ship specialisation, Hideouts and some other things.