I think this is an idea that would spice things up a bit and remove some rigidity of the standard of having a lot of solely trading fleets and an attacking one or two.

I suggest that it would be possible to for ships on an automatic trade route could come across each other, by pure chance, and do battle. Whether these people are logged in or not, I suggest a chance that it could happen. The more trade routes someone has, the more chance it is going to happen. I can't really suggest the frequency without knowing how many trade routes people have, but even if every trade route suffered it, on average, once a year then it'd still have an impact, especially on those nearer the top of the fame board.

It'd make people be more careful about just getting five level 1 trade ships and sending them on their way and leaving them to it, creating a bit of diversity and choosing the player to carefully balance trade and defence, working out how much cargo space they should sacrifice for defence of the merchant fleet.

The 2 players' would get an event saying the battle happened, whioch would run like a normal plunder in essence. Less fame/money could be lost, maybe with the added minor inconvinience for the loser that their trade route is cancelled and goods lost. Perhaps even losing some cannons/crew in the process. The winner would carry on as normal, though still suffer from damage % as per normal.

Voodoo could then be used on top of this idea, either to cause or prevent these meetings from happening or other suggestions anyone has? Please comment, suggest improvements or shoot me down completely

The idea is approved and I really like it. We will push forwards to make it more specific on the ruling and implement it as soon as possible.

More ideas specifically wanted on how to decide when they meet.

Players could also get control on whom to exclude from this. Perhaps we should include only Guild and countries though, in order to avoid further political intense. So the only chance the player will have will be to choose which countries he will attack. After all, ships carry flags and this is how decision to attack or not was made back then.

In this sense, we can make this suggestion part of the country feature and have it implemented right away.

Phill's idea is great.

I also propose that when the battle occurs, only countries should be mentioned. It should say that your fleet has enganged a citizen (or put player title here) of England!

Perhaps fleet names and ship names will need to be hidden to ensure total anonymity. If you do this, then there will be no reason for someone to skip this feature. If you do not hide identities, perhaps this will create controversy and some people will choose not to attack anyone, based on personal/guild pacts etc. It does sound like a tough decision on how to arrange restricitons so I will go with you whichever your final decision is.

Just keep in mind that if you however keep it strictly country based, it will make the countries feature more important and this can be a good thing imo.

This sounds fun! I also like Black Sparrow's idea to keep the players anonymous and just mention the country but I don't think it would be too hard to work out which player battled you because there are between 1 and 3 players in each nation that tend to have the majority of trade fleets. Also since it was a semi-random event it wouldn't demand a counterattack the way plunders tend to do. If voodoo was added to increase the frequency of theses battles then it might be used to target a certain player's trade route and then it would be advantageous for the attacker to be hidden.

Does this mean I can set my Ship of the Line fleet on a trade route and hope it runs into a Trade Galleon fleet? Would there be any ship type requirements? Could a ship ability be an increased chance to avoid these battles (how about the Galleon)? How about a ship ability to increase these battles (I propose Sloop of War)?

-Captain D

Well, the chances can't be dramatic. In contrary, they need to be fairly limited as there are some thousands of trading fleets in the game. It is not going to be easy to discern who is who if we hide player/ship/fleet names.

This would give a whole new strategy to the game that is currently not available. There are players showing up on the plunder screen that would be greatly impacted (positively or negatively) if the countries they are hostile with are automatically added as involuntary members of the potential "chance meeting" group. I would love to have my enemy countries as members of the list and I don't think I should have any control over that except in the case of countries that would lead me toward becoming a Pirate.

I love this idea. I too believe that it should be kept anonymous. The chance meetings should take place between any country except the one you belong to. So if you are a pirate, it could be an advantage or disadvantage depending on how you look at it. Also your guild should have nothing to do with it, it should be based strictly on country flag. This definitely would put a much needed twist into the battle portion of the game. Port battles are looking a little scarce nowadays, just sayin.

i would suggest hide country flag because its easy to track down people since everyone pretty much has a different one ._. but that would be unrealistic ^_^

I'm fairly new to the game but this sounds like a good way to add something extra without causing major issues.

Anonymity is a must, to prevent reprisals. I agree that it would be good to show a rank and nation.

Some of the factors you could take into account to increase / decrease the chance of a meeting -

Size of fleet - the larger the fleet the more likely it is to meet another fleet in open water.
Danger Rating - the higher the danger rating of a fleet the more likelihood of a chance encounter.
Port - the busier a port the more likelihood of a chance encounter? Not sure about this one!

I don't think its a good idea to have chance meetings between guild members or ships of the same nationality. That wouldn't make sense as guild members or people who have 'chosen' to work together wouldn't fight and ships of the same nationality wouldn't fight either. Like the idea of allowing people to choose who they would attack though, if you meet someone else who has chosen to attack your nationality though you don't really get a choice in the matter.

Pirates of course are open to attack by any nationality, including other pirates.

Very nice structured post, Swampy. Your post says it all.

I might add that Nations Diplomacy will be selectable by those who run the Nation and not the players themselves. So, if England is at war with France, then French Ships will engage the English ones and vis versa.

Pirates will always be at war with all nations and there will be no options to exclude them for those who run the nations. There will be only pacts with Privateers who will be able to be excepted when doing business with a particular nation. This will make it harder for Pirates to make any trade so this feature must follow once we have done enough to ensure survival for those that choose Piracy path.

Guildmates will be automatically excepted.
For battle reports created Player name, Player ID, Player Guild, Fleet name and Ship names will not be mentioned. In contrary, flag will be mentioned.