[Implemented] Skirmish

[Slindur]

Thankee Captain Jack!

Also, I have finally caught sight of the legendary indominable "Cutter," the one that eats 5 Man of War fleets from breakfast! I made sure to keep my distance... I didn't know if it had eaten recently.

Slindur

[Most Lee Harmless]

It got away... Daisy was most upset...

The ENEMY has escaped! You lost 1 skirmish point!


not the best of starts for this feature, in my view

[Roberts]

*Sir Roberts Gets out his Pay Check for the admins*

Walks away laughing.... Knowing how much pain their is going to be for traders from now on...

[Psychodad]

well that's the end of merchants...selling all my ships and waiting to see if this gets better. entertaining offers for credits and other objects of value.

enjoy pirates...who will you plunder when everyone is a pirate?

[Pimpernel]

Nah, 5 skirmish attacks = 5 lost cargo loads. And that's per day and if the attacker wins the skirmishes. Not something I welcome, but something I can survive as a trader.

[Most Lee Harmless]

Looking at the initial battle reports, getting hit with a skirmish is not going do that much damage unless you lose a gold bar shipment or a high capacity fleet loaded with tools : frankly, the return for the danger gain (and potential loss as the hit fleet is now lit for 'normal' attacks) is poor. Once the initial excitement wears off, the real gainers will be those that stalk such fleets for the occasional spectacular pay-off ; but for daily plunder use, it will have irritation value but aint gonna make anyone much richer or much poorer...

[Loki]

Skirmish is a fleet attack against a fleet found in the Gossip Page.

The 3 conditions below must be met in order for the Skirmish to proceed:
1)The fleet must appear in the Gossip page.
2)The gossip entry must be 20 minutes old, maximum.
3)The fleet must be in the same port vicinity with the Gossip entry.


Is anyone else seeing that you can skirmish well beyond the 20 minutes range mentioned by Captain Jack as highlighted above, I went to a quieter port and discovered you can target any of the last 50 fleets regardless of time

[Captain Jack]

well that's the end of merchants...selling all my ships and waiting to see if this gets better. entertaining offers for credits and other objects of value.

enjoy pirates...who will you plunder when everyone is a pirate?

You are wrong.

Maximum loss for a trader that does not use Gold Bars is 150.000 gold coins. Hardly the end of anyone.

To score that loss you need to run pure Trade Galleon fleets that trade on a Tools port. Since Trade Galleons manage about 10 such trips daily, you will need to have 3 or more such fleets to record the maximum loss. Assuming that all 5 skirmishes you receive are successful.

So, the maximum loss of 150K will not be a normal scenario but in fact, a scenario that will be rarely produced.

A normal scenario will be maximum losses of about 75K per day. Less than the profit that a single LMM fleet can make daily if tuned good or less than 2 LMM fleets can make if not tuned at all.

[Slindur]

Skirmish is a fleet attack against a fleet found in the Gossip Page.

The 3 conditions below must be met in order for the Skirmish to proceed:
1)The fleet must appear in the Gossip page.
2)The gossip entry must be 20 minutes old, maximum.
3)The fleet must be in the same port vicinity with the Gossip entry.


Is anyone else seeing that you can skirmish well beyond the 20 minutes range mentioned by Captain Jack as highlighted above, I went to a quieter port and discovered you can target any of the last 50 fleets regardless of time

Loki, I tried that (somewhat on accident) for my first skirmish. I was hoping for a gold bar fleet (of course) and attacked a fleet that departed about 50 minutes before I tried to attack. An error-type message occurred and said that I had to attack someone who had departed less than 20 minutes ago. So, while you can see the fleets that might have departed longer than that, you can only attack the ones that left within 20 minutes of your attack/skirmish.

Slindur

[Captain Jack]

Looking at the initial battle reports, getting hit with a skirmish is not going do that much damage unless you lose a gold bar shipment or a high capacity fleet loaded with tools : frankly, the return for the danger gain (and potential loss as the hit fleet is now lit for 'normal' attacks) is poor. Once the initial excitement wears off, the real gainers will be those that stalk such fleets for the occasional spectacular pay-off ; but for daily plunder use, it will have irritation value but aint gonna make anyone much richer or much poorer...

Tools port will surely get some heat. However, skirmish will truly matter for those that do not run merchant fleets at all and for those that manage to discover treasure fleets. Surely, discovering a treasure fleet will be worthwhile as even 120 gold bars will amount about 350K.

Gold Bars trading will become even harder and more sophisticated, as a result. Continuous game addons will ensure that things are kept interesting for all involved sides.

Also, if you have not noticed, we increased the maximum pool of skirmishes to 72. This will allow a large percentage of the playerbase to involve into the Skirmish feature. It will not get old easily as it is always exciting to attack player fleets, even for low returns.

Defenders might even manage to make profit through skirmishes so don't be fast to judge how the feature will gel.

As always, any new feature needs constant feedback. We are interesting in your point of view and I will try to respond to each one of you in order to get some fast progress.

Ideas on how to get skirmish points, voodoo card ideas, anything involving Skirmish, shoot as they come to your mind