I've found out the hard way - those that chose a pirates life early on have an up-hill battle with the current rules as they stand.

Thinking piracy would be fun, I spent all my gold on upkeeping and upgrading the Sloop I chose at the start of the game. When I worked out that trading is a safer way to make gold, I gathered the requirements for a Howker and set up a trade route. Foolishly, I lost my Sloop in battle, and all I had invested in it.

In retrospect, losing my Sloop was an act of karma: My Sloop lived by the sword, and died by the sword.

The bit that does sting is that my officers list says I have hired 2 captains, 2 merchants and 2 admirals, even though 1 of each went down with my sloop. For any noob pirate, I can see that being a barrier to advancement. Yes, noob pirates like myself will lose ships (that is just part of the game), but with the current set-up, you could add more and more officers to the hired list, yet only have a small number of ships. This will just end up making it harder and harder for the pirate to build fleets, giving less incentive to play pirate and more to play merchant (or have some players give up the game in frustration when it becomes too difficult to build more fleets)

My suggestion: The costs of hiring officers (for each type of officer) should be based on the number of officers currently hired (alive and well), not the number of officers that have been hired overall (including the dead ones)

PRO: From my point of view, this could be one of those changes that addresses to pirate/merchant imbalance that has been in recent discussions, and would give the game a gentler learning curve for noobs.

POSSIBLE CON?: More experienced players may have more to gain initially, as higher experience means more likely to have a larger difference between total officers hired overall (current rule) and officers currently hired (proposed rule change). On the other hand, this big step-change will more likely be of higher benefit to players that have previously worked as pirates than those who have stuck to merchant routes, so this could be seen as a kind of back-payment for what those pirates should have been given earlier.

I do recognise that this sort of a rule change is one that can make a bit of a change to the dynamics of the game, but I believe it would be for the better (but also recognise that I might be wrong). What do you think?

The only way to lose an officer, is through Assassin voodoo card. You do not lose an officer when a ship is sunk.

I want to suggest a modification to the equations.
Now we know that an admiral can control up to 5 captains.
And to get full fleets you end up with 150 captains but 30 admirals at which point the cost difference is huge.
How about making the cost of captains factored into the number of admirals too?

It is always better to post your idea in a new topic than posting twice the same thing in two somewhat-relevant topics.

I am not familiar with forums, so I don't know how to do that. Sorry

[quote="Captncrunch"]
My suggestion: The costs of hiring officers (for each type of officer) should be based on the number of officers currently hired (alive and well), not the number of officers that have been hired overall (including the dead ones)
[quote]
lol. so serious yet wrong understanding of the game..officers don't die when ship is sunk.

That is what is in effect at this time. In my opinion the issue is you end up with 150 captains compared to 30 admirals for instance. at which point the cost of a captain is almost 800K while the admiral is half that. Each admiral controls 5 captains max, so I just think captians are a little overpriced as the game progresses.

I asked this question also when I started playing and the answer that I received was that the cost for captains is a way to keep players from advancing too quickly. It has nothing to do with the value of the officer to your fleet. The way around having to pay for new captains is to win ships in battle. You do not need to purchase a captain for those ships unless you wish to say build a fighting ship . Then you would either have to sell off the number of ships you have until your number of ships is one lower than number of captains you have, or purchase captains for those ships plus one before you can build your next ship. Of course a bribe voodoo card is also another way to obtain an officer without having to pay for it. That comes in pretty handy when the cost for a captain reaches into the million plus range.