[Disapproved] Pirate Hunters too strong for new players

[MAjesty]

the harms of pirate hunters to brand new players should be pretty obvious, but ima list a few of them now. first and foremost, the reason why game administration should care about them. First and Most Important: it slows down new players. getting a fleet off of the ground is both expensive, and time consuming. as it is, players with pacifism cast on them have trouble beating even the weakest fleets. this is made even worse because the new player missions/natural instinct suggests that making more ships instead of stronger ships is the right play. a player who completes the make 5 hawkers mission has just made fighting an NPC fleet of any kind exceptionally difficult, even with a shower of hidden treasures and pacifism cards to help them. for players seeking immediate action, this is a GREAT reason to get bored and move on to a different game. a single lvl 10 cutter costs 214,000 gold, for a player who has started with zero, that is a major uphill climb, even after getting newb mission bonus gold, there's still something like 100,000 to make. this is a rough figure, but one of the noobs i work with reports his hawker fleet to be making about 20,000 gold on a good day. that means it would take over a week just to make a ship capable of doing battle with weaker NPC targets.

since newb pvp is a completely random experience it would only make sense for NPC battles to be a source for instant action to hook new players into the game. relying on them sticking around for a week before leaving the tutorial path is much weaker then it could be. most games have a ramp system to get new players into the fighting with NPC realm, but it usually takes an hour max, not several days.

enter the pirate hunter. even for players who Have stuck around for weeks, the pirate hunter becomes an immovable object, i work with players who have <10 ships, several of them lvl 10, and pirate hunters still completely block progress in NPC battles. larger players, ie 6 months plus have no problem beating pirate hunters if they so desire, but for newbs its a giant immovable roadblock, and that's just Bad.

solution. honestly i think it would be wise to just remove the pirate hunter from the game entirely, but i doubt that will happen. so here are some softer options. NPCs shouldn't scale up in difficulty for a players first 10-50 thousand turns and/or the pirate hunter shouldn't appear period for the first 10-50 thousand turns. players in their first 10-50 thousand turns should not have the more powerful npcs (military convoy, large merchant fleet, pirate hunter) for their first 10-50K.

as usual my concern here is player retention.
please take this seriously,
im only trying to help.

[Captain Jack]

Pirate Hunters suppose to make the npc farming difficult, we want the npc farming difficult.

-The player missions categorize 3 paths for the new players. You cannot expect a merchant to be able to beat the npc fleets with a single low lvl sloop when he has at least 5 howkers gnerating profit. This is wrong.

-There is a card that is the first that newcomers learn, it is Pacifism.

-Still, Pacifism is not meant to be a Pirate Hunter killer. Instead, the Pirate Hunter is supposed to be a strong opponent to ensure that NPC farming is hard and not an automatic source of income. There are antimeters though, like wait 2 hours or switch to another port. That's the best solution. After all, this best solution is even proposed by the game when you try to patrol with a PH present.

I can safely say that the three reasons I listed are more than enough, but there are more so I will not reserve them.

-The newcomer can still get solid help from a big player, like getting a high lvl Brig of War (something common). In this way, even the Pirate Hunter is not a problem. (This also gives room for guilds, a way to make a difference versus the rest).

-PH is an interesting game concept which also simulates a real case scenario met in real history.

-NPC farming is not that entertaining, we want it to be difficult so it can be used sparingly.

-NPC farming should require a special setup, or it is too profitable. This is another reason we want it to be difficult.

-So here we come to the balance issue that arises. If we weaken or even remove the Pirate Hunter as you suggest in your post, then we make NPC farming fairly easy. We make the necessity of Pacifism obsolete and finally we give a great advantage to Pirate style of play.

-Scaling for 10k-50k turns is still not a solid solution either. The new players need to get familiar with the dangers early on, so they can plan ahead. Presenting them with the PH after they have made their key options can be ore disastrous than anything else.

Therefore, it is disapproved early on. Feel free to come up with suggestions not on nerfing (as we generally hate to nerf anything) but counter strategies and we will gladly review them.

[Stan Rogers]

First post... Hi everyone. Very much enjoying the game.

From the perspective of a noob, knowing Pirate Hunter abilities increase in a ratio equal to number of ships player has would have helped my early development.

My attempt to defeat NPC fleets were delayed by instead of developing a strong attack ship for them, I tried to make more cash by sinking all my gold into traders unknowingly also raising the abilities of the Pirate Hunters and NPC's in general.

I eventually had to sell many of my trade ships to lvl up my attack ship thus decreasing pirate hunter/NPC abilities to start profiting from NPC' plunder.

Perhaps a line in the help guide explaining NPC abilities vs player ship count would help beginners if they read the guide.

[Skullsocket]

Thanks TPK, you have opened my eyes

[Lowled]

i need to say that MAjesty is right,
i tryied 2 times to attack a merchant fleet (just a normal one, not a large one) and i failed 2 times with a 99% damage, this makes the game not so fun for new players... and if i wouldn't get advice, i would already have gone away.

[Lowled]

hey guys, i'm looking for a guild my player id is 44522
i'm new and looking for help

[MAjesty]

hey guys, i'm looking for a guild my player id is 44522
i'm new and looking for help

i wonder where this guy went..

who knows, he liked the game enough to get into the forums...

o well, kinda shame if u ask me.