Standard Plunder Rate

[Roberts]

I don't understand how this can make plunder more strategic...

Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha (copyright: FOX)

I am going to have to report you, for plaguer ism...

[Jim Hawkins]

I vote leave it as it is The average is 3%

Jim

[Captain Jack]

Forgive me for short messages, I skip all explanations to keep it simple. I can write pages, rest assured.

Here is a proposed formula, straight to the point:
Gold Coins Plunder = 1% of Treasure at hand + 10% of the base value of ship at the tail + 1000 Gold Coins + 1000 Gold Coins per ship at fleet

This formula seems better for everyone involved. Pirates, big players, small players, everyone. The only group of players affected negatively by the change, are ship plunderers but only in time needed against a prepared player. Not in profit summary (it is greater) and not when you go against inactives/unprepared players (should be easier, take into consideration the proposed voodoo card Band of Thieves)
Mainly because it forces everyone to play with more gold at hand. This is the shortest way I can reason it.

We have a tool we use to back our sayings. To access it go here:
http://www.piratesglory.com/test/plunde ... lat_rate=1
The default values used are using the formula above, for a 5 LMM fleet getting repeadetly attacked, owned by a player with 15M at hand.

Tweakable values (change them at URL):
hand: Starting gold at hand
static: total static gold from your formula (for my formula above, if you use howker as tail and you have 5 ships in each fleet then static = 1000 + 1000 + 5000 = 7000)
flat_rate: The percentage of your gold lost per attack.

1% flat rate might sound too big of a change, this is why I proposed the 2-2.5% as a start.

The proposed formula, is a formula we can use for DISCUSSION. Nothing more.
Ask me questions, it is better than writing essays.

-----

Answers for questions above:
Roberts
Define me who is a Pirate for you and then we can talk if is against pirates. For me, it is not against pirates in my own definition. It favors them and i can list why. It is truly very unpleasing to see a standard response from you for whatever thing we put up for discussion. Your general negativity is unwanted so please, either bring arguments or don't post at all.
Danik
-The element of chance is good but it is uncontrolable as it is. A player who uses howkers as tail will last 4 attacks per million for about any amount beyond 7.5M while he will last for 120 attacks in the last 1.5M. Who is going to make these last 120 attacks? Is this procedure helping the game? How many players at your plunder screen run with hands more than this 1.5M?
TheLoveTiger
This is not a vote. This is the start of a big discussion which I suppose it will take many pages. Your quote is what we want to achieve here. We want to make all targets more worthwhile than they currently are and in the same time allow everyone to have better control of their possible losses.
Warrior
The ability to know your losses before hand, is a strategic option. You choose how much you will lose. More options are unlocked as well through hand management (see my response to Danik)

[Sebena]

Forgive me for short messages, I skip all explanations to keep it simple. I can write pages, rest assured.

Here is a proposed formula, straight to the point:
Gold Coins Plunder = 1% of Treasure at hand + 10% of the base value of ship at the tail + 1000 Gold Coins + 1000 Gold Coins per ship at fleet

This formula seems better for everyone involved. Pirates, big players, small players, everyone. The only group of players affected negatively by the change, are ship plunderers but only in time needed against a prepared player. Not in profit summary (it is greater) and not when you go against inactives/unprepared players (should be easier, take into consideration the proposed voodoo card Band of Thieves)
Mainly because it forces everyone to play with more gold at hand. This is the shortest way I can reason it.

We have a tool we use to back our sayings. To access it go here:
http://www.piratesglory.com/test/plunde ... lat_rate=1
The default values used are using the formula above, for a 5 LMM fleet getting repeadetly attacked, owned by a player with 15M at hand.

Tweakable values (change them at URL):
hand: Starting gold at hand
static: total static gold from your formula (for my formula above, if you use howker as tail and you have 5 ships in each fleet then static = 1000 + 1000 + 5000 = 7000)
flat_rate: The percentage of your gold lost per attack.

1% flat rate might sound too big of a change, this is why I proposed the 2-2.5% as a start.

The proposed formula, is a formula we can use for DISCUSSION. Nothing more.
Ask me questions, it is better than writing essays.

-----

Answers for questions above:
Roberts
Define me who is a Pirate for you and then we can talk if is against pirates. For me, it is not against pirates in my own definition. It favors them and i can list why. It is truly very unpleasing to see a standard response from you for whatever thing we put up for discussion. Your general negativity is unwanted so please, either bring arguments or don't post at all.
Danik
-The element of chance is good but it is uncontrolable as it is. A player who uses howkers as tail will last 4 attacks per million for about any amount beyond 7.5M while he will last for 120 attacks in the last 1.5M. Who is going to make these last 120 attacks? Is this procedure helping the game? How many players at your plunder screen run with hands more than this 1.5M?
TheLoveTiger
This is not a vote. This is the start of a big discussion which I suppose it will take many pages. Your quote is what we want to achieve here. We want to make all targets more worthwhile than they currently are and in the same time allow everyone to have better control of their possible losses.
Warrior
The ability to know your losses before hand, is a strategic option. You choose how much you will lose. More options are unlocked as well through hand management (see my response to Danik)

I can see what you want to do but I can't agree with you on this, curnent system is great so why change it. I understand you want to put need of strategy and not make it just click game and I respect that but still I would like to see old system staying same or just make rates little lower if you think that they need to be tuned a little bit and put need of strategy in other aspects of the game.

[TheLoveTiger]

I am a firm believer in the saying:

If it isn't broke, don't fix it. Currently I think the system works for everyone seems to be overall fair.

[Stan Rogers]

The new system should allow a whole new way of "doing things". May be fun working out new ways to do old things.

[Most Lee Harmless]

I dont like it : currently, you have the chance of gaining between 50k to 250k plunder on a target carrying 5mil purse : under this system, that drops to a flat-rate 62k on a 5 mil purse : even a 15mil purse would only get a max of 162k : I dont see where the need to carry a bigger purse comes in as overall plunder would decline : calculating the optimum purse would be a simple formula and so away goes the opportunist hits that the current uncertainty creates when you spot a marginal purse and get lucky with a few hits and then develop that into a full-on raid. Do your math and you can carry a modest purse and lose less if you do get hit under this new proposal. I dont see what is being encouraged by it?

[Stan Rogers]

As I look at my constantly evolving gameplay, I just realized this proposal will help me considerably. Not all the time but, right at this moment, it would help me with a problem that I hope to be facing more often as my "game plan" develops. Obviously, for reasons of security I am not about to reveal publicly why I am now in favor of this change but I applaud the foresight admin is demonstrating.

[Roileon]

I'm in favor of the proposed change for all aforementioned reasons.

In response to Danik's most previous post, I do agree to the notion that uncertainty and randomness is crucial in any strategic game or else they become static. A perfect example of this is chess, chess has a 0% random element, meaning after hundreds and hundreds of years it's become a game where knowing the book more than your opponent can result in a win, with lines being followed out to the letter and no real strategy involved. If I play e4 and my opponent plays c5, we both know exactly what the next moves are going to be just from having studied the opening.

Relating this back to Pirates Glory, with a smaller deviation in the plunder rate, you sacrifice randomness for stability and planning which if I understand correctly, this is the whole purpose of the possible change. While yes, this change does open up a new route for strategic defense and attack, it also puts plunder and defense down a static route in the long term. I believe that a balance of randomness and predictability are crucial in any strategy game. The unknown chance makes planning much for fun and even combat more fun as you can never quite know what's going to happen. In short, it spices up game-play for all involved.

But, the current issue is that the current system's random element throws the balance of strategy and spice off balance a bit, and so a smaller range than 1-5% would be well received. I would not be in favor though, of just 1% as then we have a chess situation. With more changes to the game coming where there's more randomness in combat, the balance will be even more thrown off. With this, it's important that stability is added somewhere in the game to counteract this and I believe that plunder rates is the most optimal place to provide this.

Generally speaking, if the random element is done right in any game, there are huge gains for all involved. We must be very careful moving forward of not only how this balance will affect the present, but how it will affect the future. Seeing the updates that are to come in the future, I've concluded that an imbalance towards static play will not occur, as the future updates proposed have enough random elements to counteract this (ie. ship abilities). In the short run, Danik is correct, "calculating the optimum purse would be a simple formula," and so instead of seeing most people carrying around less than 1.5mill, instead we see everyone "prepared" carrying around the exact same amount. But, if we diminish the range to 2-4% per say, then not only will people be carrying more gold (allowing for more plunder profit as Capt.Jack mentioned) but we will also maintain the uncertainty that is crucial. So to clarify my refrain, I'm generally in favor of the proposed change for all aforementioned reasons."

Originally I was going to leave this post at, "I'm in favor of the proposed change for all aforementioned reasons," but the moment you begin to explain one thing it just begins to spiral out of control

[Captain Jack]

If we want to be deepest sincere here, what we are after are three objectives:

1)Players should lose less than they do now
This is relative to time and time only. The current possible losses are considered too high. A player can lose all his fleet in short time. Sure, it requires efford but the damage involved make warfare a hateful practice. How many times defenders made you feel a really bad guy for attacking them? How sinister it is nowadays to cast a danger-adding voodoo to another? This is due to the big loss involved first and foremost. This will plunder rate change this? Probably not immediately but in the long run, traders will care less for getting ambushed.
At the same time, we do not want to make the attackers earn less.

2)Players should not lose everything while they sleep
It is nearly impossible for anyone to defend while he sleeps. Only very active guilds can play a role but still this era will soon pass as guilds are becoming more and more organized. Soon, even active guilds will be forced to watch when an organized attack comes in. What we want, is that if the losing player has to watch, then he must do so. Losing while sleeping is not good.

3)We want more battles
For this, more income has to be generated through fleets. If fleeting business is too risky, people will avoid it.

These being said, we do not really care about the flat rate. 1-3% random can still work for us. What we do think that will help the objectives above, is a less tight relationship between plunder amount and treasury at hand. Whatever helps to this cause and the simplest it is, the better for all.

To make it count for all and also ensure that plunderers will not see less but more income, we have also proposed a change to the sink chance ( viewtopic.php?f=5&t=1823 ). This change will allow traders to maintain larger fleets with less losses. It will help plunderers to gain more and hopefully, with this change, it will allow big players to engage in combat more frequently than they do now.

Remember, we have Ship Specialization ahead. All the rest features, diplomacy, academy etc, they all sound good but they are not really taking the game to a greatness level we desire. Ship specialization can do it. And for specialization to play a role, we need to change some of the plunder rules first. We are however open to your discussion; you play this game, you pay this game, your feedback will play a big role in our final decision on how to step forward.