TO ALL: New Concepts - Name your wish!

[Vane]

I would like to see bonuses applied to players based on their chosen path.

Career Choices:

- Noble
- Merchant
- Pirate
- Privateer
- Naval Officer

Each player would choose a career on the governor page, similar to your name this may only be changed once every 30 days.


Noble:
+ 20% influence gain through build up port
- 20% influence lost from propaganda
+ 5% profit on overall daily profit (calculated at update)
Gains 8 danger per plunder or skirmish

Political Campaigne Ability: Target port loses 50% less influence from conspiracy cards for 24 hours. 48 hour cool down.


Merchant:
+ 10% Profit on all sales by fleet action or manual sale (1.5% GB)
- 10% Cost on purchase through fleet action or manual purchase (1.5% GB)
- 10% Officer cost on purchase
2% more of treasury lost when plundered.

Merchant Tycoon Ability: When activated, you gain an additional 10% profit on all sales for 12 hours, 24 hour cool down.


Pirate:
+ 15% additional plunder and skirmish gain (generated by game)
When rum is present on board a ship, that ship gains +10% attack
Gains only 4 danger per plunder or skirmish
‎+ 10% Cost of goods on fleet purchase or manual (2% GB)
- 10% profit on selling goods fleet or manual‎ (2% GB)

Raid Ability: Target one player for 4 hours, this player loses +2.5% treasury per plunder and you only gain 3 danger per plunder on that player. 48 hour cool down.


Privateer:
+ 5% additional plunder gain (generated by game)
+ 5% trade profit on selling goods (1% GB)
- 1 danger per plunder or skirmish
(no negative balanced play style)

Letter of Marque Ability: Select target nation, for 24 hours you gain an additional 15% plunder (generated by game) and 2% from your target when you attack players of that nation. You also lose 1 danger per attack on players of that nation. 48 hour cool down.


Naval Officer:
+15% ship defense when attacked
‎Loses 22 danger per defend skirmish or plunder
‎Cannons cost 50% less at upkeep
+ 7% Cost of goods on fleet purchase or manual (1% GB)
- 7% profit on selling goods fleet or manual‎ (1% GB)

Guard Ability: activate on target player for 24 hours, that player has a 50% chance hostile voodoo will fail. 48 hour cool down.



I believe more battles will be generated from this as well as a need for strategy and teamwork based on defense and raiding.

Numbers are open for discussion. I went with what sounded good off the top of my head.

[Admiral Nelson]

How would such be classed?

Privateer to Naval Officer?

[Vane]

How would such be classed?

Privateer to Naval Officer?

How do you mean?

[Sebena]

This would make too linear and probbably lower the player base not to mention players who calassifie themselves as opportunist such as myself... but there could be some ideas that could be worked on...

[Vane]

This would make too linear and probbably lower the player base not to mention players who calassifie themselves as opportunist such as myself... but there could be some ideas that could be worked on...

You want to be an opportunist go privateer, no drawback and additional income + less danger...

[Vane]

(Moved suggestion to its own thread. Please discuss there)

[Maha]

Fame
Fame points are used to measure how successful the players are in relation to one another. However, since fame points are almost irrelevant in the game, the gold coin (gc) standard is widely seen as the real important scale.
Fame, is in game only good for masking the voodoo caster for certain cards and to change fame into gc. Fame will stay irrelevant as long as it has no real value in the game.
Because of this, all actions are calculated and merited on monetary gain. Trading brings the highest profit. And it is seen as being successful as well. Players who look at a skirmish page occupied by one player only are in awe. Much more so than seeing some mid-range war fleet from a successful pirate. A successful pirate keeps his gc low, he does not have to protect 50 fleets. An experienced pirate is willing to trade his attack fleet for e rewarding raid. The lack of assets is his way to weather retaliation. But this smart defensive measure does not radiate ‘success’ in the way the number of fleets etc. does for the Merchant. Both use the gc as norm, one gets recognition the other not.
Any disturbance to trade is loss of profit. Plunder, skirmish, raids are risks that need to be marginalized. Traders don’t plunder for fun; it is too costly in counter attacks for the amount of gc they need to carry to protect their merchant fleets. Skirmish is already limited, but can be further brought down by putting powerful ships in the fleets. Ship stealing can be pre-empted by with adequate gc and raids as well. Only when a player has other motives (e.g. nation missions) he will be raiding at a relative loss to gain more by ranking up. As a result the merchants have learned to discourage pirating. A look at the plunder board shows that it is shark eat shark while the tuna’s are (mostly) left alone.
New additions can be introduced, but as long as the gold coin rules, the fighting between players, guilds or nations will be minimal. More gc is made by avoiding fights.
What is needed is to make Fame a / the relevant scale again; a scale where fighting beats trading. When players are willing to accept a financial loss for a gain in fame, more action will follow.
There are several ways to make fame more attractive.
A formula like (fame points x number of attack the previous day) / (number of ships x lost battles the previous day) could be used to increase or lower all the attributes of all the ships a player owns in a significant way. This way high fame results in more damage, more accuracy and faster ships, low fame in slower ships and less strength to attack.
With fighting the faster way to gain or keep fame, merchants will be challenged to increase their wealth faster through fighting. Pirates know that an attack that brings no profit now will add fame that enables them to hit more profitable targets later on.
Another way to make fame more relevant is by adding benchmarks. Make desirable assets available to owners of a certain amount of fame only.
E.g. the hideout can only be opened with a fame of 2.5 million. It will close when fame drops under 1 million.
The same could be done for the various buildings and tech within the hide out. Each building adds 0.5 million to the benchmarks and each tech level a 100k. This will force advanced players to keep their fame up! And when fighting brings more fame points than trading, the merchants may be enticed to fight more to make more profit faster.

What does this do to the balance of the game?
The main issue is that the merchant way is a slow way on the fame ladder and thus a slow way to gain access to high level techs that will boost their profit. Also, their attack fleets will be slower in gaining firepower and speed, their merchant fleets ditto.
Pirates however gain fame faster by doing what they already do; fighting! And by doing what they already do they become better at a faster rate.
Although it does not change the dynamic between pirate and trader directly because the gc rewards for skirmish and plunder remain the same, the need for high fame is a game shifter. Merchants have to accept a slow path to coveted high tech and hideout buildings or change the way they operate their business