Black sparrow wrote:Juicylettuce wrote:The pause trade route feature is terrible for me and i don't like it all. If a merchant is active they can terminate all their trade fleets and let me attack them one time
PLEASE DELETE THIS Feature.
If the member was active, he could still pause all his trade routes by terminating them. I am all for pirates improvements but this is irrelevant.
Black Sparrow is right- the pause feature doesn't make it easier to avoid a raid. It only makes it easier to respond quickly and restart trading quickly.
As for the ability for pirates to cause huge damage I don't see the problem. If a pirate commits the voodoo cards that cost him a few weeks to collect he is able to plunder quite a few times. If the target is large enough there is no reason to not be collecting 150k per plunder if not 250k each plunder. If the pirate is able to get 15 plunders then they have taken between 2.2 million and 3.7 million gold. If they can hide most of that gold quickly and they get plundered 5 times in return they have only lost maybe 0.5 million gold. So committing 2 weeks of voodoo can you maybe 1.5-3 million gold. If you work with your guild and take on a large trader you can take many millions each.
But then Zombie it right: Revenge voodoo <- that is what is holding pirates back. I large trader probably has some voodoo sitting around that can take back a good chunk of gold and fame. Then the pirate starts round 2 of the attack since the trader is not on the plunder screen and now we have a War.
So this is what I think Pirates need in order able to plunder without fearing revenge and war: Anonymity and cheap (less destructive) voodoo.
Hit and Run
A pirate in history would try to sneak up on a trade ship and quickly steal and run before the big guns could show up. So we should have a common card (maybe called "Hit and Run!") that would allow a small pirate fleet (NOT a huge Frigate or Ship of the Line fleet but just 5 smaller ships) to plunder with only +2 danger rather than +6. Then if that fleet only plundered once it could get away. To keep people from using it on every attack there could be a debuff applied to a fleet after casting this on it that wouldn't allow another to be cast for 2 hours. Also every ship would need to be a Brig of War or SMALLER so that war fleets couldn't take the advantage that smaller ships historically had at disappearing.
Now a pirate can plunder without sitting around waiting for a revenge attack for 4 hours.
Hide Identity
It would also help the pirate to be able to plunder anonymously. Again, only small pirate fleets could do this and only every 2 hours or so. But this would allow a pirate to take gold without showing their face to the "authorities" which is exactly what pirates what to do!
Now a pirate can plunder from the safety of the anonymous plunder message. Coupled with "Hit and Run" there would be very few clues as to who done it.
A common, single target Fugitive from Justice
There is still the problem of getting the trader's fleet on the plunder screen in the first place: I think there have been at least 3 options already proposed to solve this: 1) finding a random trade ship at sea and plundering it (could choose a random fleet that has visited the selected port in the last 2 hours). 2) A single-target common undercover voodoo card that would give one fleet +3 danger rating instantly. 3) Research a trade route: spend turns to increase your chance to randomly find a trade fleet to plunder. The #2 voodoo idea seems to fit well with the voodoo that is already in the game- it is simply less destructive and sneakier.
Now a pirate can trim down a trader's fleets without making a huge deal out of it by casting a fugitive. It also makes it tougher to hold onto 400+ trade ships- just like how it was back then. Traders would need to build escort ships? What an idea!
Summary: Traders needed the user interface improvement. Pirates need more tools to do SMALL raids. Huge traders have it easy in that they don't need to build escort ships because they will only ever get plundered by SotLs during a HUGE raid. Allowing anonymous pirating and creating advantages for small ships will increase the options for pirates and decrease the possibility for huge traders to stay huge and take revenge. I would like to have PG less political and more small pirate friendly.
-Captain D
