And for Mr. Beltpouch:

There is no real relationship between resources and status as ‘new-player’ ports. They were determined wholly independently. The only exception is that the highest-end materials such as teak and zinc are found only in the Antilles, which is a high-level area. Thus it’s reasonable for a shipwright to build large ships in ‘new player’ ports; the designation ‘new player’ is only relevant for what missions and nearby NPC ships are at that port. We protect those ports a bit more to try to keep our newbie experience from being too hostile.

Resource availability and positioning is not intended to be perfectly symmetrical, or even mostly symmetrical. If it were, ther would be little reason to attack the ports of another nation.

We are, however, going to take a look at the magnitude of the newbie protection in 1.5, and see if it’s too high.

Sorry to be slow in responding, off drowning in work.

Nope, we're not satisfied with how the NvN currently works, but it's not confined to when port battles are scheduled. We're working on changes to the PvP for both enjoyment in that as well as how it affects NvN. I think part of it is addressed in 1.4 about how contention works, but there are more changes and design ideas that we're working on that you'll see showing up in 1.5 and onwards.

By the way, when we say "here's how something works, and here's why" it's not the same thing as "and this is the one true way". It just means that it's how we're addressing it right now, and why, but it doesn't mean that we're not working on finding a better solution in the future.

Yep. There's been an internal discussion going on for several weeks that was prompted by another discussion you and I were in on another thread where I noted that I had some ideas about changing how the PvP works. Pretty much all of my ideas got shot down (sob!) but new ones showed up as a result of those discussions. The insurance is the first one, you'll see more as we get them nailed down.

I don't have a specific time frame that I can share, but I believe Joe is working on a Devlog with some specifics in it.

GB, my personal preference is not to reduce the cost of high end ships, but rather to reduce the loss each time they sink. This is why I prefer the idea of insurance. If you get most of the value of your ship and outfitting back in doubloons each time you get sunk, it takes a lot of the sting out of that loss. It also puts a bunch of doubloons into the economy, which drives the production of more outfitting and ships.

The advantage of reducing the cost is that it lowers the initial entry fee, but my feeling is that getting together 100,000 doubloons for your first high end frigate is much less of a barrier than the fact that you have to start all over when you lose it.

Thoughts?

Your thoughts on sharing upcoming development plans haven't fallen on deaf ears. In the meantime, there is brand new Devlog up on our front page talking about what is coming in 1.5.

You can find it here: http://www.burningsea.com/page/news/...ticle_id=10818

Best,
Aether

Pirates of the Burning Sea Producer, Joe Ludwig, has published a new Devlog discussing the work that is underway on build 1.5 and how this build is a little different than the work we've done in the past.

You can find out more about what we've got planned by visiting this link.

Enjoy, won't you?
Aether

I have not read every single post in this thread in detail, so I apologize if some part of this has been covered.

Broadly: there are too many barriers to PvP in our game. This includes the very high cost of losing your ship, the extensive grinding to flip ports, and many of the other problems you've brought up. We are absolutely working to reduce these barriers and give a wider range of people access to the PvP game.

Specifically: We plan on adding a system of insurance that will refund part of the value of a sunk ship to you. We are working on ways to make low level players more interesting and useful in PvP. We are working on ways to allow low level players to tryout or practice PvP without having to risk their ship, and obviously without the normal PvP rewards.

I think the PvP experience in our game is a lot of fun, and I want to make that experience available to all of our players, not just the ones who have the time and will to get through all of the barriers.

We talked awhile ago about adding a steersman. The captain probably wouldn't be manning the wheel.

Very nice design!

I've merged a couple threads and brought them both here, since The Marketplace is only appropriate for already-approved, sellable User Content. Your design looks like it could use a little more work to be ready for the game, which should be fairly easy for you to achieve.

If you make your entire decal slightly transparent (opacity 50-70%), you'll solve two issues:

1) Right now, a lot of the underlying sail is hidden. If you make the decal transparent, it will look like it is sewn into the sail.

2) It looks like you have pure (or nearly pure) black and white in some areas of your design. If you make the decal transparent, you won't have to worry about your design being sent back for more work -- your colours will be within the acceptable range.

For more suggestions you can always look at the 2D User Content Guide.

If you make changes and would like feedback before submitting your new design into voting, you can select the "In Review" option when you re-submit. You can use the same [ u c ] [ / u c ] tag to post a preview image, right in this thread! Just put in the new submission number. Then it's a simple click to put your design "In Voting" once you're confident it fits all our guidelines.

Good luck, and happy drawing!

Thanks for the additional links. I'm going to make sure we've got the right FLS staffers reading and responding, but even more important, see if there are ways we can use the ideas and concerns expressed in those threads as inspiration for future Devlogs.

Best,
Aether