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Originally Posted by Xeos
On the concurrent battles thing: it will be the only thing saving Blackbeard from rolling british wins all year long. France and Spain can only field 1 battle each properly and the british can field 3 or possibly 4.
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This is exactly why we made the change. Underpopulated nations are often face with defending only one port at a time with multiple simultaneous battles. It's not that they aren't able to win the fights, or that they aren't willing to risk the durability loss, they just don't have enough players to defend multiple ports at once. The French on Blackbeard lost two ports out of three simultaneous port battles.
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Originally Posted by Sally Sue
actually they could have just 3 battles going on one against each nation. although, it is fuzzy on that subject. It could mean they could have just 1 battle period at one time.
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The patch notes aren't entirely clear on the subject, but here's how it works: Whenever a port battle is scheduled we look to see what other battles are scheduled with that nation as the defender. New battles are schedule such that they always start on an hour and never on the same hour as another battle.
An example:
1) France attacks England port A at 3/11 5pm - Battle is scheduled for 3/13 3pm
2) Pirates attack England port B at 3/11 5:01pm - Battle is scheduled for 3/13 4pm
3) England attacks Spain port X at 3/11 5:30pm - Battle is scheduled for 3/13 3pm
3) France attacks England port C at 3/11 6pm - Battle is scheduled for 3/13 5pm
English defenders get a crack at every port battle. English attackers can cause multiple port battles to happen at once because offensive battles aren't considered. If they're really paying attention that would enable a nation to launch a retaliatory port battle immediately after one of their ports went into contention and get two battles for a nation to overlap. If a nation is worried about that they should be careful when they trigger their attacks. They can also choose to abandon their attack (or send their B team) to favor the defensive battle.
This also still allows up to two port battles to overlap for any given defender. Players who are killed out of a port battle in the first 47 minutes will have a shot at the overlapping battle. Players could also conceivably leave a battle early to jump into the second battle if things are going particularly well (or particularly poorly) for their side.
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Originally Posted by Sally Sue
Second, I would say that this would actually hurt blackbeard more than help if what you are saying is true. As it stands now the french spainish and pirates could each attack the british as the same time thus forcing the british to spread their forces out over 3 battles. This would thuse give each of the oppossing nations a chance that they could get an easy port win.
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The French players on Blackbeard were perfectly capable of winning a port battle against England's A-team. They demonstrated this by winning the one port battle they were able to defend against. They simply lack the numbers to keep up with the numbers on the British side. This change allows an underpopulated nation the chance to defend their ports instead of losing by default simply because they can't field more than one fleet of 24 at a time.
This change certainly reduces the ability of high population nations (or allied nations) to force a single defender to fight parallel battles. Before the change the maximum number of parallel battles was 9 (and we saw 3 a few times in practice.) Now the limit is 1.5 to 2 concurrent battles. That's a trade off I'm willing to make to help out the low population nations' ability to defend themselves in port battles.
Joe