Not really. We've come up with a plan to have the skirmishes affect unrest. Plus, any time we introduce another activity in the game, we remove people from the core elements, but we also assume that we're going to grow the pop by giving people new things to do.

There are a lot of tuning changes in 1.2. I'll see if I can get a dev log together for it. PM Aether and send him your mail, and when the coveted day comes, I'll send you a map of the world with the PvP zones so you can see the progress we've made on it.

Even when the systems are working as we intend them to, there will still be an element of ganking. What we're showing is war, which is about attacking where the enemy is weakest, and having more numbers. What you're looking for is the skirmish system, which will let players create challenges for each other that will be focused on equivalent numbers and is more of a sportsmanship approach to PvP.

I am a little confused though. You come from Eve, but there's no ganking there?

The first fix is in, that of stopping people from taking a port all the way to a port battle. Right now, they can take it into Pirate PvP fairly instaneously, which i'm still not a fan of. As an aside, this has nothing to do with amount of PvP (which we're tuning up) it's just a question of how fast a port goes into it.

Anyway, after throwing around a bunch of temp solutions yesterday, we're working on the design of the real solution to roll out.

My, aren't we grumpy?

In point of fact, they're starting with one. One of the things we're testing is a higher player density than the US servers. We initially started with an expectation of where we wanted pop density to be, but didn't take into account that balance issues at low pop servers are a significant problem, whereas at higher level pops they're not as much of an issue.

Your frustration with the lack of developer response is warranted, and a reaction to the issues brought up in this thread is forthcoming.

I apologize that it didn't happen sooner, please understand that it has nothing to do with us avoiding the issue out of fear or spite for our customers.

Best,
Aether

Big Pond is aware of the issue, and we are working with them to resolve it. The challenge just now is the difference in timezone, but we will keep you updated on our progress.

My apologies for the inconvenience.

Best,
Aether

Check the latest PotBS log in My Documents\Pirates of the Burning Sea\log. It may give you more detail on the precise reason the game won't start.

It is better to determine why UDP is being filtered or dropped. In ship combat your performance may drop significantly if you fall back to TCP.

See answer number 36 at support.flyinglab.com

There seems to be a lot of confusion regarding the quests in the Algerian Consulate, so I'm going to try and help you out as much as I can.*

Once you've captured the Algerian ships and been sent to meet the Admiral, you'll have a choice after completing the quest "Checks and Balances." You can either side with the more hawkish admiral (the first one you meet) by doing "Threatening Posture" or his dove-ish rival by doing "Cooler Heads Prevail."

If you do "Threatening Posture" then you'll become allied with Yusuf and have to complete a series of missions in which you kill off all his brothers (unless you're in love with one of them, but that's a whole other can o' worms). If you do "Cooler Heads Prevail," then you'll have to do two missions in which you negotiate an alliance between the dove-ish admiral and Ibrahim ("Gesture of Peace" and "Hopeful Alliance").

The next missions in the series are level 35, so there's a big jump (because it's expected you're doing the romantic and scholar sub-plots). These are the missions that you'll need to complete in order to be able to spring your lover from jail.

If you sided with Ibrahim:

1. "Envoy of Ibrahim" from Ibrahim in the Consulate
2. "Timely Arrival" from the Bartender in Santa Catalina/Cape de Vela/Pensacola/Jacob's Clock
3. "Think of the Men, Captain!" from Ibrahim's contact in Belize/Maracaibo/Biloxi/Golden Lake
4. "I Know a Fellow What Knows a Fellow" from Ibrahim's contact in Belize/Maracaibo/Biloxi/Golden Lake
5. "Name Dropping" from the merchant in the Bluefields/Caracas/New Orleans/Turpitude

If you sided with Yusuf:
1. "Contact Sports" from Yusuf in the Consulate
2. "Negotiations and Death Threats" from the Bartender in Santa Catalina/Cape de Vela/Pensacola/Jacob's Clock
3. "104 Things I Hate About You" from Yusuf's contact in Belize/Maracaibo/Biloxi/Golden Lake
4. "The Contact's Contract" from Yusuf's contact in Belize/Maracaibo/Biloxi/Golden Lake
5. "The Raison Debt" from the merchant in the Bluefields/Caracas/New Orleans/Turpitude

*I promise that all of this information maintains the standards of accuracy and reliability that we expect from the internets.