Brethren of the Brick Seas (BoBS) Intro Thread, Era II

[Darnok]

Just now, LM71Blackbird said:

Just checked out of curiosity... and actually, Quinnsville beats out all the settlements (even Mesabi Landing) on monthly income with 99dbs a month!

I just did the same, and congrats on the first place.

We are only 1DB behind though (even if you can continue licensing for now, and we can not ).

[Capt Wolf]

27 minutes ago, Drunknok said:

The biggest problem - and one which seems to be on nobodies screen - is that BotBS has only a very minimal midgame and no endgame at all. After a certain point all you can achieve is a higher bank account, with nothing meaningful to spend it on.

If you're using bank account totals as a way to measure who's "winning", I think you're playing the game wrong. It's not about an end game or a bank account, it's about building with Legos and playing age-of-sail adventures. If I have enough DBs in the EGS to play out my adventures, I'm "winning".

29 minutes ago, Drunknok said:

I think what some people are upset about are expenses they never had to plan for, i.e. the previously free "faction forts". The large and royal ones cost serious money now, an unforeseen change that came over night.

This is the truest statement I've seen of late. That's the truly big change, and we're all scrambling to adjust. If leadership adjusted the fort rules too far, we'll address it, but for now we all need to give it a chance.

[Roadmonkeytj]

2 hours ago, Maxim I said:

That's just the point I got enough db's, but I am sure there will be others who have less db's, but are in the same position. As said above, no settlement has more than 100 db's income, so atm, every settlement is a loss for its owner.

Charlatan Bay brings in 113DB a turn but has 350DB worth of expenses every turn .... It only had just shy of 400 in its account....  How long will it be OK? 

Just saying.   We are scrambling on the faction end to remedy this... 

[Bart]

31 minutes ago, Drunknok said:

I just did the same, and congrats on the first place.

We are only 1DB behind though (even if you can continue licensing for now, and we can not ).

Poppy Port cracks out a 90db/month while being the smallest settlement ;) 

1 hour ago, MKJoshA said:

Wow. I have no desire to play (even in a small way) anymore. Too many rules. Too many rule changes. Every effort seems to be made to make it harder to earn DBs and harder to understand how to earn them. MCRAs only happen 4-5 times a year. To get no property DBs because the leadership in charge of the MCRA goes missing, links to forms are lost, or other RL delays is a harsh punishment. And on top of that you want everyone to pay an arm and a leg for forts. Fewer DBs, more expenses, and more rule changes = not a lot of fun.

My opinions on the many changes in BoBS is well documented. But this is the nail in the coffin. I hope some consideration is made regarding my comments. I can't threaten to leave, because that's exactly what many in leadership want: fewer pirates. But what desire I had to see where BoBS goes is almost nil.

Thank you to everyone who has honestly wanted to make this game a success and has worked hard to do so. Somewhere during this journey the way was lost. I doubt BoBS will ever find it again.

4/5 times a year is an issue tho. I thought of it as monthly, as in MonthlyCRA that would indicate atleast a minimum of 10 times a year, because we are all humans and maybe miss out on the one during christmas or when everybody is somehow at the same time on summer holidays. 

44 minutes ago, Drunknok said:

 

The biggest problem - and one which seems to be on nobodies screen - is that BotBS has only a very minimal midgame and no endgame at all. After a certain point all you can achieve is a higher bank account, with nothing meaningful to spend it on.

 

This is not a problem for me. there is also no endgame or way of winning in everyday live. 
The games you can win are the minor and major challenges, the sea battles with pirates adventurous ship owners. and now for corries at least you can get titles, to name a recent thing.

[Kwatchi]

While I am happy for all the mayor’s who lucked out, I’ll be giving up more than half my land properties to help out Roadmonkeytj keep Charlatan Bay running now that he got hit with a 350db bill overnight.  That leaves me with about 40dbs per mrca (ie peanuts). So in the event of a bad naval engagement, I’ll either be without ships or bankrupt, and I’ll move on to another game.  That’s the reality of it.

I personally enjoy the risk, but others don’t.  I expect our player base to continue to shrink unfortunately.

 

[Maxim I]

You know, I really hope that for Sea Rats (as you Guys are hurt the most by the update), something Will be done about upkeep prices (half fort upkeep? Pirates are Cheap soldiers :p)

What if there is a certain discount for settlements to guarantee a minimum protection? Large town has a free medium fort upkeep, City a free medium and small, Large City a large One or 2 mediums etc?

again, a medium fortress alone is not enough to defend a large town, but is sth.

[LM71Blackbird]

14 minutes ago, Bart said:

Poppy Port cracks out a 90db/month while being the smallest settlement ;)

Not bad! Poppy port hits the top 3 for settlement income.

14 minutes ago, Bart said:

4/5 times a year is an issue tho. I thought of it as monthly, as in MonthlyCRA that would indicate atleast a minimum of 10 times a year, because we are all humans and maybe miss out on the one during christmas or when everybody is somehow at the same time on summer holidays.

Leadership has stated before that they would like to keep the MRCA's on a 4-6 week schedule. They also stated that they want to make it so not just one person can calculate the results as to keep it on time.

 

While I like bits of this update and I commend the leadership for thinking all this through... rather than raising the price of everything and dropping our profits to a mere pittance, we need a reason to spend money. For example, if you launched land combat, we would be draining our own coffers and fight ourselves into poverty!

21 minutes ago, Kwatchi said:

I personally enjoy the risk, but others don’t.  I expect our player base to continue to shrink unfortunately.

As do I, the risk is what makes it fun.

[Capt Wolf]

Something to remember: forts can be temporarily decommissioned. If a settlement has multiple forts, it might choose to temporarily close some until it can afford upkeep for all of them. Not saying this solves everything, just making sure people are aware of it as an option.

[gedren_y]

26 minutes ago, Kwatchi said:

While I am happy for all the mayor’s who lucked out, I’ll be giving up more than half my land properties to help out Roadmonkeytj keep Charlatan Bay running now that he got hit with a 350db bill overnight.  That leaves me with about 40dbs per mrca (ie peanuts). So in the event of a bad naval engagement, I’ll either be without ships or bankrupt, and I’ll move on to another game.  That’s the reality of it.

I personally enjoy the risk, but others don’t.  I expect our player base to continue to shrink unfortunately.

 

This is part of the reason I think that when a build is registered that the settlement it is associated with should receive a small sum of DBs. If we could also back-date this for all current build registrations that include a settlement, then these new upkeep costs could be managed easily. Is this idea possible in the current system?

[Darnok]

27 minutes ago, Capt Wolf said:

If you're using bank account totals as a way to measure who's "winning", I think you're playing the game wrong. It's not about an end game or a bank account, it's about building with Legos and playing age-of-sail adventures. If I have enough DBs in the EGS to play out my adventures, I'm "winning".

I am not saying that "most money wins", I am saying that there is no ingame measurement of "success" other than the bank account. And this type of "success" again means nothing, since the ingame money has absolutely no meaning after a certain amount has been earned.

You can happily build away without the EGS (hell, without BotBS).

27 minutes ago, Capt Wolf said:

This is the truest statement I've seen of late. That's the truly big change, and we're all scrambling to adjust. If leadership adjusted the fort rules too far, we'll address it, but for now we all need to give it a chance.

Well, some are more scrambling than others, obviously. I just hope it works out in the long run - I think the changes made to forts are good. Some settlements will need more work to adjust than others, but in the end it should not be that big of an issue.

 

18 minutes ago, Roadmonkeytj said:

Charlatan Bay brings in 113DB a turn

You are mistaking town bank income with settlement income. The first one is going away, and Charlatan Bay has no income from land properties right now. None at all.

 

11 minutes ago, Bart said:

Poppy Port cracks out a 90db/month while being the smallest settlement ;) 

There are smaller ones, but for that size it is without doubt impressive.

 

[Captain Dee]

.

Edited January 16, 2019 by Captain Dee

[Bart]

To make my points more clear, I approve of removing the free moneys to townbank and mayor pay. and don't think that should be compensated by another form, (unless it is tied to trade value and ships visits in the tmcra)
But the consequences seem to be a bit harsh on some players. not only searats. 
And me starting that discussion, was more intended to warn people about it, then to make the Court change its mind about the rule changes. so that people can take steps to compensate. 

[Mesabi]

I think the Sea Rats, in the spirit of fairness, should have fort costs reduced for the time being, until they can figure out how to fund them. The Sea Rats are drastically underfunded, and while I appreciate all of these changes, I think they will hurt things for Sea Rats even more. Either that, or ships should be really, really cheap for Sea Rats. I would even say that sister shipping should be reduced for ships that were black flagged.

And I'm surprised that these things did not come up in court before. Look, Sea Rat leadership should have gotten ahead of this, just saying. 

Here are my other thoughts. 

@MKJoshA, I hate to see you go man, but like what is the court supposed to do to make you happy? I really liked the monopoly example @Kai NRG set out, and I'll expand on it. Right now, it's like playing a game of monopoly, only everyone has so much money, that little matters. 

And I don't see why Sea Rats are so angry about the reduction in income. If you want more income, build more! It's not super hard. 

I have an income of 500 Dbs a month. Why? Because I built a ton of stuff. Granted, it wasn't all excellent builds. (which did bite me in the rear...) but it was enough to tell stories, and make money. 

Look, why are any of us even playing this game? We play this game because we like pirate lego, and building piratey stuff, or telling piratey stories. To me, that comes before all the rules of this game. If Dbs are what matters to you, as @Capt Wolf said, you're playing this game wrong. 

My only complaint with this game, is that it can be hard to fund building all the stuff you want to. But there are plenty of faction funds, and even the bank to help with that. 

So, why is any of this an issue? @Kwatchi, I loved it when you told all the crazy stories with the Dark Bishop. I miss that. Now Charlatan Bay is just some other settlement, with the catch that a volcano hit. 

@MKJoshA, where are all the great Sinbad stories? Sure there was some drama when you did the court house stuff, but those were excellent builds, and excellent story telling. 

The fact that people are arguing about an income rule change, is in itself, against the Spirit of the Game, in my opinion. We're here to tell good stories, and build cool MOCs. everything else is just filler to make things interesting, and keep us on the same playing field. 

I'll get off my soapbox, for the moment, but that's where I'm at... 

[Roadmonkeytj]

37 minutes ago, Drunknok said:

 You are mistaking town bank income with settlement income. The first one is going away, and Charlatan Bay has no income from land properties right now. None at all.

Oh even better.  .... Well I can honestly say I don't know how much longer I will play....  This isn't fun....  Coming up with a way to make a fake megablocks settlement produce 350 fake money overnight is annoying to say the least.   

I joined this game to "Play with Legos" and to be in a community that enjoyed the age of sail as I do.    I'm letting my frustrations show but as of this moment I honestly don't know how long I'll be around

[Bregir]

In court, we try to adjust the game to do away with imbalances. We do this to make sure the game is balanced for all. We do not try to do away with pirates or anyone else. (Rather the opposite, in fact. Piracy has been top of our list in recent months, and still is, and was one of the main reasons the original tMRCA was revised, even if we haven't yet succeeded entirely)

Personally, I fail to see how rules that discourage more forts are anything but a cause for celebration for pirates, who will now have a world with much fewer forts to raid.

We do our best, and we are not perfect. Hence we will not hit the mark exactly each time first time.

On top of trying to balance the game, we also try to run it.

We have all volunteered, and we do not expect anything in return, except at modicum of respect. Sometimes, it would be nice if people would trust our decisions just a little bit - many people are involved in these changes, and we have actually discussed pro's and con's. This does not mean we are immune to feedback, but some of the comments here are not exactly encouraging, some even outright unpleasant.

___________

As I have said before, I have been one of the champions of the inflation measures, and I stand by our recent decision. There might be need of re-balancing some things, now or later, and we will look at it.

We could also have led things stand, but when everyone and his mom have 5000 + in their account, there is no point to the money. In case of war, the amount of money will only amplify the troop numbers, which makes no difference. Additionally, you will need someone to be at war with...

We agree in court that money should be relevant, and to make them so, we need to limit them. We want to make them relevant as we believe it makes the game more interesting.

As in reality, the real issue is probably much more about the distribution of money than the amount - for there is no discussion that the "top 50%" are far too rich in this game, and that being too rich is the end result of the original rules. When you have played for a while and build up a significant portfolio of ships and properties, you hardly ever need to think about it again. We have done much to make piracy more profitably, but are hindered to some degree by the MRCA which did not effectively manage to split fleets up, and is far too profitable still. This we are also looking at. But everything takes time.

And yes, we are changing things up quite considerably, but look at the account numbers. I have hardly done anything in a year to increase funds (and have laughably few merchant ships) and have more than 8000 - and I am probably not even in top 10.

So, what we are saying from court is: We are actually trying to balance things out, and will reconsider rules, old and new, if we find they lead to imbalance. And please... Have a little faith in us :)

[Kwatchi]

1 hour ago, LM71Blackbird said:

While I like bits of this update and I commend the leadership for thinking all this through... rather than raising the price of everything and dropping our profits to a mere pittance, we need a reason to spend money.

I do too.  But the sole reason for the db glut is the ludicrous returns from ship trading.  Why that hasn't been fixed is beyond me.

1 hour ago, Capt Wolf said:

Something to remember: forts can be temporarily decommissioned. If a settlement has multiple forts, it might choose to temporarily close some until it can afford upkeep for all of them. Not saying this solves everything, just making sure people are aware of it as an option.

Catch-22.  You can close your forts, and then get raided as an undefended colony and pay anyway.

10 minutes ago, Mesabi said:

So, why is any of this an issue? @Kwatchi, I loved it when you told all the crazy stories with the Dark Bishop. I miss that. Now Charlatan Bay is just some other settlement, with the catch that a volcano hit.

Lol.  That's the big joke.  My brother and I built C.Bay up in order to make money to buy ships and be pirates.  The story was to help us try to enjoy it, but colonies are essentially a boring 'job' that requires building stuff that didn't inspire you and more energy completing paperwork than they are worth.  Heck, they don't even pay you a salary anymore for doing it!  Frankly, the reason I am one of few players not freaked out by this turning an income into an expense is because I am no longer responsible for one.

"I've got no strings to hold me down / To make me fret, or make me frown / I had strings, but now I'm free / There are no strings on me."

[LM71Blackbird]

5 minutes ago, Bregir said:

Additionally, you will need someone to be at war with...

Well, that's not really to hard... Bart and I figured out a reason to fight in a few hours...

[Bart]

@Bregir

The problem for wanting piracy is, that you as an aspiring pirate, need money to build ships, and quit some money to build anything decent lets say class 6.

therefore searats invested in landbased properties.

Then you grow attached to such landbased property, so you protect it with a fort to protect it against retaliations from navies whom are not going to like you pirating on them.

So now you go pirating, and that wasn't too succesfull in the past and even let to backfires to non pirate searats

on top of that, in the three other factions players stuck around since the start, in the searats people came and went, and no single player was a mass producer of anything, as to give him or the faction a financial base to grow upon.

So now you intend to take moneys from the big players, okay I understand, but the means, hit the searats the same. so now they are back, at needing to build land based property to get a yield to pay for upkeeps, and still cannot go pirating because they cant afford the ships to do so.

*I'm here since the start and've only build 2! although that is more due to my inaccable to real brick and my desire to build true to history perfection but also the idea I never had the cash to license and support a ship let alone a fleet.

 

4 minutes ago, LM71Blackbird said:

Well, that's not really to hard... Bart and I figured out a reason to fight in a few hours...

yeah we decided to play paintball :P lol 

Depending on the results it might lead to an increase in raids or another postpone of active piracy in the brick seas if the resulte is pirating needs bigger ships even. 

Edited January 15, 2019 by Bart

[Bregir]

2 minutes ago, Bart said:

The problem for wanting piracy is, that you as an aspiring pirate, need money to build ships, and quit some money to build anything decent lets say class 6. 

To me this is a different problem - It should be possible to work your way up from the free class two you have from the beginning. A single moc'ed capture would in fact probably put you well in your way, either by using that, or selling the prize to finance more warships.

However, as someone running the tMRCA and a class 2 privateer, I can say that there are so few lone ships sailing around at low class it is absolutely impossible to achieve anything there. So what is next on my list is to look at tMRCA income and balance to encourage more smaller and lone vessels to make it easier to make a capture. How? By making it relatively unprofitable to sail out big fleets/make single merchants more profitable. I have a prototype that I will discuss with court.

As I said, we have reworked the tMRCA once, but our new trade calculations have missed the mark entirely. Profits are too high, and there is no incentive to sail as a single ship.

To me, a few pirates banding up with class two vessels or similar should have plenty of opportunity to make captures amongst player ships. And I will do what I can to achieve this. I am fairly certain the rest of the court is on board, but things take time.

8 minutes ago, Bart said:

Depending on the results it might lead to an increase in raids or another postpone of active piracy in the brick seas as the resulte is pirating needs bigger ships even. 

And as I said, forts are made more expensive to make it feasible to make raids going forward. Building a fort should be a strategic decision, not a default.

 

ALL: We are looking into the sea rat fort situation, and will probably announce an adjustment soon.

[Bart]

Spoiler

(I never build my free starting ship)

you'd still need landbased yield to afford the upkeep

[LM71Blackbird]

Just now, Bart said:

yeah we decided to play paintball :P lol 

Depending on the results it might lead to an increase in raids or another postpone of active piracy in the brick seas as the resulte is pirating needs bigger ships even.

And I look forward to the results!

Well, I certainly hope it gives a reason for more raids to be conducted.

Now, I know I've missed the happenings of Era 1, but after almost a year in Bobs, one problem I see is that there is too much peace... (  What!?!?!) In the age of sail somebody was always at war! England and Spain fought for decades over the new world and then France joined in on the action when Spain's fleet was decimated. Then later there was the French and Indian war, the American Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars, etc. Right now, all the factions (even the Searats) are just  being peaceful traders... nothing wrong with that, but it seems to just make it a trading game, without all the danger and uncertainty of being overrun by an enemy. 

[Capt Wolf]

16 minutes ago, Kwatchi said:

But the sole reason for the db glut is the ludicrous returns from ship trading.  Why that hasn't been fixed is beyond me.

Give us a break. Did you want us to take all your DBs at once!    And I'll dispute the basic premise. I made my DBs more in land properties than shipping. There are problems with both, but we can't fix it all at once.

---

If I can address everyone in this discussion for a moment: as a member of leadership, I put in a lot or time and effort to help make this game fun. I got involved because MRCAs weren't happening at all, but now that we have them running fairly regularly (yes, not 12 per year, there have been hiccups, but nothing like before, and well more than 4/5 a year, thank you very much), we get blasted for not doing enough. And when we make the move to synch the shipping with land income so that land yields don't outpace shipping yields, we get blasted for not reducing shipping income. We try to make it easier for players to raid settlements (because everyone wants something to attack!) and all we hear is complaints that we can't defend our settlements any more. All the factions have leaders that were involved in developing these rule changes, so no faction was ignored, and we're open to tweaking things if we overcorrected (in fact, working on something right now!), but if every time we try something we get slammed, and we get slammed if we don't do anything, where's our motivation to help with this game? I'm feeling really underappreciated right now, and I would like to see the discussion recognize how much we're trying to help this community with absolutely zero reward for our efforts. If you've got suggestions for improvement, great. If all it's going to be is complaints, you'll blend into the background noise and never be heard. FYI.

 

[Bregir]

Just now, Bart said:

  Hide contents

(I never build my free starting ship)

you'd still need landbased yield to afford the upkeep

Nope - you have 100 dbs of free upkeep, which translates almost to a class 5 ship (at 105 dbs per turn)

Edit: Additionally, Sea Rats pay NO upkeep on Black Flagged ships.

[Capt Wolf]

Just now, Bregir said:

Nope - you have 100 dbs of free upkeep, which translates almost to a class 5 ship (at 105 dbs per turn)

Edit: Additionally, Sea Rats pay NO upkeep on Black Flagged ships.

FWIW, I think there's a huge misunderstanding about ship upkeep costs. It's really far less than most people think.

[LM71Blackbird]

7 minutes ago, Capt Wolf said:

Give us a break. Did you want us to take all your DBs at once!    And I'll dispute the basic premise. I made my DBs more in land properties than shipping. There are problems with both, but we can't fix it all at once.

---

If I can address everyone in this discussion for a moment: as a member of leadership, I put in a lot or time and effort to help make this game fun. I got involved because MRCAs weren't happening at all, but now that we have them running fairly regularly (yes, not 12 per year, there have been hiccups, but nothing like before, and well more than 4/5 a year, thank you very much), we get blasted for not doing enough. And when we make the move to synch the shipping with land income so that land yields don't outpace shipping yields, we get blasted for not reducing shipping income. We try to make it easier for players to raid settlements (because everyone wants something to attack!) and all we hear is complaints that we can't defend our settlements any more. All the factions have leaders that were involved in developing these rule changes, so no faction was ignored, and we're open to tweaking things if we overcorrected (in fact, working on something right now!), but if every time we try something we get slammed, and we get slammed if we don't do anything, where's our motivation to help with this game? I'm feeling really underappreciated right now, and I would like to see the discussion recognize how much we're trying to help this community with absolutely zero reward for our efforts. If you've got suggestions for improvement, great. If all it's going to be is complaints, you'll blend into the background noise and never be heard. FYI.

 

Well, frankly, you're right... Leadership is a voluntary thing, and this is simply a game with grown-up playing with our toys... we should be more considerate of the time and effort that you guys put into it to make it fun for all of us. Unfortunately though, you can please some of the people some of the time, but you can't please all the people all the time...

 

While it would probably be vastly unpopular, have you guys considered a hard reset or loading an older save of the game?

1 minute ago, Capt Wolf said:

FWIW, I think there's a huge misunderstanding about ship upkeep costs. It's really far less than most people think.

Yeah, every month I think it's gonna be hundreds of Dbs because of the amount of ships I run, but I hardly notice it...

Edited January 15, 2019 by LM71Blackbird