SkaForHire

Ahem... I am not sure about others being on the side of ESL unless they can't find a third. That seems a little odd to me.

I assume you meant you added the fort to Stormhaven and not Port Raleigh, so I changed that tidbit.

Swift Packet and Saucy Jack would like to join the Merry Lyric, while the Dancing Dogfish will sail with the SH, if she is in the convoys, if not, throw her into ML if you can stomach it!

Caveat here, if you are over three ships you would have to pay additional licensing fees!

Welcome Berninhr! I have added you to our private thread. (Yay new powers!) Also, if I have missed anybody, let me know!

I have a ton of Dugal plot, and Kaliphlin story to do, I just need space and time to build.... I have an idea for a game while we are waiting for the Nocty challenge (NO! Not another Kaliphlin Civil War game!)

Right, the rework is probably going to have to be that the predators roll the incident roll and not the prey. With an additional random roll for good fortune or bad fortune by each list, and then the predators that "catch" during the incident roll would then roll a random number to determine which prey they ran into. I guess you and I and the rest of the people I want on this redesign team should probably get a private message going sooner than later. I am just not ready to tackle this yet, maybe in a week or two.

That is great! But, I think she actually was destroyed by L'Olius in a fight!

I updated everyone's value -- settlement value is not the same as trade value, trade value goes 2 (if not like a property) 5 (small) 10 (medium) 15 (large), Settlement value = 0 if unlicensed, 1 if small or medium, and 2 if large.

I don't really agree with the balance statement, the sweet spot for balance in investment should start up the class levels a couple steps, or else there is nothing to strive for but a bunch of 1Ts. Scarst and I are working on a "bank" system rather than the current "slot" system we use. #4 already exists in a way. There are going to be more NPC pirates where the risk / reward is higher. #2 us probably impossible without programming the MRCA to be ran by a computer, and taking some time to pretty much develop a video game. There are actually NPC traders for each predator. There are plenty of 1A pirates as well, but they are usually destroyed, outran, or never get an opportunity against a PC to be noticed. You are seeing the larger NPC predators captured because their ships stay around and can catch PC merchants. Exactly, and to Fuzzy's point -- the EGS land builds are a constant return, a safe bet for your money. In one years time, people are going to be making a lot more money of EGS builds than MRCA. Scarst and I are playing around with port levels in settlments, saying class x and higher are too large for a port until significantly upgraded.

Don't go Fernando! I smell a festival with little people reenacting the Juniper War and poisoned drink!

Perhaps the easiest fix is to allow the free license on the most expensive vessel a builder has from class 0-2. As long as all of the other vessels that they have at the same time have been paid for. So if you had a free class 1, then wanted to do a class 2, you would actually pay the price of the class 1 instead of decommission it. If you lost the 2, you would get it back for free, because you had paid for your other ship already. Although this would allow for abuse by those wanted to send their free ship off far away without any consequences.

No, it is supposed to be there. Forts, as always are still 100%

There is a lot we could do with the MRCA , if we wanted to make it a harder to calculate. The first, very simple, version was three numbers. Scarst and I played for a few days and decided it got dry very quickly and you could not really do things like convoy and raid. It expanded to a somewhat usable system, that if automated would be good, but right now with nearly 100 ships, takes 7 hours to calculate. However, as CB4 - who has automated the system to an extent - said, the drag and bag strategy is the best way to take ships, and the most profitable as your ships are protected. The idea is to add more strategies, and I have a few ideas. Plus, merging the MRCA with the war mechanic will make use of some of those useless warships.

That is going to be a little longer, we are working on an automation for this, so I have not even looked at yields and builds.

Ok! I thought it was weird that I cut off a players ship.

she is a capture, she already has a license.

she made her final port, she didn't do poorly, she never saw any pirates to begin with! It was a mistake deleting her from the list, because she is owned by a builder and not a faction -- I think in my quest to shorten the list I was over zealous.

Ok too much to quote: To Bregir, great minds think alike, I have already split speed into two categories for the next version when I saw your chart. And I even picked Maneuver as the name of the characteristic. However, the chart is not going to work, because there are now a few more characteristic differences. To Legostone, I like the data representation but there is a critical piece of information missing -- how many zones one traveled. The reason why 2Fs are so over the top is that they are the more popular free ship, and people don't care about throwing caution to the wind and sending them 7 zones, which means a heavy increase in income if they make it. a 1 $ rating vessel running a 400 DB route over 7 zones is going to make at least 40DBs and could make up to 136 DBS. What we are seeing here is small routes and small ships are going to average a lot less money than bigger ships going on much longer routes. Whoever said 2 times a month -- that was my original goal, until I ran it once, if automation comes, perhaps this will be possible. Right now I am more concerned about finding good places to sink gold at an individual level. The factions are not a problem, they theoretically spend their money every month. -------- On the debate of quality versus quantity, where I agree we should discourage a constant barrage of figbarfs and baseplate + square structure, at the same time I have to agree with the sentiment that most people are not looking to become a master builder. Most people seem to generally want to improve over their builds, but few people want to improve THAT build they just finished. Ships may be different, if you are leaving them up for display, but other than that, a few minor cosmetic changes on any build is probably the extent that the majority of AFOL's put towards an old build. For me, this is a story game, Lego is a medium to tell stories, and it is fun to tell them side by side. I try not to put out crap builds so that people will enjoy what I have presented, but at the same time, I am not becoming Gideon or even Legonardo ever. (The difference here is that Gideon showed up to GoH already and ace, and Legonardo developed into one). We actually had a quality reward system for free builds, but that was removed. IF we put the quality component on all free builds, then people would have lost interest quickly as they only earned two or three DBs. Phred and I talked about adding a quality component to ships that granted bonuses in the MRCA, which would tie into the skill tree as well, so it is coming - after the new MRCA. This would reward those who take the extra time to add some of the upper level building techniques to their vessels.

That is planned in the skills tree :) We decided to redo the MRCA first, so that we don't have redo modifiers from the skill system.

I want to get a general idea of what people think as we look at changing the MRCA.

I am thinking that the NPC pirates would find no use in the vessel for continuing to go pirating in, and would much rather sell the ship for rum money or a boat with more guns. It ran, I just deleted many of the warships if they didn't have anything spectacular happen to them. Also, some warships are sent through the convoy form, so they would not show up in the results table anyway.

I would not be surprised if you saw the HoE go on auction in Bastion... Perhaps there is a way to buy her back for cheap?

I knew I missed one! 5A is the abbreviation I use for light -- good thing I picked that one to show! Lady of Madrice in 11, HoE in 4.

We lost ships last month, (including a 5HA!) and we had some return to port this month. In general, this is why I put that last note in there, Corrington and Eslandola were both heavily attacked by pirates, but Corrington had 2 or 3 escorts per run that saved their bacon twice. Eslandola was thin with only one escort per trade run, which ended up hurting them. Oleon was barely attacked by pirates, and actually had extremely good rolls (many were working off a "Golden Voyage" at the beginning), but went into the hurricane where sinking risk was much higher. For example, although we don't have as many Eslandolan ships here, here is my notes for Zone 6, the zone with the most ships in it. As you can see, much good luck here with the rolls for Oleon, bad luck getting caught for Corrington -- of course, if you are attacked, and have a superior escort, then you are going to have a much better chance at taking enemy ships: Zone 6 Privateer 4A Pirate 4A Privateer 3A Pirate 2A Pirate 4A Unknown 1A Zone 6 Commerce de Breshaun-Golden Voyage Purple Rain Zephyr La Transferata –Golden VOyage Chubby Duckling Sulky Harlequin Comet The Nightingale – Attacked by a pirate, protected by whisper, who is boarded but fights them off, action broke. Black Marlin La Recouvrance Dancing Dogfish – Attacked by a pirate, Whisper defends. HMS Otter The Morning Rose Aurei Lacerta – Goes back to port Tigerlily – Protected by HMS Mars. Mardiers Revenge Alexander – Half Voyage sprung a leak Saucy Gibbon Corland Provider – attacked by pirate, Kite defends. Lady Jacqueline Starliner- Golden Voyage The Pelican – Golden Voyage Jezebel – attacked by Pirate 4A “Wild Whale”, Bull Shark defends and captures it. Absolutely Fabulous Revenant The Divination – Attacked, but defended by Granoleon. Saucy Jack – attacked by pirate, Bull shark boards “Carnage” captures pirate 3A Valkyrie HMS Alice Stubborn Stern The Prophecy-golden voyage Swift Packet Antigone's Fury Flying Colt – attacked, but Mars fends off pirate. Sphinx Pato Moreno – springs a leak, goes home. Winds Beauty Hmm, my highlighting did not come through, but it helps illustrate how dangerous a zone is. If the ship has nothing next to it, it meant that it had a clear sailing roll for that zone.