Innovative territory claiming.

[Salty Del 117]

Edit:  If you’re a big company, there’s nothing to see here. Move along. If you’re a small company, keep reading.

If your like my wife and I, all you want is a place to anchor your ship for the night with some hope that it will be there when you log back in to continue your adventures. This means find a piece of land or sea that you can claim to anchor your ship in. Not an easy thing to do these days.

It seems impossible to do right now. Every island you got to has red rings covering it, with only small gaps that are too small to place a flag in. The territories on the map aren’t accurate either. You see a small corner that doesn’t look claimed, but when you get there you find that the territories extend well beyond what is shown on your map.

What’s a sailor to do? How can you kick back and enjoy your rum when your precious ship could be at risk? I’m rather attached to our ships (we have a sloop and a schooner). I’d be incredibly sad to lose either, with the amount of work we out into making both.

So, I started thinking outside the box.

On every island you come to, you see flags everywhere. A lot of them don’t even have anything built anywhere near them. I know, I know. Some companies want to protect the resources around them. If everybody built everywhere, eventually there would be no resources respawning. I do get the mentality, even if I don’t agree with it, but that’s another discussion altogether.

What you may also notice, however, is that sometimes their territory doesn’t cover the whole piece of land. Sometimes there is a small corner that is just cut off from their territory,  it not large enough to place a flag on. I’ve seen lots of barrels floating with flags on them, but I haven’t worked out yet how they work.

Instead, I found my own solution, and discovered something interesting.

I found that you can place flags on the ocean floor. You can swim all the way to the depths and place a flag. You still can’t put it in close proximity to another company’s flag, but that’s also how I found out something ELSE that’s interesting.

Territories may not be a cylinder in shape. You’d think that the flag would cover the area, and then all vertical space in that area belongs to the company. I thought that as well, until I started trying to claim these small pieces of land.

The reality seems to be something else entirely. Something unexpected. The territories are actually sphere shaped. They claim an area that is all points equidistant from the flag, both vertically and horizontally.

What difference does that make, you may be asking? A BIG difference, actually.

If you place a flag at the bottom of the ocean, you’re not just putting your flag further from the other company’s flag horizontally, you’re also doing it vertically. In some cases, the height difference can be quite large. This means that since the height difference is so big, the horizontal difference doesn’t need to be. You can now put your flag horizontally closer, without contesting their flag. You can use this to take some of those small pieces of land that are leftover.

You may not get much land, but you can at least have a safe-ish place to a anchor your ship. And if you’re dedicated enough, you may even be able to build a small base out in the water itself. You don’t always need huge tracts of land. You can gather your resources from anywhere and bring them back. But you do need a place to bring them back to, and this is how I found to make ours.

I hope this helps out some fellow privateers. Some people are happier just sailing the seas alone or in a small group. But every captain needs a mooring spot where they can hang their hat in peace.

See you on the high seas!

Del

NA PvE (The Hydra’s Den)

Second edit:  Captain’s should be general neutral. I just noticed and corrected it. I may steer the ship, but my wife’s the captain

Edited December 31, 2018 by Salty Del

[Salty Del 117]

Two things I forgot to mention:

You will end up with a smaller territory at the surface. Your claim is widest at the ocean floor. Not where you’ll be wanting to build your base.

You may plant the flag deep enough that you have no territory at the surface. But you’ll have a tonne at the ocean floor!