Jean Lafitte

Ummm nope. I started in G8 and played there for about 2 weeks. Server crashed, came back to find I owned nothing. Joined a company for about a week, decided they were asshats and left. Sailed around for a week or two looking for a place. Found one and called it home. Then again, I never looked at those red dots and assumed they couldn't be taken and cried, 'no land, waaaa.'

Wrong. It favors those who are willing to WORK for what they want. I started with a raft and 1 claim. My company now holds 80 and we WORKED for every single one of those and continue to WORK to maintain them. You can either sit on your ass and bitch about how it doesn't WORK or make it WORK for you. Your choice. *see what I did there?*

Oh jeezus, you got me there! All those massive resources you gather and the structures you build... I could OWN THEM ALL! We have over 80 claims, 8 elephants, 5 rhinos, gobs and gobs of horses and bears, a small army of pigs, and more ships than we have players. Do you seriously think I have the time or even give a shit about a shanty on a beach? Let me give you a lesson in economics. We have, like most everyone else on the island, a 20% tax. If I give you a waterfront claim, I get to collect taxes on the claims behind that that you farm. It would be STUPID of me to block building on a claim when I collect taxes off the 20 claims behind it. My concern is assholes. We don't have any on the island where we live and I don't want any. Prove to me that you're not an asshole and you get the claim. It's just that simple. *edit* Hell, I've even offered a free bear and a horse to anyone who moves on the claim to compensate for the taxes. But you know what the problem is, it's in the tundra and everyone seems to have this idea in their head that if they're not getting a silver spoon shoved up their ass, they want no part of it. Again, I have no pity for these 'no-land' posts.

Sorry, I no longer have pity for these 'no land' posts. For weeks I've been trying to give away land. All the person has to do is stay there a few weeks and prove they're not a griefer or asshat and aren't going to piss off the neighbors and I'll give them claims. Do you know how many people have responded to my post? 0

<- * impatiently twiddles his thumbs *

Exactly! Stop breeding and proving that this system is tenable. It isn't.

Ok, so the situation went from bad to worse. First, there were ships being sunk everywhere due to griefers. That needed to be fixed. I get that. However, the net result of that fix has backfired. Over the weekend I went with some others to the FoY. They were able to get it, I was not. One of the HUGE reasons I wasn't was lag. That lag was caused by the hundreds... yes HUNDREDS (I'm not exaggerating) of ships parked around the FoY entrance. Now I don't have a great video card, I've got a good one. Trying to render all of those ships, I was barely getting 5fps. For over two weeks I had an abandoned schooner parked in my harbor blocking a good portion of it. It took a support ticket to get it moved. I still have several RSloops and rafts parked along my claims. One RSloop belongs to a company that has 0 members (we invited them to the corp and didn't 'merge'). Travelling around the map I've encountered numerous lawless islands that look more like a ship salvage yard than a collection of harbors. These ships cannot be moved, sunk, boarded, SotD'd, hurricane'd, shark smacked... etc. They are more that just an eyesore. They are a render and server lag inducing mechanism that needs to be fixed. Proposal: If your ship is parked on your claim, it does not decay as per current rules. Freeport decay rates begin 2 hours after arriving in a freeport grid. That gives you 2 hours to conduct your business. If your ship is parked on a claim you do not own after 72 hours, it begins to decay at freeport rates. For each ship parked on a claim you do not own, the decay timer is is divided by 2. 4 ships on a claim you do not own, decay begins in 9 hours (making raft spam much less of a problem). If your ship is parked where no claim exists and you have not been in the area, after 72 hours it begins to decay at freeport rates. For each ship parked where no claim exists, the decay timer is is divided by 2. 4 ships on a claim you do not own, decay begins in 9 hours (making raft spam much less of a problem). If your ship is parked on a lawless and you have not been in the area, the same with structures, it begins to decay after 3 or 4 days (not sure what the structure time is on lawless) at freeport rates. If your company has build rights on a claim, it does not decay as per current rules. Ships that exist on a claim when the ownership of that claim changes, after 72 hours they begin to decay at freeport rates. Alternate: Instead of accelerating the decay, the ships become unanchored and thus, sinkable or claimable. Whatever the solution, something needs to be done to fix this. The number of anchored ships that do not go away is becoming untenable.

I'm still trying to figure out how so many animals get on the islands in the first place. I mean it's obvious that no living creature can possibly survive birth without human intervention. So how are all these animals reproducing??? Seriously? They expect us to sit within render range of recently born creatures for what, 36 hours straight? Feeding them constantly, lighting fires all over the place like we're having a barbecue, taking shifts... is this seriously their idea of entertainment? How can staring at a NPC bear for a day and a half be considered fun? They keep saying this is a game about sailing and piracy. Ok, so how does sleep deprivation experiments involving newborn wildlife have anything to do with piracy???? I'd love to get into animal breeding. Right now, the mechanic is beyond playable, it's fucking stupid. You mean that section where you post the report and it's instantly cycled to page 16 where nobody sees it? Good idea.

Nope, this one:

Yes, there is. You forgot the event where you get 1 point or no points from whales. One of my crew got 50 for each whale type, two of us only got 1 or none and we were on the same ship. So, I submitted a ticket. Can you guess the response I got?

So those of you with the git gud posts, let me point out a few things before you condemn the op as sucking. 1. Where I live, SotD form conga lines. I've see 7 of them surrounding my ship at one time. 2. Fog. I was was just on a run to pick up some metal. The fog was so thick that I saw the cannonballs coming at me before I saw the SotD. 3. Speed. I've been running a brig with 2 speed and 1 handling sail. In crap winds it BARELY outruns a SotD. Which means, When I'm surrounded and left with few choices, I tend to eat a few cannonballs before I can get out of range. The other option, which I'm doing now, is to anchor on some island and wait for winds not to suck, which is not my idea of entertainment. 4. Waste of time. I've noticed that in middle latitudes there don't seem to be as many SotD. I'm assuming you guys in temperate and tropic zones keep them pretty well under control. In the tundra, where for example, we have 2 metal nodes on an island with 20 odd companies, we find SotD's to be a waste of cannonballs because the loot utterly sucks for the metal we have to expend to kill one. It's simply not worth the effort it takes to run to a polar region, farm metal and then, run back to our tundra just to kill SotD's. Was out with a fully gunned galleon last night. The owner lives in a temperate. He had no problem unloading a broadside onto a low level SotD just to get rid of it. In the tundra, that's an extravagance we can't afford. Therefore, before you condemn someone for speaking their mind and describing their particular issues, please consider the fact that where you live, the circumstances may be vastly different.

Just as soon as that filthy human species is eradicated from this planet.

I've had it happen both with and without npc's. Got stuck in an inlet yesterday with a brig. Had to rip half the planks to bits turning it around because it wouldn't back up.

3 of us went whaling. Myself at the helm, another who salvaged the whale and another who stayed onboard. All 3 got the notice of the discovery, only the crew member who stayed on board got the points. Fix this!

Yep... because they came up with a half baked idea about making people float when on someone else's ship. Now, they're discovering the problem that caused. Hundreds of abandoned ships that nobody can sink, claim or move and don't even deteriorate. And now that you can't even get SotD's to shoot them, it's going to become even more of a mess.

Good boy... exaggeration. You caught it. Kinda like saying that cleaning the guns implies gun violence. You're smarter than you sound.

And yours portraying sexual battery and animal cruelty? Touché? Today's Wikipedia lesson: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Those_who_live_in_glass_houses_should_not_throw_stones

It was an analogy. I see that mine was way more effective than yours.

That was a really horrible anecdote. A. If I bought underwear, used or not, and found skid marks you can bet I'd be going back to that thrift store and raising hell. B. If my underwear were stolen from a laundry, I'd be calling the police. C. If that thrift store told me that they wouldn't replace those shitty underwear you're goddamned right I'd be pissed. I paid for underwear, not shit. D. If the police told me they weren't going to investigate a theft, you're goddamned right I'd be pissed. Don't wallow in the public trough if you're not going to provide the service you're being paid to provide. And if EITHER of them told me to move to Canada until we get our shit figured out, I'd start cleaning the guns.

You are correct. They are a well established company. But I bet they didn't get there by telling their customers to, 'shove off' either. In 2005, Sprint merged with Nextel. Not long after, their customer service turned to shit. It was described as being in a 'free fall.' In one year alone Sprint lost over 30 MILLION customers (I was one of those) all because of poor customer service. Their stock plummeted 66%. One Sprint employee described it like this: "the numbers-driven management approach implemented after the combination led to poor morale and deteriorating customer service. Even bathroom trips were monitored. They would micromanage us like children." I am not saying Grapeshot is anything like that. What I am saying is, when a company becomes so focused on any aspect of their business that customer service is tossed out the window, then they are doomed to repeat history.

So, I was just working on some code to bind to a specific port and send a UDP request to a server using PHP. I kept getting a 'not permitted' error. I put in a support ticket with my host with a sample of the code I'm using. Within the hour I had a reply. Because of the technical nature of my request, it got shot straight to their CTO. And this isn't exactly a small hosting company. The CTO mind you, replied with very technical specifications as to what they allowed and what they didn't and then asked me for my requirements. It was a timely response. A personal response. It was an informative response. And I got the impression that, depending on my needs, they may make accommodations. I pay these guys a whopping $5.00 per month. Had I gotten the response... "I'm terribly sorry but we have a limited staff and can't be bothered to deal with your issue. We do thank you for reporting it and if we get enough complaints, we may or may not fix that issue. If you don't like this fact, please find another host for your websites and come back when we have our head out of our ass...." I'd be backing up my websites in preparation for a move instead of writing this post.

Thanks. Ok, problems I see: First, there's no guarantee that a player using one image is the same as another person who's using the same image. Secondly, the Steam API only provides links to the images which is what you see on the site. In order to hash them, the script would have to physically download them. And since they can be changed by the user, that means the script would have to download them every single time it runs. There is a small image that can be retrieved but even then, downloading 500+ images would likely cause the script to go past the time limits set by the host and crash unfinished. Good idea, don't seem practical from the code side of things.

Right now, I know of no actual way to do it. You can't claim it because when you get aboard, you're floating and can't stand on the deck. And even if the anchor were raised and you could stand on the deck, you still can't claim it because that's bugged. You can't damage it, you can't climb the ladders, you can't toss any weight onto it to sink it because it's anchored, you can't use climbing picks or grappling hooks, we tried. And with a recent patch, you can't lure in SotD's because they won't attack anchored ships and hurricanes apparently don't damage anchored ships. We had one sitting in our harbor for over 2 weeks and in that time I saw it's planks take less than 300 damage. From what? I have no idea but at that rate, it would have taken months to sink. We tried attacking with pets, luring in sharks, bears, etc. None of them could be enticed to damage it. Because it was blocking half our harbor, I finally submitted a ticket. A couple of days later we found it unanchored and floating out in deep water. It sunk a day later. Whether a GM moved it or the owner logged in and moved it (we had been sending him out of game requests to do so), I have no idea. I still have 2 other ships, a RSloop and a raft, on another claim I can't get rid of. My suggestion. Submit a new ticket for every single one you need moved. The more tickets that get submitted for something that should have an in-game solution, the more likely they'll fix it.

Yup, bears work just fine. If you have the taming perks, taking on 2 or 3 at a time with a 50'ish lvl bear is doable. It just takes a while as yeti have a lot of hp. The trick is to get the bear to higher ground so it knocks the yeti back further when it attacks. The biggest problem is when a yeti decides to run. Chasing them down can be interesting.