Lifedragn

I feel like stealing a ship should still be difficult. But it would be good to see more reasons to cripple and board a ship rather than sinking it outright. It's easier to plunder a ship before it goes down! I think a contested state would make a good addition. Keep the current timers to steal a ship. But after 20 minutes on the galleon without owners present, it becomes contested and all of the doors and containers are unlocked for pillage.

Lawless should not be a permanent base option. It is intended as an intermediate step. With any luck, we'll also have fewer lawless zones than we have now in PvP.

Why not find a company with land that will let you build a shipyard in their territory? Shared harbors have immense value for protecting assets. More little islands in some grids would make for a more interesting world, but it won't help as much for hiding ships as you might think.

Front and back is certainly the meta for single ships. When it comes to fleet combat, however, you'll find great success in having a mix of designs.

Not having played Dark and Light... 1) What prevents an Alliance of companies from dropping a new flag once every 12 hours to keep you at a perpetual state of war and thus uncertain about when an attack might happen. 2) If only one war dec at a time with cooldown, what stops a friendly company from always ensuring the open window will be at a beneficial time for the defender and a detrimental time for potential attackers?

I don't see anything that promises Skull and Bones will be a more rich experience. It looks like a more narrow, more controlled experience which does allow for more polish at the expense of breadth.

Killed a sperm whale before but no discovery types. Not sure those count.

Need to get better at hitting F12 and grabbing screenshots of these cheats.

Where do you find out that this Snail Games owns Grapeshot?

Company is active only when logging onto a dummy character so primary character can claim flag a ship we built to leave in offline protection. Unless you can magically guess what day and time the transition is made then you are offlining us. I am in the camp of offlining sucks. But offline protections will be abused so hard by megacompanies you will lose whatever competition you have to throw against them.

Ultimately, there has to be some balance struck. Anything done to help a small company will definitely be abused by the large company. If a structure becomes invulnerable when nobody from said company is online, the large company will simply make dummy characters to form a small company and build all of their defensive walls. Oops, now we've got impenetrable bases. Ships immune when offline? Form a small company to build a fleet of reserve ships that they can use claim flags on far faster than they could build a new fleet. Offline protection is a good idea in theory, but very tricky to do without major exploitability in practice.

Because some of us are still thriving despite not being part of the Big 10. In fact, some of these mid-size alliance groups are successfully holding back attempts at land grabs by the larger entities. You will not see us in the dynamic territory claim leaderboard map. But you will see the regions the top companies have failed to claim. That success breeds fun, even if the process can get annoying when you have to drop all of your plans because an enemy fleet arrives that needs to be sunk or chased off. Conversely, with our level of organization we would likely dominate an unofficial server far too easily. Officials are certainly not the best place for everyone. But some of us still enjoy the challenge. Though trash may be talked, we do appreciate the opponents that have driven us to innovate in base defense, ship design, and communications. So much so that some of our former opponents are now friendlies.

As mentioned, I'm all for an Asian server. But region locking is a different story.

Chinese have several lawless islands completely blocked off now. Mortars along the shores and huge walls going up. Soon there won't be any room for small companies in lawless anywhere. Regardless of radius allowed around base.

You will never be able to solve that problem completely. Anything that fixes the problem makes some groups near invulnerable. But that is also part of the nature of a survival MMO. I'd say to jump to PvE, but they have their own problems as well - spawned from the near invulnerability issue. An alliance doesn't fix the one troll running around to destroy stuff. But it mitigates them.

Form alliances with other small companies. Cluster yourselves near each other for mutual protection. Or ally with a larger company that will let you build in their territory. Get their protection in exchange for a 10% resource collection tax. This isn't a game to go it alone. There are tools that allow you to have your small company and still work with other groups. Another option might be less populated unofficial servers.

This is not the kind of game to go it alone. You don't need to join huge companies for safety, but you do need to find allies and work with them. Rather than trying to keep a whole area to yourself, find a couple other small companies and cluster together. Work towards building mutual defenses. Find friends from other time zones. You are going to have to play politics in order to survive on a PvP server. That goes for everyone from the smallest to the largest of companies.

You'd be more likely to hinder the chinese by naming all of your ships after censored chinese words and having the great firewall handle it than you would getting a company to cut its own funding line... That said, the alliance I belong to has been under siege for a good week and a half or more and have been holding them back. The largest group of us is mid-size at best. But we've been doing what we can to help and support each other. We've lost stuff, sure. But we've more than returned the damage.

Until you get alphas through breeding which does happen at present

Without knowing how it is going to work, it is hard to say. Either people with bounties will find friends to claim them as mentioned above, or mega-companies who have the resources to farm unlimited gold have a new avenue to harrass groups that have been defending against their aggressive advances.

Were they gunports, or on the top deck?

This current PvP meta of sending floods of naked people to claim territory is ludicrous. Make claim flags medium-heavy weight items you need to craft and carry. Constructing them should require ample quantities of readily available materials. Wood/Fiber of sufficient quantity to be annoying to gather on site, but not so difficult that it is impossible to establish a first claim for a small company.

I'm generally against region locking. And always against racism. I do believe it makes sense for an Asian server, but let's face it... why would they jump over after being established here so well?

It tends to be either punch above your weight class, jump to PvE, or hope your new mega-company overlords are kind enough to give you a sense of freedom after they dominate you.

This process was started before these changes though. Small companies couldn't build anywhere in some lawless Zones because large companies were foundation spamming to keep them away. Many of the lawless zones I have been to are dominated by large companies from the top 10 or allied with the top 10. Even if you managed to find a place to squeeze yourself in, these guys had the resources to blow through even well-honeycombed areas and the small companies lacking said resources have basically no way to retaliate. With or without this change, the small companies are entirely at the mercy of the large in PvP servers. What has been working well for small companies that I have seen is allying with Medium companies and renting a space in their claim. The tax may seem annoying, but good companies will keep it around 10% and also serve as a strong way to gain some extra defense.