Why are Pirates so imbalanced in the conquest

[Mart_TheScotsman]

I am wondering why do we have to give ports we capture back after 3 days.

We as pirates dont want to give them back they're ours we took em we should keep em.
Also why is it we cant use supplies to raise or lower contention past that magical 5k mark. We have tons of supplies we'd like to use for this purpose! Ok so we stole most of them but thats not the point!!

Also why do we have to wait 46 hours. Warfare notes of "be ready after breakfast" went out in the 1200's We as pirates would prefer this:- flip contention over 10k - 1 hour later snatch it

So Devs We as pirates demand a certain degree of equality!!

[kungtotte]

No, we don't want equality. If they changed the game and made us play conquest the way nationals do, I'd re-roll as a french privateer. We all play pirates because we don't want to play this game the way nationals do.

I wish people would just understand that pirates aren't meant to play the game the same way as the nationals do, and stop this incessant whining about imbalance. Pirates are not imbalanced if people would just play them as pirates.

We demand that pirates remain pirates!

[JoeDragon]

Agreed, Were not meant to play the Conquest Game, sure, they made it possible for us to win if we Really wanted to, but most of us dont. Were just here to pick off the Fat Traders who are growing too wealthy off the war.

[Zapporius]

so OP merely wanted free ships and rest like nationals. Do you want those 4th rate npcs to lose their "Mission" tag, so you can capture them? Would that please the young gentleman?

[MosbyRaider]

OK please explain a bit more in detail exactly how Pirates are "supposed" to play the game? Because from where I'm sitting the current system is completely flawed. No not a bit flawed it's completely and utterly screwed. In fact the more I play the more I realize something needs to be changed. Pirates might not need to hold ports after they capture them but they need to get more than 3 frickin points when they do!

1. Not having SOL's puts Pirates at a big disadvantage in port battles and this problem will become even more pronounced as SOL's increase in numbers. And dont say it is too big of a risk for nationals to use them in port battles against us they already are. In fact the more guys who can bring them to a port battle the less chance they have of losing one of them since the firepower advantage becomes even more overwhelming. Let's be honest and agree that we are tremendous underdogs when it comes to beating nationals in a port fight. And if we are not "supposed" to win port battles against nationals then how are we "supposed" to win a map? Oh let me guess we're not "supposed" to win and if I wanted to win I should have rolled national? Give me a break...If we can't win through traditional means then you should damn well provide us with an alternative way to earn points.

2. Contention point generation in the game is way to difficult to accumulate. Trying to flip a port as a Pirate is an extremely frustrating venture as well. You either can raise contention through PVE or through economic means. Well trying to out resource nationals is crazy, Pirates simply cannot compete economicly with nationals resource power. OK well lets do it through PVE instead. the problem here is once again they can kill pirate NPC's at the same rate we are killing their NPC's. So if you can somehow manage to kill faster than they can and overcome the resource dumping you can get the zone in the red. Now all you need to do is beat a few of those 6-6 fights with 2-3 SOL's in them. Good times...

It's late right now so my applogies for spelling errors and if I rambled a bit. In closing I'm ok with having a different "path" to play as a Pirate but I would like one that is reasonable. If we are just supposed to be the guys who make life difficult for the nationals fine, let us be able to attack players wherever they happen to roam. Or maybe increase the number of points we get from taking a port to 10 instead of 3.

[Zapporius]

Just because you can't play doesn't mean that pirates are bad, check out pirates on Rackham for tips what to do. They are doing pretty well last time I checked.

[kungtotte]

Yes, the way that pirates are incorporated into the conquest system isn't optimal, and does need some seeing to, but if you wanted to win the map you should have rolled national. I'll skip responding to how the system can be fixed, and just focus on what the game gives us right now, if that's OK. Hypothetical discussions tend to fail on this forum

The Citations of Conquest are awarded to every nation after a mapwin. The winning nation gets a bunch, the others get one. The bonuses that Citations of Conquests will buy you will eventually be available to everyone, pirates won't fall behind just because they never win the map.

Aquiring fourth-rates have proved to be little harder than aquiring any other non-SOL naval career/refit ship, so at this point when the nationals are still showing up in PBs with fourth-rates and big frigates, I'd say the only thing keeping pirates from matching them ship-for-ship is dedication. Once it moves on to third, second and first-rates then yes, the ship advantage for port battles will always be with the nationals.

Spiking a port is easy. We've flipped several ports on Rackham and it wasn't a mad scramble to find good NPCs to sink, that nationals somehow have it easier to flip ports is just a ridiculous statement They might have a stronger economy and can thus afford the econ-spike much better than pirates, but other than that the difficulty involved in each flip is the same (if not even better for pirates, since nationals tend to show up to defend their ports. Sinking one guy in PvP equates to something like five or ten NPCs in terms of contention points).



In closing, yes, if they want us to keep doing conquest this way with the intention of winning the map, it would be nice to maybe up our points from 3 to 4, or even 5. But then again, we're not flipping ports to get into a port battle. We're flipping ports to keep that glorious red circle of love open for two days without having to do anything but scoot around and hunt nationals (and run from Corte). Personally, I would like them to remove us from the conquest system or give us completely different means of fighting it.

edit
Yeah, pirates on rackham are doing well in terms of port flippage and OS PvPing. Port battles? Not so much, the nationals still PRAWN us there
The pirates are leading the conquest scoreboard on Blackbeard though, if I understood things correctly.

[flymetothemoon]

the citations of conquest are the incentive for pirates to win the map. personally, I sure would like to get enough citations for a nice trade in before the nationals do, even if 'eventually' we'll all have enough.

[kungtotte]

I want Citations of Conquest too, but not bad enough to give up my pirate ways.

[overfloater]

Originally Posted by kungtotte Yes, the way that pirates are incorporated into the conquest system isn't optimal, and does need some seeing to, but if you wanted to win the map you should have rolled national.

Couple of things here...

1) You say "if you wanted to win the map you should have rolled national" as if it's a no-brainer at character creation. Except nowhere in the game literature does it indicate that pirates are at such an innate disadvantage that they should never be considered by any player wishing to take part in meaningful PvP... which is essentially what you are saying. Given that it's apparently such a game-altering factor in nation selection, you'd think it would have a little more visibility! (Heck, I've been playing the game for a month and reading the forums regularly and, while I'm only just learning the conquest scoring system, this is the first time I've heard that pirates aren't contenders for map victory, after kinda figuring it out myself this week.)

2) The very fact that pirates are included in the conquest system indicates that they should be a viable contender. Otherwise, what's the point of bothering to include them? If our only purpose it to cause short-term port flips and create PvP areas to irritate and gank the other nations.. well, we could do that just as well without being arbitrarily scored on it. So clearly pirates are intended to be a contender for map victory, but the system is simply imbalanced.

Originally Posted by kungtotte The pirates are leading the conquest scoreboard on Blackbeard though, if I understood things correctly.

Sadly not. We were but, predictably, only for as long as it took our captured ports to flip back. I think that's what prompted Mart's post. Blackbeard pirates made a huge strike against the British last weekend and decimated the entire SE corner of the map... but after 3 days (during which the British had to do nada) the ports reverted and the Brits were suddenly leading us, despite having only 2 port caps to our 7.

Pirates are in the conquest system, so clearly they're meant to be able to win it. The problem is that conquest system subjects us to different rules from the nationals but scores us on the same basis. Our goals and scoring system don't have to be identical to those of the nationals -- I'm happy to have different rules -- but they do have to be of comparable difficulty, and currently they're not.


This isn't just meant to be a whine. Given that the game is pretty PvP-centric -- and given the lack of traditional "end game" goals -- I don't think it would be healthy for the game in the long term to have one faction entirely excluded from the conquest system. Hunting PvP in the red circle simply for the sake of hunting PvP and hoarding loot is not going to keep level 50 pirate players occupied forever. (Especially given how awkward it can be to actually track PvP down!)