Navy guns, Elites, Blueprints, and poor new players

[Mystichaze]

Navy guns should be a purchasable item in the admiralty shop using combat metals, like 6lb = 1 combat metal each and 42lb should be 8 combat metals each. Just a suggestion on that item considering every other navy item is bought with combat metals.

Elites are not as interesting to fight now that Loki players can just hijack the ship itself and you automatically loose the loot due to the change it goes through. You could wait to find an elite ship however sometimes its fleeted and that becomes suicidal to take on, just too difficult especially since half the drops are worthless for the type of gun you are seeking (who wants a crappy 5th rate note anyways if its not a Trink or better?). One time a I had a group of 5 take on 4 elite L'Oceans ships with Santis and L'Oceans only for half our group to sink and the rest barely make it out, due to the elites insane 16 knot speeds with 75% sail. Only got out because they kept shooting at a dying team mate.

I built a shed, had a teak BP but its useless when you consider the costs. I have redeamables that gives more of what I need then what I can craft from tearing apart a hermine got like 160 seasoned one try. When instead of paying 4k reals a tool, using labor to collect the teak, shipping time and then crafting with dubs to be able to only make the same amount with 3000 labor hours... Id rather tear apart the redeamables I'm not using per day and come out with 1k wood in a weeks time and surpass what I can produce normally.

How about some BP's that do not involve the seasoned woods, like constructing items for crafting upgrades, or being able to construct different cannons like congrieves in the forge. You know stuff that is actually handy to compete against the pay to win gamers that can just tear down their ships? I mean come on your making the privateer event a joint mission for clans and giving them all the best loot when solo players got nothing but elite missions to do and get crap for their efforts. Have you ever played in a PVP server with loot drops, its insane trying to get back to port without someone jumping in an alt to sink you for trying to get back to port with something they want. Or the fact that your broadcasting to the open world about it?

Just saying it, the game is heavily teetering towards pay to win in a bad way, there should be something at least for players that don't have redeamables. Fix the elite drops and drop the fleets on them from 13 to like 3 so its actually doable by someone in a 5th rate. New players struggle so hard on this game, I have to give them like 6 indiaman, 6 5th rates and 500k reals just so they can actually have fun and do something, asking them to obtain that on there own caused them to just quit the game after like 4 attempts at a cargo mission cause they get picked off by someone in a redoutable... I rush to help any new players i hear about giving them ships I don't need cause I'm worried the game will die if I don't give life support to these poor souls.

By now everyone knows where the best trade routes are and you don't change the economy supply and demand from day to day so everyone knows where to camp out to grab people, we need changes so its not too easy to nab traders. I sank 24 indiaman in like 4 days just sitting on a wind boost at a halfway point with my redoubtable. Playing only like 3 hours each day, that also includes the time it takes to sail 30 mins down and 30 mins back to port. I should not be that lucky, but it is what it is. And half the time they had an escort, aggy or endy and sank them while I was at it cause there balls just bounce off my seasoned fir wood, and they cant run me down cause I'm 13+ knot with a boven winds copper plating and navy hull refit. Just a standard blue redoubtable and they cant touch me, almost makes me feel like I should donate indiaman to the enemy players...

[µBunny]

OP is right on so many points.
The resent update to the AI seemingly didn't update the AI mecanics, they are still the same dumb AI, but their ships... One doesn't say that one are going to fix the AI and then just boost their ships, no.. That's a lazy mans fix to a problem. One change how the AI behave and make them a tougher opponents.

As for the Elite drops, I agree there it's bad. Maybe increase the chance of getting that Elite Note to drop, give it chances of good upgrades and book drops, give them a rare "Elite chest" where you can get permits and blueprints that are more rare and even a more rare "Experts Elite Note" that make you able to chose what woods you want it in.

The current state of the DLC ships is destroying the economy of the game. It's fine that you can redeem them every day, but it should be a cost to it on 4th rate DLC and up and there's two good ways of doing it that make them less destructive on the economy of the game.
1. You have to gather a set amount, depending on rate of the ship, of the wood you want to make the ship of, like the Rättvisan.. If you're planing to make it Teak (S) White Oak (S) you would need to have in your warehouse, 550 Teak (S) and 250 White Oak (S) logs.
2. Make it a dubloun cost depending on what rate it is. 2800 Dublouns to redeam a 4th rate DLC ship.
Borth these ways make the player have to do something more than just sit there and redeem the ship over and over and breaking them up for season wood.
But the chance of getting season wood from breaking them up should really be reduces a LOT, it should be VERY rare thing to get from them, because as it is now it has completely removed the need for a seasoning shed.

On OP's last point I would say remove the current trade missions and make new ones where players can make contracts on delivering a certain type of cargo to a certain town and they get payed in dublouns for finishing the job and they get payed extra on the goods when they sell it to the store in the destination town. Missions like these can be.. Deliver X amount of provisions to X town within the X amount of days. But they should be set up so that the player have to make more than one trip and the amount should depend on the level of crew the player can command. These missions should be higly profitable and would help on spreading out the trade routes more.