|
Post by lord_denton on Jul 28, 2009 12:04:36 GMT -5
The idea of a new nation has been thrown around a bit. Some are concerned that it will interfere with the other nations and make things more difficult.
I don't personally see the problem. In Savage Shores, they had the Mercaneries. If we exclude them and the Cursed from this historical set (that is the way this seems to be leading to), there is plently of room for a new nation.
So, if you vote yes, name the new nation you would like to see (Name 1 please).
If you said no, explain why this would help other nations if we didn't have a new one, and any other ideas that come to mind.
If you choose "it depends", state you reason.
Here is a small list to get you thinking: Denmark Portugal The Dutch Sweden Russia Poland-Lithunia Ottaman Empire
|
|
Riz
Master & Commander
As bloody as I wanna be!
Posts: 55
|
Post by Riz on Jul 28, 2009 13:19:52 GMT -5
I think it depends upon a couple things. Would this new nation be historical or fantasy? Would it impact any of the normally percieved "roles" of the other nations?
Myself I think rather than bringing a new nation in, bringing some fo the previous one shots up a bit would be better.
|
|
|
Post by admiralb on Jul 28, 2009 13:25:29 GMT -5
Depends...I think before really doing new nations some of the old ones need a bit more...like Viking. Corsair, Jade, and Mercenary could use some help too.
Although, if we were to do a new nation I'd say Portugal would probably be best...but I'm basing this more on an Age of Exploration set...they seem to have more big name explorers than most others mentioned above.
...I've been debating whether Italian born explorers should get the Ex-patriot keyword or not; any suggestions?
|
|
|
Post by chasseur85 on Jul 28, 2009 15:25:43 GMT -5
Depends...I think before really doing new nations some of the old ones need a bit more...like Viking. Corsair, Jade, and Mercenary could use some help too. Although, if we were to do a new nation I'd say Portugal would probably be best...but I'm basing this more on an Age of Exploration set...they seem to have more big name explorers than most others mentioned above. ...I've been debating whether Italian born explorers should get the Ex-patriot keyword or not; any suggestions? I guess you could say that, but I was thinking maybe we should add some nations from a different continent. The Ottomans would just introduce the Xebecs, but with the Portuguese we could add caravels and carracks, which would be like a galleon, well armed but a tall ship, making it vulnerable to sinking after multiple broadsides. The only way I can see an Italian Explorer being an ex-patriot is if we tweak the ability a little bit. Sweden would have a decent fleet, but it wouldn't introduce any new ship types. Same with Russia, P-L, and the Danes. If we do the Dutch, then we would could add Fluyts.
|
|
|
Post by lord_denton on Jul 28, 2009 17:27:18 GMT -5
I think it depends upon a couple things. Would this new nation be historical or fantasy? This comes up alot. I thought it was answered here: www.miniaturetrading.com/im/forum/viewtopic/t=4647///The general answer was that people wanted a historical set, and, to a small degree, new ship types. So, I suppose its historical. Would it impact any of the normally percieved roles of the other nations?I'm not sure if I know what you're talking about when you say roles. Is that like Pirates and French are cheap, Britain and America shoot well? I think you are right. But, since we are doing a historical set, Vikings are mostly out. Mercaneries sort of existed, but not in quite the same vein. I've never heard of Mercanary ships before. So, that leaves us with Jades and the Coarsairs. We could do a set based off of the Trading companies and the fight against the Jades. Same with the Coarsairs, America had a few wars with them, they were taking slaves. Okay, I think we should aim for that. I'll let the discussion continue here, though.
|
|
|
Post by rustyhook on Jul 28, 2009 17:29:25 GMT -5
I'm afraid I'd have to vote no. Not that I'm against a new nation, but I am against eliminating the Cursed. Personally I seldom use the Cursed, however, from a marketing prospective you can't ignore the jump in sales with Davy Jones' Curse, the expansion that introduced the Cursed nation. People love a good ghost story, and that's what the Cursed provides.
|
|
|
Post by lord_denton on Jul 28, 2009 17:32:35 GMT -5
If its historical, the Cursed can't be in it. Period. Thats the idea here, we are elimanting the Cursed, who (and if) do we put in their steed?
|
|
|
Post by rustyhook on Jul 28, 2009 18:29:51 GMT -5
If its historical, the Cursed can't be in it. Period. Thats the idea here, we are elimanting the Cursed, who (and if) do we put in their steed? Your point is well taken. So the next question is... when is the time period? I saw there was already a poll thread for this question. I think once that question has been answered then narrowing down a new nation can be more easily decided since logic states the two should sync up.
|
|
cleverpun
Master & Commander
I need more wenches / More wenches and mead
Posts: 46
|
Post by cleverpun on Jul 29, 2009 2:58:45 GMT -5
But did Russia have any decent naval battles after WWII? Or even during? As I recall, they've been a land-based power for some time. The same can be said of Italy.
I suppose the Pacific Islands were covered in SS.
Or how about Scotland (or Ireland)? That would be fun, but only because I want the Loch Ness Monster and crew in kilts. But then I suppose there's the same issue as the others.
|
|
|
Post by lord_denton on Jul 29, 2009 8:38:17 GMT -5
Oops! I accidently replaced Cleverpun's post with mine. I'll fix it!
|
|
|
Post by lord_denton on Jul 29, 2009 8:40:45 GMT -5
Okay, I restored Cleverpun's post in entirety.
Well, a user on the A&A forumini said this of the Russian fleet in WWII:
Why does this matter? The Russians had a good crack at a navy during the age of sail. What does WWII have to do with anything?
Italy had a much better go at a Navy than the Russians during WWII, but the opposite can be said of the age of sail; The Italian states were all broken up, no time to establish a Navy I've heard of.
I don't see why we must limit ourselves to things not done. I would love to go back to the Revolution, Barbary Coast, South China Seas etc. ( I missed it the first time round ).
I don't really know much about them at the time, but I believe they were part of Great Britian. At least, Scotland was, so any Navy they had would've been merged with England's.
|
|
|
Post by woelf on Jul 29, 2009 12:33:07 GMT -5
("No" vote)
As much as some people might want to add new nations, there are quite a few major issues to resolve before they should even be considered.
1) Which nation? By far the least of those issues is deciding which nation (or nations) to add. This thread alone shows how much the opinions vary on which would be the best. You could set up a poll and let people vote on which to add, but no matter which one wins a bunch of players are going to be disappointed that "their" nation wasn't it. That's all without even getting into the debates about which was the most historically significant or which (not necessarily the same one) would be the most playable within the confines of the game itself.
2) Set size. This issue is a big one. The vast majority of comments about this referred to Savage Shores as the "target" size, which for a user-made set is probably for the best because it'll help keep the costs down (versus a full-sized set).
However, if you look at the numbers in that set, each nation got only three or four ships each (for the sake of argument, I'm counting each set of canoes as one ship). England got five, but two of those were in the SR pack. If you look at all of those ships using the most popular criteria (in ship/fleet reviews and custom ship designs at least) where speed, firepower, and cargo space (in that order) are valued more than any other stats, only about half of those ships are considered "good" by the majority of players. On average that leaves maybe two "good" ships per nation.
Now, think about about what would happen if you tried sticking another nation in there. To give them all an equal number of ships, that means you're down to just two or three each, and among those probably only one or two "good" ships per nation. Of course, naturally people are going to want to play that new nation all by itself, which may be possible, but there's no chance of them being considered "competitive" against any other nation, much less a mixed fleet, unless they are artifically boosted well above the others (see issue #3). Just look what happened with the Cursed - instead of being given half of a set to get them started, they were eased in more slowly and in numbers that weren't significantly higher than what the other nations got at the same time. As a result, they're severely lacking in a number of areas and are constantly viewed as one of the weakest nations. The only thing that keeps them from being tossed aside completely is the fact that they have a few insanely powerful abilities (in particular the copy ability found on Davy Jones and Behemoth), but even those aren't enough to give them an even footing with the other major nations in the game.
The alternative to giving the new nation and all of the others an equal share in the set is to dedicate a majority of the space to the new nation. Think of the Corsairs, the Jade Rebellion, Mercenaries, and Vikings, which each got roughly half of the space in their respective sets. Savage Shores was already a half-sized set, so if the new nation got half of that they would effectively be getting a quarter, which not only would give them far too few ships and crew to be "competitive", it would also cut down the rest of the nations to one ship (or two if they're lucky), which may or many not even be any "good". With a set that's already half-sized, the only viable option to make that new nation "competitive" is to give it the entire set, which of course means the rest of the existing nations get nothing. That might work later down the line, but not for the very first set.
3) Balance. The number one complaint about all of the minor nations (BC, JR, M, and V) and to a lesser extent the Cursed is that they are weak compared to the other nations. While most of them can hold their own in certain areas (Corsairs in a treasure race, for example), they are also severely lacking in other areas (Corsairs in combat).
If you want a new nation to be focused on treasure-running at the expense of combat it could certainly be designed that way, but then there will always be complaints about how lousy they are in deatchmatch games - or vice versa. If you want them to be competitive overall (which most people really want) right from the start, they need to be given all of the "basics" found in the other nations and/or they need to be significantly more powerful.
By "basics", I mean the things common to most of the other nations, and the things that draw complaints if they're missing: a super-fast treasure-runner or two, some big and powerful gunships, named captains, SAT and Extra action crew, an 0LR or two, and maybe even a point reducer or someone that allows crew of other nations onboard. Once you've put all of those in there isn't exactly a lot of space left for anything else, and aside from their flag and the artwork the "new" nation ends up looking a lot like everything else (see issue #4). If that's the case, you would have been better off just adding to the existing nations than creating a new one.
The alternative to that is to make the new nation's individual ships and crew significantly better than their counterparts in other nations, but that's a problem too. Sure they might be balanced if you're playing single-nation fleets, but as soon as you start mixing them with others things will quickly start to break.
4) Uniqueness There has been talk of creating new nation-specific ships such as a Dutch Fluyt, but is a new ship design and a new flag really enough to make a nation unique? If the new ships end up playing exactly the same as any number of other ships in other nations, that answer is no. A ship-specific keyword can help to some extent, but if it's fairly minor (Junk) it's not going to have much of an impact on overall gameplay. If it's extremely powerful (Longship or Submarine) it is more then likely going to add a significant cost premium which will in turn make that nation much more difficult to use effectively. If it has a significant negative aspect (Mercenary) it again makes those ships harder to use.
You can create new abilities to make a nation more unique, but then you run right back up against the issues of keeping the pieces balanced on an individual level and in keeping the nation competitive as a whole (see issue #3).
---------
At this starting point, I just don't see the addition of a new nation working unless one or more of these things happen: A) The overall set size is increased significantly (full-sized vs SS-sized) - that adds a lot of cost. B) The new nation gets the majority of space in the smaller set - that short-changes all of the other nations and/or cuts out some of them entirely. C) The new nation makes only a token appearance of no more than one or two ships and a card or two of crew - that means they're not going to be able to stand on their own in a nation-pure fleet.
If people still have their hearts set on a new nation they really should wait until a later set, after a good foundation has been established and we know for sure if this whole thing can even work at all.
|
|
Riz
Master & Commander
As bloody as I wanna be!
Posts: 55
|
Post by Riz on Jul 29, 2009 12:42:33 GMT -5
Woelf raises some durn good points.
|
|
|
Post by lord_denton on Jul 29, 2009 13:57:25 GMT -5
True. All of its true.
But, what more is too do with the existing nations? Sure, the are gripes like the US lacks different named crew, Spain doesn't have a Sac-Captain etc. What more can be done after these are satisfied?
Okay, Savage Shores has 52 cards. This set will either have 6 nations or 5. Savage Shores had 7. That means each nation will have roughly 8/10 "pieces".
|
|
|
Post by vladsimpaler on Jul 29, 2009 14:21:27 GMT -5
... Spain doesn't have a Sac-Captain... Don't worry, I've already taken care of that. That being said, I agree with Woelf. A new nation is just another logistical nightmare to add to the pile of nightmares that we already have to deal with. The less we have to go through, the better in my opinion. Like I said before, if this set is successful, then if we do another fan made set maybe it can have a new faction.
|
|