without kingdoms having jurisdiction over the seas, that means nothing is stopping them from murdering the fuck out of some pirates.

Posted By Scheneighnay at 10:36 PM - Sun Jun 09 2019

without kingdoms haven't jurisdiction over the seas, that means nothing is stopping them from murdering the fuck out of some pirates.

Except the risk of perma death fighting against people who are probably more skilled at sea warfare

I see few risking it who are not already pirates unless war is declared on them.

Posted By Sackeshi at 12:55 PM - Mon Jun 10 2019

Except the risk of perma death fighting against people who are probably more skilled at sea warfare

I see few risking it who are not already pirates unless war is declared on them.

Why would they be more skilled than anyone else? Kingdoms are going to have the same people, focused on the same areas. I doubt even pirates would risk fighting in deep ocean. Most would just flight in the shallow waters.

While the best way to remove pirates, attack their base. They are either setup somewhere on the mainland or on some island. Just raid the hell out of that. Lock down all the ports close by. Watch them starve to death out there.

What Gunnlang said.

I'm not sure if Sackeshi realizes it, but death in coastal waters does not necessarily lead to permadeath. We don't yet know the mechanics of the deep-sea permadeath feature.

Moreover, pirates make a living by raiding commercial shipping. If commercial shipping is limited to coastal waters, pirates don't have a lot to gain by generally hanging out in deeper waters. The exception might be to escape capture, when no other recourse is available. The risk of permadeath might be preferable to a near certainty of lifespan loss, after all.

Of course, a consequence of the scenario I just described is that pirates might be the first group of characters to gain knowledge of safe havens (i.e., islands) in deep waters that cannot be seen from land. The law will probably not pursue them to such havens until piracy becomes overwhelmingly costly to merchants and domain rulers, because lawful sailors generally will not risk a fate worse than permadeath if they don't catch the pirates.

Once piracy becomes too costly to ignore, a likely remedy will be that of bounties to privateers or the most daring of nobly-sponsored captains and crews. This should spur improvements in ship design to increase the probability of survival on the high seas. I don't think established coastal patrols would generally risk loss of its coastal cutters in high-seas ventures, because losing them on the high seas would diminish their deterrence effects where the coastal traders travel.

Ship loads of NPCs go and hunt down pirates for coin with bounty tokens. A few players use alts to guide it.

Even if they lose, the pirates they manage to kill suffer perma-death. The pirates wont get NPC help or many safe ports on account of being pirate. So 100% of the pirate losses will be characters the pirate players value.

Also it wont remain like this forever. Once the underwater biomes are developed them dying at sea wont always mean permadeath any more.

Welcome to the real world...of CoE. If any kingdom were to allow a pirate guild to gain so much control then it's their own fault. Also, it's the Deep Water that causes permadeath. That doesn't mean the shipping lanes will be through Deep Water.

Another point: ships won't appear out of thin air. They'll need to be built.

So you can count on kingdoms having the logistical backbone to always have the bigger, better, more numerous, and newer ships than pirates will.

This is utterly ridiculous on so many levels.

At first I thought you were going to be talking about the weather, which, you know, would have actually made sense.

Interesting thoughts here.

As the leader of a Pirate Guild, I do not intend on controlling any waters. That's a good way to end up dancing the hempen jig. While I love the idea of a Merry life, but a short one, I don't know that I want to invite the king and his navy to dance.

In reality, I imagine there will be lawless regions of coast, where there are treacherous waters, no local ports, and lots of inlets, harbors, and bays where my kind can hide and wait. These types of places would make for great ambush locations and that's what me and the crew will be looking for. Good pirates will look for these kinds of stretches of coast between trade ports.

Trade Routes are great and all, but they'll most likely be patrolled by Kingdom Navies. Merchant ships of importance will also likely have armed escorts. Might be good for fast hit and runs, but not for main hunting.

So, while it may be possible for a Pirate Guild to gain a good amount of power, I doubt many will spring for total control of any water ways. There may be small sections where they frequent, but having a location that can be tracked and marked on charts is a sure fire way to get the King's navy and marines on your port!

Of course, this is my speculation. Who can say what will transpire in-game until we get there!

I do not really know where to start ... maybe, on the title of the thread which is the only thing with a semblance of sens.

Yes sea travel will be long, perilous and not cheap, all that is true, but one thing is 150% certain, it will not be any of those because of pirates.

Pirates are not navy, they do not go out in search of ship to sink, they go out in search of ship to plunder in order to live of or rather sell cargo in order to buy what they need to live.

And what they need is food, water, cloth, repairs for their ship and their weapons..... what they need is a port and doing trade.

Which leads us to three things, first naval battle, pirates wont have easy ones, because they will try to board ships and take control of them while their opponent will only try to sink them, which means the risk of ocean permadeath is way higher for pirates than for their prey.

Second port, pirates need, or rather , NEED, to have access to ports at the very least in order to maintain and repair their ship. In a world, Elyria, where every thing decays, ship are no exception. but more than ship repair they need to go to a port for everything and to be allowed in a port they need at the very least a neutral reputation there, which means support. If they lose that support either because they attack indiscriminately or because they get too much attention and trigger a ducal action against their support ports, they die.

Third, trade, see, Elyria is big, no it is huge, and sea/ocean is even bigger than the land, and pirates need prey to attack, but unless, winds and sea current are to be a thing, there will not be a lot of sea trade roads. On earth pirates could operate because of the winds, they force all ships to go on the same path, in Elyria we do not know if such a thing will happen, if no trade path at sea, no pirates.

But there was so much to talk about on the subject, price and maintenance of ships, maps , weather, food preservation, sickness, monsters..... so many real factors that are going to make navigation a challenge. But no, you picked the only one subject that will not be a major thing :(

Posted By Kyleran at 1:43 PM - Mon Jun 10 2019

Can't really predict how it all may play out until theres an actual world populated with players, so will be quite some time before we'll know.

that goes for everything really- I don't expect metagaming to go away

I plan on sneaking through lots of patrolled waters personally

Brigands along trade routes will be at least as dangerous to commerce as pirates are. Ships should have advantages, at least once a certain level of technology is reached, as being a faster and more efficient way to transport goods (at least to coastal areas). (Indeed, river transport should be better than roads where available, and if we get canal technology we can build them to be available.).

The coasting trade does not risk permadeath, but also increases risk of piracy because shipping is co fined to a narrow lane, and ships cannot simply disappear into the vastness of the blue ocean. Once ocean transport technology is reached, piracy should be harder, not easier. There was very little piracy in the open seas. Pirates couldn’t find prey out there. Pirates instead hunted along the approaches to ports, which were places where the sea lane narrowed to huntable size.

But if piracy is a problem, navies and pirate hunters will be a thing. Pirates impose a cost on commerce. If that cost outweighs the cost of an effective anti-piracy force, then rational governments (or merchant associations) will create an anti-piracy force. And if piracy doesn’t have that cost, it means that commerce is still flowing reasonably well.

At best, they will form Tortuga...