Comments/Questions/Observations from Meke blockade today

As is known Meke was blockaded earlier today at Noon pirate time by Fallen.

Round 1: They had ships on the board for us to play with. It had looked like we were going to lose the round but we got ahead with points for the win in the last few minutes.

Round 2: Point sit basically since they said they were pulling out. But we were prepared for them to not stick to it.

Round 3: They brought in a Xebec with 20 on board. After we knocked that out they brought in a War Brig. After knocking out the brig, no other ships from them.

Other bits whole blockade related:
- Undertow did bring a few ships to shoot and be annoying to help us out.
- We stayed 200 below what Fallen was paying and still out jobbed them.
- Also, can't forget about the awesome hearties and allies that came to help as jobbers and navers ( or was zarci the only out of flag to nav?)
- A great job for all the flag members

It Was a fun naving experience since i've only naved during a few event blockades before.

** I got knocked out twice was it on a junk ( within the first 10- 20 minutes?) but did do a decent amount of damage to the ships i had been shooting at- before point sitting for the rest of round 1. I probably should've moved away better than i had but i'd wanted to shoot them as much as i could before getting knocked out.

** Round 3 was fun. Me, Pac and Naiki played with the Xebec. I'd moved to nearby flags to also get the damage down while they finished it off. Naiki and Pac played with the Brig. Had no more damage until we were heading out when me and naiki decided to have fun shooting at each other.
-- After getting the damage from the xebec down i'd said on break "great job on getting damage down" and a jobber asked "we had damage?"

Between puzzling and seeing only what's in the small box to XOing to Naving- it's all a different experience.

It would be great to have more wanting to nav even if it's only once ( or once per round) during a blockade.

Positive from me:
- During the rounds it was great to get back on the board within 5 minutes of getting knocked out.
- Everything went a lot smoother than the last time.
- I would hope that no one said anything bad about my naving at first

Cons:
- Nothing from me at the moment

I would like to get opinions on after the other side isn't bringing in any more ships- would you keep shooting so the gunners get paid or have them station. ( it was for the rest of the third round that i kept shooting 6-8 per turn to every two turns so the gunners would get paid)


I do think it would be really helpful to everyone that we have a separate post for each XO position ( atlantis/haunted seas/big ship ci's, Flotillas, War Brig and up pillies, and blockades) if there isn't anything already posted on it. Or if not separate posts then separate each into their own section- and a post on MAAing wouldn't hurt either. Putting it out there since i don't think there's a post on here yet about it.

Comments, questions and thought's are welcome to be discussed. If i missed anything or got anything wrong- correct me.

I'll answer Angel's last question first, I posted a fairly detailed description of XO/MAA responsibilities as I seem them in the following forum; https://an-otherworld.forumotion.com/t278-atlantis-flotillas-ci-and-hs See my last reply on Sept 4, 2012.

Regarding the blockade, I can't comment on Fallen's decision not to bring in any ships or job in the second round, behaving like they were pulling out. Then re-jobbing and loading ships in the third round. I haven't participated in enough blockades to know the etiquette involved. But I can say I received several tells from players incensed at this behavior and that it was a complain-able offense. Marmy chose to post a complaint, and I later learned Reformed had too. I also received tells from several players that had left to do other things in the game that they would port, in order to send their jobbers to us to help in the third round if needed. However, I had kept two Junks mostly full at the end of the second round, and used them as a basis to fill brigs for Pac and Naiki, while keeping Angel's Junk full too. We were able to quickly and easily re-job folks even though Fallen started jobbing for the third round with pay bumped to 2000 a segment (we raised to 1500 a segment). We were able to fill two brigs, a Junk, and a point sitting sloop (about 60 pirates) to their 20 despite this pay differential.

From my perspective the first round was stressful and intense! I thought we had a great start getting our offer out on the board almost right on time. Pay started at 500 to 400 differential but at the end of the round was 1K to 1K. Flag's favored ocean-side entry so Fallen got a quick lead in points. There were three main areas to compete, a group of 3 points on the upper side of the board, with a cluster of 7 points pretty close to those 3 (ships could fight back and fourth between these clusters with one move). Then on the opposite side of the board was a single 3-point flag, and four other isolated one-point flags.

We got two brigs, a Junk and a sloop in at the start of the round to a Brig, Junk, and Baglah by Fallen. Battle raged over those three groups of flags for the entire round. We were able to add a second junk and two more sloop point sitters (the Junk driven by Zarchi, and the third sloop by Cdustin). Over the course of the round we slowly ate away at the lead which had been 100 points at one point. In the very last segment we closed the gap and I thought for sure we had lost when Fallen sank Angel at the sole-three point flag, and we only had Naiki alone against two ships on the other side of the board. But Naiki sank one of those two, Marmy got her latest brig back in action in the center fast, and Fallen left the loan three-point flag to sail all the way across the board to attack Naiki. I made the decision for Naiki to leave the 3 point cluster to contend the 7-point cluster. At this point we had all the 1-point flags covered (by three sloops and Zarchi's crippled Junk) and Naiki prevented the one Fallen ship from scoring many points in the 7-point cluster. By the time the Fallen Brig arrived at the central cluster from the other side of the map, Marmy was back in action and together finished of one of the two fallen ships. Leaving us with 2 ship on the 7-point cluster. We finally went ahead on the second-to last segment in that round and one it by about a dozen points.

The one thing I took away from this round was to be more proactive setting up out-of-flag assistance firmly, including getting guests on TS and ready. I hung on too long to hoping to get more flag folks on line to help out, and this meant we were not prepared to load additional ships. I learned after the fact that Zarchi would easily have joined us on TS had he known. In addition to getting guest drivers, I had offers for help for anything from JC to vice admiral. I don't see why we can't hire non-flaggies for some of these roles and should have asked for help there too. I chose to be vice-admiral as well as admiral, which was distracting.

I do believe we did a very good job getting ships back out pretty fast, I can't think of a single moment that we had ships on the dock waiting very long to get back in. However, we do need our JC to be in DR in the future to be able to post offers, in case we have a driver that is not in the crew to do that. It worked out OK this time but I think we can have less confusion in the future. I think there was one time we need a DR officer to do something, but none was available (unless I logged on as my alt, I guess I will generate an alt account for this purpose too). I can't remember exactly what the task was though.

I can't remember how much our pay cost the flag, I believe Howee has the numbers and we can discuss that with SOs, Captains, and Royals. I don't think stock costs were high either, we didn't lose the stock with the 'sinks', only what was shot or rum used. We did get a small donation from Fallen from their failed drop payment!

The third round was very easy, with our three main combatants and Gremmels staunch point-sitting, we won this easily. I'll only make a minor change to Angel's summary in that Fallen brought in 2 War Brigs after the Xebec. The only flags worth fight for were clustered near the island side, and in a rock trap. It was easy for the ships to protect this one area, and I think Fallen only wanted to have fun shooting at something that round, they made no effort to win it. We lost one Brig to the Xebec, but our three ships had no trouble finishing of the Xebec and the Brigs that followed.

I very much want to hear comments from everyone active in the blockade, particularly any folks new to being in blockade staff. I'd like to hear from you what you liked, didn't like, and would make future blockades more fun for you to participate in.

Also if you want to learn more details about the logistics of blockading, Fandango posted a amazing summary of the process on YPP at: http://yppedia.puzzlepirates.com/Fandango_Blockade_Method

Fallen bringing the ships in for fun was what I thinking when we saw that they were loading one ship at a time.

When you had said that we could use a few more nav ers since not all were on yet-- I had thought about asking if you would have wanted me to bring an alt into DR, sub them for a week and double client with nav with them. Didn't ask since you busy with everything.

It is something to think on for if it may be needed at any point during future blockades.

I don't have much to add other than what was said. Great work by Spout!! Especially being prepared to have boats for round 3.

Only 2 comments really:

1. We need to be in Round 1 faster. It seemed like we were late to the party and playing catch up rather than being proactive and saying "come try to take us."

2. Along with Marmy and Reformed (and many many others), I'm disappointed in Fallen. I think they have taken their idea of blocking all islands (which is a good goal), and turned it into a frustrating annoyance (which may be their intent). There is no honor in saying, we're going to block your island and then running away when they are going to lose. I have really lost any respect I may have had for these players. They showed a lack of respect for Otherworld by not coming prepared (they said they didn't have enough boats) insinuating to me that they had no intent of staying for 5 rounds to begin with.

Ooooo, one more thing. I think we do need to decide if we will job navvers from outside the flag and let others bring their own boats in, etc. If we have procedure in place, it will be less confusing when someone asks.

Anyway, I'm glad I was able to make it, got to drive a junk (whoo hooo), and a sloop, and had a great time. Kudos again to Spout and Howee and everyone else in Otherworld. There is no place else I'd rather be <3

Mupple

I think it went really well. To me (having been JC (jobbing contact) on all but one of the blockades we've participated in, it was the smoothest run that we've had.

I think there are a few small things we can work out between now and the next block (whenever it may be). We had the staging ship set up, however hadn't determined how we were going to load onto the ships that were going in. There was a little confusion about that. I've helped on other blocks when they've had a staging ship and will see if I can get feedback from those flags on how they load. I seem to remember a tell over jobbing chat "We're loading now, all hands to....." and they'd list out the three or four ships that were loading. The nav'r and XO would already be on the ships. Once a ship filled up, the jobbers would stay with the nav'r if they sunk. Our not having a plan on that was a small hiccup but didn't delay getting us onto the board.

I agree that we do need to have a nav'r and XO paired up beforehand. We've always done this in the past and I think we simply forgot.

We have awesome hearties and allies who came out and jobbed, and many offered to drive if needed. In future we can coordinate with them on what they're going to do. I didn't see Zarchi at all in the week before. In our last block, he and I had talked at several times so we knew he would be filling a ship with his own crew.

Spout and I briefly discussed last night that it would have been helpful if he and I both had access to the ship list - it would have saved us time channel hopping when ships sunk. I believe that with google docs, you can see the changes someone makes to a document as they are being made. We might want to look into that for the future.

I don't know if there is any set "etiquette" for blockading. I wasn't a bit surprised when Tzz started loading for the third round. I know it's not usually done, but I wasn't surprised. I had two hearties send me tells that Tzz had told THEM he was pulling out early in the third round, however as far as he knows he never said anything to any of us. After the second tell from hearties, I sent Tzz a tell and said I'd heard from others that they were done, and he did reply and say they were out of ships.

We had a lot of jobbers leave at the end of round two, on the assumption that he was done. A lot of them came back when they heard he was reloading, but it would have been easier on our end if we knew he would come back in round three. Then again, as it was said, that might have been part of his intent.

Thanks to everyone who showed up and to everyone who spammed their hearties all week. Without the awesome pirates in our flag, we couldn't have pulled this off.

I'm pretty sure in the long history of Midnight some flags have pulled out of round 2 to organize and try to win it in later rounds. I don't see it as a complain-able offense but it does seem to run counter to what Tzz has said he was trying to do.

I'm sorry I wasn't able to help out. It sounds like it was a blast.

Your post reminded me, Silver (not sure why) but if I recall correctly, smaller ships had been agreed on.  We didn't go that route (neither did they).  Was the change ever discussed, or did it just kind of get forgotten?

Doing fambly stuff is most important, Silver.  Don't ever feel bad about putting fambly first.  Hopefully you'll be available for the rumless run with Howee driving!  That's sure to be fun for everyone (except Howee driving, who may have PLENTY of rum, and Spout on bilge.)  :D