Pirate Paradise

Scott Hardie | January 1, 2012
It is my great pleasure -- and after this long in development, my relief -- to announce the launch of Pirate Paradise, a big new game on Funeratic! There's a variety of features to this game that I think will appeal to different kinds of players, and I have plans to add many more in the future. This game will evolve over time, so expect many tweaks and improvements and additions. For one thing, a new technique (play rule) will be added every month.

Besides starting at the game homepage linked above, you might want to read the official announcement, which explains the differences between this game and Rock Block, and the How to Play page, which walks you through the basic concepts. Please ask any questions that you like, here in this discussion or in private. Suggestions and requests are more than welcome; this game belongs to all of us.

I've been working on this game for a long time now. It's been in a private beta release with GooCon guests for the last few months, and I'm grateful to Chris Lemler, Justin Woods, Kelly Lee, and Steve West for participating in the beta and giving me good feedback. Thanks in advance to all future players who shape the game in the months and years to come. I'm looking forward to playing this new game with every one of you!

Scott Hardie | January 1, 2012
There is one small hiccup with launch. Annoying technical problems with both companies providing images have forced me to launch the game with fewer pirate images than I had intended. Every player will get five random pirates when they start, and there are only ten base images to go around, so we'll see a lot of similar faces in the crews at first. Sorry; this problem is beyond my control. Once the holiday weekend is over and people go back to work, I expect to work it out with both companies.

Scott Hardie | January 2, 2012
Some points for longtime Funeratic users who like to set reminders and options:

- You can set Dashboard subscriptions for Pirate Paradise, alerting you at a glance when it's your turn in battle or when there's a merchant vessel nearby for easy looting.

- You can subscribe to email notifications, which come once daily to inform you of all the battles where it's your turn.

- You can set in-game options at the bottom of the "My Crew" page. Turn confirmation will be familiar to players from Rock Block, but automatic battles is an entirely new feature, in which the site will randomly spawn battles for you so that you don't have to issue your own challenges. Only two players have that option turned on right now, but the more players who use it, the better it works.

Aaron Shurtleff | January 3, 2012
2 Questions:

1) The page says there will be a new technique every month. Is there a technique for January?

2) The ranking is based on money, not victories. Doesn't that sort of set up a situation where it is best to not buy additional crew members, since that lowers your money total? Nor promote them either? I guess eventually there will be situations where you might have to...

So far I am digging the game!! Bravo!

Aaron Shurtleff | January 3, 2012
2 Bitches:

1) Does it annoy anyone else that I (and some others) have gotten less from 2 merchant battles than others people have gotten from one? Stupid randomizer hates me...

2) Steve Dunn I feel like there is a strategy, but I can't figure one out. I think I might have become dumb(er) in my old age. Where's my Ginkgo biloba pills???

Scott Hardie | January 3, 2012
Glad you're enjoying it!

Answers to questions:

1) There is no technique yet for January. I wanted to add several techniques before launch, but I ran out of time. Maybe it's better this way: While the plain game without techniques tends toward repetitive matches and draws for outcomes, it can be a complicated game to pick up at first, so maybe it's a good thing to get our feet wet before we add complexity.

2) The ranking is based on gold, yes. I might redesign the lists visually to have more emphasis on that number and less on the number of battles won. Hiring and promoting can lower your ranking in the early game when most players have the same total, but it will have little effect in the long run. Ranking doesn't have any effect on the game; it's just for pride only.

I'm open to discussing strategy any time. So far, I see a lot of players trying the most popular basic strategy from Rock Block, play the lowest card you have next to as many enemy cards as you can. That's fine, although I hope to see some other strategies develop in this new format.

Steve West | January 3, 2012
I'd like to experiment with new strategies, and I grant that I had the opportunity, but it's a little more daunting with money on the line. I'll have to play more games with low wagers or none for that matter and not worry about wins/losses.

Steve Dunn | January 3, 2012
BUG REPORT: on the dashboard notification of my turn in battles, I see Scott picture in every one, regardless of who I'm playing. All Scott, all the time!

Aaron Shurtleff | January 3, 2012
1) I didn't think there was, but I had to check.

2) The ranking is fine. If you only play fair matches, then promotion and hiring won't matter, since you can never be forced to advance (until something happens to cause you to lose cards, of course). So spending your gold on these things can really hurt you, the way I see it, if someone else wants to be cut-throat about it (pun intended). So I think it would matter, but I am willing to be proven wrong.

As far as strategy, at this point, what else can you do? You could throw down your highest and work down, but that could be detrimental and you could be in a jam. I find that lowest possible and working up is the best strategy. Defense is hard to do right now. I haven't seen too many pirates that don't have some weaknesses that can be exploited...

Aaron Shurtleff | January 3, 2012
Ah! But, if the rate of times you see is merchant is based upon rank, with higher rank seeing less merchants, spending more should cause you to see more merchnats for easy gold! I should ponder this more... That is how it works, right?

Question: With the navy vessel, is the chances of seeing one based more on how many merchants you defeat or how much you get? Maybe that is the equalizer for the amounts of gold? I'm not really bothered by it, I was just surprised at how much variation there was...

EDIT: Moar questions!
2) Does the game end at 10,000,000 gold coins? If you get there, do you have to stop playing, and everyone else too? I know this is a distant future thing, but I am curious.

3) If you do something that would satisfy the terms of a technique, does it remain? What I mean is, let's say to get the RB equivalent of Hidden, you have to accomplish the feat of winning one match, and this is set up in February. If I have already won a match, do I automatically get the chance of trying to defeat the ghost pirate (whenever however it shows up), or do I have to get a win from some point afterwards? Also, do you have just the one month to get the feat accomplished, or once it has been opened, it stays open?

I know some of these would probably be answered in time, but I have no patience. :)

Scott Hardie | January 3, 2012
The issue with Dashboard icons is noted. I'll fix it tonight. Thanks.

Promotion and hiring may matter if you want variety in your crew. The random selector gave me very similar cards: high in Pistol, low in Cannon and Sword. I have few ways to out-maneuver my opponents on the grid if they have high Cannon or high Sword. I will probably expand my crew soon and begin promoting. (On that note, one of the image companies just got back to me this morning that their technical issues are worked out, so I'll add more pirate base images shortly and announce it in Game News when it's done.)

Of course, anyone promoting in these early days of the game will want to keep in mind how many other players will have 5-4-3-2-1, and that an equal sum of ranks is needed for fair battles. Automatic battles are always fair.

Defense can be feasible depending on what you have. In the beta, I had a pretty good variety of combat skills, so I could position my higher pirates in place where only one enemy could hit them, and none of the enemy pirates had a high enough skill to inflict fatal damage. Since I also had low-ranking pirates with certain high skills, it worked out well. No such luck now in the real game. :-)

You are correct about merchants, Aaron: The more gold you earn, the less often you'll encounter them. But the cost of hiring and promoting is negligible in those calculations; their effect on merchant frequency would be very slight. To be clear, merchants show up less often based on the amount of gold that you currently have, not based on your ranking against other players.

The royal navy will decide to attack you based on how many merchants you sack, not how much money you have total. As with merchants, it happens randomly; there's just a greater or lesser chance per person. As you progress in the game, you'll gradually encounter fewer merchants, which also means fewer run-ins with the navy.

The amount of money that you can win from a merchant (and from an automatic battle) has a pretty wide range, yes. But the maximum amount is still not much compared to how much you can wager in a challenge against another pirate. If you want to go after the big bucks, you'll need to play human opponents for high wagers.

The game ends for one player at 10 million gold coins. I haven't completely decided yet, but I think that player will be invited to restart the game as a beginner if they really want to play again. Other players are unaffected.

Accomplishments to unlock ghost pirate battles will be retroactive. I plan to make the first one simple, something like "play one battle against a human opponent." Since almost all of us have done that by now, we'll all be qualified when the technique debuts on the site, so it will just be a matter of waiting for the random generator to spawn a battle for each of us. If you lose to a ghost pirate, it will sooner or later challenge you again; you don't need to pull off the same feat twice.

Once you learn a technique, it's yours forever, unlike in Rock Block where you could lose a few rules like Invincible or Rickroll if you ceased to have the right combination of bands in your label.

I might possibly introduce special limited-time-only techniques for a summer event or for GooCon or something, but I have no plans for that right now. My intention is that once a technique is introduced to the game, it will stay that way for good. You don't have to unlock it in the first month that it becomes available. Those of us who got in on the ground floor will have an easier (albeit less exciting) time unlocking achievements, because we can focus on them one at a time. Players who join the game a few years from now will have many achievements to pursue all at once if they wish.

Steve Dunn | January 3, 2012
OK, so, it turns out that reading the instructions is immensely helpful in understanding game mechanics.

In other news, I no longer see Scott's face in all my battles on the dashboard, but I do see the SAME face each time. Sometimes it's all Ryans. Sometimes all Justins, etc.

Finally, "fist" should be "hook." Or, the icon should be a fist.

Ryan Dunn | January 3, 2012
...also, clicking on a game leads you away from Funeratic...IMO it should open a new window.

Aaron Shurtleff | January 3, 2012
Hmmm...

I am low in rankings, which is by gold, which for me is low because I have already chosen to add a pirate to my crew, and I have paid for a promotion. Unless there is something else going on that I am missing (very possible), that 30000 gold that I have spent for hiring and promoting has placed me near the bottom of the rankings, because the game says I only have 8000 gold. Is there an internal counter which takes into account the gold already spent? Otherwise, the amount of gold you spend totally lowers your gold total, which lowers your ranking versus other players, which should lead to more merchant encounters. Maybe you mean that the difference between my 8000 and someone else's 38000 is negligible, but if I constantly keep my gold total low, wouldn't I eventually get to a point where I have a lot more merchants than someone who hoards their gold? Maybe we are saying the same thing, and I am dense...

I am on board (pun intended) about the advantages of promoting and hiring new crew. I am working up some good balanced pirates, because a lot of mine are as weak in one area, just like you said. Defense is totally something I look forward to having, but right now, it's hard.

Aaron Shurtleff | January 3, 2012
I look forward to someday being introduced to Massive Cock.
–Steve Dunn, January 3 2012, 9:28am est

In case you missed it in my recent match vs. Mr. Dunn. :)

Steve Dunn | January 3, 2012
Yeah, yeah, one of my most ill-considered remarks ever. At least I didn't say "playing with."

Aaron Shurtleff | January 3, 2012
I also hope that it is clear that I am loving this game, and I am just trying to figure stuff out. I'm not trying to bust Scott's balls by any means.

Another question: Recently, I had challenges out that were for more than my current gold total. Fortunately, I sidled up to a merchant ship and took care of that issue. Hypothetically, what would happen if you go into a negative gold situation?

Scott Hardie | January 4, 2012
The Dashboard icons issue is fixed. I had written some special code to show an icon for merchants, royal navy, and ghost pirates, since they're not players and the usual player-icon method won't work for them. But that code caused whoever was the first icon in line to re-occur for all of the other battles. It's all better now. Thanks again, and please send me any other issues that you notice.

Personally, I kind of like that the icon for Fist is a hook. It's piratey. :-) I will consider swapping it out.

Links that go between sections of this site have been an unsettled issue for a while. Some users like links to other sections to pop open in new tabs so that navigation isn't lost. Other users prefer them to open in the same tab by default, since they can hold Ctrl to open the links in a new tab if that's what they want. I used to be the former, but the new del.icio.us and its annoying insistence on opening everything in a new tab is turning me into the latter. I'm working on a global solution that will work across the site and hopefully satisfy both kinds of users; please stand by for a bit on that.

About promotions and hiring increasing your chances of encountering merchants: The chances are based on your current sum of gold, as an indicator of the total progress in your career. It costs 10k gold to hire a pirate, which is 0.1% of the ten million gold needed to win. That makes you 0.1% likelier to encounter a merchant after hiring, a difference that I consider negligible. (That's not exactly the formula used, but close enough for sake of argument.)

Fyi for the record: Unlike Rock Block, each player gets a randomized chance of encountering a merchant daily independent of all other players. Merchant distribution is not zero-sum.

Gold management so that you always stay broke and likely to attract merchants is possible, but difficult. Firstly, every merchant brings with it more gold, unless you're losing on purpose, in which case what's the point? Secondly, you have a finite number of hires available (I'll let you figure out how many that is). Thirdly, you earn promotions by defeating other players in battle, and it will be tough to play many opponents without making some big wagers, especially after we get more confidence in the new rules and bid higher.

No ballbusting was presumed, Aaron. You wouldn't be talking about this game so much if you didn't enjoy it. I hope that's true of everybody else. :-)

I mentioned above that I have gained access to more pirate images. It's been a long day and I don't have time tonight, but I'll expand the set of images asap. When I do so, I'll make a one-time offer to all players to swap some of the pirate images you already have in your crew for new images. You guys shouldn't be penalized just because those companies had technical problems over a holiday weekend. More details will follow on that.

EDIT: I originally wrote here what happens when you reach a negative sum of gold, and some users may even have seen it. But I think maybe it's better left discovered. I'll say that your game will not end, and you'll have ways to get back in the black, but your options will be necessarily limited in the meantime.

Aaron Shurtleff | January 4, 2012
Argh! I missed it! lol Hopefully, I'll never find out what happens...or at least not personally.

Ah! I did not know it was independent of the other players. That makes the difference, and I thank you for the information. Please, like for the negative sum, don't answer a question if you want the answer to be something we find out in the course of the game. A little mystery is good too. :)

Aaron Shurtleff | January 5, 2012
BUG (I think): I don't think that the link for more pirates to hire works. I try to click on it to see more choices, and nothing happens. :(

Not that I need another pirate...just lookin'.

Scott Hardie | January 5, 2012
Someone else reported the same issue. What happens if you refresh the page completely -- do you get three new choices? I thought it was maybe because you and he both have six pirates, but I just bought a sixth and I'm not seeing it yet. Hmm...

Aaron Shurtleff | January 5, 2012
Nope. I see the same three if I refresh. They were a different three from when I logged in last, so maybe you have to log out and back in to get them to change...

Steve West | January 5, 2012
That's exactly what I'm experiencing. Can you see the parenthetic number of icons open on your homepage? I used to but it stopped a few months (maybe weeks?) ago.

Aaron Shurtleff | January 6, 2012
Ugh! No merchant again today. :P But Justin seems to get one every day. So now I believe the low gold plan would utterly fail. :)

Waiting for the royal navy to step in and take care of business. ;)

Samir Mehta | January 6, 2012
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Scott Hardie | January 6, 2012
I'm looking forward to seeing the royal navy step in, too, but that's because I like watching the game mechanics kick in after working on them for so long. :-)

The merchant algorithm is randomized with regard to success in the game: the more gold you have, the less chance you have of seeing a merchant on a daily basis. We're all still early in our pirating careers, all less than 1% of the ultimate goal, so our chances are virtually equal. There's one rare condition under which a merchant will definitely or definitely not appear, forsaking random chance.

We're only five days into merchant activity. At five days into the card exchange in Rock Block, there were vocal concerns about it not being fair in giving chances to everybody. Those quieted down after more days passed and the wealth spread around a bit. I think we'll see the same thing happen in Pirate Paradise too.

For what it's worth, not everybody is claiming their merchant opportunities. Check the lower-right corner of Pirate Paradise each day, or choose the "merchant available" subscription in Dashboard and watch that page instead. Each day's opportunities are generated at midnight est. It's a shame that some opportunities have passed by unclaimed.

Aaron Shurtleff | January 6, 2012
I am by no means complaining about the merchant frequency. It is more that I am trying to see if the system can be "gamed". I should know better than to think you haven't already thought it through. ;)

If you can answer, does the royal navy show up immediately after a merchant, like in defense of the merchant, or instead of a merchant, like the algorithm says you have an encounter today, then it checks to see if it is a merchant or a royal navy, or are the two separate?

I like how Scott mentions a rare condition that guarantees a merchant (and the opposite). Now I'll be racking my brains trying to think of what it is...

Samir Mehta | January 6, 2012
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Scott Hardie | January 7, 2012
The processes that generate merchant activity and royal navy activity run independently of each other, at different times of day. The only connection between them is that the more success you have in raiding merchants, the greater chance that the navy will come after you (and the more money they'll seek when they do).

I'm glad you're both enjoying it!

Aaron Shurtleff | January 8, 2012
Stupid merchants!! lol They need to be stupider. :P I must be doing whatever it is that guarantees not seeing a merchant. It's probably complaining about not getting merchants...

So, is getting the luck of the merchant draw the only way to get out of negative gold, or was that just a happy coincidence for Samir? If you are willing to answer that, of course. ;)

Scott Hardie | January 8, 2012
Defeating merchants is indeed the only way to recover from having 0 gold or less. I might be in that boat myself shortly if I lose to Russ.

Just to be extra careful, I tested the merchant script yesterday to make sure that it was randomizing properly, and it was. Your name came up many times in the test, as did mine and all other players' names. Now if only our names would come up when the script runs for real...

Aaron Shurtleff | January 20, 2012
Has anyone fought the Royal Navy yet???

Steve West | January 20, 2012
Nope. Anticipating that with dread and fascination.

Scott Hardie | January 21, 2012
I've added the first technique to the game. Since we're still getting used to the new rules, I'm intentionally keeping this first technique simple; it's something you're already familiar with from Rock Block. It's also something that most of us have already become eligible for, based on battles prior to today. I look forward to making these techniques more complicated in the months to come and shaking up the game more.

Aaron Shurtleff | January 27, 2012
...That pirate battle was not trivial...at all. Wow. Maybe next time.

Steve West | January 27, 2012
I'm 0 for 2 myself.

Aaron Shurtleff | January 27, 2012
...whatever! Everyone knows Steve West cannot be defeated!

Steve West | January 27, 2012
I think that's a scheduled technique for later - Automatically Beat Steve West.

Chris Lemler | January 28, 2012
Steve West is like the Ghostly Pirate...haha

Steve West | January 28, 2012
Sadly, those guys are much better looking.

Scott Hardie | January 28, 2012
I look forward to the ghost pirate actually employing its technique, and seeing how that affects difficulty. It probably goes without saying that the AI opponents don't undo their moves. :-)

Steve West | January 28, 2012
These guys are going to be as hard to beat as the Devil eventually, grrrr.... Not that I can beat them now. They're no Angels.

Aaron Shurtleff | January 28, 2012
If you get into the situation where you have multiple techniques that you can learn from ghost pirates (for having achieved multiple goals, but not being able to defeat ghost pirate), will you be facing ghost pirate with multiple techniques? Or is it one at a time? Same question with victories in that case...could you win multiple or just one at a time?

Scott Hardie | January 29, 2012
Ghost pirates use one technique per battle. If you're eligible for multiple techniques, the ghost pirate will pick one at random when attacking you.

Aaron Shurtleff | January 30, 2012
Ahem... It would seem that someone has fought the law, and the law appears to have won...

Scott Hardie | February 1, 2012
It was painful. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Samir Mehta | February 5, 2012
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Scott Hardie | February 6, 2012
I haven't made the precise math public before. I'll say this: It takes both a certain amount of gold and a certain number of victories against human opponents to promote a pirate. The amount of gold needed varies per rank of the pirate being promoted, so going from R5 to R6 costs more than going from R1 to R2. But the number of wins needed is the same per rank; you simply unlock another opportunity to promote after so many victories. The longer you play, the more and more wins it takes to unlock another promotion, so that veteran players have a harder time than beginners. Keep playing often with the crew that you have now and you'll gain more opportunities to promote before you know it.

Samir Mehta | February 6, 2012
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Scott Hardie | February 8, 2012
Yes, correct. Gold is a prerequisite only in the sense that the lowest promotion still costs 20k, a high sum this early in the game.

Samir Mehta | February 8, 2012
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Scott Hardie | February 9, 2012
I'm not sure I understand, sorry.

Samir Mehta | February 9, 2012
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Scott Hardie | February 9, 2012
Correct, those are the two components to a promotion.

Just more gold will allow for a promotion of higher rank.

Erik Bates | February 13, 2012
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Aaron Shurtleff | February 13, 2012
Yeah, I also was surprised that the victory with Withstand (which I thought was going to be a hell of a thing to overcome) seemed to come easier than Undo did. Can't explain it, other than good fortune for me. Which is good, because I am hemorraging gold to everyone else.

...speaking of which, I see I have another Steve West battle waiting for me... *sigh*

Steve Dunn | February 13, 2012
Do I have to do or accomplish something special in order to get ghost pirates to attack me?

Aaron Shurtleff | February 13, 2012
As far as I am aware, it just happens randomly. I mean, you have to meet the requirements (which I think you do in battles against me alone!), but otherwise, I doubt it.

Now Scott can give the official answer. lol

Scott Hardie | February 14, 2012
Aaron's right. Once you accomplish the feat, the ghost pirate will attack you sooner or later, according to a randomized schedule. It only attacks one player at a time.

Easier wins against the ghost pirate might be happening now due to promotions. Who knows? More likely, luck is the difference so far.

Erik Bates | February 14, 2012
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Scott Hardie | February 16, 2012
Well, increased skill in the second month of the game is a likely factor too, but I hope nobody says "definitely luck, because I have no skill." :-)

Aaron Shurtleff | February 16, 2012
Can we say that we are very happy that the Ghost Pirates seem to have little to no skill then? :)

Scott Hardie | February 17, 2012
Some people have heard me mention this in private, but I'll say it for the public record: Programming my AI opponents to play more intelligently is one of the few technical challenges that I've been unable to overcome with this site. What makes this one extra baffling/frustrating to me is that it should be fairly simple: Regardless of where you put it on the grid, just play the weakest unit remaining. The ranks are just numbers, right? Comparing them should be simple. I spent hours trying to get Devil to play whichever of his remaining bands was ranked lowest when it was his turn, so that he would finish with his strongest cards. But no matter how many different ways I coded it, this failed to work. I finally gave up and just let him be powerful but stupid. The pirate AI is based on Angel and Devil, so the problem persists today, although I'd like to take another crack at it sometime.

Aaron Shurtleff | March 2, 2012
OMG! It's March 2nd already!! Where's my new technique?????

Scott, kidding as always! :)

Today I learned that skills don't go above 9. Good to know! Also, the Royal Navy is very very lazy!!!

...Having said that, they will be attcking me any second now...

Steve West | March 2, 2012
Be aware of your win total. I hit 50 and haven't seen a merchant in over a week.

Aaron Shurtleff | March 3, 2012
I won't have to worry about that any time soon. :)

Aaron Shurtleff | March 9, 2012
...so. Did I miss the announcement, or is the mysterious appearance of a Pirate Paradise event starting on Sunday according to the calendar all we know? :)

Scott Hardie | March 9, 2012
There has been no announcement yet. I wondered if anybody was going to say something about that. :-)

Steve West | March 9, 2012
I took your word for it. Can't wait to bloodlet! No quarter - none requested, none given!

Aaron Shurtleff | March 10, 2012
I would like to request quarter!

Scott Hardie | March 10, 2012
Yeah, I could go for some quarter too.

Steve West | March 10, 2012
Jolly Roger eight-ball says, "Odds not in your favor".

Samir Mehta | March 10, 2012
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Aaron Shurtleff | March 10, 2012
I think some given is only fair, since some was requested...

Scott Hardie | March 11, 2012
Before we got into talking about the tournament, Aaron pointed out that the Royal Navy has apparently been lax on the job, as they're attacked only one captain in over two months now. The problem is structural in the game: Most players spend cash as soon as they get it, so they don't have enough for the Royal Navy to come after them. That wouldn't be a problem, as I'd be happy to let them face the music later instead of now, but the "owed" fines keep growing bigger and bigger. Somebody is going to win an event and then have all of their prize money suddenly seized by the Royal Navy, and that won't be fun at all. So, I'm working on some adjustments that will let the Navy come after players for smaller fines more often, though still not too often.

Aaron Shurtleff | March 11, 2012
Don't you make this my fault! I just stated a fact.. :P

I am pretty sure that Russ Wilhelm amassed over 200000 gold, and he was never picked on by the Royal Navy. I smell bias! (Kidding. He's just a lucky lucky man, I know.)

Speaking of tournaments...*looks around hopefully*

Aaron Shurtleff | March 28, 2012
...Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand the Royal Navy has finally struck again. Boo! But it wasn't me, so yay!

Also, I was thinking about this earlier today, and I think I have an additional solution (which is so crazy, I put it here rather than speak to Scott about it directly, so everyone knows who to hate if it goes through!) What if you had some amazing technique that everyone would want (who wouldn't want a technique??), and the method of unlocking it was to save up some large amount of gold? That would encourage huge wagers as people tried to accumulate such money, and it would give the Royal Navy some good reason to go after us wacky pirate hoarders! Yeah? Yeah??

Scott Hardie | March 29, 2012
The Royal Navy is supposed to be attacking a lot more often, even with players re-investing their winnings quickly. I'll leave it alone for a while to see how it plays out with the current formulas.

I love the feat idea! I have lots of good ideas for techniques, but few for feats, and that's such a good idea that I wish I had thought of it. :-) I'll use it sometime soon, I think.

Aaron Shurtleff | March 30, 2012
Meh. My first try at Outgunned has failed. I still haven't quite figured out what it might do (and no one tell me), even though I have seen where it got used in a couple battles... We shall see.

Aaron Shurtleff | May 19, 2012
WOO! Draw vs. Royal Navy = I KEEP MAH GOLDZ!!!!!!! Ya-HOO!!!

It's not a win, but I will take the non-loss! ;)

Matthew Preston | May 19, 2012
Nice Aaron! Win one for the bad guys! Er... good guys... er... you know what I mean.

Scott Hardie | May 24, 2012
Nice! There have been three draws so far, but nobody has beaten the Navy yet. I think someone will before the summer is out.

Steve West | May 30, 2012
I fought the Law and the Law lost. That's right, I kicked the Royal Navy's scurvy backside. No gold exchanged hands as Scott explained earlier but I won't be attacked for the next six months (so I got that going for me). I shoulda taken hostages.

Scott Hardie | May 30, 2012
Nice!

Aaron Shurtleff | June 28, 2012
Now that I get a pirate up to essentially-invincible, NOW you change the rule. :P lol