MH6~SPARTA~

Cordage and Oakum order completed. I can't make Mid Grade Notes so a higher level crafter will have to do those. I haven't decided which ship I want to get yet, but I'll let you know if I decide to go with a Frigate

So I've been working on a website to complement Naval Action because sailing for hours can be tedious without something to do. Massive overkill? Probably. http://navarch.us Navarch is the main commander of a Spartan fleet. Thought that was fitting. The fleet was commanded by navarchs, who were appointed for a strictly one-year term, and apparently could not be reappointed. The admirals were subordinated to the vice-admiral, called epistoleus. This position is seemingly independent of the one-year term clause, because it was used, in 405 B.C. to give Lysander command of the fleet after he was already an admiral for a year. I've only leased the domain for a year since we probably will have moved on to other games by then--which just so happens to coincide with the one-year term of a navarch. I've also written a listener program that will automatically track warehouse inventory, production buildings, port inventories, etc., to help discover market trends and keep track of items. If anyone is interested in running this program on their machine as well to ensure the warehouse inventory is always up to date and to improve our market trend numbers, I'd appreciate it. All it does is listen for HTTP packets from the Naval Action server--it is completely passive and not a bannable offense (or even detectable). The more people willing to run it, the more accurate inventory, prices, trends, etc. will be. Crafting Orders The biggest feature of this new website is the ability to create, assign, and manage crafting orders. So for instance: Samurai places a new order for 75 Large Carriages I assign this order to myself and begin constructing the 75 carriages. The order screen will outline what resources and materials are needed to construct all 75 carriages, and can either check the clan warehouse inventory for the resources/materials or ignore the warehouse so I can make everything from scratch. Once I am done I click "Complete Order" and Samurai then picks them up from the warehouse to use in whatever he is building. This works on the honor system. I didn't want to make people sign up for an account, so please only mess with orders pertaining to yourself. Here is an example of what resources would be needed with "Check Warehouse Inventory" enabled. The blue items are what I would have to craft myself, and anything green could be withdrawn from the Warehouse. And here is the same order when ignoring the warehouse inventory and crafting everything from scratch: This should make crafting a little less painful (especially for me, I can't stand trying to figure out what I need and what is missing, etc.). And we can more easily manage who is crafting what without stepping on each other's toes. Production Shows what buildings everyone has, where they are and what level they are currently. This information is automatically updated via my listener program. Warehouse Lists the current warehouse inventory in a searchable and sortable format, as well as the current deposited gold. Updated automatically when the warehouse is viewed via my listener program. Market Trends Analytics of the trade market over time. Not finished. Will allow you to select a resource to see its high/low/average price over time for both buying and selling to maximize your profits. Ship Builder Future (possible) feature. Works similar to Crafting Orders but specifically designed for ships, so the main shipbuilder can easily delegate out individual crafting tasks to other people and track total ship completion progress. For now, Crafting Orders can be used to manage ship construction. Let me know what you guys think, and if you'd like any changes done.

So I broke down and bought one. A cool one million gold. Exceptional. Beauty of a ship. Waited till 1AM my time and started sailing to Port Morant. Quick, safe journey. Nothing could go wrong. Done it dozens of times. Then this happened 5 minutes after I left Kingston. I mean really? I don't see a single damn pirate ever except one time sailing to Antonio during prime hours, and as soon as I buy an Indiaman Mr. Blackjack "Suspected Hacker" Morgan teleports out of the blue and tags me. I tried to flee, but he managed to land his bow chasers from across the ocean with perfect accuracy, so the timer never ran out. Then his ship randomly turned sideways (without changing its direction of travel), sped toward me, and I got disconnected. This has never happened to me in the 150 hours I've played Naval Action. Never once have I randomly disconnected. I reconnect and he's perpendicular to my stern, camping it. He demasts me in no time flat--my masts are made of tissue paper apparently, not solid wood. I get boarded, I fend off his first attack but then he manages a second last second attack at 62 prep--I could have sworn you needed 65 for that. That one attack wins him the battle. Now my poor Indiaman has one less durability. The good news is, being the maiden voyage, I was not carrying any goods at the time. Just my luck though I get attacked in less than 5 minutes. I don't know if its because I'm undercrewed or what, but nimble it ain't when it comes to open world sailing. Never seen a ship turn so slow. Also never seen a ship (his ship) sail so fast. Must have had motor strapped to the back. Not sure what I'm going to do now. Maybe sail the Indiaman to my furthest outposts where I have yet to see another single living player. Maybe then it will be safe. Though I'm sure Mr. Blackjack Morgan will just pop into existence again. At least now I know how you win PVP engagements. Just shoot their masts, piece of cake. They're made of tissue paper after all. The worst part is, I only bought the ship because I had 8000 cargo at Antonio (cause I didn't play yesterday) and didn't feel like making two trips... Anyway, rant is done. P.S. - If you ever see Blackjack Morgan, kill the bastard.

It's a show about pirates. You know what you have to do. Arrrrr!

It only gets better after Season 1.

Jesus Samurai, how long did that battle take?

Beauty! That's the way to do it!

I have written software that automatically keeps track of shop inventories at each port, will tell you what current deals are available (i.e. what currently has the best profit margin based on quantity, distance, buy/sell prices, etc.), graph selling and buying trends over time (so you can see highs and lows etc). Red Wood is indeed fairly lucrative right now: The quantity bars fluctuate at 350g per, which means people are definitely willing to pay 350g for it right now. At 50g cost and 350g gross, a 300g net profit per log is pretty damn good. A fully laden Le Gros Ventre carrying 1920 Red Wood logs would make a net profit of about 576000g. I was thinking about writing a web interface for it as well. If you guys want, I can try including simple web management page so we can keep track of everyone's resources, the warehouse contents, etc., and make it so we can select a ship to build and it will tell us what were are missing based on the warehouse contents. But I'm also fine with sticking with the spreadsheet if someone wants to manage it manually. Oh and don't forget to use http://www.navalactioncraft.com/shop-price (only updates during maintenance, not 100% accurate) If only I could put this much effort into making real money.

I was actually looking into Red Wood as a feasible trade good already. Though I'm way too impatient to wait on production buildings. I've got about 3 ports picked out that should have decent quantities of Red Wood for 50g each at any given time, and they are close to one another. So we'll see how it goes. Pine and Fir have brought me respectable profits as well, though the profit margins aren't as large on them as other resources. The downside of trading those is their weight--though the Le Gros Ventre should help tremendously with that.

Low Grade Notes do not need a shipyard, I was making them without one. I have found trading to actually make some decent gold if you can play the system right. I went from around 75k gold to over 200k gold last night without leaving Port Royal, just buying and reselling goods. Though I have the added advantage of being awake at 3AM EST when most of the server is asleep, which incidentally is when the server goes down for maintenance every day. For instance I saw someone list coal at around 25g per, which I bought and relisted at 80g and sold. Made about 20k profit for a minute of work. Then I invested that 20k into making small profits on other items. I'm now spending a good chunk of my 200k to try and grow it even more. I'm also working on a system to automate some aspects of trading, i.e. when I enter a port it automatically records all quantities and prices of the port's inventory, so I don't have to keep a spreadsheet manually. I was even thinking about making it record to a database, so if any of you wanted to use it we could in theory have up to date trade prices for any port one of us visits. Similar to the navalcrafting map but more real-time (navalcraft only updates during maintenance). I will be using this system and sailing around a bit. The system will tell me what items would make me the most profit based on travel time and the buy/sell prices of various ports I've seen. I do this because I'm insane. If I can't make a decent profit with this then trading is definitely not worth it. Trading without leaving Port Royal is already lucrative though.

I want to start leveling up my crafting. I can't seem to find any decent tutorials for it though, i.e. what is the most economical item to make initially to quickly raise your level (though I'm sure this will vary depending on current market prices). Do I need to actually trade and visit other ports to craft effectively or can I just buy everything at Port Royal? Help me procrastinate while I'm at work please.

Mercury it is. I have carronades in my cutter currently, and they are awesome. Rush the enemy ship, pull in close, unleash broadsides until they sink. Way more effective than trying to deal with the AI at range, they are much more accurate than me. Should I just buy a Mercury in the Ships tab at Port Royal or can I pay a Sparta guy for one?

So I've just reached Second Lieutenant, and I think its time to retire the ol' Cutter and get something snazzy and new. I have about 82k gold saved. Which tier can I realistically purchase and operate? Can I get a Mercury or Snow or something?

I suppose I can sail in the name of ol' King George.

I've been keeping an eye on this game for a while, didn't realize they had released an alpha though. Will definitely check it out.

Lot of places have sold out of the 1080 already. So it may be a few weeks before supply catches up. EVGA and ZOTAC have also announced their custom superclocked cards for June. The EVGA GeForce GTX 1080 SC Gaming ACX 3.0 card will release in early June for $649.99.

Tell him to wait a few months days and get one of the new NVIDIA Pascal GTX 1080 cards. The Titan is not worth the price in my opinion. You are paying twice the cost for a card that is only slightly better than a 980 Ti. The only noticeable difference is the RAM (6GB vs 12GB) and that only matters if you are running some obscene resolution. Unless he just wants to burn money for the sake of burning money. Or if he wants to burn money and get something out of it, tell him to get a 980 Ti Hybrid, which is a self-contained water-cooled card (similar to the self-contained water-cooled CPUs like the Corsair H100 series). They also make a Titan X hybrid, though that will run you $1300 compared to the $680 of the 980 Ti. Then you can overclock it a bit and it will always run nice and cool (and quiet!) Seriously though. If he can wait, he should wait for Pascal and the 1080 series. Hell the 1070 (a $450 card) is already showing itself to be faster than the Titan X or 980 Ti, and that's the budget high-end card. The 1080 will be faster still, and the 1080 Ti faster even still. They are slated for release this summer, with the Ti versions out a few months after that I'd imagine. If I were in the market for a graphics card right now, I'd wait for the 1080. But that's just me. So the 1080 is actually coming out on the 27th (2 days). Go with the GTX 1080. Or he can wait and get the new Pascal Titan, or the 1080 Ti. But there is no word on when those are coming out, though its rumored to be sometime this year. Source: GTX 1080 is faster than the Titan X at half the cost

Neat. Might have to dust off R6 and try out the new update.

Putin has *always* been insane.

I sold my Oculus Rift on Ebay. I got a free consumer one for Kickstarting it a few years back. Going to either buy an HTC Vive in a few months time or just wait and buy Version 2 of whichever model wins this year's VR race. VR looks like fun, but as far as content, it's mostly just tech demos right now. There aren't a whole lot of fully fleshed out games that utilize VR well in my opinion. They're basically all just mini-games.

Sure just send me the blueprint for it

I think Space Engineers has finally reached a point where it can be really fun. This video has sold me on it. I used to build things like this back in the days of Garry's Mod + Space Build + Wiremod, and have been waiting for someone to make a full fledged game on that premise for a long long time. Do we still have a Space Engineers server running? Anyone want to start playing this again?

Hacks have been around since Beta, and will not be going anywhere. Ubisoft has never been one to crack down on hackers.

While I wasn't in that video, I do remember us beating DA_Metal at some point.

Bet you thought that was going in a different direction didn't ya?