The Ad-Hoc (open sea battle) spawning system is something that’s bothered me for quite some time. We knew it was a problem, as players reported sometimes spawning far, far away from their groupmates even at the start of a battle, but it was set up in a way that meant we couldn’t easily adjust it to make ships spawn where they should. We made a series of changes to reduce the problem but they persisted to a lesser degree. That meant we needed to overhaul the entire Ad-Hoc spawning system to get it functioning the way we want. We started planning for a new system during open beta, and began the work to replace the system just before launch. You’ll see the results of that work in 1.2

The upcoming build represents the first significant batch of changes from late beta (and into pre-boarding). This includes a couple global changes and a bunch of changes to individual ships.

[...]you might have noticed that, at the moment, Pointe—Pitre could be Charlesfort’s long-lost twin city. But in ConCo we believe every nation deserves, nay, has the inalienable right, to walk into a unique capital city that is the envy of every other. A city that is, in a word, rocambolesque. A word I never would have learned if we hadn’t revamped Pointe—Pitre.

Although I’ve been on Pirates of the Burning Sea since before it had a name, and have posted lots of dev logs and many replies in the forums, I don’t think most of you have heard of me. John Scott Tynes (aka “Rev”) is going to work on other things, and I’m stepping into the role of Producer on Pirates, so I wanted to re-introduce myself and talk a little about what’s coming up in the next few weeks.[...]

The big issue in the current system is that the requirements for the mission are only checked when you take the mission, not when you turn it in. Weve changed that so that we test for mission validity both when you take the mission and when youre completing the mission. This means that while the unrest missions can take a port into Open PvP, you cannot reach the point at which we schedule a port battle solely via the unrest missions.

It is a difficult job to make sound amazing, but I love it and the creative freedoms that is gives me. Now that I have totally awed and inspired you all to be technical artists, I hope you enjoy the “life” in POTBS!

The Basics

There are loads of factions in Pirates of the Burning Sea and most NPCs are in one. You can tell which by the title underneath the character or ship name when it’s selected, in the same place where a player’s society would appear.

Your character has a reputation with all of these factions, which you can find in the character section of the user interface under the reputations tab.

Silence. The seas are calm. Suddenly, on the horizon, a ship appears. Followed by a hundred others. The French are coming, and I'm all that stands in their way. I will NOT allow them to take this port. I will die a thousand deaths before they take control of Bartica away from me. I am an Englishman, and this is my story.

My name is Clackling, and I am one of the many Boarding Party members of PotBS. Boarding Party representatives are people who participate in many aspects of the game and its community, from helping new sailors get on their feet, to organizing live meets around the globe, to creating fun contests like this one. We've decided to put together this contest to introduce ourselves officially to you, as well as give you a chance to win some awesome prizes.

I really enjoyed showing the game and talking to gamers – especially our awesome Pirates fans – and I guess the team here liked the way I handled things during the show because they invited me along to be on the demo team at GenCon Indy the following summer. By the time of the show I had another year of animation under my belt and I was excited to show off all the ways the game had improved (including avatar combat! Woo).