User:SciguyCO

(more goes here)

Pirates:
Bonnpete, Viridian Ocean. Crewing with Still of the Night

Work in progress
Note to self: stick into rumors list when done

The myths of "Port now plz" and booty division
You see it during almost any pillage that lasts more than two or three battles. "When do we divvy booty?". "Can we split now?". Or the succint "port plz". These requests can clog the chat channel, annoy the ship's officers, cause bad feelings among the crew / jobbers, and are completely unnecessary.

You can leave the ship at any time
You don't have to be docked at a port to leave the pillage. The "To home isle" button on your Ye panel, a whisking potion, or planking will all get you off the ship, even if you're in the middle of the ocean. Planking and "To home isle" will send you to your home island. A whisking potion will take you wherever you want (as long as it's an island on your Ye known world chart). Or you can just log out, and the next time you log in you'll be on your home island.

Of course, just because you can leave doesn't mean you should. Leaving during the sea battle or the swordfight / rumble portions of an engagement will put your shipmates at a disadvantage since the enemy's number and skill was set based on you being on the ship. So head home only when the ship is not in battle.

Officers cannot divvy booty unless the ship is ported
Asking for a booty division in the middle of the ocean is a futile request. Unless a ship is docked at a port, the officers cannot divide the booty. Asking to port in order to divvy the booty won't help (see below).

If you leave the ship before booty division, you still get paid
This is probably the most common reason pirates request porting or booty division. A pirate's booty cut is determined by the number of sea battles they participated in, along with the booty share set in the crew's articles. If you fight in the first two battles of a pillage and then have to leave, when booty is eventually split you will receive the same amount of PoE as a pirate who fought just in the last two battles prior to the split. This money is delivered even if you are logged out of Puzzle Pirates.

You might get more PoE if you just leave than if booty is divvied immediately
Even if the ship is near port, it might not be in your best interest for booty to be divided if the ship's officers are planning on continuing the pillage. In the simplest scenario, whatever you've earned at the point you leave will be what you get at the end. In most other cases, you'll actually get more PoE if the ship continues to pillage without dividing the booty. Only in the worst case scenarios will you get less.

The explanations gets a little involved here, so hold on. For these examples, we'll use a sloop that starts with a full seven person crew and a booty split of "Even". Other splits should still give roughly the same results, but the variables are harder to handle, mainly what rank the other pirates have.

"Your Shares" are the number of battles you worked in. The "total shares" is the sum of all the battle counts of all the pirates over the entire pillage. So with seven pirates, after the first battle this will be 7, after the second it will be 14, and so on. "Total Booty" is how much PoE the ship has in it's booty chest after each battle (this is cumulative). "Your Cut" is what you would earn if the booty split was done after that battle. Your cut is determined by the Total Booty * Your shares / Total shares. With other booty splits, the "Your shares" would be multiplied by the share size corresponding to your rank, and the "Total shares" would be the sum of all your shipmate's battles * their rank's share size.

Getting the same pay splitting at the end of the pillage vs the middle

Here, you leave after the second battle of the pillage. Your spot is filled by another jobber. To keep the math simple, assume each battle gives 2000 PoE, which would be 1400 PoE after a 30% ship's cut.

You get exactly the same amount of PoE regardless of how long the pillage lasts after you leave, so there is no benefit to splitting early. The total shares and total booty increase together equally, leaving the value of your two shares at a constant value.

Getting more splitting at the end vs. the middle

In another scenario, you leave after the second battle, and your spot is left empty. Maybe there weren't any more jobbers available, your spot was filled by a bot (which don't get a booty share), or maybe the officer in charge figured he could handle a ship without a full crew. So after the third battle, the "Total shares" only goes up by six, since there are only six pirates aboard after you leave.

What's happening is that you get the same number of slices of an ever-increasing pie (the total booty), and the number of slices aren't increasing as fast as with a full ship. Your cut flattens out at around 465, but that's at over 90 battles. Realistically you would probably expect around 450 with those parameters. Note: That's 50 more PoE than you would've gotten if the ship's officer fell for your "split booty" request. That's your reward for doing nothing more than letting the ship go about it's business independent of your actions.

Even more booty

Both of the above assume that every battle gives the same amount of PoE. However, the longer a pillage goes on without porting, the more PoE you get off of each defeated ship. This appears to be determined (based on some release notes) by the amount of booty the ship has in it's chest. The longer the pillage runs, the more booty in the chest, the higher the payouts. Porting also resets the ship's might rating, so you could go from spawning Imperials to Scurvy Dogs, reducing the ship's booty haul in the immediate future. It's difficult to determine hard numbers with the actual random rewards, so for an example, let's say that each battle gives 10 more PoE than the previous one (for this, we'll leave out the restock step, just pretend the column with 2000, 2013, etc are included). So the first battle gives 1400, the next 1410, the third 1420, etc.

If you're not replaced by another jobber, then your increasing cut reflects both the "same number of slices of a bigger pie divided less" as the example above plus the increased booty haul in the battles after you left.

So if you are replaced, instead of getting the same amount of PoE at the end, you end up getting slightly more. It's not much (roughly 1-2 PoE per battle after you leave), but it's something. You're not getting less than you earned, and you didn't do anything after you left. It's free money.

Getting less booty

Despite all that, there is a chance that when you get your share, you do end up with a smaller stack of PoE than you would've if the booty split been done when you left.

Ships won't win every battle. If the ship loses a lot after you leave and those losses aren't regained, your cut will likely be lower. But so will everyone else's. It may not be fair (after all, you contributed to the success, why should you be penalized when you weren't even there), but it's a risk of the pirate's life.

On larger ships, the number of pirates could grow after you leave. Especially if you were on from the beginning, when it can be tough to get a large enough crew to wait around before deporting. Splitting the booty among more bodies will leave your cut smaller, but it's still your fair share.

There's also a chance, slim though it may be, that you jobbed with an unscrupulous captain. A cruel trick would be to -1 every pirate who wasn't there for the booty split, and +1 everyone still around (to entice them to vote aye). Hopefully, the pirates at the end will vote against such an unfair practice. You are protected by the game mechanics from too large of a reduction (the most an officer can dock you is one battle), but the risk of some loss does exist. The possible reward from this scam is probably so low it's not worth the bad reputation, so it may not even be an issue.

Officers won't port just because you ask
All that being said, the ship's officers have the last say on where the ship goes and when they port. It may be ok to ask how much longer the pillage is going to last, to determine if you've got time to see it out to the end. Just be polite about it. It is not ok to insist on porting just because you have to go to bed. Annoying your commanding officers is an easy way to get /planked, maybe given a -1 on the booty split, and possibly blacklisted from jobbing with that crew.