Release 2023-05-06

Standings and Blockade Changes

From the Release Notes:

Blockade Changes: Last weekend blockades were closed because of two issues with mercenary pay in blockades. The first being that players were receiving higher pay. This was a bug related to the flat rate pay for mercenaries being too low in some configurations. The player pay was much higher than the average pay set in the jobbing offer, however it came at the expense of the mercenary pay -- so overall pay was unaffected. We have updated the mercenary pay to work better with every jobbing offer configuration. The second issue was that certain flags were surprised with the amount spent on mercenaries. The root cause appears to be related to the way mercenaries get payed and the fact that they get replaced in the event of a sink. The mercenaries do not have a minimum amount of time stationed before they get payed like players do. This means if someone sinks and takes a new ship in they will pay for two ships of mercenaries. This was intended to avoid pay evasion -- however it appears to be more harsh than expected. Mercenaries now have the same minimum as players but their pay is prorated before that. This means players will still have to pay for mercenaries even if they duty for only one turn of a blockade -- but the amount they get payed is related to how close they are to hitting that minimum. Standings Changes: In our April 5th release, we made some changes so that the criteria for puzzle scores on a duty report ("Fine", "Good", "Incredible", etc.) would be compared against some new thresholds, so that if you score sufficiently high, you will always be guaranteed to achieve at least a minimum corresponding Rating, regardless of how other players might be performing across the ocean. With this same goal in mind, this release includes a change so that if your puzzle scores have reached certain thresholds, you will be guaranteed to achieve at least a minimum corresponding Standing (grand-Master, legendary, ultimate, etc), regardless of how other players on the ocean may currently be performing. This should make Standings like "Legendary" and "Ultimate" so they're no longer out of reach for sufficiently skilled puzzlers. This should also make the oceans a bit more welcoming for Greenies and newer puzzlers, as they begin making their initial ascent through the Standing levels. These new thresholds will be the same for all oceans, so that a Renowned Standing on Cerulean meets the same criteria as a Renowned Standing on Emerald or Meridian, etc. (please note: This change will not go into place until it is enabled sometime after the actual release) Over the course of the next few weeks, pirates might see standings fluctuating as a result of these changes. In many cases this means standings will go up as pirates log in or become active in a puzzle again. We will be closely monitoring the results of these changes in the days and weeks ahead, and will make any necessary adjustments based on the data and feedback we receive. The overall goal for these changes is to bring the Standings to more reasonable levels, as they had become somewhat misaligned over the course of many years. We expect that this will help encourage the health of the oceans for years to come, for players old and new alike. Small updates: There are some other updates and bug fixes either in this release or recent releases: Added banana chroma to the trading post for all those banana trinkets. The mercenary minimum pay on the NB is updated more frequently and should be more accurate. Mercenaries no longer apply LE ship custom appearances due to compatibility issues. Mercenaries should now be able to find DNav stations on all ships. Fanchuan's booty chest should now be replaceable like any other booty chest (this may require an additional reboot).