Sandeep Crisis - A Possible Solution?

[Teti_AA]

If you haven't heard by now the DVS guild and Forestcrows have joined forces to patrol and control the Sandeep Trade run routes. They have spies that watch the coast lines carefully and report to them. We've been mulling over possibilities of how to work around this. I was looking through my photos of Archeage when I found this picture that I took long ago and it made me think. I know we discussed this possibility in chat but here's an image of what it would look like if we put the option into play.

Imagine everyone donkey subbing packs from Gabby's farm down south to a spot far enough away from the coast and summoning their clipper ship. Now imagine some people on clippers with NO packs; they are strictly dummy ships. Either everyone on their own clipper or two people to a clipper. I believe this will ONLY work if there are enough people in force. We all take off at the same time, we all stick together and we all go straight for Sandeep only while it's in peace. They will obviously have multiple ships with lots of people patrolling for us but even so, if they close in to make contact we scatter. I think they will successfully take two or three ships but they will not get all of us.

I realize that this seems like a lot of hassle for some trade packs but this is just a possible theory I've had to combat the problem. They cannot get everyone at the same time.

[Dusk Dusk]

Teti, Great concept! The only thing I disagree on is the scattering part.  Also there are a few things we can expand or improve.

So let’s start with what we know…

Turn in:
1. A fixed location for turning in our trade packs
2. Possible blockades of waters immediately outside the trade-in location during Peace
3. Possible patrols and boarding parties immediately outside the trade-in location during War
4. Enemy camping of trade-in location during War

Transit:
1. Red, green, and/or pirate maritime interdiction parties and fleets at sea
2. Unfriendly scout vessels at sea that helps vector and orient the interdiction vessels
3. 5 methods of transporting goods across the sea (Merchant, cutter/junk, clipper, donkey and submarine)

Staging:
1. Utilizing a single or group of farms to pre-stage large quantities of trade packs
2.  Friendly coastlines are patrolled by enemy scouts that alert interdiction or blockade forces

Key considerations…

The first thing to address is that we want to utilize merchant ships.  Here is why:
Merchant ships hold 22 packs when full and require 4 players to fully man the ship.  To reach this same capacity would require 18 players active on a Junk or Cutter and 22 players utilizing any other method.

If we have a large raid group (20 players as an example), we dedicate 2 players to man a merchant or 4 players to man two merchants; then we have 18 or 16 players to maintain security.  Security is the key word for success; please keep this in mind at all times.  The definition for what type of security will change, but we always want what ensure the highest level of security.

A second consideration is if it’s “quick, convenient and easy” for us; it’s also its “quick, convenient and easy” for our enemies.  If we want the best chance for success, we need to invest the time and effort to do it right.

What we can effect…

Staging:
We have been loading our merchant ships at the most convenient location to the housing area that the packs were stored on.  And we have been staging our trade pack on the map we wish to disembark from.  

This plays into the scouts favor by lessening the time spent and number of scouts needed to identify when we are about to embark on a trade run. We don’t stage our packs in Solis if we intend to disembark from Solis, we instead pre-stage in southern Mahadevi and courier our pack to a vessel already off shore.  This bypasses any scouts positioned in the Solis housing areas or between those housing areas and the most likely staging locations on the coast.  We also do not have our merchant ship beached on the shore while we load, instead it should be positioned out of sight from shore or at least out of easy view by other players passing by. (We will need to begin identifying such locations).  Likewise; if we are departing from Ynystere, we instead pre-stage in Silent Forest.

When moving our pack from staging to the vessel, we do so in small groups of 2-5, not as a large mass of 20 or a single file line stretching from the farm to the boat.  We can’t hide that we are moving packs, but we can make it look like we only have a handful of packs instead of 20+.  And thus we are less of a tempting target and can go largely unnoticed by scouts.


Transit:
We cut the manning of a merchant ship to 2 players, one on the helm and one on the radar.  We spread out our load between 2-4 merchant ships.  Everyone else is on a clipper.  The crew of each clipper is only 2, one on the helm and one on the harpoon.  Now imagine our 20 player force… we have 2 merchant ships each with 14 packs (for example).  Those two ships are surrounded by 8 clippers each with 8 harpoons.  Our enemies now need 9 vessels to catch one of our merchant ships if done successfully.

We maintain a tight formation at all times with the clippers surrounding the merchants ships.  Think bubble wrap, or as the military refers to it “defense in depth”.  The merchants have a primary and secondary radar user to call out threats to our clipper force.  If an enemy vessel moves to interdict us, a clipper vectors to intercept and harpoon the enemy vessel, once harpooned that clipper pulls it in the opposite direction, drastically slowing it.  In addition, our enemies’ radar will see a force of 10 ships on radar that should deter the majority of weaker pirate and privateer fleets. For this, having our members on voice comms should be mandatory, not optional.

We aggressively defend our cargo, not run or try and out run those who seek to take it.

Final point on transit is that we pre-scout the route we wish to take 20-30 minutes prior to us undertaking it.  One clipper sails out, reaches the end location and then sails back.  When they get back, we all go.  This should help mitigate the chance that we sail into a blockade.  If the scout identifies a blockade, the player leading the trade run needs to have a secondary trade-in point identified or we need to return our packs to the off map staging area.

Turn in:
This is the most difficult variable to effect. We choose where we start out and the route we take, but the enemy knows where we have to take our goods.  They also know what points are the easiest to access.  SO! Let’s not use them.  We want to identify routes that can get us to locations that the enemy will not be camping.  Yes, this may add extra time and effort.  But it should pay out if we can successfully trade in all of our packs that reached the shore.  

For example, if Sandeep is under blockade and its trade-in is camped by enemy factions.  Then we don’t use it.  Could we instead go just south to the edge of Hell Swamp and take a short, overland detour to another trade in.  Likewise, could we land to the north on Lilyut hills?  I am specifically choosing maps that are not normally associated with oversea trade in.  If we get to hell swap as it hits peace, our packs are far safer than if we landed in Sandeep and found a blockade that pushed us back to sea.

In short, our primary location should be a map that has a guilda and gold trader in a port city. Our secondary location should be a guilda and gold trader that is more inland but is still relatively accessible.

Anyway, that’s my 2 cents on the issue.  Feel free to use all of it, some of it, or none of it.  I’ve done my part if this spurs discussion topics that lead to successful merchant runs.