Battle Pirates Faithful, 

First, I want to make it clear that our users are the lifeblood of this game. Your happiness is our primary objective and everything that we do to improve the game is aimed at increasing it. We have heard the feedback on the latest release from our respectful and dedicated users and I promise you that it will inform how we shape the game going forward. 

Second, let me give some rationale as to why we changed the graphics and look of the game. We have a major problem with the first time user experience of Battle Pirates, it's not entirely limited to the graphics, but it turns off a large percentage of new users and they never return. This is a big problem for a free-to-play game and we needed to address it. The early new user data shows that we were right in that assumption, and that first time users are responding better to Battle Pirates. We need new users to grow the game and incent us to devote more and more resources to improve the game. That said, we would NEVER want to alienate our existing, loyal users while fixing a problem for new ones. 

We knew that some people wouldn't like the changes just for the sake of change, however, I will admit that we fucked some stuff up and we are going to fix it ASAP (I agree that the Seawolf looks like shit, and we shouldn't have let that one launch the way it did). 

Good news is, that we have heard you and we have a plan of action to fix some things immediately. This is a partial list of what's happening in the next 24 hours:

1) SHIPS We are changing ALL ships back to the way they were. This isn't an easy change, so please be patient. After that, we will make some minor improvements over time, but any major changes we make in the future, we will let the community vote on it. 

2) TURRETS We are changing the turrets so they are much more easily identifiable and have more contrast

3) LOADING We are fixing the loading issues that some of you are having where buildings are taking too long to load in your base or during base battling.

4) CHAT We are increasing the size of the font in chat and making it white so you can read it better.

5) WORLD MAP We are removing the large sun spot on the world map. (I really liked this detail…sniff sniff)

6) BATTLE UI At smaller resolutions, the top health bar gets pushed down. We're fixing this

7) BASE HEALTH BARS Wall health bars will be removed entirely. All other health bars will be moved so that you can see them better (like with the turrets)

8) REFIT & REPAIR TIMES There is an intermittent bug that shows the incorrect repair and refit times. This will be fixed shortly.

We're dedicated to continually growing and improving Battle Pirates with your input. As always, thank you for playing. 

Thanks,
Will (DESTRO, sector 175...at the moment) 
 

ByKIXEYE CM Swag 

Alliance DefendingAlliances will enable players to support their battle brothers in some new and exciting ways. One feature currently under consideration is to enable player fleets to automatically defend the fleets and bases of players who are in the same alliance. So for example, a high level player could park one of their high level fleets next to fellow alliance member's base thereby giving it additional protection. Any attack on the protected player's base would be intercepted by the friendly high level fleet. By doing this, however, the high level player would be risking their fleet by leaving it visible on the world map. On the whole, we feel this feature will lead to more fleets on the world map which will lead to more combat and more interesting strategic choices for players in alliances. 
 
April 19th

The Forsaken Council has learned that Draconian Commander Maximilian Vassago is out to assert his power in the world. Our intel is sketchy, but it seems he plans on building numerous Outposts on April 19th. We must strike these sites before they're fully operational. Your daily participation in this attack will be rewarded with a Damage Quota Bonus. Will you join us?

Base Invaders III Start Times:**

Sectors 1-100: 9am PST
Sectors 101-200: 10am PST
Sectors 201-300: 11am PST
Sectors 301-400: 12pm PST
Sectors 400+: 1pm PST

**All players will have 96 hours to execute this coordinated attack.
 
New Features
• Base Defending Fleet - Now, in addition to ability to set your fleets to defend your base from the outside, you can now set one of your fleets to defend and patrol inside of your base.
• Spectator Mode - Any player of any level can now view a battle that is taking place on the world map. Up to 10 players can view a battle in Spectator Mode.
• Submarine Special Equipment – There are three new equipment specials for submarines. You can research this equipment in the Advanced Lab.
  • Concussion Warhead - increased torpedo damage.
  • Nautilus Battery - stay submerged for longer sprints in between surfacing.
  • Caterpillar Drive – enemy ships, even with sonar, will have to get closer to detect the sub while it is submerged.

• Cerberus Rockets – You can now research (weapons lab) and place rocket turrets on your defense platforms. They have limited range but do high amounts of area-of-effect damage.
• Double-clicking Fleet Icons – clicking on a fleet icon (bottom-right of screen) once will select a fleet. Clicking on it a second time will move the camera to the fleet’s location.

Game Balancing
• Stalker Submarine
  • Can now equip Havoc Torpedoes in all 4 of its weapon slots
  • Turning speed increased
  • Increased built-in sonar range
  • Reduced repair time

• Predator Submarine
  • Armor value has been increased
  • Maximum ship weight has been increased

• Damage Protection – A base will now have to be attacked 5 times in one hour to receive a bubble instead of 4.

Bug Fixes
• Players will no longer be able to launch fleets while their base is under attack.
• Screamjet Engines and Slideloader special equipment now work as intended.

Other
• Social Media Bar – below the game window, there is a bar with links to easily get to the Battle Pirates Facebook Timeline, Twitter page, and KIXEYE YouTube channel. 
 
Spectator Mode

There is currently no way for a 3rd party to view a battle in progress. 

We will be implementing a feature that allows any player to view a “Fleet VS Fleet” or “Fleet VS Base” battle. Any player can use the mouse to click on a battle and view the battle as a spectator only (cannot participate in battle). Spectators will not be able to view submerged submarines.

There will also a feature that announces when battles are taking place near your base in the Comm (chat window). This feature can be easily disabled if you do not want to receive battle notifications.

As Battle Pirates is a Massively Multiplayer Online game, we feel this will greatly enhance the effect of being an open-world game. The game has a strong emphasis on competition, so it only makes sense to grant anyone the ability to view players competing with each other.
Predator Submarine Armor AdjustmentThe Predator Submarines currently have a base armor value of 80. This means that if Predators are not equipped with any additional armor and have small flagship, they can instant repair. After several months of seeing how the Predator is being used in combat, we feel that they should not be able to instant repair.
We will be buffing the base armor value of Predator Submarines to ensure that no fleet combination of “4 Predators + a small flagship” will allow for an instant repair time.Base Patrol Fleet 
You can currently deploy a fleet outside of your base to defend it. While this can be helpful in defending your base, we feel that players should also have the ability to have a fleet to defend inside of the base as well.

We will be implementing a feature that allows players to deploy a single fleet within their base that will attack invading fleets. Players will be able to set an attack radius of the fleet to customize how far away a fleet will travel to engage enemy ships. This gives players the ability to prevent the patrolling fleet from being “kited” (lured) away from the base.

If a player is present when their base is being attacked by an enemy fleet, the player will be free to control the patrolling ships how they see fit. 
Alliance WarAn enhanced Alliance system is being developed to provide greater incentives for teamwork and organized combat. Alliances will have the ability to set "postures" between one another ranging from Allied to War. Here we will describe the current plan for "War":

An Alliance can choose to instigate a war with one other Alliance once per week. War is a mutual posture meaning that both Alliances are set at "War" with each other when war is declared. The target Alliance has no chance to avoid War although they can sue for peace after it has started. Only the Alliance Leader has control over setting Alliance postures and starting a War.

While an Alliance can start only one War per week they can be the target of other Alliance Wars and so could be participating in multiple Wars. 

  • Now is the time to suggest ideas to extend the Alliance War feature! We are particularly interested in feedback around the following:
  • War bonuses: special bonuses that are generated from combat between warring Alliances.
  • Victory Conditions: what factors are used to declare a winner.
  • Fair Fights: how to stop large powerful Alliances picking on much lower Alliances.

Damage Protection Rules ChangeThere are currently several ways that a player’s base can get temporary Damage Protection (a bubble over the base). Two of the ways that you can get Damage Protection is if your base is attacked 4 times in one hour, or 10 times within 24 hours. Unfortunately, players repeatedly “bubbling” each other are abusing this system.

We will be removing the rules of Damage Protection for when a base is attacked 4 times in one hour, or 10 times within 24 hours. Bases will only receive Damage Protection if it has received a certain percentage of damage to the buildings within a certain period of time.

This change will take effect in conjunction with the new Base Patrol Fleet Feature, which should help to prevent any of the possible negative effects of removing these damage protection rules.
 
Greetings Captains,

We’re getting ahead of the curve this week and posting this week’s update in advance so you can get properly prepared. This update is expected to go live on Thursday, but keep in mind that this is subject to change should a technical issue force a delay. Enjoy!

New Features

This week marks the introduction of another set of Defense Platform Special Equipment that you can research in the Advanced Lab. If you thought the ones you already have are cool, then feast your eyes on these bad boys…

• Screamjet Engine – Increases missile range
• Slide Loader – Increase mortar fire rate (but lowers damage)

This post will be updated with the specific numbers for these closer to release.

Mini-Event

Previously, there was an issue where certain Draconian Weapon Blueprints did not properly display the amount of damage the weapon would do to a building. That issue was corrected nearly a month ago, and now the blueprints do display the damage value.

We understand that some players spent to speed up the process of finding blueprint pieces and resources to refit ships during the time building damage value was not displayed on the blueprint.

To offer you a chance to earn some of that time and resources back, we will be having a bonus weekend where all ship repair times will be cut in half. With the blueprint streak-breaker in place, you should be able to attack more salvages to earn blueprint pieces and gain more resources. Salvage ships will also respawn faster. Of course, you may also choose to attack bases or mine to earn resources as well.

Bug Fixes

• Ships will no longer “disappear” upon completing a refit.
• A 6th ship will no longer appear in the middle of a battle screen.

All this should make for a great weekend of play. Happy hunting! 
 
  • About Password Changes 
  •  Early this morning (March 1) there was a minor defacement of the forum, and for several minutes the forum index page was being routed to a CGI error page. Many different forums across the web were attacked all at the same time, and in the same way. This was not a “hack” of our forum software in any way.

    However, as a precautionary measure, because we take security seriously, we are asking all forum members to please change your passwords. Your forum passwords are encrypted, and we have no reason to believe that anyone has broken that encryption or accessed this data, but it’s a good practice to change your password every so often anyway. Some of you haven’t changed your password in almost two years!

    If you registered on the forum using Facebook Connect, note that you might still be asked to change your forum password. If this happens, you can simply enter a new password when asked. This will not affect your ability to use Facebook Connect in the future and you do not need to change your Facebook password.

    However, if you registered on the forum separately and your password happens to be the same as your Facebook profile, we suggest you change it to something else in Facebook as well. Again, this is just precautionary and good security.

    On a final related note, if by any chance you ever receive an email from someone claiming to be from KIXEYE, but the address is not from someone, “@kixeye.com”, it is a fraud so do NOT open it, or (if you do open it accidentally), do not click on any links within it. And if you’re not sure, ask us!

    If you have any questions, please post them in this thread. Thanks!

    P.S. If you haven't been asked by the forum to change your password, you can always change it yourself by going to http://forums.kixeye.com/profile.php?do=editpassword.    

  •  
    Welcome and here is out first post. Mostly for testing purposes.