REPRISE: Privateers

[canuck64]

Eric et al.,

Sorry to revisit an old, much-harped on theme, but privateers and their function still elude me-but then again, I suppose trade on the whole eludes me..

Please, someone correct any misunderstandings from the following-merchants gain income based NOT on trade volume going in and out of a port-but rather port size dictates the bankable total to be earned (and split) by several merchant ships sitting off a particular coast, right?

There is no way to counter that short of getting more merchants in there, which still splits up merchant totals somewhat strangely.
Privateers ply on the actual trade route being used-but they cannot be fought. For instance, I have the norwegian sea heavy with trade routes out for Britain. I have merchants off-shore, protected in turn by frigates. I see no reason (because I am not at war) to commit a fleet of line ships and heavies to it. I have Portuguese privateers that I CAN SEE AS BRITAIN, sitting in that body of water, and my report tells me I am losing money to them, though I am working as hard as I can (subsidizing) Portugal for good relations-I even have heavy trade with them, observance of neutrality....yet I cannot 'push' the privateers out, can I?

Somewhere it was suggested that privateers, (hence their name), might be considered fair game. I contend that the naval end of things needs a few additional features, wondering if it's possible..
If I'm at WAR with Portugal, I can attack their privateers, correct? Short of, I can do nothing about them? Putting my own privateers in there might seem a remedy, except that my privateers are uncontrollable in any way, and thus will impact further alliances in an unpredictable way-drawing off goods say from Prussia or the minors or Sweden ultimately. Is that the current state of affairs? Please correct me if I'm wrong. Thx
The trade model confuses the snot out of me, frankly. Not only that, but the interface, which on the whole I love, just bogs down unbelievably on trade.

I think the game's most time-consuming aspect is trying to trade from England to say, Portugal, but having to find the INDIVIDUAL provinces available from those oh-so much ballyhooed lists. Eric if you're around-is there a hidden rhyme-reason to not having those in some geographic sense, alphabetic sense or other?

Other than that, love this game, highly addictive-great scope.

[ericbabe]

Provinces are just in province-order. To provide other ordering mechanisms is on our list of features to consider for a future patch.

We're also considering limits on privateering (certain number of privateers per nation/country) and on an anti-privateering function for unattached frigates.

[canuck64]

Thanks Eric, appreciate the response. Wasn't sure what was on the short list of updates and what wasn't.