Saturday, June 23, 2018

Happy Sailing Prof


Fair Winds and Full Sails


By: Brian Randich

As many of you have seen, Larry, aka the BP Professor, recently quit the game. He was more recently known as a town hall member, a host, and one of the mainstays of the Battle Pirates Crib show. Before that, he was known for his blog. While it was not updated recently except for the announcement of him quitting, the blog holds a wealth of information and tips collected over the years. It had tips and builds for the raids and what to get, explanations of mechanics (and the first explanation of how vxp affected reload after it got changed to 75%), and personal thoughts and ideas about the game and the direction it was taking. It was a one-man TFC before TFC existed.
I don’t know how I first found his blog. I think I googled “Battle Pirates help” or something similar. The first memory I have of seeing an article of his was the Riptide raid tips back in April 2014. As a new-ish player who had no idea what to do, I started to learn from what was out there. I liked the way he explained things, and it made sense. I looked back through the archives and found his old articles, and while some didn’t exactly have use at the time (old raid tips/prizes), I learned quite a bit, and I started to form a base of knowledge on this game and what to do going forward.
Here are a few links I found to be helpful, or at least entertaining, along with a brief description:
This is how I learned to build ships. While a lot of ship-building changed with hull classes, these ideas still hold true. Figure out what you want a fleet to do, then build it to do that. It’s easier these days with hull classes and weapons and specials given out with hulls.
This is how I learned the equation to find a weapon’s actual reload, how much Kix screwed up that math relating to reload, and how important rank really is.
The professor does not mess around.
Even though his blog updates became further and further apart due to real life and disillusionment with the game itself, the professor was a prominent community member. With a mix of math, knowledge, and humor, his blog was a great read, and he was someone I aspired to be like in the game and on the shows.
Happy sailing, prof.