Flying Lab has announced a few changes to what happens when pirate factions conquer ports in Pirates of the Burning Sea. In typical FLS fashion, the changes and the reasoning behind them are explained in clearly in one of their devlogs.

The Pirate nation has a unique place in the Conquest system in PotBS. Their ports can’t be permanently controlled by another nation, but they also can’t keep any ports they conquer. Because of this, Pirates accumulate points towards a server victory in a slightly different manner than nationals do.

As part of M14, we’re increasing the amount of points that Pirates get for capturing a port from four to five. I’ll go over some of the reasoning behind this.

Currently, Pirates get four points every time they Raid a port, while Nationals get 10. This means that for a Pirate to keep pace with Nationals, they have to win three port battles in order to get the same amount of points. Since every nation can only attack three ports at a time, this means that Pirates would always have to have their maximum amount of attacking ports at all times, and then they have to win all of those battles. When we increase those capture points from four to five, Pirates only have to win two battles to keep up with the Nationals. This means they don’t always have to be attacking ports and gives them a little breathing room if they lose a port battle.

Read more here.