Frogster has announced that its free colony expansion for Bounty Bay Online will be released on Jan. 15, 2009. It will be installed automatically with the patcher tool, so all you need to do is play the game to enjoy the add-on.

With this comprehensive expansion, player guilds will be able to establish their own colonies with towns and harbours in the historical sailor world. Once created, guilds decide not only upon their appearance but also upon their in-game progress and their commercial policy. Mighty guilds hereby create their individual home territory and retreat as well as a profitable trading base.

The addition of colonies will give players an intricate way to both enhance their attributes and interact with their guild members. It sounds like a great addition for Bounty Bay Online. Keep reading below for a full press release regarding the colony expansion.

Berlin, 2008-12-02: On January 15th of 2009, Frogster is going to launch the free colony add-on for Bounty Bay Online. With this comprehensive expansion, player guilds will be able to establish their own colonies with towns and harbours in the historical sailor world. Once created, guilds decide not only upon their appearance but also upon their in-game progress and their commercial policy. Mighty guilds hereby create their individual home territory and retreat as well as a profitable trading base. The colony add-on of roundabout 500 MB size will be installed automatically by the patcher tool when starting Bounty Bay Online. Existing characters and accounts can be used further on unrestrictedly. The game software for Bounty Bay Online is available for free on www.bountybayonline.com.

With the colony add-on players can establish colonies in 33 coastal regions all over the virtual sailor world. After completing a series of colony quests, successful guild leaders will receive a harbour foundation stone, with which the guild can establish a colony on any free colony ground. Founding a new colony requires that the guild has reached guild level 5 at least and does not possess another colony already. Once the colony is established, the guild has 48 hours time to expand it to level 1. If the player group cannot manage to achieve that goal, the colony will destroy itself and all allocated resources will be lost. The guild can choose one of four development paths after the successful foundation of a colony. However, in order to change this path later on players will have to spend a big amount of in-game currency.

• Industrial Harbor: Specializes in the research of weapons, armor and the trade of pets.
• Business Harbor: Specializes in the trade of materials between the different colonies.
• Collectors Harbor: Specializes in importing and gathering of materials which can normally only be bought from NPC’s.
• Military Harbor: Specializes in the research of new ships, new ship features, canons and ammunition.

The new colony harbour system offers players a new anchor point for their worldwide trade. Moreover, a colony opens up the possibility to create a controlled sphere of influence and to store large amounts of resources. Feeble warrior guilds can use outposts for the regeneration of their forces as well as to secure important stock. By increasing the overall level of a colony city, all guild members gain enhanced character attributes like better endurance of their ships, increased regeneration rates, raised manoeuvrability of their vessels and heightened defensive attributes of their land characters. As soon as the foundation stone for a colony is laid, the guild can choose one of three basic appearance types. Rural village, industry town or pirate nest can be selected, but the look of a colony town has no effect on its development. Established colony cities have to be well supplied with resources to not go bankrupt and thus to dismantle. But a guild can abandon their colony on purpose by decomposing the guild or by dismissing the colony themselves