Subscription benefits apply to ALL Servers (Legacy, Antigua and Roberts).
Access to the Legacy Server requires a Subscription
You can purchase a Subscription at www.burningsea.com and also find out more about the game. A Subscription unlocks:
The new Subscription System that was developed for the opening of the Legacy server replaced the long-broken Subscription System that dated back to the FLS and Sony days.
Due to the shut-down FLS Subscription System, the Accounts of some very early players who were Subscribers back when FLS transferred the game to Portalus were stuck in "Subscribed" mode, and have remained that way ever since -- incorrectly receiving free Subscribers' benefits in the form of the Captains' Club, BSP Discounts, Econ Slots, Ship Slots, etc. ever since. These long-stuck Accounts are now unstuck and have reverted to their proper non-Subscription (technically, lapsed-Subscription) state.
If you owned one of these Accounts, there is no need to worry about losing any Ships, Structures or Captains as a result of this reversion. However, when the Subscription-based Bonus Slots that the Account received shrink back down to the Free-to-Play level, there are some effects that you should be aware of.
What a lapsed Subscription means for Econ is that any Structures in Subscription-based Econ Slots (i.e., Econ Slots that were only unlocked and open due to the Active Subscription benefit) will become dormant, and will no longer run recipes.
Also, while the structure is dormant, if you try to add maintenance to one of them, the game will consume your maintenance doubloons and provisions, but will not add them to the maintenance total.
Do not pay maintenance on dormant structures!
Unfortunately, at this point in time, when Econ Slots are rendered dormant due to a lapsed Subscription, there is no visual indication that the structures are dormant. This is due to the way bonus Econ Slots that opened up under Subscriptions were originally implemented by FLS. The only way to tell if a Structure Slot is dormant if you hover your mouse pointer over a recipe, and the game will tell you that you don't have the slots. This hovering method is something of an awkward work-around to compensate for the lack of any visual indicator, and we plan to fix that (and other issues like it) in an upcoming patch, but we felt releasing Legacy sooner was better than holding off to address minor items like this, since if a Player is Subscribing to Legacy, they will have the full Captains' Club benefits and unlocked slots anyway.
Similarly, what a lapsed Subscription means for Ships is that the Account will fall back to the normal base two Ship Slots (unless you added more Slots via the Upgrades in TA). But if you filled all five of your Subscription-based ship slots when your Subscription was Active and your Subscription lapses, you can still use the five Subscription Ship Slots as long as you don't empty them (scuttling, losing final durability, etc), because once the "extra" Subscription Ship Slot is emptied, it will disappear. Note that you can only withdraw Ships from the Dry Dock when your Subscription lapses (if you have an empty Ship Slot available), and cannot add Ships to it (unless you have purchased the Dry Dock Upgrade in TA). Lastly, when Scuttling ships, bear in mind there is no automatic Ship Insurance without an Active Subscription.
Lastly, Accounts normally have two Character Slots, and this is expanded by either purchasing additional Character Slots in TA or Subscribing. As players at this time have no means to set the order of their Captains in the Character Selection Display, and reduction down to two character slots could possibly block access to the most frequently-used or most-favored Captain on the Account, we have decided to temporarily allow the Character Slots unlocked by Subscription to remain accessible even though the Subscription has lapsed. This issue will be addressed in a future update which will allow Players to arrange their Captains in a specific order, and to place their most-preferred Captains in the available Slots (either the two that come by default, or in additional Character Slots unlocked through Upgrades in TA).
Of course, if these Accounts Subscribe again, they will regain all of the Captains' Club Benefits for as long as their Subscription is Active, and things will return to the way they were before.