maturin

Wind is a volunteer forum moderator, not an employee of Game Labs. He likes to impersonate developers on a regular basis.

No, the game is still plenty populated and will pick up again upon release. People just like to cite the number of players that were online right after EA release, exaggerate it, and then claim that the drop is the result of their own pet feature request not being implemented. "This game used to have 10,000 players online every day but then the devs wouldn't put three sets of boobs on the figurehead of my ship, so everyone left."

Not too much room for more realism in an MMO with conquest. Hope for an eventual shard with SP/dedicated server or mods. Would make for a nice DLC repackaging.

I assume that would apply to the sail that is controlled by the Z/C keys. So Cutter/Lynx would benefit from that perk on all points of sail.

Jibs on the cutter are treated the same as the jibs on frigates, AFAIK.

Only when furling and unfurling. For momentary speed adjustments in battle all sails can be clewed up by pulling on ropes from the deck.

There would be sharpshooters in the tops, but this isn't featured in-game. Sailhandling and bracing yards can be accomplished from deck. No one does elevated rangefinding with black powder cannon. Sail repair should be contextual.

Crew have no reason to be in the rigging in combat. Possibly a few while tacking, but that's it.

The waist gunners are just as exposed as they would be on Lynx, as the gangways would be removed in combat.

20 ships per person isn't enough?

Which is why we need different wind strengths. Stability as a feature is meaningless until then (and probably even then, because of complexity).

Last two posts I've read about it have specifically pointed out the point of sail. Indiamans outrunning Endymion at 135, etc.

But were not in fact boarded. Very close ranged battles were common. Successful boarding actions were not.

When the going gets tough...

Yes, congratulations on disproving the obvious hyperbole. But you can knock off the upper half of a ship without harming those poor wilting violet seams that you are so concerned about. That's what a razee is. Removing an entire deck or more without any harm to the structural fabric of the ship. Pirates did it at sea. The only difference is that a saw is used instead of a projectile. So apparently you are imagining that the projectile creates damaging shockwaves that propagate from the impact point throughout the entire hull, with remote effects multiple meters distant, which dislodge planks below the waterline. Wood does not work like this in relation to shockwaves and projectiles. These aren't main battle tanks with homogenous armor plating. A stone fort that is battered by cannonfire will collapse. A fort of palmetto logs simply absorbs the punishment. Lieste recently made a post about how timber hulls respond to gunfire. TLDR; the wood simply crushes to pulp, and two shot-holes in close proximity have very little interaction with each other. Shot-holes are usually smaller than the projectile that made them. That's the exact opposite of the lethal shockwaves you hint at. No, that's the nonsense that you made up on the spot, which I'm dismissing for want of evidence. And I'll remind you that we're talking about lethal battle damage here. We're talking about ships foundering despite efforts to save them, not a trickle of water. Wooden ships are always leaking through those very same seams, even if new and undamaged. We're also talking about actually feasible battle damage. If you bombarded a ship with 150mm howitzer shells, I'm the thing would eventually leak. If the texts supported your position, you would have quoted them here, rather than make vague hints. It's not the other person's job to research and prove your arguments!

Take the guns off

I like it, but it's far too late in development to overhauling the damage model and core combat.

Me too. So let's call game mechanics what they are, and not try to impose game mechanics on history.

Countless primary sources refer to ships being holed between wind and water. No historical text talks about ships sinking due to damage above the waterline. The only reason you're talking about open seams is because a videogame in 2015 came up with an idea for gameplay balancing. That which is asserted without evidence can be summarily dismissed. Logic dictates that any ship that has received enormous damage to the hull in general will also have suffered damage to the waterline. To assert that you know exactly how a ship sank in battle given scanty references is egregiously dishonest. Wrapping hawsers around hulls is a measure to stiffen an old, weak ship, not a means of battle damage control. If the crew had time after the battle to affect such a measure, then it is only further proof that above-waterline damage is not an immediate threat to a ship. Of course having serious damage to gundeck-level scantlings will harm a ship's structural integrity and make it foolish to expose the vessel to the elements without significant repair. But it is akin to rotten walls and shingles on a house. The threat of collapse or foundering is not imminent. So you are talking about sympathetic damage to seams from the shockwaves of shot impacting the hull multiple meters from the seam itself. There is no reputable source which allows you to claim that such a phenomenon ever actually occurred. So no, we can't say whether the dinosaurs were wiped out by a meteor or lung cancer. But I know which side I'm on.

Don't forget lower yards mounted too high, a spritsail that shouldn't exist and a mizzen topsail with distorted dimensions.

Exactly. The most horrific battle damage ever recorded in the Age of Sail and it still takes a fierce gale to sink the ship, with shattered pumps and a skeleton crew. Also, Redoutable suffered from unusual damage in that Temeraire(?) managed to shoot a broadside into the hold by depressing the guns at close range.

It's a gameplay mechanic that isn't consistent with anything in history, so please don't try to retroactively justify it. The devs tried a more realistic system but it created gameplay problems. No warship ever sank in combat without being holed at the waterline. You can smash the entire top two decks off a wooden ship and it still float just fine.

They consider it better but they know it's not correct.

A Xebec frigate is a rarity, not a workhorse. Leda-class frigates were the second-most common design in the Royal Navy at one point.

Minor point of order: Yards are turned by crew standing on the waist gangways and quarterdeck.