maturin

Админ однажды говорил мне именно об этой проблемой, и я придумал новую схему постановления парусов, чтoбы ее решить. При Battle Sails движение парусов непонятно, и поскольку в книге Harland нет описаний парусов в боевом режиме, у некоторых кораблей странный результат получается. Админ, скажите пожалуйста, будет ли реализована более реалистичная и красивая схема, или уже слишком поздно в процессе разработки? Вот она внизу: Обратите внимание на то, что никакого странного пoводения при Battle Sails не будет.

Small pennants are easy enough to ignore that I don't really care if people put pink unicorns* or Darth Vader on them. *Who says this is ahistorical, anyhow? The British named ships HMS Fairy and HMS Rainbow, and pink was a manly color.

You can also have flags on a small vertical staff mounted near the bowsprit cap (above the dolphin striker where the jibboom begins).

What's wrong with flags? Putting a complex symbol on a sail is a silly extravagance.

How about this: Hauling resources requires time. You order a delivery and it takes place in an hour or two. This way you need to plan ahead. Play a bit, then order resources just before you log off. They are there waiting for at the beginning of your next play session. Much more immersive, and just as effective. Despite the time limitation, this idea actually solves 95% of the problem that currently exists with hauling. After all, I don't mind small trips for resources. When I craft in Havana I can get oak logs, hemp and iron ore from the port next door, withing visual range. It's the fir logs and coal that are nigh inaccessible, now that the US has taken lots of the ports in Eastern Cuba. With a modicum of planning, this sort of delivery lets me can avoid that huge long stressful supply run, yet still craft the ship on time. If delivery is instant, than the location of resources becomes meaningless. Furthermore, we can assume that the ordered goods are split up into various different vessels. Goods in transit can be assigned to the holds of the regular old AI traders. Or more concretely, my ordered resources can be randomly assigned to AI traders in the loot screens after they are captured. That way players can rob me, but I am only likely to lose 10-20% of any give order. Which of course I can be reimbursed for through insurance. If I am on a schedule, I will just buy some extra, as the threat of war increases the cost of doing business.

On the other hand, in the PvE server the AI should hunt your ass down from the very horizon.

Constitution was in "English" colors for the first part of her service life. Or rather, she was painted and varnished like many other European frigates.

I was all up in arms until I read the 'except merchants' part of your post. The job of bots is twofold: to provide targets for newbs and grinders; to do the jobs players won't do (be full-time merchants/fishermen/convoy escorts, etc). I suspect we'll always need low-level bots so players can learn and level up. Other than that, I don't see much problem relegating most of the AI to merchant vessels. Bots could be use to reinforce low-population factions that should be strong and numerous historically (Spain and France), but I don't see how that is supposed to work with the current AI.

I think I agree with this. Whenever I take heavy casualties, I also suffer a lot of battle damage. So it would be relatively rare to return to port based on crew damage alone. The exception is boarding. But permanent crew damage from boarding could be used to fruitfully rebalance the whole system. Let us take prizes with us to sell in any port, making it easier to earn money this way. On the other hand, the need to replenish crew will slow down our captures. AI ships can lose some of their OP boarding capabilities too. Once cash-for-damage goes away, this will be necessary anyhow. This should never happen. Real captains had charts, and we do not. Most of us sail AFK half the time anyhow. Now, when we get shoals in battle instances I absolutely want to see ships getting stuck or bilged. So that small vessels can fight in dangerous waters that constrict the maneuvers of their larger foes. Your frigate can chase that trader's brig into the shallows, but you might pay a high price. There are technical challenges here.

On the other hand, we should absolutely have partial gundecks. You could remove most of Cerberus' gundeck 9-pounders and have an instant merchant ship. And a trader's brig should at least have a pair of light guns. Moreover, I have absolutely no problem with the idea of installing a crafted permanent module to Lynx that lets you mount a single 18-pounder, as long as there logical drawbacks for doing so. Basically you've turned your armed privateer into a less-versatile gunboat. This is a case-by-case sort of deal, though. I really don't know why the OP had to word his feature requests in such a disparaging way, though;

It wouldn't be a circle, it would be a long flat oval that updates at noon. Storms, increased time at sea and course changes would make the oval get longer, but not taller.

RAE* Santi is already in the game. That's why she's so fast. *Rocket-Assisted-Elephant

Yikes, what mods?

This one's nice and lean. I'd actually consider using it while the game hogs my bandwidth.

Thanks for doing that with your sails set.

I think pirates would be the ideal testbed for low-XP or XP-free advancement. They can gather crew from prizes, but the bigger the crew, the smaller the captain's share of prize money. In general I would rather see XP-based no-gold advancement for naval officers, but this wouldn't work for merchants and privateers, so it would mean designing too many different systems at once.

Not when a small vessel might have 4 4-pdrs but (historically) almost a dozen swivels. And not when so many rounds of boarding combat resolve with 1 casualty per side. And I'm pretty sure a 1-pound swivel ball will go through the light quarterdeck bulwarks on many ships.

We only have a 9-point compass. That means a massive margin of error. You could be just off the coast of Puerto Rico, or you could be in Africa. Unless you can perfectly align your camera to due west and then gauge the angle accurately (is this even possible on a 2D monitor with variable FoV?) No one noticed that we get exact position fixes from F11? That's 100x more accurate.

No one gets lost near their capital, so I can't see how this is terribly useful. When I'm wandering around between the Windward Isles and Caracao, what do I care where Havana is?

Closed gunports are supposedly on the to-do list for sinking ships, so it stands to reason we will see them on the OW as well. It would offer an interesting alternate view of many vessels.

"Don't you just hate it when you put your sails in the dryer and they come out shrunken to half their size?" -Hero

Never use locked sector at long range. Ever. If you don't want to bother with what each settings mean, just leave it on Unlocked Auto.

Basically I would like to see more Orders that spawn NPCs at certain location, in a semi-random sort of way. There could be a convoy or a smuggler that you have to find, but you don't know exactly where they will be placed, or if the wind will be favorable, or if fog will hide them. And the game doesn't know whether or not other NPCs/players might attack the subject of the quest. So anything can happen. When I have to go and sink 10 brigs in a brig, that is like a shopping list. But if I have to find and escort 1 brig in totally uncontrollable situations where anything can go wrong, that is an adventure. Also, whenever there is suspense and and a very specific goal, covering the large distances in OW is less dull.

Sounds great! Emergent gameplay on the OW is the way to go.

Compare a breech-loading rifle from 1870 to a Brown Bess musket from 1775, and you'll see what happened in the intervening century.