maturin

I don't know about the colors, but it would be nice to vary the procedurally-generated terrain a bit. The Caribbean does have deciduous and coniferous trees, after all, especially on the larger islands and mainland. Agricultural land would be harder to model, but also good to have.

Probably easier just to allow ammo selection in the 'warmup period,' during which the changes will be instantaneous.

Anglocentrism happened. Mahogany would be similar in properties to teak*, I presume, as it is extremely durable. One of the reasons Havana-built ships lasted so long, if I am not mistaken. *Except that it, err, actually grows in the Caribbean and was exported to Europe, unlike Teak. From Wiki: Edit: This source says that mahogany is lighter, stronger and more buoyant than oak, and also burns and splinters less. Not quite are resistant to rot and insects as teak.

You wouldn't see your rough position, you would in fact see a narrow line that contains all your possible conditions. A sextant at noon will get you latitude quite accurately, but finding longitude is dependent on either a good clock or very accurate account of your past speed and heading.

I too know the pain of numpadlessness. But keys to select various gunnery modes would ultimately be nonessential. Those with silly Mac keyboards could just rebind them to Ctr-1, Ctr-2, etc. (Every serious PC developer lets players modify keybinds with Ctr, Shift and Alt.) However, I would rather see the numpad select various ordinary view perspectives, such as foretop, mainmasthead, quarterdeck, forecastle.

Nothing wrong with groups of 2-3 unaccompanied 74s IMHO. Any group much larger than that is looking more like a serious squadron and should have some frigates. But not always. The frigates would often be out scouting, after all.

In Sea Trials battle instances the wind would rotate gradually over the course of the battle, meaning that eventually the wind would blow in the exact opposite direction as the waves. Not very likely unless you are dealing with lighter winds in a new weather pattern while the 'old sea' is still running high. And certainly you could have confused cross-seas, which would be much more dangerous than the size of individual waves would suggest. If you're reduced to either lying to or scudding downwind, there is no way you can fight. But according to the author of this paper (which is unfortunately hidden behind an absurd paywall), the Battle of Quiberon Bay was fought in a 'full gale.' That is Beaufort Force 8, with sustained winds around 35 knots. In such conditions, the ships involved would have been restricted to a treble or close-reefed topsails courses. Given that they were in a bay, the seas would have been steep and perhaps confused, but likely not so large. I don't imagine the likes of Lynx being able to fight in these conditions, though. It would be about time to lie to, rather than try to sail upwind. A gaff rig is not much fun at all sailing before the wind in those conditions either.

Any main magazine explosion would blow the ship to pieces.

Not treason, I'd imagine, but definitely contraband. There was a lively cross-channel trade during the Napoleonic Wars, and I don't imagine the smugglers involved were often hanged when caught.

I do believe that would be called 'smuggling.'

Sailing a square rigger in a storm involves a huge variety of possible scenarios, none of which I have experienced, and very few of which could be easily represented in a videogame. But I can share the reasoning behind my suggestions. First of all, large and confused waves are generally more dangerous than high winds. There is almost no force of wind strong enough to seriously threaten a ship that has an hour or so to prepare. The trick is that you have to harness the wind somehow, to keep your ship from being overwhelmed by heavy seas. You could furl all your sails and lower the topgallant or even topmasts and be quite secure from any squall. But in a real storm, that also means that your ship will be out of control, and will tend to swing broadside to the wind, where you will roll deep into the troughs of the waves, as they break over the ship's waist one after the other. Eventually you will have more water pouring onto the deck than can run out through the scuppers, reducing your stability and (for smaller vessels) buoyancy to critical levels. So basically you have to keep some canvas set, just enough to make the rudder effective. Even if you can set plenty of sail, you want to moderate your speed in heavy seas because hollow wooden shells are not very good at riding rollercoasters. You don't want to go slamming into oncoming seas at 10 knots (the waves themselves could be going 30 mph, remember), and have your bow plunging twenty feet down into the trough. Even if the forward half of the ship doesn't end up underwater, there's no better way to stress the ship's timbers, spring leaks, wash away crew, lines and boats, break the jibboom, spritsail yard, bowsprit or entire masts. Therefore, you set a few tough sails (perhaps a close-reefed maintopsail, perhaps some storm staysails or the reefed mizzen sail, depending on strength of wind and the personality of the vessel) and set a close-hauled course. This operation is called 'lying to,' and the objective is to angle the bow into the waves, and in the roughest part of any storm, the seas will be coming from the same general direction as the wind (In the game this isn't the case, which complicates everything). Then you will forge slowly to windward, with the bow rising as gently as possible to each oncoming wave, with the wind heeling you over and moderating the severity of the ship's rolling. This prevents you from driven ashore by the storm. Just remember not to loose speed, or you might end up surfing backwards down the faces of the waves, likely snapping the rudder off. And if your sails come aback, you risk losing your masts or even sailing the stern under. In the very worst conditions, lying to becomes impossible. This happens a lot sooner for smaller vessels, as the seas will becalm their sail lower sails and break more easily onto their exposed decks. At that point, the only option is to put your ship before the wind and 'scud' to leeward. Oftentimes you sail quite fast without any sail set at all, thorough the windage of the masts and bare spars. That means the rudder has authority, and the helmsman must constant battle to take each wave directly on the stern. The seas will try to bury the bow in the troughs or even lift the rudder from the water, both of which will cause the ship to yaw wildly, 'broaching to' to turn broadside to the waves. This must be avoided at all costs, lest the seas overwhelm the ship as described earlier. In addition, fore-and-aft rigged vessels are not well-equipped for scudding before the wind, unless the wind is strong enough to provide them with steerage way under bare poles. Back on the subject of the game, here is how we simplify things: If the game's storms are meant to threaten a ship's survival, then to avoid damage there are two strategies: Sail closehauled at Dead Slow Sail dead downwind at Dead Slow, but with the same speed you would have at Half The smaller the ship, the sooner Option 1 goes away (based on distance from the storm's center). If the storms represent more garden variety rough weather, then they are nothing more than an excuse to get the best performance out of your ship. High winds and rough seas will shake up the balance of vessel performance, making certain frigates excel above others, giving a boost to the largest ships and slowing down the likes of Lynx and Mercury.

Really? I should go log on!

I haven't heard any proposals that could remotely be described as micromanaging. Unless a grand total of one keystroke and a course setting fit your definition. Current storm behavior is unacceptable because it is both unrealistic and unfun. No choices, knowledge or skill is required, and the qualities of your ship are irrelevant. There is no risk and reward. It is just a sadistic time tax, guaranteed to be a quintessentially dull experience after your first few storms.

Never fought or even seen him. Death to cheesy exploiters.

A prize ship would be encumbered by all the prisoners packed into the hold. How would you get your powder monkeys to the magazines and shotlockers without a huge traffic jam? Plus there would be no room for your own wounded.

Honestly, it the Connie that's the problem. No one worries about getting ganked by SoLs.

During campaigns? Plenty. And the Spanish built their SoLs there.But the current prototype OW game clearly isn't balanced to represent the Caribbean, with live oak and fir and Iberian meat everywhere. The game is naval action, and that means battleships. PotBS was wrong. There was no such thing as a "port battle" IRL. There were just fleet engagements, which sometimes were coastal and only very rarely resulted in ports changing hands. And when they did, it was always due to soldiers on land.IRL 4th and 3rd rates were used regularly on the "OW," to great effect. Making them useless except in fleet battles in nonsense. NPC spawns are a separate issue. If pirates can't craft or buy large ships, then other restrictions aren't so important.

This is a reeeeeeally complicated topic. For the barebones implementation, you would want storms to cause damage on sail settings above Slow, Battle, or Dead Slow, depending on distance from the center. At the same time, however, the storm would need to provide speed bonuses for those lower sail settings. A large ship would travel about 30-50% as fast to windward under reduced sail in rough weather, with very little speed penalty downwind. Smaller vessels would suffer more, especially closehauled which would in the worst conditions be impossible for them, causing damage.

Nice photoshop job. I like the sails made of nets.

Besides e-peen? In the current build pirates would make more money from linefighting in SoLs than by catching merchantmen. But more to the point, the ideal pirate vessel is Constitution. Which is sort of like saying that the ideal weapon for Al Qaeda is an Abrams tank. Nationals bullying who? Raising the black flag is supposed to be a challenge to the whole world that says 'exterminate me mercilessly and doyour worst you rum buggers.' But to answer your questions, national SoLs are for bullying other nations. Pirates are an afterthought. Not really. The Royal Navy had dozens and dozens of SoLs. Smaller navies might have SoLs for as many as 40-50% of their warships.

Inability to craft large ships Inability to buy repair kits without smuggling Much lower gold rewards due to splitting prizes amongst too many crew

Premium skins would be a great idea, as it would increase diversity.

In Battle you can also see Mercury's figurehead in telescope view. But I love this bug and hope that it stays in until the day before release.

Making the game have prevailing winds doesn't mean a full-bore weather simulation. Just some basic patterns that will influence the flow of NPCs and players around the gameworld.

For immersion and cosmetic purposes I would recommend that sails not be caught aback in the OW. If it is easy to disable that part of the animation, anyway.