maturin

Square riggers can sail at 45 degrees to the wind in the game, so there are zero problems.Also, when I log in and want to sail to Habana from Baracoa, I have no idea what the wind is doing. That is potentially frustrating. If I can predict the wind pattern (with 70% accuracy, as sometimes the prevailing winds will shift in my favor), then I can plan ahead. I can develop logistical strategies for trade and war.

If a well-trained crew fires three times faster than an inexperienced crew (which would be totally historical), then Naval Action will NOT be a game of skill. It will be an action RPG.

Mods are far from immersive, and the most realistic option would be to make crew and officer skill paramount. No argument there. The problem is that then we have WoW, where HMS Surprise with a lvl 50 crew wipes the floor with a lvl 26 crew Surprise. It means that everyone has to grind and grind just to be competitive.

IMHO Survival mode should repair broadsides up to 15% when you are out of combat (option to leave the instance). That will prevent sinking in some situations. Bots should get accordingly better at chasing you, though.

I dunno, I think people are already hoarding too many resources. With a bit of starting capital, I already see huge profits for traders and an economy awash in ships. Shipbuilding is just so much easier and cheaper than in PotBS. Perhaps they should turn off money for damage (not kills) sooner, rather than later, and cut the prices the AI pays for crafted vessels.

Age of Sail: iPad widget edition

This would work.

Why not watch the Muppets' Treasure Island?

If instances are going to match the OW time, night should be shorter. This will lead to a more realistic proportion of nighttime battles.

Apallachicola is now Spanish, not pirate

Oh, the repair kits should certainly contain items that are meant for the hull. I'm just saying that the rigging materials and iron parts should pose the biggest financial and logistical challenge when crafting them. That's realistic, and repair kits are highly abstracted, so there's no disconnect.

I agree, since high repair costs for speed demon vessels and underbuilt ships (Renommee, Commerce de Marseille) is my pet feature. Realistically the biggest logistical challenge for repairing a vessel should be replacement spars and masts. In the current economy, that means a lot of pine logs. In the economy as it should be, that means some very expensive, heavy and relatively rare resources called Mast Timber. After that, iron fittings, rudder parts and such sound good. But why would you have ballast in a repair kit?

No, I copied the wrong link: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B-pwrC9JR7ahfkpKOGVYYUlCMU13OTFjNlRsaEVTSE10djYzR2xYWlUydXFEWDVPOEhDbW8&usp=sharing

Don't forget L'Abenakise (HMS Aurora). And why only 'maybe' for Renommee?Anyways, please share any sources you have, because this is the kind of information I've been hoarding. Here is every sailing quality report I've been able to find: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-pwrC9JR7ahbkdwTThIX1VLSVU/view?usp=sharing

Some American privateers operated xebecs in the Caribbean. Ultor from Baltimore, for one. The Swedish used them in the Baltic as well.

No point careening unless all our ships start growing weeds. Of course, it would be interesting to delete 9/10 of pirate ports and then let them repair or trade on the fly like that.

This is deliberate. The devs want you to feel alone in an enormous world, and this will often mean getting lost. Realistically speaking, celestial could get you a decent fix, but only in certain conditions and times of day. The simplest system would be an automated latitude reading each day at noon, with a vague longitude estimate whose quality varied according to days at sea, officer skill. It would be very accurate when in sight of land and very inaccurate in storms.

Current game concept is that durabilities can never be restored, so there is constant demand for new ships.

F*ck speed mods entirely. This is a yacht that is faster than a brig on its best point of sail. And not just a little bit faster. It zoomed up over the horizon and caught up in a few bare minutes. And then of course its group mates jumped into the instance from beyond visual range, armed with with carronades for the sole purpose of ganking, thanks to the 400-kilometer wide Battle Timer that hasn't gone down, even in the wacky patch. I want to see an unfettered PvP game, because that is historical and exciting. But why is the game still breaking the laws of physics to allow failboats from high population nations and societies to hunt down lone targets? No amount of useless AI reinforcements and BR tinkering can make up for this.

I'm inclined to agree with Jodgi. Right now we have ships that are modded for speed and ships that are modded to be slower. What if we only have the latter type? Then the default ships would be the fastest, and some captains would choice to apply mods (turning, HP, etc) with speed penalties. Pretty much the same result, without the newb-killing arms race that results in ridiculous SoL cigarette boats. I would also be fine with speed mods if they weren't allowed on the fastest ships (Trinc, Lynx, Merc, etc).

Pretty sure that was just luck of the draw. Wood type effects are built into the wood type 'mod.' They don't spawn separate ones.

Teak wood type is already in the game, isn't it? Does it just have no effect? I don't like the speed effects of different wood types. Live oak construction should maybe have a very small speed penalty because of weight, but that's it. The British builts tons of Leda-class frigates in oak, fir and teak. None of them were noticeably faster than the others, or at least no one could notice the effects of different timber type. Alternate idea for Fir wood type: -40% Ship construction labor hours -1 Durability point -1 Armor class -30% OW repair kit effectiveness Automatic Stiffness upgrade of varying quality Automatic Acceleration upgrade Live Oak wood type: +30% repair kit cost

So even frigates of this size don't require knees from compass wood?

Cayo de Sal is a neutral port now (can't seem to edit the map anymore).

When the game is released, there will be tutorials and helpful pop-ups. The first time you buy a ship, there can be a note on the confirmation screen reminding you that it doesn't have guns. But now is not the time for such finishing touches. The 'batteries not included' thing is hardly the most confusing aspect for new testers. The game still writes 'yard' in Russian, for chrissakes.