maturin

How could it be otherwise? Sharpshooters and swivel gunners don't fire in vollies, and the player has no business directing every bullet fired. Nothing wrong with a Total War-type approach. I long ago proposed a system for directing your sharpshooters' fire at specific target. Hit the men at the wheel, suppress the officers, suppress the men at the braces, etc.

I'm sure this will get added in eventually, as an automated sort of close-in weapon system. IRL, sitting right under an SoL's poop would be suicidal for a light vessel with an open gundeck. It's hard to stern camp an enemy that is bristling with muskets. At least it will force you to keep your distance, which makes it more difficult to stay out of the enemy's gun arcs, and prevents you from hitting as hard with grape and double shot.

In my dreams it will one day be possible to rent private deathmatch servers where you can play a fully mod-enabled version of the game with your friends. Sort of like ArmA or Half-Life.

It would be a bit odd to have a realistic inverted image in a telescope with variable zoom levels (seemingly x2 all the way to x30)

I certainly don't want invisible guns like POTBS. But aren't all the long guns in the game visually the same size? The 4-pounder and 24-pounders look the same size to me. But maybe this is an illusion.

Many of those up-gunned Great Lakes vessels are frankly just dangerous. The same goes for Baltimore clippers (including Lynx). Armament aside, you have to be real careful not to get caught in a squall with all your canvas set, or you might get knocked down and never get up. When it comes on to blow, I suspect that most of these heavy guns ended up in the hold. And in action, I would guess that the vessels were handled more like gunboats than the nimble brawlers in-game. Slow RoF from only one broadside at a time, without many quick maneuvers while reloading.

A 42-lb carronade may weigh about the same as a 6-lb long gun, but the recoil is going to be atrocious. So yes, let's allow small sloops and cutter to carry heavy carronades, but only if they are restricted to firing ranging shots, with severely limited traverse for the barrels. We also should question that source that describes four men handling a heavy carronade "without exertion," as we know of frigate captains who got rid of theirs due to the difficulty of loading a heavy ball. It hurt their rate of fire.

I think mast repairs should be dramatically slower, but be taken from a completely separate pool of repair as hull patches. That's a plus for realism and gameplay.

Правда, но ставить лисели при ветре средней скорости было физически возможно. Один из хороших качеств лиселей в том, что они--бросовая вещь. Используешь их в погони, и если теряешь лисель-рея, это ничего страшного.

The insult generator is meant to defuse aggression and anger with humor. If it is insufficient when it comes to the humorless, then that cannot be helped. But in any case, guys, this thread needs to shape up. No one has a leg to stand on when it comes to telling GameLabs how to run its own forum. The rules weren't written by consensus, and they are completely adequate so long as people are willing to be decent to each other. Trying to apply your favorite sociological theories is just cause for a lot of hot air. Be decent to each other. If not, the moderators will step in.

Holy hell that was a talky-talky episode. This show needs to spread out its transitions a bit. You can practically see the showrunner's whiteboard with the season plans: "Episode 7: all loyalties shift" The ending shot was also an enormous 'so what.' Psychic buggy passengers.

Leaving your team is poor form even if victory is assured. And people want to see their damage. I tend to stick out and see a battle through even if I have sunk.

It's poor sportsmanship, in my book. If you really have no hope of victory or even getting in that last consolation kill, don't drag a battle out. Just stand and fight so you can go out in a blaze of glory. Now, if the enemy were catching you anyways, no one can blame you for jigging back and forth the way a leeward player needs to, so as to avoid being mobbed. But if you have a lone fast frigate that is the last survivor, facing several SoLs or damaged enemies, wasting everyone's time pointlessly sniping is just rude. There's nothing at stake and nothing to gain, so why delay the inevitable and piss everyone off?

When two fleets of mixed SoLs and frigates are approaching each other, the frigates are the main targets because the SoL's are too far away to hurt each other. Unless one fleet has decided to target masts.

I've always toyed with the idea of leaving out characters entirely (since we are unlikely to get quality avatars or any related features) and just focus on the life of the ship. That would sidestep any questions of how exactly your Naval captain gets to own five different vessels, and go joyriding in them with no regard for duty. Or why your pirate captain hasn't been hung by the neck three times over since last Tuesday.

The United Provinces were arguably even more maritime-focused as an economy. But even the Dutch can't boast the continuity of Britain's naval tradition. Great Britain was a maritime naval power without interruption, for a period of several centuries. The Royal Navy didn't suffer from the same wax and wane as the French, Spanish and Dutch. While casting absolutely no aspersions on either of Britain's main rivals, it means a lot if your institutions and personnel base remain functioning without periodic setbacks. The French navy had very high standards of professionalism and was very technologically advanced in many ways. But from time to time it fell into ruin and had to be rebuilt from the ground up. I leave aside other powers such as Portugal, Sweden, Denmark and Russia because of their smaller size, or because their fleets weren't the lifeblood of an essentially maritime state, but simple accessories to their inland territorial ambitions.

Probably NOT, since that would require a total overhaul of the 3D models and probably game engine tech. Even 32-lb roundshot is only going to make a six-inch hole, after all. That's not really feasible to render at this scale.

French players will be able to build and sail HMS Victory. This is blindingly obvious, people. Very, very far from irrelevant. The devs have taste, and constantly emphasize one of their core visions for Naval Action, which is a 'beautiful Age of Sail game.' Start including technological monstrosities from the aesthetic dead zone of the 19th century, and they will proliferate everywhere. Including vessels from after the 1820 technological turning point will make all more famous, important and beautiful vessels obsolete. Or if not, they will have to be nerfed into oblivion, at which point one wonders why we should pay the price of having them in the first place. Suddenly it becomes difficult to imagine that you are fighting any of the hundreds of legendary fleet actions of the 18th century or Napoleonic wars, because there is that great bathtub making up half the fleet.

In the videogame... I'd be shocked if the real one every exceed 6 knots in any moderate weather.

This says it all, really. American SoLs are a Pandora's Box. Or rather, Western SoLs of similar type are a Pandora's Box for game balance and atmosphere. But for some reason we don't have many European nationalists demanding that "every single" British warship ever built be represented in the game. And no one would ever dream of agitating for Britain's advanced 1820-1830 SoLs.

I think the ships might be a little too buoyant. Seas like that should definitely be 'coming aboard' more often, and obscuring the lower gunports of an SoL. Most of all the ships should be pitching into the trough and burying their bows more.

I imagine that they would run out of powder first in any case. And carronades use a nice small charge. Apparently chainshot was carried in very small loads, however.

I can't think of anything that would accomplish that in a traditional square rigger, which is a Swiss Army knife that can be optimized for almost anything on a minute-to-minute basis. Everything except shifting masts and re-sizing spars. So Axralis, please share a detailed, technically thorough proposal if you have one.

Is it even possible? There's no way I'm waiting six to eight months for a DvD of this film to maybe filter down to a hipster video rental store in Greenwich Village. Want to watch the damn movie, any way possible.

The penalties are the loss of your guns. I don't really see a problem with defenseless merchants not getting ganked. Especially when they might get captured by the next cutter that comes along afterwards, and not have enough water to reach their destination.