CaptLouis

Felix, your map is a joy, thank you so much for all the hard work on this. I did notice a minor issue (which may already be known) in the ship comparison tool. Under the Permanent module dropdown, none of the Spanish or Pirate rig refits are available.

I was told by several players that accuracy was affected by sail settings. Really pleased to hear that they are wrong, thanks Admin.

Is there now a game effect whereby using full sails detrimentally affects accuracy of guns, as compared to battle sails? Apologies if I missed it in all the above discussion. If so, what is that feature trying to model?

A possibility would be to keep Q/E and Z/C as they are, but additionally allow the M key to toggle through these 3 states: Main & Mizzen (by default) Main only Mizzen only ...so no changes to muscle memory for existing players who do not want fine control of main or mizzen alone.

Applause to the Devs for finally addressing the wind and sailing model, sounds like it needs serious tuning though. The term 'wind shadow' is a bit misleading and we'd only use it in RL sailing if for example you were in the lee of an island that blankets you almost completely. The related effect from other vessel's sails is always referred to as 'dirty air' or just 'dirt', because it's turbulent wind - not the absence of wind! Its affect is relative to wind speed as noted in posts above. Apart from in very light airs it has only a marginal effect, but marginal is critical in racing where 1/4 kt or 1/2 kt is quite noticeable. With tuning this feature will really help the game though, removing the arcadey blob battle nonsense. Really happy to see battle sails becoming almost obligatory too. Unless chasing or fleeing, no captain in the age of sail would have gone into action without furled courses in their right mind. Topsails give you the speed and control you need, and crucially they counteract both heel and roll (the variation in heel due to wind and wave). Would love to see these two more distinct in the game. Please can we have control of bracing over all three masts on a ship rigged ship, not just foremast and everything aft ganged together. You still can't heave-to by backing your main mast, 5+ years after I started playing There need to be controls for all three masts! Dismasting (especially with ball shot) was way rarer in reality than in the game. There are plenty of accounts of even slender topmasts having multiple shot embedded in them after a battle to no detriment. 'Aiming' for a mast is completely retarded nonsense, it would be a very lucky and probably ineffective shot. Dismasting was all about shooting the backstays, usually with bar shot if available. Chain worked too but was better for attacking running riggng. The other strategy, used by the British in particular, was to target the chains with ball to weaken the weather shrouds. Halliards and other running rigging are significantly more likely to receive damage than for a dismasting to happen. Edit: more nuanced rigging damage and less dismasting will make for a skillful, interesting and fun game.

Yes, stopped working for me on Friday 19th, with the deployment of the conquest flag testing patch.

Another graphical version of this is available for download here: Thanks to all those who dug out the data! ** Updated 17.16pm 2017/06/02 with corrected link and image **

Couldn't disagree more! I'm not at all interested in the one off, special ships with some mass appeal from one particular action, but more in the prototypical designs that spawned large classes or a revolution in ship building. Customising, quirky but popular ships is exactly the opposite of how I'd like to see it go. And while I'm at it, we need way more classes of sloops of war than anything else, plus many more varieties of light frigates. 3rd rate plus, great, but not the be all and end all.

I'm very keen on these suggestions and see the 'pirate' role as heavily nuanced in this era. BTW, what is the key date or date range for this game? Further to Lt. Obiquiet's point, this is all about timelines and geo-political shifts. I see it as crucial to model shifting national alliances and resulting ROE changes in some way, rather than just having everyone at war with each other for ever. Large scale collaborative wargames (both digital and not) have often run sandboxed 'games' with distinct timelines, rules, setups and historical backrounds. These 'games' are driven by historical events that re-define the rules based on historical timelines, but sometimes elect to keep variability from the purely historical to keep the players challenged. A historically accurate flavour should ideally also come from Letters of Marque, in addition to out and out piracy. There is potentially also the capacity to have false colours and forged Letters of Marque, as well as a distinction between Letters of Marque and Letters of Marque and Reprisal. Thanks for starting the discussion again with piracy and neutrality considered as two facets of the same dynamic. EDIT: Lord Hood is right, a pirate SOL is a ridiculous contradiction in terms that spoils this great game.

I named myself after my ancestor Rear-Admiral Sir Thomas Louis, but recalling him in his guise as a Captain, when serving under Nelson at The Battle of the Nile.

Issue: Bow wave anim appears above foredeck sporadically Steps to reproduce: Ship - Brig Sail Trim - Full Sail Point of Sailing - Dead run Camera position - In gun mode looking directly for'ard Expected behaviour: No water anim should penetrate hull NB: I'd add a screenshot, but alas I am on a different computer.

Interesting thread, and the esprit de corps online is great so far. Makes me think of a couple of things though, especially when this all scales up: 1. Duelling - for settling the really rancorous disputes, how cool would it be to have a mini-game with your choice of weapons at dawn, accompanied by your seconds etc. More seriously... 2. Rated vessels firing on unrated vessels. This was completely outside the ethos of war in this era, UNLESS fired on first. Maybe it should be impossible for a rated vessel to fire on an unrated vessel until damage is received from that vessel or that vessel damages an ally. 3. I still maintain that ramming should cause you to lose all or most of your rig and force survival mode until you have cut free the wreckage.

Dublin, Ireland - originally from UK

Crew skill variance is vital to adding flavour. Also, there was an earlier comment about realism being undesirable - wrong, for many of us, realism is massively preferable to arcade nonsense. E.g. customising the gunnery configuration, within tight historical constraints, gives not only an effect to fighting capability, but could have a very tangible impact on sailing qualities, tacking speed, weather helm etc.

Most interested in cutters, brigs, sloops and lighter frigates. I'm very keen to experience the differences between ketch-rigged and snow-rigged brig sloops. Also, the ship-rigged sloops were so numerous as to make up the majority of AoS vessels. I actually voted for 3rd rates too, because this is the backbone of the fleets.