Henry d'Esterre Darby

As long as they're generic enough. You don't want a trademark lawsuit landing on your head.

Of course they don't have to be English! I'd heartily hope that taverns would be named in the local language.

I love the idea, but we don't even know if there will be taverns in Open World. That said, what better place to keep this going than in the Tavern. Let's see, I like: The Drunken Sailor Dog Watch The Rusty Anchor The Spirit Room

That's what I'm unsure about Grim. Whether the reference was in regards to the mooring chains which would have been attached not between the ships but between the ship and the anchorpoint on the seafloor, or whether it was indeed with regards to ships actually physically chained together. How do you "aim" the ship if it's chained tight to the one behind it? I'm just not sure what that reference really meant. See my correction above.

The image itself is outdated, but what it describes is still extremely useful and has value in my opinion. Thanks for keeping an eye on things though!

The image you found isn't chains that are on the surface - in order to do that they'd have to be under a ton of tension, and you wouldn't be able to move your ship over top to then hook up to it. What you're seeing, I believe, are chains that lay upon the bottom, with extensions that were buoyed to float on the surface. A ship would pull up to a mooring buoy, hook it and pull it aboard, and then make themselves fast to it, preventing the need to drop anchor and allowing a large number of ships to be moored close together without them fouling each others' anchors. Looking at the near-right part of the image, you can see a little square with a circle and a chain extended from it to one of the straight chains - I believe that's a representation of a mooring platform. It's possible the French ships at the Nile were moored on a chain system in such a way as to allow them to warp and or easily turn their sides to better deal with an attacking enemy force, and I think the mention of the chain not causing a problem for a ship passing betwixt the two French vessels was mainly in that it wasn't made so tight that it was too near the surface afore/abaft the moored vessels so as to foul the ship trying to break the line. Here is the quote that goes with the plate you've referenced: Another issue is attaching a chain to a ship in such a way as to foul a ship passing between the two, while not tearing the two ships to pieces. Other than a mooring system as I've mentioned above, where would you attach a chain to two vessels in such a way as to not damage the vessels if another vessel hit the chain, and in such a way as to not cause one or both of the ships to lose their anchor cable and come unmoored? That said, they did have large chain that they used to fix between two points to close a harbor, but I'm not sure ships were chained together in such a way as to effectively block another from passing through. Edit: I stand entirely corrected with regards to the Nile. It appears as if there was a chain of some sort stretched amongst the French ships to prevent the English from breaking their line. I have no idea what that would have looked like from an implementation standpoint, but I had missed that detail before.

Images are posted here: http://forum.game-labs.net/index.php?/topic/3644-alpha-open-world-current-development-images-large-images-updated-2422015/ Thanks Wind.

Kpt - Personally, I'm all for ramming being far more catastrophic for ships, especially smaller ships hitting larger ones. I'm not sure the ramming mechanic as currently implemented adds to gameplay fun.

Great! Glad they got you settled. Closing.

This is true for a number of reasons. First of all, the crew are not all equal. They may all be professionals, but they all do not have the same base of skill, the same experiences, the same levels of proficiency. They also read the weather differently, in fact, they attempt to steer for areas they believe to have a better weather pattern, which can put them a hundred or more miles away from another ship that has read things differently. They choose and trim their sails differently based on their expectations and experience. Even should two boats be exactly the same, down to the last micron, the myriad of different rigging and sail adjustments that are available, accompanied by the actions of the crew themselves will create performance differences.

Really sorry to hear about that Teradyn. Hang in there!

The devs went away from the 18 has the best penetration as a result of player input of historical penetration tables I believe. It's a fine sign of such a proactive and open Development group.

The answer to 1 and 2 are currently No. 3, likely not, though I understand that you may be able to use NPCs to ship cargo in certain circumstances.

I was kind enough to leave this thread open, despite a partial violation in reposting and referencing a moderated thread, in the hopes that perhaps some experienced members would discuss this issue with Kngsbrg. Discussing the results of moderation on the forums is forbidden. I'll further ignore the posting of a thread with duplicate discussion items in it to previous threads. Finally, I'll be kind enough to overlook multiple transgressions of forum rules for a moment to see if Kngsbrg can make a salient point about his desire for change by doing so with respect to forum volunteers and experienced players, some of which were personally involved in the early development of the aiming system and through whose hard work we have arrived at the point we are today. It is possible for us to disagree with each other without telling someone directly that they're wrong, and I'm running out of kindness, extremely rapidly. Further disrespect will result in this thread getting locked as well, and I will encourage a warning be given for repeated violations of forum rules. Please don't exceed the remainder of my kindness. Now, removing my Moderator Hat for a moment, and restoring my Captain's Hat: If you truly want a feature like this, then you are also asking to remove the auto-stabilization of the guns. The guns set to a particular height, the maximum of which is a particular angle. The guns then move of their own accord up and down to maintain the angle you have then set. If a wave, or your heel, causes the gun to run out of angle, it is now at maximum (or minimum) and can go no higher, so the muzzle's aim point ascends or descends to maintain maximum/minimum angle. Once that movement ceases, the gun goes back to stabilizing itself on the new aimpoint. This serves two purposes: 1. It creates a situation where your aimpoint can't stay the same if the movement of your ship exceeds the ability for your guns to go higher or lower. This is limited by the gun's length, and the gunport itself. 2. It also creates a situation where you can not fix your aim, fire, throw out a ton of sail, then reduce sail and have your aimpoint come back to the exact same point. This is one of the skill based shooting items - if you're going to be in heavy seas, or sailing a ship, part of whose balance is greater heel than others in her class, you have to exercise extra skill in either exhibiting enough seamanship to avoid an excessive elevation, or remember the rough aiming point you were at prior to the ranging shot, and re-adjust your aim to approximately that same spot after you have brought your heel under control, or that big wave has passed. It is my humble opinion that allowing the aimpoint to track regardless of heel/waves would be a simplifying factor on the shooting skill of the game, which many agree is already too easy. In my opinion, were you to add this feature, I would argue that the gyrostabilization should be removed from the guns, so that you had to time the roll of the ship as well, which would allow the same exact elevation to be maintained on the guns regardless of your heel or a wave but still maintain a skill level.

Currently the telescope is aimed independently of the guns. Is your suggestion to fire guns with the last set elevation and traverse?

They originally had those lines, but found that it made gunnery far too easy, so they were removed. Thank you for the suggestion though!

On warships, the spirits were very carefully controlled and meted out - extremely carefully. Only in the last stages of a successful mutiny or if the ship was sinking would you see the sailors break into the spirit room and start getting drunk. While there may have been a small degree of drunkenness here and there, those found drunk on duty were usually subject to punishment. Having a "drunk" crew just didn't happen unless the Captain had been deposed.

Sorry mate, I'm going to nip this one in the bud before it takes off.

To the best of my knowledge, they haven't begun Open World testing just yet. Give you joy on your new command sir!

The Developers are working on the chat system, and this feature is on the list. Thanks for posting!

Thank you Brigand. Question has already been answered, locking.

That's a non-sequitur sir, it does not follow that one requires the other. If you'd like to make the argument that making sail or turning should be slower will improve gameplay, please do so. That argument can't be made by demanding those items be implemented simply because another unrelated item is being implemented. Increasing long range dispersion also means that, when Open World or the ability to escape a battle comes, a smaller, slower ship has more of an opportunity to get away from the larger ship. By making the extreme range of the guns less reliable to hit, you increase the survivability of the smaller ship, and increase the meta of "trying to knock away a spar or stay/shroud" with a chaser (on both sides) to allow the pursued and the pursuer to try and slow each other. That's as opposed to simply getting inside max range, yawing, and giving them an extremely accurate broadside.

Doesn't contain a suggestion for the game, nor does it involve current Sea Trials build, moving to "General Discussion".

I think one of the best approaches would be something like the insult list - a list of adjectives and nouns that could be used to create a random name might be even better. In an extremely large list, there would be a far lower chance of encountering a similar name. It's not foolproof, and would prevent the more common names like Victory, Constitution from being in game, but would be far preferable (to me at least) than 80 Constitutions, or HMS WTFBBQPWNYRFACELOLOLOL. ETA: For a value-added component, you could allow someone who paid for the privilege to choose from the list manually, putting together a neat name that they really like.

I'm not sure it would have a greatly measured effect prolonging battles really. If you know you're not going to hit much at 1200 yards, you're going to close the distance to attack at a distance at which you know you can score good hits. If anything, because of lack of penetration at extreme distance, using this mechanic to encourage players to close the range might shorten battles slightly, as players will not see as many no-penetration hits, so that when they close to a distance with less dispersion, they'd have a higher likelihood of doing actual damage when they're seeing balls hitting the enemy, allowing more damage to be done sooner in the match.