Henry d'Esterre Darby

I understand entirely sir. Cheers!

That is making the assumption that the folks working on ships are the same folks working on other features. They may be able to mainly work in parallel.

Actually, I've argued against having such names Madam, but then, I've argued a lot of points since I've arrived in these forums. That said, one pet peeve of mine is this insistence on historical accuracy when it negatively affects good game play. Other than people "not liking what they see", there is no reason not to allow women Captains. As with some posters above, I'd far prefer they be dressed in a femininely styled naval uniform (that is to say I don't want to see half naked women commanding ships, I'd like them to be decently dressed, not too dis-similarly to your avatar), but I think there's no real good reason to not allow them. Fine, perhaps that argument brings me by the lee with regards to ship and player names (HMS PWNZRLOLOL and my favorite of yours, Captain "fart nuggets"), but if having modern leet names for people and ships also means we allow female ship Captains in all professions, I'd gladly be willing to make that exception. The female gaming community is quite important in my opinion, and having female avatars that are tasteful and respectful is an important part of any modern game.

Have you considered loaning that to a museum for preservation and documentation? Looks amazing, I'm looking forward to seeing high res images.

The ability to strike and surrender is on the list of things the Devs will put in the game.

From what I'm seeing, that card supports DirectX 11, so you should be good to play.

Completely true, I just didn't want to get down to that level of detail, the post was getting large enough as it was.

As a flight fanatic, it's fun to also know that a sail will "stall" prior to luffing (or flapping when the wind angle is too small to fill it). In a fore/aft rig (that would be most of the modern rigs on the boats you're used to seeing - in the game, the cutter/Lynx/yacht) when the wind is just starting to angle too closely for the sail to fill, the leading edge of the sail near the mast (named the "Luff" - go figure) will balloon a little in the opposite direction of the sail's fill. This is a "stall", and it's what you look for when you're adjusting the sail for best speed - you'll let out the boom (let the swinging piece of wood to which the bottom, or "Foot" of the sail is attached out away from you), just until you see the stall, then you pull the sheet back in just enough for the stall to go away. Similarly, if you're trying to point as close as possible to the wind, you'll sheet the boom all the way in, and then bring the bow up into the wind until you see the stall, then let the bow fall off away from the wind just a hair - you're as close as you can go in that particular speed of wind. Unfortunately, stalls and luffing are not modeled in the sails in the game at the moment, you can simply see the sail go "flat" when it's not drawing air, but it's a neat little real world fun fact for you. Welcome to the game!

I was thinking the same thing. It's good otherwise!

Darn it, I was reading the wind indicator backwards. I also see the source of my confusion. My only problem is that if you're starting at the heading indicated, there's no point in tacking, just wear ship to the new heading and save a ton of time. There was a post a while back that said to tack, you should head downwind first to build up speed. If you're going to do that, just wear ship and save yourself from having to come through 270 degrees of heading.

The bigger problem still lies in that most crews weren't mono-faith, especially not once the ship had been out of home waters. I think the entire concept of faith giving you bonuses is far too complex to implement properly and realistically without making it "magic", and that the time spent trying to create something like that mechanic can be far better spent on other things.

Fore/Aft rig control isn't complete at the moment. Manual control is on the list of things to do.

Grim, I'm not sure the little pictures are in order. If they are, I have no idea what you're trying to illustrate. Edit - You're showing a how to wear ship, not a tack.

Let's be totally clear - the page is back up, but the Pre-Ordering system itself is still down. Hopefully Paypal will have their account running again very shortly.

No need to be sorry, welcome to Naval Action!

That's exactly the problem. Trying to fight a ship when it's overloaded with men would be a nightmare.

Yes. NA doesn't receive the name fresh from Steam every time you launch, nor is it stored locally on your machine. It's set in their database servers, likely associated with your core Steam ID or Token, and that's the last time that value is updated. There is no current mechanism for that value to be updated again. It's nothing to get upset about though - when they start working on the character creation code, you'll be able to update your name then to something you're happier with. I know it's a pain for now, but such is life in Alpha.

There's a reason the United States has the 1st Amendment barring state sponsored religion, and that's a prime example. That article doesn't say a Chaplain must be on board, only that Sunday be observed, and effectively, that if a Chaplain is preaching, that it be the dogma of the Church of England. I never said Chaplains weren't ever aboard ship, I did say that many sailors didn't like them there, and that "Blue Light" Captains that tried to run their ships perfectly within the teachings of the church were often quite unpopular with the crew. "It's Sunday, we'll rig church and eat our special Sunday meal." Yes, required. "It's Sunday, and the ship's Chaplain is going to lecture you on sin for an hour." Not required. I'll restate for the record - I'm against Religion being used aboard ship for morale or performance boosts of any kind. I'm adamantly for religion to be used for missions, land based organizations, etc. Even possibly prestige increases for tithing to a limited degree would be ok with me. I just don't want "Ships Parson" to be a required piece of equipment to get extra bonuses.

The only place you made a mistake was in not searching for this topic prior to posting. We have a few threads regarding surrender mechanics. They're planned and very similar ideas have been proposed. You're right in that incentive will be needed to encourage ships to strike rather than fight until sunk.

Except NA doesn't pick it up. Once it's set in NA, it's set.

If he has already launched the game, and chosen a name, it's fixed until such time as the Developers create character creation functionality, and I'm not even sure I've seen that one on the features they're talking about yet. So for now, he's stuck with his choice until they have time to work on that feature.

Sunday Mass wasn't even practiced by many Royal Navy Captains - if there wasn't a parson on board, they'd just read parts of the Articles of War that might apply to situations they were concerned about. The reason the crew might be much less apt to fight on Sunday was much less about any sermon, and far more about keeping their "nice" clothes in good condition. Woe betide the sailor who messed up his Sunday best - you couldn't just buy a new coat or hose out in the middle of nowhere. This. Men of faith were often considered bad luck aboard British ships. And "blue light" Captains, who were very serious about a pious ship, often didn't allow the little pleasures that the sailors so much enjoyed, such as women of pleasure aboard while in port. Some were even abstemious to the point of not allowing anything but the minimum required alcohol aboard. The idea of "Add a Parson and get a morale bonus" isn't necessarily a historically correct one, at least for the Royal Navy. Further, as mentioned above, many crews were of mixed faiths, everything from animism to Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, etc. If you want to roleplay that your ship espouses a certain religion, more power to you, but I just don't think we need to waste time on mechanics around that aspect. Again, this. Well stated sir. A Captain in the Royal Navy usually didn't hate the French as such. In fact, there was very little rancor towards the French people and those who served in her military. That doesn't mean you'd do your darndest to sink, burn or take a prize a French Ship, or gleefully bombard a French shore battery - but that was your business. Once your "enemy" struck, they became respected gentlemen, far from being hated. You might hate Buonapart with a passion, but you usually didn't hate your counterparts in the military.

Yes, religion played a huge factor in society at the time, however, I don't see any real need to try to implement it here. As Mr. Aagaard has suggested, period and regionally specific buildings would be great, but having a parson on board doesn't really do much for the morale of your highly superstitious sailors. You may as well implement fear of a ghost at the bowsprit while you're at it. I just don't think it adds anything to gameplay.

The Devs are also looking at this - it may be a bug.

As soon as PayPal gets their act together, unfortunately. There's no ETA just now.