Henry d'Esterre Darby

Your Steam issues are likely a result of NA being in a testing status - the streaming feature doesn't work either from what I'm hearing. This. The idea is to only show images that have the game in working order. Admin has also posted that you can put videos on YouTube and Stream the game as well so long as you mention that the game is in Pre-Release Alpha status, and don't emphasize any problems or bugs that you encounter, editing them out where possible would be a good idea in my opinion.

Only if they're whalers.

Disagree on this. If I capture an enemy ship as a Captain in a National Navy, it's not my ship - it's the Admiralty's. If the ship is salvageable, the Admiralty may choose to bring it into the service, and I'll get some prize money for it, but it's not my ship. I don't get to keep it. If the Admiralty doesn't bring it into the service (let's say instead of a First Rate, it's a sloop), I might choose to purchase it out of pocket for the prize price (if you wanted to stay true to history here, you could put it on the Auction Block for that nation's members to bid upon it), but I wouldn't see this happening much with Rates.

Is that a recent change? I've done it without being dead, and I know a number of folks have used that technique to create screen shots and videos while under sail.

Admin, you guys make it easy to help folks out with your responsiveness and willingness to discuss underlying mechanics and your "vision" - it's far easier for us to answer simple questions when we know the answer or the direction the game is taking due to the Developers being so interactive on the forums. Mr. Bolitho, it's our pleasure, and hopefully you'll take what you've learned and pass it on to newer folks as well.

If you mean the camera viewpoint was doing that, you can press Home to unpin your camera from the viewpoint on your ship and fly it around. The person shooting the video may have done that.

Giving you a Like for awesomeness there Mr. Bristol. A glass of wine with you sir!

Pretty good review. A couple of quibbles. All ships can equip carronades. Check the constructor tab. You're under NDA for WoWs, you may want to strike any details you mentioned there.

I never said it should be prioritized, just a suggestion as a nice to have.

There's a "settling" action that causes a lurch right now. Admin indicated it's something they may need to smooth out a bit.

Agreed on the operation of First Rates. They should require extremely active and successful Navy Service, or the massive support of a Large Society through cost to obtain/operate/maintain. Where we disagree is with your claim that a Captain who lost his ship would find it difficult to regain Command. This is entirely at odds with the spirit and operation of the historical Navy at that time. As long as you didn't lose your ship through malfeasance or negligence, and were a ship available, you'd be assured of regaining command of the same rough class, or even perhaps a better ship based on the circumstances in which you lost it. Captains were required by the Articles of War to fight their ship, and not to run away unless presented with a superior force or a losing battle (e.g. after exchanging broadsides, lucky hits or other risks of war presented you with a situation where continuing to fight would guarantee the loss of the ship, and running away would allow you to bring her to action another day). A Captain that lost his ship always was subject to the Court Martial, but unless the loss was the fault of himself or his crew, was found not-guilty and returned to the service with an untarnished reputation.

Yes, since each key is different, paying for another key and then forwarding the key to a friend when received should get them in just fine.

No ship of the line had such ranging methods. The quarterdeck, knowing the approximate dimensions of a vessel, could possibly use a sextant to get a rough idea of range, but the rolling and pitching of the ship wouldn't allow anything like what you're suggesting here. The gunners had to estimate it, and while later vessels may have had a sight of some sort on the cannon themselves, that sight still was subject to the movement of the ship - it wasn't the gyrostabilized line that we have in game. In fact, I understand they used to have gradation marks of some sort on the gunnery view, and it made gunnery far too simple and easy, so it was removed. The gunnery is pretty easy right now, it doesn't need to be made any more simple IMO.

That's the most likely assumption Mahlitz.

The game is written in Unity, so if there's a problem between Unity and your driver/card combination, you'll have to wait until Unity fixes it. In the mean time, you might want to send one or two of the more detailed threads to the support email so they can see what the problem might be and determine if there's anything they can do about it. That information needs to be more than "it doesn't work" - it will need to have specifics of the paraticular Unity DLL that is failing, any stack information, related objects (such as a particular physics object that conflicts), etc.

Before you point the fickle finger of blame and leave, you may want to check your local network and route to the game server for packet loss or temporary bad ping rates. It's possible its you.

From what I've heard, the command change functions may be a bit wonky. Change them at your peril.

Thanks for posting the fix! Glad you got it running.

Manning the pumps took a fair number of people if I understand it correctly. This wasn't a little hand pump, but a large pump which took a lot of men to service. That said, while I'm using realism to back up the argument, this is also a gameplay suggestion.

If even the sender is failing, you may have some video driver problems. Before I saw your latest post I was going to suggest you try to run the game on a lower resolution.

We're agreed on all of those points. Ranging shots are important. Vertical dispersion at longer ranges is far, far, far too small. I've agitated in multiple threads to exponentially increase dispersion, both vertical and horizontal, beyond mid-range.

Due to lack of rifling, you're also missing the spin imparted to the projectile, which serves to "even out" imperfections and imbalances in the projectile, causing each to have a different aerodynamic drag which will emphasize that impurity/imbalance as it flies through the air, causing the projectile to swerve in an unpredictable direction. Even a completely round projectile can obtain decent accuracy if a good amount of spin is imparted upon it.

Some Admirals drilled their squadrons, watching their gunnery, practicing passing signals up and down a widely spread line, etc. No, they didn't have a "safe" place to do so, but it was something that was done, at least for blockading squadrons. Mr. Danforth's statement is pretty spot on, in that by the time you were handed a ship, you usually had quite a few years of service under your belt in the lower officer ranks, having been responsible for the ship on watches, led that ship in performing all of the various maneuvers, etc, all under the watchful eye of your far more experienced superiors. I too am a casual gamer, however, I understand that people that have hours and hours to spend will always be better than me. The addition of a place to train will not change that, they may indeed just group up and lie off of Scotland, but what will be denied is that same safe area to myself, who may not have a big group to use to keep myself safe while I'm learning or trying to teach a friend or random newguy the ropes. In fact, by denying such an area, you're reinforcing the ability of large, well organized societies to provide extra training opportunities to their hard core members, while ensuring that those with less organization or size do not have that same "safe" area but must risk the open sea with a new ship or a newguy that they're trying to help ease into the game.

It is my understanding that the way ships "die" will be expanded and made more variable at a later phase of testing. You're absolutely right in that currently, there's not much variance, but that will come in time once some of the other features are in.

In real life, you could tell if a vessel was making a lot of water because you could see the jet of water coming from the pumps and going over the leeward side. At some point in the future, I'd like to see this in the game as well. When a ship is in survival mode and is actively pumping water (there's still blue in the compass/wind indicator), there should be a jet of water going over the side that is visible from other ships. This would be another step towards a more realistic understanding of how damaged another ship is without having to use gamey indicators.