Henry d'Esterre Darby

I believe this is already simulated to some degree, as ships are able to turn without any headway and even with every sail shot off you can still move at a very slow pace.

The current advancement system is just to help ensure people test all of the ships. There will be a different system altogether in place at release for earning larger ships. That said, merchants don't trade using a warship. Warships aren't designed to carry large amounts of cargo, they're designed to fight. Merchant ships will be far less "armored", have far fewer men, less rigging/sails, and, in general, very few cannon.

That looks like a cell phone shot of a part of the screen.

For what Nation? A privateer must have a country.

You could always disable a deck or two or let them pound on you for good damage experience.

I may be completely reading too much into this: In response to a post asking what would happen if pirates all ganged up together to raid ports and shipping:

That one was a lot of fun. Very enjoyable, even if I did sail in such a lubberly manner as to allow Maturin to board me.

Understood, and it would be a great starting point for unimproved areas, you're right on that.

This sounds very similar to how Naval Action is approaching things. Welcome!

I'm not saying I'm for or against the idea, but what I've gleaned of Admin's posts, that may be their idea.

The UI is great for this stage of development. No worries Admin. Looking forward to everything on the list, especially ballistics and the commander tablet.

Details are still sketchy. It sounds like if you want to be a pure loner pirate, you're going to be kill on site for everyone and your account will be locked out for a brief period after you're caught. On the other hand, it sounds like they're planning on players being able to form their own nations which can then prey on other nations - more of a privateer status than the traditional pirate. Piracy in that time was extremely rare, and most pirates had an extremely short career before they found themselves hanging in a gibbet on Portsmouth Head. NA sounds like they're trying to prevent the more modern "Everyone's a Pirate!!! YARR!!!!" meme that has held sway in most games of this period over the last 10 years.

There were all manner of minor monarchies and tiny little countries at the time. Who is to say what would have happened had they been led differently, found particular resources that went unclaimed, made the right alliance instead of a wrong one??? From what I've heard of Open World, it sounds like many nations will be founded by the players. Some may be one-port wonders with very little political and military power, but others may grow to rival the "French", or the "British". Having the major nations is well and good, but who will run them? What fair way do you decide that?

Once again, Alpha Test. Those things will come when it's time to work on that aspect of the game.

It's not about the product, it's about the content that they've licensed - most products that display charts or maps are, in actuality, using another party's data. I have no idea what the licensing cost might look like. The idea has a lot of potential though! One must understand, however, that Havana Bay, or the East River, are entirely different today than they were in the 1700's, before massive dredging and filling and other changes were made that would be in complete disagreement with current charts. Some of the most famous places will appear on a modern map with none of the original bars or challenging navigational features.

There's no incentive because we're still in Alpha, there's no economy, no open world, no crew system, nothing that really incentivizes a player not to fight to the death. That's all coming, for now, we test combat!

It's not the most intuitive thing on the planet, I struggled a bit too.. Welcome! Hope you see you on the seas soon.

More than four letters required won't fix the problem.

Yup! All manual shooting. There's not much to change before you get Surprise - those are single deck ships so they only have one row of guns on each side to change and, at lest in the case of the Cutter, Lynx, and Yacht, no chasers to change either. Grape has effect with the armor up, but you need to not shoot it at the armor - try shooting just above. Pump repairs are for when your pump is red or yellow and you need it now. Works fine, but only works to repair the pump, you're right in that you need to enter survival mode to pump ship. Great impressions here, I know Admin will find them very valuable for new-person help! Welcome.

It's good press, and the resulting video, keystone cops and all, looked like a very fun scrum - of course all the cursing in chat maybe wasn't the best representation of our users (I hope).

I'm sure they'll have you fixed up shortly Mort. You can also PM Admin here on the forums if you haven't had a response by later today.

Looking forward to having you on the other end of my guns! Welcome.

And that's a great point right there I hadn't thought of Maturin. +1 That said, for playability, the Devs allow rotation even at a standstill (the fluff being that you're using anchors or towing the head around with boats). This wouldn't be done in real life except in dire circumstances, but there is a bow to playability there at the moment.

I agree with all of this. If you see the game controls more as "I'm the Captain, bring the ship about!" and less as "Hey, let me take the wheel and bring her about myself", having to reverse rudder during a tack is an unnecessary control input. As the Captain, I say "come 2 points starboard" to the helmsman, he and the sailing master handle the detail work of making that happen. It shouldn't be as it is now "Ready about, helms alee, we're backing, helmsman you infernal lubber, reverse that rudder!"

And there we're very much agreed. That morale "needle" could cause a positive and negative effect on the "realistic" list above. I'm not a fan of auto-striking either.