Kngsbrg

Wow! Glad to see people caring for simulation! One thought, though: A true simulation needs features and mechanics, most of whom need space on the GUI and/or a button. Some good simulations can get away with only very few buttons, e.g. Silent Hunter III. Others need every button there is inkluding Shift+Alt-modifier! What I am trying to say is, keep the control surfaces somewhat limited. I would not mind giving up certain simulation aspects for the sake of gameplay, though. After all, gameplay makes or breaks a game.

It makes me sad to read this. Very sad.

One aspect not mentioned yet is heavy sea. Some ships can maintain a somewhat decent speed even in heavy sea, others are completely crippled by it. Other than that, ship lenght is in no way the go to criteria for a high max. speed!

It is 1815 and yet you are still talking pirates? Privateers? Yes. Pirates? Arrr, no! Other than than, solid proposal.

--Disrespectful Content Edited - H. Darby-- Have you read anyhting I wrote? You guys talk about aiming being easy at it is and I never ever said something else or something to change that, but you suggest taking ranging shots and in this very thing I proposed to have a closer look at a problem at hand that has nothing to do with aiming itself. --Personal Attack Edited - H. Darby--

Your proposal is a valiant one, but you are, like many great men before you, ahead of your time. Currently, there are two major problems with your proposal. A. At the moment, the player base is split roughly into two by allowing PVP and PVE. A further division would result in smaller battles and extended waiting times, less accurate group battle samples and, most of all worse matchmaking. This is something one can look into once there is a stable playerbase big enough to support such modes. Think about it that way, would you rather have normal PVP or random PVP if you only could have one of them? B. The way progression is handled at them moment such a game type would not do. As ships tend to do more damage the more guns and higher caliber guns they have, you could not implement a general experience earned. One could implement a certain factor, like 1.5 for snow, 1.0 for trinco or 0.5 for victory. One could most certainly make it work, but only at the expenses of a lot of trouble and most likely a lot of folks unhappy with the progression system. After all, people want to play that shiny new ship they just unlocked and most think bigger is better.

It is a good suggestion and certainly one should look into, but only once one fully knows how to employ unitys engine and has everything set up to properly focus on getting it to work. I believe to have the unit collision handled in a reasonable manner will take a lot of effort and that the game is not there yet, but I sure would be glad to see it around v2.x!

As said, I ignore your "beginner how to" tipps, because they have nothing to do with what I am describing, but thank you for trying. And no, this is in no way a aimbot --Disrespectful Content Edited - H. Darby-- Your other remark, what the admin said is exactly my solution A in the very first post, so what is your point exactly? As for the problem, neither. It is merely about eliminating a unwanted effect that has nothing to do with skill. As for aiming in general, I would love to see it tweaked to be less accurate, but this to decide is not my paygrade.

I will not react to the posts stating their feelings towards the current aiming mechanic in general and neglecting my remarks upon a minor, but troublesome problem which occurs in a very specific scenario. The little red bar is their eyeballing and their guessing. The little red bar is in no way part of the guns or anything, it is simply the order for the gunners where to shoot! Nothing else. It is not their crosshair or their lining up of the shot, it is the commanding officers order where to train their guns at. If they have their guns set up right or not and if they hit or not is not part of the little red bar. On a side note, we are talking early 19th century sailing ships, many of whom having guns on the open deck. Gunner could hit stuff under mild conditions, I do not say they could snipe a seagull from 15km, but to say they did not know if their cannon ball would fly 50m or 500m is a vast understatement. Again, the precision of the gunnery in its current form is, in my eyes, very much in question. Deviation and mean are way too consistent, ranging is way too good. All those people crying about how they do not want this turned into Naval Action Arcade, this is already Naval Action Arcade. It does not take skill to hit things even on range. Just saying. Edit: Thank you, this was probably the case. Your proposal is spot on, something like that would come in mind and would definitly serve as a solution!

Unfortunatly, most people are on very different levels in terms of understanding the aspects of the metagame and, to be honest, righteously so, since they can play this game whichever way they want. Common sense would dictate for a single player to communicate with the others, to play as a team and to achieve victory, but this is not how this works. People playing this game can have very different backgrounds, some may be banker, who just want to fire some broadsides for giggles, some might have a lot more free time on their hands and have taken playing this game as their holy crusade in the name of whatever entity they believe in to raze the earth of any infidel they encounter and that do not share their state of mind on how this game should be played. You see, both worlds are tough to match and you will notice this with any multiplayer game with a somewhat broad audience. Learn to play around this, learn to fight a losing battle and accept things for what they are. At the end of the day, you should be able to look in the mirror and say, you did the best you could do. Nothing more, nothing less.

Very good! Thank you. Looking forward to this. First of all, thank you for your answer. You call it gyro, but I call it a artificial point representing the order of aiming. It is not the actual level of the cannons, but the intent of the gunner where he wants to aim, not where he is aiming at at all times. With that in mind, maybe you can follow some of my remarks even better. In all honesty, this sentence does come off a litte odd to me though. My post in the Suggestion Area was about a precise solution for a UI indactor regarding elevation, which you found not to be worthwhile therefor telling me so and locking the thread. I do get that and I am ok with it. Now, my second post was about a general aiming UI discussion and persistent problems at hand. I do not see this being a repost? I was simply referring to my other post to give other captains, such as Grim, the chance to catch up on my intentions. I was not reposting my original, very specific intent and I would like you to consider that. Furthermore, you mentioned other violations which I do not seem to recall and I may ask you to contact me in a private message to illustrate your claim. If my tone got a little picky it may have had something to do with the attitude of certain responses. In Germany, we have a proverb saying "the tone makes the music". Anyhow, since Admin was so kind as to acknowledge their interest in ever improving the gameplay and aiming still being a work in progress, this thread can be held open for further captains to illustrate their opinion on the mechanic or, if you insist and deem it appropriated within reason, can very well be locked.

This is getting out of hand. You keep coming up with some sort of advice that is totally misguided. The problem I describe is a gameplay element and does not depend on wether I sit in my Lynx, my Brigg or my Bellona. It has nothing to do with skill. It is a fundamental problem. I do not not not want the Red Aiming Bar gone, I do not say it is too hard to shoot something. Actually, the volleys are way too precise for my taste and ranging is way too good. All I am saying is, there is a fundamental problem in the game mechanic and it should not mess with a artificial aiming point by forcefully moving it away from its intended place due to heeling. The people who think this "working as intended" fault in the game mechanic is increasing the skill ceiling are dead wrong, it simply increases balancing of mediocre and good player due to RNG. You can not keep track of heeling at max. elevation. Slightest changes are devastating and yes, it does make a difference if you are hitting waterline or railing, but some moderators in this thread seem to be really great at what they are doing, since aiming is not that hard. Again, the scenario which I am describing is: max. elevation of gun slightest heeling slightest offset which could go unnoticed Nothing more, nothing less. This should not happen. Some sort of indication for this offset would increase the skill ceiling again. I am really sick and tired of some of the responses here, which are really not staying on track/on topic and seem to not even read my posts. Those who do and still disagree seem to are somewhat mislead by my proposal. This should in no way reduce the actual act of aiming thus not lowering the skill cap. It simply removes RNG from this game. If gamelabs decides to keep balancing gunnery by using RNG, even if only in 0.5% of the cases, I would be severly disappointed. As mentioned, the key for finetuning gunnery lies elsewhere, e.g. precision. If there is some flaw to the specific problem I mentioned and not to gunnery per se or any other aspect of NA, please respond. No more "aiming is not that hard just lead your shots" responses please. Edit: Just noticed this, it fits perfectly into the whole picture. You say something totally out of context and seem to not have read a lot of what I wrote. To enlighten you a litte, I said: I never said max. gun range, I never said something about penetration or not. I just said, let's read it again together, gun range limited by max. elevation. Now, next time just try to stay on topic and avoid derailing this thread.

Thank you for your attempt to help me, but I did know that and, again, this is in no way part of the problem which I am describing. As my point may not be clear to all participants of this thread yet, let me make this crystal clear by taking the liberty to demonstrate using a example: Ship A with Captain A sails windward of Ship B and is just in gun range. This is important, since he is already at the max. elevation of his guns. Captain A then proceeds to take aim at Ship B and fires off one shot. While Captain A watches the cannon ball fly just a few meters shy of Ship B with the scope, the ship heeled a little bit and it forced the aiming of the guns a down by a bit. The Captain A did not notice this, because he was watching Ship B with the scope. (the heeling forcefully moved the mouse aiming bar down, because the aim was very close to the max. elevation, being just in gun range) Captain A thinks his aim was almost perfect, adjusts a little and fires a volley, just to see it miss and hit the water way too short. He did not notice the change of his aiming bar (it was just half a millimeter) and fell prey to a broken game mechanic. My point here is, that no gunner in the world would get the order to shoot 500m, see his aim get dropped because of heeling and say "whatever, might just fire anyhow". He would wait for the aim to be somewhat on target again and _then_ fire. Heeling should not affect the POINT WHERE I AM AIMING AT, even if it there is no way my guns could reach it! Heeling effectivly changes my point of aim, if I am at maximal or minimal elevation and this is called vertical lockup. This change or displacement of my point of aim is exactly the broken mechanik which I am referring to and what some people, some mods included, do not seem to understand.

Where to start... Well, if you say so... who am I to say something else? INow is it? This is the Discussion section, how dare I post something worth a discussion that got locked in Suggestions. My five minute search did not come up with this indepth discussion and I am sorry if I missed it. I thought this topic to be of utter importance, very much to the contrary of your opinion it seems. Does that belittle the value of my thoughts? I do not think so for a second, my dear moderator. Sure, learn to cope with a broken mechanic by spending more time with it. To be honest, I believe I am very close to the skill ceiling and I have decided that it is a broken mechanic and poor design. There is nothing to cope with. If I see a change to be important, who are you to tell me to shut up about it? Is this not a forum for Alpha/Beta/pre1.0 participants to discuss the game at hands? I highly doubt it is a perfect as you make it out to be, but again.. who am I to tell you what to think. Finishing thoughts, I do believe your overall experience of game design seems to be somewhat lacking, but that is just my humble opinion. Well, you have not noticed the vertical lockup? What part of my two previous posts did you not understand? Do you understand that I am not mocking the aiming per se, but the _v e r t i c a l l o c k u p_ ? The arcade'ish style comes from that intense precision, dont you think? A gunner could very well fire a shot at a certain range with, you said so yourself, markers. This is single shot only and has nothing to do with a rocking broadside in the middle of 10m waves.

I can't see how fixing a broken element is changing the skill cap. The problem at hand DOES NOT involve any skill ceiling other than judging millimeters between mouse aim bar and horizon/ship rail. Regarding the red bar aiming, people learn pretty quick that very small mouse movements mean hundreds of meters range difference. It is purely "who can move the mouse with the smallest increments possible". Experienced player get used to it, new player get screwed because of it, but in the long run, everybody has to deal with the same poor mechanic. But this is not the problem at hand, the problem is the VERTICAL LOCKUP which happens, when you want to aim below min. eleavtion or above max. elevation and which "locks" your mouse either by hand or by heeling of the ship. With solution A you still have to aim and guesstimate the range, but you will not be screwed by vertical lockup! This has nothing to do with the skill of aiming, it is simply preventing your red bar to be moved by a tiny bit due to heeling while you look with your telescope and do not have the chance to ever notice it. Solution B is rather aimed towards a final solution, since the game mechanic at the moment should not be satisfactory for anyone. Having to set mouse speed to a tenth and having to work with percentages of on screen millimeters to properly hit the waterline is not the way to go. No one in all honesty can call this a desirable mechanic. It is not about skill, it is about proper setup.