Some thoughts on potential improvements from a newbie - compass, sails, PoV

[Zargor]

Hello!

 

Preface: I am a big fan of naval combat and have some personal sailing experience although only with small yachts (sub 10mt). After some fretting (Alphas are a mixed bag) I have finally got myself Naval Action and so far, I like it very much. It's still very rough on the edges but I understand the team is small and things will need time, important part is that the center piece of it, the actual combat, feels very good, especially after the new patch.

 

Here are few things I have thought about and think would help:

 

1. Rotating Compass

 

Currently, the ship silhouette with the overlayed wind direction is not tied to your point of view. I find this a big impediment as when sailing manual sails I would like to know at a glance the wind direction relative to my course and point of view. It would be great if the compass rotated together with your point of view, allowing you to see immediately the wind direction relative to your ship course and your current general situation. I know the pennants can help here and this is how we did this when actually sailing, however this being a game, a little help would be good as sometimes telling the wind direction from them is not that straightforward.

 

 

2. Point of View

 

After playing some battles, there is one thing that started nagging me - the point of view. A big part of navigation is observing - determining other ships speed, course and plotting your own in a way to avoid collisions and such. While the bird's eye view does help a lot especially in bigger battles, I feel like this might be taking away a big chunk of skill and the feeling of being on an actual ship instead than tele-commanding a toy.

 

Maybe as an option for small battles first, it would be great to not have it and instead have several PoV on the ship, corresponding to crew positions. I understand that a game needs to make some compromise so what I think could work would be:

 

• Aft port & starboard, around the helm area, where the actual Captain would be
• Current port & starboard gun positions
• Fore port & starboard, this could be the chasers on bigger ships
• Top lookout - this would emulate having people on the lookout high in the rigging
• No bird's eye view

 

For the sake of the gameplay, the switching would be instant, simply emulating the relaying of the information to the Captain by the crew members. This would add immensely to the feeling of actually commanding a ship and create an entire new layer of depth based on understanding the general tactical situation and relative position and speed of ships.

 

 

3. Sails

 

I am fond of using the manual sails however I'm finding a major impediment to it currently. There are several pain points I would love to see added.

 

• change from digital to analogue: Having pre-set position for sails feels weird, for me it would be more natural to move the sail position on a smooth scale for fine tuning
• desired sail position indicator: I understand that on bigger ships the sails will take time to move to a new position however currently there is no indication of what that position would be. It would be very helpful to have an indicator so we can set the desired position precisely, without risking to move too much

Edited March 15, 2016 by Zargor