Time Compressed Years unlock ships by launch date - enabling older time periods

[Destraex]

I posted this elsewhere fairly deep within a thread but thought as it is an idea in it's own right I would post it here:

I have suggested this before but thought I would flesh it out in a bit more detail now that people are starting to long for older ships:

 

I would love to see older ships in game, but only if the game did some sort of bi-monthly or longer time period transition. For example. The game does day and night quicker than in real life now.

The game could also cycle years in a similar fashion. As the years go by more ships become available until it hits the beginning year again. In this way older ships would naturally be phased out as people took up newer types as the years progressed and more ships became unlocked. Before it started again at the earliest ship year. This could even give the feeling of always having something to look forward to. I mean once you hit the top year and go back to the first year the game will be fresh starting with the older ships... seeing them in their prime before they are finally superseded by newer designs. It will also make sure the game does not look like a strange mish mash of time periods and remains majestic.

 

As for ship types we have a lot at the moment:

 

Gunboat - tiny dingy with one gun at each end - a swarm of these historically could take out a becalmed frigate and did.

Mortar Brig - Artillery ship for fort attacks

A large assortment of smaller ships in between like the snow, cutter, privateer, lynx, yacht, niagara, rattlesnake etc

Brigs - navy and normal brig

Corvettes - cerberus but more coming

Light Frigates like the renomme

Frigates like the bell poule

Heavy Frigates like the trincomalee

Super heavy frigates and unique ships like the constitution

Merchants like the gross ventre and indiaman... although I would like to see pure merchants with virtually no guns and better holds to encourage people to take them. 20-40 crew usually

4th rates

3rd rate 74 guns

2nd rate 80-90 or so guns

1st rates like the victory

Super 1st rates like the Ocean and Santissima

 

I believe there may be a Xebec coming on top of this which will be a radical new way of sailing because the sails are completely different to anything we have in game at the moment.

I would like to see despatch/packet ships and specialised fishing boats as well as whalers (which may be controversial but were a major part of the economy of the day).

[DeRuyter]

We would need to have more designs from the first half of the 18th c. in game. For ships built before 1750 we have; Ingermanland, Renommee, and the Yacht. The Inger being the real outlier at 1075 because she has an older rigging style as well. Lots of very cool and ornate designs for the early ships but lots of work for the modellers at the moment!

[Sir Texas Sir]

 

I would like to see despatch/packet ships and specialised fishing boats as well as whalers (which may be controversial but were a major part of the economy of the day).

 

 

I thought a nice PC way to do Whalers and Slaver ships is just to make them NPC's and you get contracts or rewards for taking them out.   As for the type of ships they can bring some exploration ships in and that could be one way to get them (one dura ships) or if you do a reward point system you can get enough points after sinking so many to get the BP for that type of ship.   That way they won't piss off any of the PC folks as your stopping such actions not encouraging them.

[Destraex]

Texas. The British at least were actively hunting and stamping out slavery during this period, actually I just looked it up and it was 1807 it was outlawed in the UK and the British navy then actively hunted the slaver ships to extinction, but I believe they were stopping it long before them.

"The Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade was formed in 1787 by a group of Evangelical English Protestants allied with Quakers, to unite in their shared opposition to slavery and the slave trade. The Quakers had long viewed slavery as immoral, a blight upon humanity."

 

"The Royal Navy, which then controlled the world's seas, established the West Africa Squadron in 1808 to patrol the coast of West Africa, and between 1808 and 1860 they seized approximately 1,600 slave ships and freed 150,000 Africans who were aboard.^[11] The Royal Navy declared that ships transporting slaves were the same as pirates. Action was also taken against African leaders who refused to agree to British treaties to outlaw the trade, for example against "the usurping King of Lagos", who was deposed in 1851. Anti-slavery treaties were signed with over 50 African rulers.^[12]"

 

 

The Americans took another 60 years or so to outlaw it when the civil war happened so they defo would have some ships. I don't know about the other nations. Will look that up. Actually the Americans outlawed slavery a few months later because of British pressure, but kept their internal slave trade. So no American slave ships!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slave_Trade_Act_1807

 

I agree that slavers should be about as NPCs to capture. Then you should be able to sail the slave ships for some other purpose like shipping live cattle???? Trying to find a use for slaver ship models in game..... I know pirates converted some to pirate ships because of their good internal defences?

[Destraex]

I see. So you just had people twiddling their thumbs to play the top tier at the end of the cycle.

From a psychological point of view. That is very interesting. By that logic people should just never play a sailing game and move on to modern naval warfare sims or straight to prospective naval space combat games. Can people just never enjoy a period for what it is?

Was their some sort of disincentive to play the earlier tanks?

[LeBoiteux]

@ OP : Interesting idea to have older ships in NA.

 

One could have early ships and later ones in NA :

- mixed as now 

- or separated :

- on dedicated servers 

- in separate areas of the map, e. g. older ships in the Pacific area and earlier in the Caribbean 

- at different times of the RL day/week/month as OP proposes here. It could be with :

- time compressed years

- or a succession of bigger period of time (decade ? 20 years ? 3 periods : 1700-1750, 1750-1800, 1800-1820 ?)

- in combat with a dedicated BR system taking into account the sailing qualities of the ships

 

Within NA timeframe, as time goes by, ships got better sailing qualities, carried more and more guns with bigger and bigger caliber and design became more modern with less naval sculpture.

For example, in France :

- in early 18-C, a frigate could carry say 24 guns (6-pdr), a corvette 6-16 guns (4-pdr) 

- in mid 18-C, a frigate could carry 24-36 guns (8-pdr), a corvette 12-18 guns (4-pdr or 6-pdr)

- in late 18-C, a frigate could carry 32-44 guns (12-pdr or 18-pdr), a corvette 20-24 guns (6-pdr or 8-pdr)

(approximate numbers)

 

The current NA system might leave indeed little places for early (and thus less armed and slower) ships that carried those beautiful naval sculpture as counterpart.

For example, I guess that in 1758, when HMS Cerberus was built, she was a very decent frigate with her 28 guns IRL.

But in NA, she is easily beaten by an 1793 Corvette/light frigate, HMS Surprise, and could be considered as a kind of NA/1801 Corvette.

 

Separating early and later ships would give HMS Cerberus (that I took as an example) a new dimension and she would certainly be more used.

 

Likewise, La Renommée, with her 32 guns and her speed, could have a totally different role than now if she only fought other mid 18-C frigates that only carried 24-36 guns.

Same for the Ingermanland and any early ship that could be implemented in the future.

 

One of the main issues about that is the number of 3D ships that need to be modelled and implemented...

 

But I think that issue deserves some thinking.

(I guess devs have already thought of that though) 

[Destraex]

It's funny. Ships of the line from the immediately previous period... 1600s - 80 were just as well armed and indeed with better metal used in the cannon.

Sure the metallurgy and powder etc may not have be as good, but in general they carried comparable numbers of cannon and similar calibres.

It was just that the ships from the 1600s were poorer sailers and poorer hull designs. Indeed the earlier period ships carried much more amazing decoration, but their hull forms as I said

were simply not as sexy and naturally deadly looking.

So as we go through 1600s and head to mid 1700s we would start to get less decoration but more advanced sleeker looking ships we have in game now..

 

Think Ingermanland vs 3rd rate we have in game now.

[LeBoiteux]

Speaking of the previous period (second half of the 17-C to early 18-C), there were in France  hybrid vessels though : "ship-frigates" with lower and upper decks and armed quarterdeck/forecastle and around 30 to 50 guns (8-pdr and 12-pdr),

[Destraex]

Ship-Frigate? Got a link?

[Sea Archer]

I thought a nice PC way to do Whalers and Slaver ships is just to make them NPC's and you get contracts or rewards for taking them out. As for the type of ships they can bring some exploration ships in and that could be one way to get them (one dura ships) or if you do a reward point system you can get enough points after sinking so many to get the BP for that type of ship. That way they won't piss off any of the PC folks as your stopping such actions not encouraging them.

Slave ships would be great. They being only NPC, of course. When you cap one, you get a certain number crew added (maybe 100).

From Whalers you might get Whale oil, which could be a resource needed for some ships.