Little things you'd like to see

[Destraex]

I would like to see a few things especially in the interface menu:

 

a) Full historical write ups and a portrait of the ship in the menu. So that people can identify with the ship and understand it's historical role and where it fits into the scheme of sailing warships.

b )Explanations in the equipment screen for what cannon ratings are for. i.e. first traditional long and normal cannon and then the second number being for carronade ratings.

c) An indication in the upgrades screen identifying that upgrades in the upgrades pane are not actually equipped but something that can potentially be equipped.

d) An indicator in the hold and warehouse panes as to how many slots are available... or a corresponding highlighted area showing a pictorial representation of empty slots.

e) Can we please have battles that take place according to the surroundings.... I am yet to have a battle on anything but flat sea.... no islands, reefs, sand banks, ports, forts or other features that would make battles interesting.

f) Can we have battles take place with backgrounds as per the surrounding islands... again so that things do not seem so bland.

g) An explanation of why the effects on the ships - especially the red numbers such as low crew or red rudder values are so.

h) Was their such a thing as 8pdr naval cannon?

i) A way of listing how many guns I have in battle in total on each side without waiting for a reload... I keep looking at enemy ships and seeing how many guns they have and then trying to remember how many I have on the new ship I just got.

j) Stop the AI from making turns all the time and taking perfect shots through smoke. Constant Circle jerking is annoying enough with real players.... actually real players don't do it that often but prefer to fight or run.

[marecek05]

h) Was their such a thing as 8pdr naval cannon?

 

 

Afaik, 8pdr was french 8-livre guns. Very close to 9pdr in actual weight and performance. French used 8,18,24,36 livre guns.

[karacho]

unlimited durability

[Thomas_Bainbridge]

As this is a suggestions thread I am hoping that offline play will be a full and readily available option.

 

People like myself, an avid history buff, love recreating history in 3D environments for our own pleasure and education.

 

Going aboard a real ship is of course fantastic but we are highly unlikely to be able to take part in a naval sea battle or cutting out expedition in the real world.

 

For this reason  I love any kind of game which allows me the option of setting up a scenario, controlling aspects of all sides, allowing the action to go on without me whilst watching from various camera angles and weighing up the odds of success and testing them in an active environment.

 

Of course sometimes I want to be the Captain or the Admiral and lead my ships into battle and test my skill against the enemy but personally I never want that enemy to be a real person nor do I want to play alongside anyone else in a co-op situation. Call me unsocial if you like but my real world is full of enough cooperation and competition and when I play I want to play alone.

 

I have not seen up till now weather this is to be primarily online or if the offline options will exist but here is my vote for a fully functional offline player experience

 

I'd love pre-set historical battles (either off line or online), Trafalgar, Saintes, Chesapeake, St Vincent, Nile, Copenhagen, Glorious 1st of June etc.

As more of an amateur historian than gamer I'd love to play with the "what ifs" of history.

[Thomas_Bainbridge]

Two things that are related that I think would be good:

1. When guns are dismounted, a graphical representation would be nice. Very minor, but nice.

2. I would love to be able to dump guns/cargo for speed. Perhaps if they had a weight (the guns already do) which negatively impacted speed, dumping them would in that way give you a better chance to escape. Since guns and gear are bought or captured already, dumping them has a built in "loss" that would have a fiscal ramification to the player.

 

This. Also:

• Two and three deckers must/should close lower ports during heavy seas, especially on lee side. (2 British 38-gun frigates once defeated a French 74 in these conditions)
• Ability to attempt to disguise a man of war as a merchant ship and vice versa

[Nemesys]

the possibility to refill ship durability with money or with a captured ship(only if is the exact same type/color)

[hoarmurath]

logbook

 

15 January 10h20 "departure from Fort Royal"

15 January 16h30 "Engaged by a british Surprise frigate at 14°53'38.1"N 61°56'37.0"W end of battle at 16h47"

16 January 7h10 "Engaging a pirate navy brig at 16°25'00.9"N 62°42'53.0"W pirate navy brig sunk at 7h23 pirate brig sunk at 7h34 end of battle 7h34"

16 January 19h25 "reached Plymouth port after 2 days of sailing"

[_X_Apophis_X_]

I would like to see a telescope when traveling in OW so you can make out Port names at a distance and spot sneaky captains with their sails down waiting to pounce as soon as you enter battle. Especially when your first exploring and new to game.

I would like to see a wind Gauge in port so I don have to keep setting sail to check wind direction (I'm sure they had barometer).

At some point make the port shop look more like a period chandlers.

Ship Buying, would like small 3D rotatable images of the vessels (I would not buy a car without seeing it first) could do it with the cannons too.

Battles reflecting the time of day when you enter (Imagine the not total darkness, but full moon engagements, flash of the cannons awesome.) Also more varied sea states to match weather your sailing through.

Stop the friendly Ai from attacking once you are capturing a ship (Teach friendly Ai how to shoot and to stop shooting me in the backside). Fire as your cannons bare! not when I'm in your line of sight.

Having said all this loving the game keep up the good work

 

BlackJack III

[hoarmurath]

port interface with animation of outside weather

[ID I]

I would like to see....

Reload times under ship stats (helpful for determining upgrade loadouts with cannons to figure out dpm)

Degrees on the compass(I know its been mentioned just wanted to add my support for it)

 

[poosd]

Hello all,

 

I originally posted this as a separate post, but it only got a few comments, so I've reposted it here thinking that this may be a more appropriate place and generate more discussion.  Moderators....If I've violated some forum rule by doing this, my apologies and I'll understand if it gets deleted.

I open this discussion with the hopes that the Developers will respond at some point and provide some information on what their thoughts are on the subject or if it is even a feasible concept. I of course welcome the thoughts of my fellow NA members.

1. One distant ship model (sail icon) in OW equals one actual ship instead of a fleet or multiple ships. Reduce AI fleets to one or two per nation at national capital or roving to allow server capacity to keep up and allow this one model=one ship displayed. If this were possible, then vessels on a one-to-one basis could be displayed that are at anchor in or outside of ports. Granted you would have to make them invulnerable to attack to be fair, but if you wanted to know what ship are currently in port, go look and see, they would be displayed.

2. You have a sequence that is followed when you see a sail on the horizon. Detect, Classify and Identify (yes I know that is a modern naval process, but it still applies in NA OW).

A. Detect. Please increase the "click spot" on or around a distant sail. If it's too far to make out details, in the Hail/Attack screen, just give us something like "Sail spotted" and nofurther details. At least we know we hit the click spot. It's very frustrating on trying to click on a small, moving single pixel to get the Hail/Attack screen to come up. If you are viewing the van of an approaching group of ships, you see the closest one first. When the second ship gets closer, another sail appears, and so on until all ships in the group are visible. In this manner, a group or fleets formation can now also be determined from afar. Very important tactical information! The player decides whether to alter course and avoid, or close to investigate further. For this example, player chooses to close the distance.

B. Classify. At the appropriate range another click on the sail opens the Hail/Attack screen and gives the following information on the individual ship being selected. "4th Rate. Flying No colors", or "2nd Rate. Flying Spanish colors", or "Lynx. Flying no colors". The idea of whether to display colors or not, or how and when colors would be displayed is another topic that I will leave for others to discuss. Eliminate the "Trader Brig carrying contraband" and "Trader Lynx carrying contraband" stuff completely. How would any captain of a revenue ship or warship know what another ship had in it'shold at these distances. A smuggler's sailing behavior may tip them off, and NPC's with contraband might be programmed to immediately flee or avoid, but simply viewing the ship would not tell you if they are dirty. This simple change also opens up an entire sub-game, i.e. smuggler vs. revenue ships. I have to close, board, and inspect if I want to see if you're a legal traderor a smuggler. Signals or other message passing options also come into play here. Lot's of new play possibility there.

C. Identify. You would only be able to make a positive I.D. to include the ships name and possibly the captains name and rank in the actual "instance". Giving the players the ability to name or customize their ships could come in to play here, but again, there are other topics related to customizing our vessels. It would be in the I.D. "Instance" where the shot across the bow, heave to order would take place and the boarding inspection could be done. Some work would need to be done to address the use of ships boats to board and inspect. Maybe that could be abstracted like current boarding/melee is?  This would allow for the "Smuggler vs. Revenue Cutter", or blockade and interdiction type scenarios to be developed.

In the RW, I imagine that it would be very rare for any nation to have more than one fleet, or maybe a fleet and a detached squadron or two operating in our current OW area at any one time. If players want more fleets? They organize themselves in to fleets for specific future operations, or hire individual NPC ships as needed. I would hope that this would reduce the number of NPC fleets to allow for the one-to-one ship display idea to be effective. This would also allow for a large addition in NPC merchant shipping which, in my oppinion should be the most frequent type of vessels encountered by warships at sea.

Dumb idea? Totally unworkable? Thoughts? Comments?

With respect,
Dean

[Belisarius]

I'd like to be able to 'pause' the XP I gain

[BlueEagleGER]

Nothing huge and important here, but something that should be quite easy to change:

National flags/ensigns need to fly right under the gaff, not haflway up (like on Mercury atm).

[Thomas Rowsell]

I'd like to be able to change the name displayed on the back of the ship (for example 'Bellona') in both OW view and during battles.

[TheChaosGrinder]

A captains log.

The ability to rename your ship.

Working lanterns.

Choosing what banners you display.

Not displaying names during battles, so ships do actually have visual cover from gunsmoke.

More dynamic ship sinking.

Preload guns and set what type of shot you preload.

[VictusB]

being able to see guns run out, pulled in for reloading

 

Smoke, lots of it.

 

A dynamic economy that makes larger ships more expensive to maintain/replace...I'm sure this has been discussed alot but if not tackled early will end up with 90% of players beboping around El Caribe in 100gun ships just to sightsee...losing a SOL should hurt (and would make smaller ships more prevalent)

 

ability of smaller vessels to risk sticking to the shallows to avoid combat with larger vessels (unless that vessel runs aground, then its GAME ON!)

 

more shot variety, I'm sure this is wip but in larger guns chainshot evolved into star-shot pretty quickly, grape got larger ect.

 

Having to BUY said ammo (player manufactured?) to keep economy and make resupplying and proper pre-voyage planning matter.

 

And after reading the earlier pages of this thread= a dancing mini-game on the deck of your ship with ALL THE FEMALE MEMBERS OF YOUR CREW in their PIRATE DRESSES!

 

All that discussion brings up a concern though, if you have too many nationalities the playerbase will quickly become very fragmented and one (prob Russian) will come in and control half the map.  Mabe focus on the key players in the Caribbean and keep player organization to societies/fleets/organizations within those few main movers..perhaps the other countries could all be subsets of 'Neutral'?

Edited August 23, 2015 by VictusB

[namrewob1]

I'd like to see Spanish Treasure fleets, with enough ships to be impossible to take alone. Something like this would really promote playing with other people.

They could also be made very rare but on a known course so that fleets of different nationalities know where it is going to be. The nations could then either choose to work together or... They could take it for themselves. This then promotes PvE and PvP play.

[Herzog]

Dont know if it has been suggested yet or not but the game needs more ambient sounds than just the sound of the sea. Maybe adding in the sound of seagulls when you get close in land and also (im sure this has been suggested) introduce sea shanties like in AC Black Flag

[namrewob1]

For long voyages it would be nice to see ships stock up on supplies and rations before they leave. Over time the crew uses these, but if you don't stock up, the crew loses moral and your ship becomes harder to control. 

[Blackjack Symons]

I'd like to see Spanish Treasure fleets, with enough ships to be impossible to take alone. Something like this would really promote playing with other people.

They could also be made very rare but on a known course so that fleets of different nationalities know where it is going to be. The nations could then either choose to work together or... They could take it for themselves. This then promotes PvE and PvP play.

Yes! AI fleets that promote PvE! Rewards for cooperating with large groups of players would promote cooperation.

[rosencl]

hello there nice little touches in the light that can make a fun experience, for example:

 

1) view on the deck of the ship, crew diversity of performing different jobs, cleaning, observing, repairing, etc.

 

2) in combat, the crew could be more numerous, with muskets in hand, ready to shoot at a close distance, see injured or killed in combat.

 

3) would be awesome, boarding to perform a more visual, graphical manner that the current system of proportion. but it is a job I managed okay.

 

 

 

These some small decorative ideas, but which produce immersion to the game.

Edited September 3, 2015 by rosencl

[Hieronymous Alloy]

This is trivial, but I've noticed that some of the ports don't really reflect the actual historical port. In some cases the work the devs have done is really impressive -- Sansbury, GA no longer exists, you'd only find out about that if you did major historical work -- but then conversely, the port of Charleston is just all kinds of wrong. It's not even on a peninsula! 

 

Thing is, for at least some of these ports, there actually are period drawings, too, so the game could model them for "accuracy." (see, e.g., http://i.imgur.com/TZSMHfW.jpg for a roughly 1820's portrayal of Charleston Harbor). 

 

This is of course trivial and should probably be the lowest priority imaginable, but it would be nice if they had the art etc. resources and time for it. 

[Leo R.]

id like ships disappearing behind the horizon like in the real world and a telescope in OW, together with the option to improve the view from the crows nest.

[jlan5031]

I'd like to see three changes. First, I'd like more weather/seas variety (storms, heavy to calm seas). Secondly, I'd like some sort of window, besides combat, that would give me the ability to practice sailing skills. Thirdly, I'd like to see bow waves and wakes during the fast travel.

You've developed  a great game. Thanks

[Foxtune]

Watch this!!!!!!! I want such animations/physx in this game!! This is amazing!

http://vimeo.com/16710091

http://vimeo.com/65490463

http://vimeo.com/63981026

http://vimeo.com/60090331

http://vimeo.com/50747033

http://vimeo.com/8036664

http://vimeo.com/8036704

http://vimeo.com/74197060

Hell yeah, that would be nice!

And another nice Little thing: moveble

Captain on Board at a Instance and a First Person view from Captain. And a crew that will climbing on Mast when you turn down sails, load & Fire cannons, and things like that...

That would be awsome.

Edited September 16, 2015 by Foxtune