ah thank you very much.
I thought that might be the case but was not sure. ..about not being able to enter firing mode until near another ship. I wonder if it might be a good feature to have a "crew firing training Mode" added as an option to allow us to do training as was done in real life, ships would drop emtpy Water Casks and use them as targets to train gun crews.
I will have to get my training under fire i reckon but i do appreciate the help and the posts. I dont mean to seem overly anxious about this all, and apologize for the trouble BungeeLemming Sir and others, i did read thru and understand most of all of the process and many tutorials but none of them mention that gunnery mode cannot be activated until one is in range of another ship. It might be a good thing to add to tutorials. I have written many myself including a number for Naval wargames so am aware of how complex control issues can be and the discovery aspect of this sim is an interesting approach and I am not complaining, just eager to learn the ropes so i can get my sea legs.
thanks again to all hands for the kind assistance for this shellback.
I now understand these to be true:
You Obtain your starter Free ship complete equipped with basic gun suite and crew on board. I will have to check to be sure the slider was all the way to the right on crew management but i did see the bar set at 40 so I assumed they were already on board.
You can control the ship as soon as it is launched, and you can return to port if you are in the immediate area just off shore of the "harbor" entrance region. You can also return using the teleport key but there is a delay (cool down).
You cannot enter into firing mode or aim until you are within range of another ship...and are in a battle instance.
I am guessing the UI elements at the base of the screen i see in some tutorials on firing will appear when i am in gunnery mode. will look for them when i can achieve that mode.
thanks again for the help
Adm V.G.