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Hello, I would like to know if there is more catastrophic damages planned like some big torpedoes blowing the whole front of the ship while not being enough to sink it or the catastrophic ammo strorage explosion like what HMS Hood suffered? The most catastrophic element especially in term of visual is the turret popping party right now which is admittedly quite enjoyable. We see some things like instantaneous sinking for example big BB main shell one shoting DDs but the visual is a bit unimpressive appart from the big visual explosion, you see the ship slowing down and sinking with the model unscathed appart from the damaged "paint", the visualisation of ships being totally pulverised could be really impressive. I feel like a little more damage visuals like bow or stern blown off with the subsequent element no longer being useable, as well as the superstructure being blown on some element reflecting the catastrophic malus we get from the conning tower destroyed... A couple of destroyed turrets looks...

2. Reworked grapeshot damage. It affected other things related to crew damage: boarding and musket shooting on ships. We are going to continue to balance based on your feedback. Okay, here my personal feedback. Imo, grapshot damage is a bit to high atm, especially when ship had full amor. I m an old NA Veteran, so maybe thats why i think it needs some balance. My suggestion: actual Grapedamage can stay when amor is down to 50% half of actual crewdamage when ship has full amor and double of actual damage when ships has no amor left/ or when structure is down but armor is full(sternraking) what do you think? @sterner

Prolog Currently our flags stay untouched and look new even after tremendous rigging damage. Suggestion Flags get a damage layer like sails do, but complete destruction of the flag isnt possible. Details: After/during a battle flags could be damaged and look like this for increased immersion: Pro: increased immersion Con: Dev time

Currently, experience is provided to players based on the hull hits they score on a killed target. This entirely leaves out players who score primarily sail or crew hits. This is a major flaw especially for sail hits because there are many situations and strategies when playing alongside friendly ships wherein a captain may legitimately maximize their effectiveness by focusing on rigging or crew damage, and as of now they receive zero credit for it. Even further, the task of dedicated rigging attackers is best suited to smaller vessels that are commonly captained by newer players. It is very hard to new players to sail alongside higher ranks in larger battle because even though they can provide the very useful contribution of rigging hits and raking grape attacks, they won't get any points for doing so and are thus discouraged from training alongside folks. From a new player retention viewpoint, this could also provide some much needed encouragement for midshipmen and the like as they'd actually be useful and benefit themselves from participating in fights they're invited to by more experienced players, who can even show them the ropes in the process.

I've been working on and mathing over a subject that's been bothering me for quite a while - Cannon Penetration. Specifically, Carronades and how their penetration drops off to 0 at extreme ranges, so it got me thinking. Could one really stop a 42-pound iron ball that's been flying through the air for 1000m by...holding up a piece of paper? Noooo, that's silly. Therefore, I'd like to introduce a concept I like to call Minimum Penetration. Min Pen should be identical for shots of identical size, no matter what sort of gun they're fired from. Min Pen is based on the terminal velocity of an iron sphere of a specific mass in free-fall for an indefinite period of time. As I was pondering this subject, I said to myself, "You know, I'm sure the devs have a formula in the background that they tweak for this sort of thing, but it isn't readily apparent and carronades don't seem to follow a simple mathematical model." So, I devised a plan. Two alternate models for cannon penetration, easily adjustable based on the minimum (infinite-range) penetration, maximum (gun barrel againt hull) penetration, and the distance at which the devs want the weapon to have a pen value halfway between min and max. Edit/Update: After far too many hours than is healthy, I've updated things. I dropped the previous "Falloff" model as it was a little silly and had zero chance of being adopted. Instead, I have done extensive research on the internal and external ballistics of cannons and cannon balls for a "Historical" model that should more closely fit a realism-based scenario. The Epic Spreadsheet of Epic The above sheet shows current values, Exponential Decay, and "Historical" models as well as data on relative penetration based on kinetic energy divided by projected area. I arbitrarily set 4 pdrs to pen through 5cm of wood in a free fall, which seems reasonable to me, but this is easily adjustable with the data present After lots of research, I finally was able to simply calculate the hypothetical oak penetration, at terminal velocity, of the various weights of cannon rounds. The key is that minimum penetration is solely dependent upon the mass of the iron ball - 42pd carronades and 42pd long guns will have the same minimum penetration at hypothetical infinite range. I have two models here. The first is a gamey, Exponential model that has, as Gamelabs does, all guns of the same type lose energy at the same rate, and has Carronades' initial penetration equal to Long guns of half their caliber. The second is a "Historical" model that attempts to more accurately model internal and external ballistics. In the Exponential Model, I attempted to adhere to the theme of Gamelabs design - long guns maintaining energy over long ranges, Carronades dropping off quickly, and medium guns somewhere in between. Here, Medium cannons have 5% less 0m-Pen compared to Long guns of the same caliber, and Carronades have the same 0m-pen as a Long cannon half its caliber. The horizontal lines are for reference, from top down, Victory mast thickness, Connie mast thickness, Actual physical diameter of the HMS Victory's lower mainmast, and the current thickness of the Victory's hull. It's clear that even using this model that, while any gun is capable of damaging a 1st-rate's hull if the ship is close enough (Privateer swarm ftw), being able to deal effective damage to the masts of a 1st-rate is nigh-impossible; ONLY 42-pounders at close range (and 68pd Carros at sneezing distance) are able to pen through the thickness of those masts. The advantage of this model is that it keeps carronades short-ranged in all regards and clearly defines roles for guns. The disadvantage is that it can make using carronades, and even medium guns in some cases, frustrating at anything more than a stone's throw from an enemy ships. The Historical model attempts to more accurately simulate both external and internal ballistics. With this model, Long guns are 20 calibers in length and use a 1/4 charge-to-shot ratio. Medium guns (historically termed Short cannons) are 16 calibers in length and use a 1/5 charge-to-shot ratio and have a 10% lower muzzle velocity than Longs. Carronades are only 8 calibers in length and use a 1/12 charge-to-shot ratio but have much tighter windage that results in a higher-than-expected muzzle velocity for such a lower charge. This winds up with Carros having about a 30% lower muzzle velocity than long guns of the same caliber, but curiously about the same muzzle energy as a long gun of half their caliber (even though it's a little less penetrating potential since the same energy is being distributed over a larger projected area). Here, Carronades are slightly less effective at point-blank range, but it treats, externally, all shot of the same size the in the same manner - a 42 pound ball will lose energy flying through the air at the same rate (as a proportion of its velocity) as any other 42-pound ball. However, larger shot maintains its energy better over distance (since the shot's mass increases as a cube of radius, while its projected area only increases as a square of radius) and thus will lose penetrating potential slower than smaller long guns. It can be readily seen that guns of the same caliber, regardless of type, decay to the same minimum penetration value at extreme range. With this model, accuracy becomes much more important; long guns are the kings of this, while medium guns have a little more dispersion and slightly reduced muzzle velocity and carronades are not very accurate at all. Carronades, while having the potential to reach the same range as a long gun (due to the capacity for higher gun elevation), it will not only strike with less force, but a higher impact angle (which significantly reduces the effective impact energy). Large carronades fired at range, if aimed well with decent accuracy mods, might be acceptable for chaining sails or raining grape onto weather decks, but little else. The Comparison chart shows existing 42pdrs in red, Exponential model guns in green, and Historical model guns in blue. Obviously, no concrete data is available for shots beyond 1km with the current values. Personally, I am a fan of the Historical model that I've concocted here. It makes Carronades much more of a skill weapon - high damage potential with very low accuracy. A skilled captain could, potentially, out-damage a similar ship at medium range with carronades. While this treatise does not address cannon damage, my initial thoughts are that damage and reload should be adjusted so that cannons of the same caliber do the same damage, but different types of cannons have faster reload times. E.g. 50 damage for 42-pound shot, 72 seconds for a 42-Long, 64 seconds for a 42-Short, and 48 seconds for a 42-Carro. Edit: It is this way mostly, already, just some minor tweaks and fine-tuning. The other issue at hand is mast thickness. Hull thickness is more or less acceptable (a few outliers, like the Constitution), but Masts are far and away far too thick to avoid "demasting at range". A general rule of thumb to go by is that the lower main mast should be no thicker than 4/3rds the hull thickness. By this logic, the thickest that a Victory's main mast should be is 100cm. This means that, even with the Historical model, all but 42-pd carronades will have trouble demasting a Vic, while Long 12s and Medium 24s should be up to the task, albeit at very close range. However, that doesn't mean they should be necessarily easy to demast. Lower mast sections were quite tough. While this thickness should be dropped to less than 100cm, the mast HP should be buffed easily 50% for lower mast sections, and 25% for mid-sections with the lower mast thickness. One amusing side effect of the Historical model is that the 68pd-smashers would actually retain more penetrating potential outside 1200m - but good luck hitting anything, let alone hitting it square enough to do significant damage.

I wanted to start a thread for those of us trying to understand the new game mechanics. To get the ball rolling, I am wondering how we take cover behind stone walls or other embattlements. I have seen the AI do it, and my men have sometimes started in that position, but I have no idea how to order them to do so. Does anyone have any suggestions or other new mechanics they are struggling with.

I thought I'd throw this out there.... just to see if I am alone in this, way off the mark or actually onto something. I am talking about the visibility of the damage inflicted on the enemy, and other glues as to their seaworthiness and ability to fight. After watching numerous videos its quite apparent that the visual information on the enemy has a huge impact on the engagement and the tactics employed. I'll say it, I feel uncomfortable with the idea of having such accurate info on my enemy. Surely this brings into play an unrealistic mechanism that removes any element of risk or skill on the part of the Captain fighting the engagement, and his/hers ability to judge whether they are winning by visual clues and hard won experience.... By removing the enemy damage indicator, the Captain would have to rely on his assessment of the enemy ship, its speed, its maneuverability and its visual damage. Whether also its Broadside weight and gunnery is lacking due to damage inflicted. I also note in one engagement that the Captain of 1 ship knew how many repair counts the enemy ship had left and had used!!!! It may be too hardcore but should the damage inflicted be more vague? Your valued thoughts and opinions Gentlemen?

I have been sailing the Bucentaure for a few days now and I'm having a pretty serious issue with it. My crew loss per mission is unbelievably high compared to my clan mates in ships of the same size. 200 + crew lost in each battle and not just from stern shots. Each broadside I take I see my crew drop by 5-10. What this makes for is an almost unplayable match and today i lost my Buce for the last time due to one point blank broadside from a Bellona which wiped out 330 crew. I know you history buffs will say "That's what happened at Trafalgar" and it is... The ship was rendered useless in one broad side. Yet i can put a full broadside into the back of a third rate or Bellona and only kill 30-40 crew. I'm now stuck with no big ship, no upgrades, and no money due to the fact i spent it on ships for my clan mates yesterday other than 1 last Buce which is (In my opinion) My least favorite ship in the game and practically useless for anyone who wants to do PVE fleet missions to level. I get the ship being a bit squishy, But the crew loss is too extreme when it takes more then the 160k-200k gold I'm getting from missions to recrew and repair the ship. Also for those of you getting ready to type away at how bad i am at the game and how you never lose anything save it. I'm excellent in anything other than this ship.

This might be the most modified game mechanic until now and I would like to share some more ideas here. I have seen in different threads similar ideas, and here is my total RoE package for a robust, fun and sustainable PvP environment on the open sea. The Concept: The main difference here for the initiation of OS engagements is, that the location is not only factor for determining the allocation of ships in the instance, but also the time itself. So, basically after the OS attacking, the instance is created. And any ship, outside this first initiation circle, would be joining to the instance as reinforcements. Until this point, it is similar to the current system. The reinforcements on the other hand, would be again positional according to their open sea location, but the reinforcements would be relative further away to the engaging ships in the instance. I would like to use here the term cutter minutes, similar to light years, the distance a cutter would cover in one minute. For example, the first joiner would start in that instance 6 cutter minutes away (outer rims of orange circle) from the engaging ships. The reinforcement who joins after one minute of the start of the instance would be 6+1 minutes away (outer rims of green circle); the one who joins after 2 minutes of initiation would start 6+2 minutes away and so on. As a result, the more late you join a battle, the further away you would spawn from the initial battle location in the instance. What would this allow for the game? The open sea battle instances could stay open for much longer times instead of just 2 minutes, which would increase the dynamism and activity of the open sea and rendering it more lively. This would not end ganks, but if a captain is ganked close to a friendly port, there might be a chance for reinforcements to arrive at the horizon On the other hand, it might also lay the groundwork for a good organized gank, using the positional reinforcement. However, the distance to reinforcement point depending on timer (6 + x minutes) would still give a chance for the ganked captain. No BR limits Smooth transition from open sea to the instance Need and thrill of searching the horizon not only in open sea but also in the instance Attack Circle and Timer: The attack circle on open sea could be adjusted. A relative smaller circle and shorter timer, would increase the importance of the open sea positioning and engaging. Keeping the Target in Battle: At the current state, if you land a cannonball from 800 yard distance on the sails or hull and inflict some damage, you would reset the battle timer for the target. In most cases, this would result in a very long and boring chasing situation. The current tagging mechanism also gives opportunity to the griefers. To prevent those, a damage threshold could be applied like the need of inflicting minimum 1% damage to sails (or hull) to be able to reset the battle timer for the target. Similar measures were also taken in PotBS to prevent griefing. Even in the worst gank scenario, this would give the gankers at least several chances to attack the target for resetting the timer, whereas, the target also keeps its fair chance to be able to run away and click out. Instance Join Timer for Reinforcements: The timer for reinforcements could be easily increased in this concept. I would say a time between 5 and 10 minutes might be the optimal point. Ship Polars: Minor changes to the directional speed limits should be made according to the gameplay instead of realism here, I think. This means appointing different best speed directions for different ships, so that every ship could overtake others at a specific direction or similar to that. If we look below graph, Trincomalee curve (orange) is a good example being at some directions more slow and at some directions relative faster. In conclusion, I think all those rules together would render the open world much more lively and active place for PvP and RvR compared to the current situation.

I would suggest upgrading all grades of planking for leak/damage protection. Removing the speed cut back would be nice too!

Let's note: the highest damage scores you've got or have seen (state the type of the ship and what you have done to reach that score) epic battles, great victories and WTF moments I'll start with my 56915 damage, when playing a victory. A storm map. The battle ended in a tie (one enemy remaining). Most of the time I was shooting at the masts of a santissima, taking them down (first we were chasing him down, then he ended up upwind from us, not very eager to come closer ).

I'm getting this when I try to download steam. I'm running on a PC laptop using a mouse in a usb port (but only in selective games). I play Eve, WOW, World of Tanks/Planes. I've never had this come up before. Has any one else Have tis happen to them?