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I hesitate to brings this up, but is it just me or are propellant (that which makes the shell fly) and filler (that which makes the shell explode) conflated in UA:D? I am not one hundred percent sure but Lyddite seems to be a filler while tube powder and poudre blanc are propellants (as far as I can tell at least tube powder propelled shells filled with TNT). Should this be grouped into two categories or left smushed together?

EDIT of 23/06/20: Not going to continue with this specific thread, or any future ones I had in mind. You can read my last post for more detailed explanation. ================================================================ I'm wondering if any of you like the idea of making several of these threads as it seems to me it's potentially a good way of drawing together our very wide experience, knowledge and talents and present them to the devs in formats that are relatively specific and focussed. I do appreciate I'm asking you all to post things you very possibly have done previously, but I hope we'll end up with a comprehensive set of thoughts on each big topic area. I'm happy to run with a few of these and monitor/update as we go. I might ask if I can get this put as a sticky, and possibly even see if I can get some better form of editorial control within this (and other) threads if the idea gains sufficient support to make it worthwhile. ============================================================ Hi all, I thought it might be helpful to take stock of the GUNNERY MODEL as it stands, especially now that we're able to see EXACTLY the ENEMY ships' tech, guns, gunnery statistics through a battle, and all their real time gunnery modifiers. With that in mind, could I ask you use the following HEADINGS format within posts. I realise not everyone will want to/care to follow it, but at least for those who do I'll provide some common format. If you wish to discuss someone else's post, please make sure you continue to caption your own contribution with the "GUNNERY FACTOR" and/or quote the other post to achieve the same thing. GUNNERY FACTOR - post with clear heading/statement of the specific gunnery model question/issue you are raising. Where the issue is a specific factor included on screen, please "USE EXACTLY THAT term" within quotation marks. Doing so will allow me to sort/update relevant contributions as we go. EXAMPLE(S) - provide screen shots to illustrate. Not at all seeking to teach anyone to suck eggs (despite my professional background I am surprisingly lousy with these things, LOL), but I tend to do the following: I pause the game and use the mouse to bring up any relevant info if it's necessary to get a tooltip to display, or I want real-time gunnery factors on screen. I sometimes make a few different images if I can't get all the info in the one (I might need more than one tooltip, for example), or am doing a "before/after" demonstration. I use the built in snip via Left WIN + SHIFT + S as it cuts down on image size and makes me focus on what's important in the image. I also like it because if I select it immediately I can then CNTL + S to save the image and I use those save names to describe what's in it/why I'm saving it. I mention it solely as a tip for anyone interested, but I'm sure most of you are way ahead of me (and I don't like image hosting sites but perhaps I ought to get over that). DISCUSSION - give the meat as to why you've raised the specific GUNNERY FACTOR, such as what you see as an issue with it, whether you think it's a good factor yet less than ideally implemented, or a poor one (obviously explain why) and would be better off being removed (and possibly replaced with another to achieve the intended result in a better fashion). SUGGESTION - make a suggestion as to how to address the issue you're raising. As mentioned in the intro, if enough people think this sort of thread might help bring feedback/experience together I'll make some others, so this is something of a trial run. Cheers

Too me it seems that the armor upgrades in game are a bit drastic. Getting any of the Krupp tier armor makes putting a ton of armor on too easy and it also makes the ships absolutely impenetrable, throwing 500mm of armor with Krupp IV makes the ship only vulnerable to torpedoes and the absolute largest guns. Does anyone else feel the same way? It just feels like smaller weapons even on battle ships, and I dont mean 5 inch guns, i mean the 13-14 inch weapons are just not viable for very long.

With the excellent addition of the ability to hit ships other than your target, it's produced an interesting and no doubt unintended side-effect. My understanding of how the rendering of gunnery works, what we see on screen is a consequence of calculations already completed. I'm certain that's the root cause of the following issue. If you have your ammo selection set to 'auto', your guns will fire whatever ammo best suits (according to the AI) the target. That means if you have a BB set as your target BUT the calculation has determined one of those shells will in fact hit a TR or DD, that SINGLE shell is fired as HE. Of course it also works in reverse, so shells meant for a TR that instead 'accidentally' hit a BB will come from the gun as AP, not HE. While it's nice our gunners have that level of prescience, it's probably not exactly fair. Cheers

I am thinking about this idea for a very long time and since I see that the complaints about demasting are on the rise again and that many mostly blame the accuracy of our cannons for this, I decided to present this Idea in a hopefully fashionable manner. Keep in mind these are just some ideas I have and want to share. I don’t insist that these should be implemented nor would I be frustrated if they won’t (I will just write a bad steam review ). I too think that our cannons are far too accurate and thus enable players to snipe for specific parts of an hostile ship. Especially at longer ranges. Also the speed of changing your point of aim, acquiring a new target and the feeling of disconnection of the cannons from the ship, bothers me. Our cannons act like they are mounted on modern turrets. You can single shoot masts and if you miss you can instantly adjust your point of aim (horizontal and vertical) and shoot again with almost no delay whatsoever. Also, the up and down motion of the ship doesn’t influence the aiming at all. Sure, heel does influence your max and min elevation, but doesn’t pose a real problem. So the main subject of my idea is, that the cannons and their point of aim really get fixed to the deck and are affected by roll, pitch and heel. So our aim bar constantly moves with the ship. The roll in the game right now is moderate to almost nonexistent because the sea in the instances is very calm. Maybe that should change too (variation). Heel can be significant but everybody should know by now how to minimize it. I don’t know if pitch plays a role, since aiming at the moment is not very much affected by the movement of the ship. Furthermore, the change of horizontal orientation and elevation of cannons should be a bit slower. Cannons were manhandled with handspikes to change these parameters. This took time and to instantly fire a cannon during this (like we can do now) wasn’t possible. So cannons in game should not be able to fire while being traversed or elevated. A simple example of how it could be shown to the player that his cannons aren't ready to fire during adjustments What will be the effects of this? Changing horizontal traverse and elevation isn’t almost instantly anymore. Adjusting your aim to snipe enemy masts in a fast manner isn’t an option anymore. To have a further option of balance. carronades could receive a buff in horizontal traverse speeds due to their carriages. Changing elevation fast to quickly aim at the waterline and right after that back at the hull or masts won’t be possible anymore. You must pre-plan your broadside. You must calculate how and where you want to aim and how to position your ship to get the best result. In fact you will mostly don’t touch the elevation setting of your cannons and aim with the ship now and keep your guns leveled to the deck and use roll to either shoot high or low. You don't wan't an arched flight path of your balls and want to keep it as flat as possible. Elevation then comes into place if you want to compensate for heel or are very close to your opponent but still want to shoot high. Also there would be a use for battle sails and people wouldn’t sail around with all sails set all the time. Full sails let the ship heel but also stabilize it against roll (although I somewhere read that higher speed makes the roll more unpredictable, sailing experts?). No sails on the other hand won’t let your ship heel as much but let your ship roll too unpredictable. Battle sails could be the middle ground between both extremes. A moderate heel and a moderate more predictable roll. I also read somewhere on the forum that the current battles sails layout isn’t exactly correct with set topgallants and royals but again, I think our sailing experts can prove me wrong on this or give better explanations. A downside with current firing mechanics in combination with my proposed idea above is that many shots of a broadside probably won’t hit due to the ship movement. Well at least if you are not right next to the enemy ship. Right now we can single shot with space bar or release a whole broadside with a mouse click, where many shots will miss and be wasted. I believe that no gun captain would fire his cannon if the target isn’t in sight (I assume he has a clear picture and is not hindered by smoke). Therefor I would like an additional way of releasing a broadside. This was an idea of @Hethwill some time ago. He suggested that, while you hold down spacebar your ship will fire a rolling broadside (front, back, random). If you release spacebar it will instantly stop and will continue at the next cannon if you hold spacebar down again. Maybe a general gimmick could be to let the player choose between 2 or 3 different rates of firing intervals. With one where almost all guns fire at the same time. This could increase the probability of a reload shock of your enemy. A downside could be that it also has a small negative effect on your structure. But that's just an extra and honestly not really needed. Until now I just made it harder to actually hit a target. I would also propose something more positive for the gunplay. As far as I know, the transparent fire sector roughly shows where the shots will land. I don’t know exactly where the aim bar is pointing but I assume it is somehow an elongation of the bore axis (of course somehow the average of all decks). I would like to keep it that way with a few adjustments. I will explain these things with a few pictures too. At first, all decks should be independent from each other. This means different point of aim and also different cannon loads per deck. You will basically see an aim bar for every deck (aiming all decks at once should still be possible). If you go into aim mode of a deck, the correspondent bar will be highlighted and a vertical axis for elevation and horizontal axis for traverse will appear. There would be middle markers (where the cannon is leveled/perpendicular to the deck) and min and max markers. This way you could load chain on the top deck and aim it a bit higher, while the two other decks are loaded with double shot. Or you are up close and preparing for a boarding action. So load your small top cannons with grape, while still pounding the gun deck and waterline with ball. Since it is a bit more complicated, I think UI wise it would be probably better to use the mouse for everything instead of smashing long button combinations (like 1 - 1 - 2 for example). no deck selected all decks selected and in aiming mode (chain loaded only on the top deck) all decks selected and traversed to the right example to show what I mean: only the lowest deck is selected and all decks are aimed differently In addition to that, captains should be able to mark up to three individual set settings on the elevation bar. You can experiment against AI or whatever you like and find some good settings that will help you in future battles. For example, you roughly know how far 200 meters are. With simple trial and error you can set the cannons of all decks to an elevation, where they will hit the target at 200 meters and roughly the same spot and mark it on the elevation bar. Doesn’t matter if the top deck consists of carronades while the other deck mounts longs. Or you keep your top deck always loaded with chain and aimed higher, because the low caliber won’t penetrate the hull of the enemy ship. example of premarked elevation settings. Deck 2 and 3 set to almost the same elevation, while deck one is elevated higher (the colors are just to make them more distinguishable) Since gunnery would be less accurate with those ideas, other things could also be adjusted. Like the thickness of hulls back to normal values. Leaks can be more dangerous (although I think they are fine as they are right now). Performance of cannons and carronades could be adjusted. Maybe introduce different firing mechanisms for cannons like flint lock and fuse ignition, which affects the delay between the command to fire and actual release of the round. So a rough overview of what these ideas can change Pros: no more easy mast-sniping (especially at long ranges) no more easy waterline sniping long range chaining very difficult - easier to escape a purpose for battle sails positioning and maneuvers are even more important more difficult to get the perfect rake (also affecting long range rakes) individual loadouts and aiming of every deck possible reintrodution of reasonable hull thickness because it is harder to hit consistently also adjustments of cannon damage possible to make up for worse accuracy (a really good broadside should have a big impact) Cons: too complex and over-complicating mechanics too difficult can be frustrating no real difference with current calm and invariable sea states/ship movements many others I bet.... Swivels. Since we introduced swivels with the new pirate refitted LGV I thought about a way to implement them to all ships. Every ship should have some places where you can install swivels if you want. An example is shown in the picture below. To fit swivels to your ship you have to select in port where you want them on your ship. Maybe limit the number of swivels so not every point can be equipped with them. The player could also be allowed to switch the positions during the battle. This should take some time of course. To man the swivels in the battle instance with crew, there should be a second option in the boarding menu (like press 9 and then 2 for “man swivels”) to fire the swivels you can switch between them and aim them personally at your target. I made some example pictures with a swivel aft and one at the fighting top. This can be a nuisance to smaller ships who like to stern camp your SoL. Those swivels can also be used in the new boarding mechanics if the devs are still on it. So, this was it. Remember, these are just some ideas I had.If everything stays as it is, fair enough

I thought the article Gunnery in Great War at Sea: A Designer's Perspective did an excellent job breaking down some of the challenges in portraying the gunnery of the dreadnought period. Obviously Ultimate Admiral is much more granular than GWAS. Having said that, the campaign and battle system of GWAS is often considered the one of the best of all time. This article touches on many of the topics of discussion concerning the accuracy of guns during the period, the effectiveness of secondary armaments and so on that have arisen on this forum recently. Especially of interest to players of Ultimate Admiral are the many well-researched articles on a variety of topics concerning naval warfare and ship design. For example, the two articles on British Pre-Dreadnoughts are an engrossing read. All in all, I think that while computer games allow for more granular simulation than boardgames, the fundamental questions of game design remain largely the same. The ability to use more detailed models in computer gaming can sometimes obscure the fact that there are always choices to be made between 1-to-1 simulation and simplification for playability or accuracy versus authenticity.

To begin with I want to present the preface to this idea, and it's pretty simple, actually: Accurate gunnery at sail-plans with a lot of sail are way too accurate, and it does to a great degree defeat the purpose of at all having the "Battle" speed mode (sail-plan). My idea for how to fix this would be relatively simple to introduce, and I think it would be very interesting to try this for a few months on the live servers: Remove the "gyro-stabilization" on the follow-up shots after the first one. Currently it doesn't matter how much the ship rolls after the first shot leaves the barrel. ALL other shots will head the exact same direction. Instead guns should be affected by the roll, so that firing while rolling heavily will scatter shots all over the place. This means that firing aimed shots at the hull or other specific sections with a ship that rolls more than just a little will become pretty much impossible beyond point blank range. The result of this would be that players either need to accept that shots fly all over the place (which might not be much of an issue of you toss a crapload of iron on the enemy's masts at range), or they will need to drop to battle sails or otherwise depower and turn their sails so as to lose a lot of wind in the sails and thus acceleration and speed. The more tricky part of this implementation would be that gunners shouldn't fire exactly ALL over the place, because they wouldn't be that dumb. Instead there should be some kind of maximum vertical limit (above and below the point of aim) at which the guns fire. Consideration must however be taken for how to combine this with the "walking" fire of the front/back fire modes, because to get the maximum rate of fire (and as many shots on target as possible) it might be necessary that guns fire out of order. On the other hand this could be exactly what the "Random" fire mode will be better at, so that people will need to make a concious choice of if they want walking fire, or if they want maximum rate of fire but in no particular order. I think that this could have a very interesting effect on gameplay, and to some degree promote other attributes in ships and other modules (for example having as little deceleration as possible from water resistance could become pretty important), and it would also promote ships that sail well with "slower" sail-plans, like for example how the Essex can sail really fast at beam reach with Battle sails.

So Let's first off cover all of the basics, in Naval Action there consists 3 different firing techniques: Rolling Front Fire, Rolling Back Fire, and Random Fire. Now each of these firing versions have a unique purpose and advantage. Rolling Front Fire fires all of the cannons in succession, starting at the bow of the ship and ending in the stern of the ship. Rolling Front Fire: This should be your 'default mode' this mode is used when performing rakes of any kind, hull or sails, is used when you are approaching a ship coming alongside it and YOUR ship is faster, and it is used when exchanging broadsides with a ship going the opposite direction. **Wind’s Visualization for Rolling Front Fire: http://forum.game-labs.net/index.php?/topic/10218-rolling-front-vs-rolling-back-tutorial Rolling Back Fire gives you the opposite of rolling front fire, firing your cannons in succession starting in the stern of the ship and ending in the bow. Rolling Back Fire: This firing mode can be appropriately used when a ship is passing you and HE is faster so that your broadside almost follows his ship in a sense, since any other firing mode will just cause you to miss the latter half of your broadside as he would have already been passed when it finally got to that. Random Fire will fire off your cannons In a random order. Random Fire: this mode is almost never used, the only real practical designation for this would be in some circumstances when firing on the bow of a ship that is coming at you if you try to use Rolling Front/Back he can easily adjust his course some and cause his ship to be at an angle for the latter part of your broadside. So if you use Random Fire he cannot effectively alter his angle for your incoming broadside as he has to dedicate himself to one side. Now, let's move on to Gunnery Arcs: Locked, Unlocked, Unlocked Focus 100m, Unlocked Focus 250m. **Throughout i will refer to this slideshow just to give you a simplistic diagram and hopefully help you understand it better: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1hSjDGU7sifg34C5OWDELDFsuPMmiqY6ARks026G97vI/edit?usp=sharing Locked Sector will fire your cannons straightforward with no angle on them. Locked Sector: This like Rolling Front Fire should be your 'Default mode' and is the most common to be used. Locked Sector is used for the basic shooting of an enemy's ship broadside, when raking, hull or sails, and unless otherwise specified use this mode or experiment on your own. Locked Sector especially with this new Damage Model is better for shooting at the sides of ships because it causes your shots to be going perpendicular with the enemies ships hull neglecting the angle of fire if side by side. **When using Locked Sector Focus is is imperative that you are going at a high/reasonable speed otherwise the back half of your broadside will not be hitting as you are not able to get your ship lined up with theres as they speed away. A little later on it will say what to do when going slow. **Sometimes when using Locked Sector Focus you will need to slightly turn so as to get the back end of your broadside on target. ( For Example if you were firing on a ship on your port side(left) and using Locked Sector Focus with Rolling Front Fire if he's faster than you or farther ahead then by turning slightly to the right when firing every shot will now hit, or if when raking a ship let's say on your starboard side (right) and you begin your rake with Rolling Front and Locked Sector than for the back end of your shots to connect you may need to turn to the left slightly) Unlocked Sector Focus will cause your Guns to be angled slightly inward Unlocked Sector Focus: This is used when you are going too slow for Locked Sector Focus and too fast/far away for the 100m/250m focus. Unlocked Sector Focus allows your shots to converge onto a smaller area then Locked Sector Focus, which is good for raking hull/sails when you are heading into the wind or against it as you will be going too slow for Locked Sector focus to be used effectively. This is also helpful for when you’re in a bigger ship and firing at a much smaller ship (Although who would be doing that ), with Unlocked Sector Focus your (let's say Trincomalee) cannons are able to angle inwards and all accurately converge onto the (Rattlesnake or Privateer) hull. The other unique purpose of Unlocked Sector Focus Fire is its ability to be used to specifically cause leaks underneath the water line (while Locked can do this just as well Unlocked and the 100m/250m variants are better at shooting the bow of a ship and causing leaks. **Why not use this for shooting at normal hull? While Unlocked Sector can be helpful as it is able to better specify where you want to shoot when your shots start to angle inwards they are now not coming in perpendicular to the enemies ships hull but at an angle effectively giving him more of a chance to block/deflect it. When shooting at a smaller ship per used in the example above the smaller ships armors are too thin to be of concern. In addition when passing an enemy going the opposite direction as you if on Unlocked Sector Focus or 100m/250m the back half you your broadside will most likely miss (See Slideshow) Unlocked 100m Sector Focus causes your shots to converge into a small area 100m away. Unlocked 100m Sector Focus: is just a more specified version of Unlocked Sector Focus and as such is used for less as it fills a small niche. Unlocked 100m Sector Focus can be used when you are at very close range for raking the stern/bow if going very slow and can be used to specifically target one mast to bring down if you are close enough. The danger of this fire mode is that if you are too far away the shots will not go at all where you wanted and will go off at very sharp angles. Unlocked 250m Sector Focus causes your shots to converge into a small area 250m away Unlocked 250m Sector Focus: This can be used as a longer ranged version of the 100m Sector Focus and just like that can be used in rakes on the stern when going slow and can be used to rake the bow as well. It is also able to target specific masts like the 100m Sector Focus but with less success and as such is better used as just raking all the masts when going slow. **Additional Videos For Further Representations Locked Section Rake: 250m Unlocked Focus Fire Rake: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tY-ZZiwqBw When To Not Use 100m Unlocked Sector Focus Fire: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuDTnrPgAmo When To Use Unlocked Sector Focus Fire: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyc5esyihm4 When To Not Use Unlocked Sector Focus Fire https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_5lk1unJag Locked Sector Focus Rolling Front Broadside:

This german dude made some pretty cool relevant vids many here would like. Here is one of them:

I know you can disable specific decks in order to dedicate more gunners to the active cannons, but is there a way to designate a specific side? It would be extremely useful sometimes to have all gunners dedicated to either port or starboard cannons.

The guns on my ships seem to fire spontaneously, often part-way through a manoeuvre, wasting the broadside into the sea or the air. I have asked about this before so I apologize if this is the incorrect place to ask about it again. It is almost as if there is a setting to 'fire guns immediately they are loaded' that I need to un-set. I can't find any such setting, however. This is really frustrating for me (although I suspect not for my opponents!). Has anyone else come across this? What is the cause? How can I stop it happening?

Gunnery can be a pain. The ships is moving, your target is moving, the cannon shot is going all willy nilly...it is all just a very large best guess. This make it a challenge, and there is the fun. What I do not like though is that some how, you can not give an order to fire while using the Spyglass. To range a shot you need to fire, then quickly press Shift and hope you can spot where the round lands. What I propose is that the Spyglass and Gunnery sighting are integrated. While in gunnery mode, if you use the spyglass you get the same elevation indicator as without. By raising and lowering your spyglass for far off targets you can then press space and see the shot land with out having to exit. When you leave the spyglass the indicator is in the same place you left it. This would make ranging a little easier to do since it removes a step and ungags the commander of the ship. A different method would be that the player in spyglass mode could use keys to alter the elevation of the guns in the glass. So instead of having the the marker dead center of the glass. We could use keys to increase the elevation pushing the marker higher in our view. It would still be a judgement call and in no way would make it easier. But it would alter the chance of having to raise the glass so high you loose sight of the target altogether. I find it hard to believe that when using this aid, the character can not order the ships guns to fire. It seems a little silly doesn't it? Please note dispersion, chance to hit something far off and so on would not be hampered...they would still be a fat chance past a point unless someone gets really good at gun by gun aiming. To them I say...good for you, congratz.

So, as everyone playing the game knows, you can outfit your ship with officers, I've got a few suggestions and would also ask for some player feedback into what officers roles should be and how that would affect your sailing; if they go down with the ship or have a chance of getting onto the longboat and paddling to the nearest pirate port, whether they can be injured, gain XP and rank up just like you; or just simply be modules you plug into your ship, leaving all the captaining and micromanagement to you, though captaining a ship would be no easy task. Firstly I'll take a look at navigation. What I'd propose is, with an officer who fills the role of your navigator is access to your captains quarters (though in a 'locked' isometric position) where you would get to see your map spread out over a table, along with all the ports and their flags. When asking a basic/low level navigator where you are he would simply reply "Nearest to <portnamehere>", however as you got better navigators (or your navigator got better) a circle would appear around your ship on the map like GPS on your phone with bad sattelite reception, as the navigator gets better and better or the best one is got the circle would shrink until you had a very reasonable idea of where you were, along with the navigator telling you where the nearest port is provided it's on the map. Officer of the watch - This officer would stop you having to buy a 72" 4k TV to tell if there is a ship in the distance. Of course like the navigator not all officers are as good as others so you may still have to keep an eye open for ships he might miss. However, he would be tasked with one other important thing, logging ships and fleets into the ship's map a lower-level/rarity officer would have them as lines coming out from the ship indicating heading, but not exact distance, somewhat like the sonar map in silent hunter; as he gets better he will begin to mark the lines red, white or green according to whether they are neutral, an enemy or an ally (He would start with black lines), eventually he would work his way up the skill/rarity tree to map the ship's approximate location, heading and speed he would also give call when land is spotted and if it's uncharted you could have him and your navigator draw up a rough shape (accuracy dependant on how skilled both officers are) of an island that was not on your 'original' chart. As a pair the navigator and officer of the watch can map out shallows and put them on your map too. Bosun - (or whichever way you want to spell it), generally keeps the morale of your crew up and gives shipwide bonuses if morale is high (almost as if you had added more crew), he keeps you aware of your crew's status, if any are sick (if this is added in the future) or if they are annoyed to the point of mutiny due to a series of failed encounters and not having a captain of the correct rank controlling the vessel. Your bosun could also double as a carpenter or surgeon, the carpenter getting more effectiveness out of repair kits and allowing you to repair about 20% of your armour if in survival mode, though patching a ship up with bits of shattered ship takes time. Him doubling as a surgeon would reduce crew loss in battle and reduce crew loss during boarding and regain some crew who would have otherwise died during boarding, they would mend slowly over a matter of days depending on their injuries. If he is acting out other roles then shipwide bonuses would Gunnery Officer - Pretty simple this one really, firstly you can set him to fire broadsides if you wish, possibly manning starboard and firing salvos at an easily hit ship while you pick off the little guy in a gunboat. If he isn't on firing duty he would assist with aiming, giving you somewhat of a trajectory arc, as all other officers some are better than others. As well as that a modest increase in gun damage would be nice as well as the ability to have him suggest where to shoot (eg armor, rudder, sails; though this may be very difficult to code) if trajectory arcs are a bit too Assassin's Creed for you then let him widen the little red line, essentially adjusting guns on the fly to hit where you may have just missed. Just to add a quick edit here. Should ships with multiple gundecks benefit from only one gunnery officer or should you have to have one for each gun-deck or set him as a ship-wide gunnery officer who's task is just to maintain the guns and keep the firing crews trained, giving less bonuses to all the guns on your ship than say 3 gunnery officers for each gun-deck of the HMS Victory who would actively be running fire control for each deck. Edit: one more thing he would do is tell you how close your ranging shots are to the enemy ship rather than you having to fire and get a spyglass on the ship (a feat impossible/very very difficult in real life if you are controlling the gunner's aim first) naturally as the officer got better by way of experience he would be able to tell you how far you missed by, by saying "Your shot missed her" at the beginning to "You hit just short/long of her cap'n" to giving more accurate descriptions of how much you missed by such as "You only missed by a few yards short cap'n" as well as letting you know how well you are damaging the ship from telling you whether you scored a hit to whether the shot hit her sails (though ball going through sails would not count as a hit when he feeds back to you), her mast or her hull (higher levels would be able to tell you if you hit her on the waterline and higher levels yet would tell you if you have created a leak) essentially a high level gunnery officer takes you away from mundane tasks and allows you to focus on things like manual sails. Boarding commander - takes care of boarding tasks, gives a modest increase in turn rate and fire rate prior to boarding(once again increasing with experience or rarity) during boarding he gives a recharge rate bonus as well as a morale and damage bonus. If there are any roles I've missed, let me know and let me know how you feel about things. Main questions would be: - Should officers be bought from the store as an item or hired from the tavern (Yes I got most of those roles from Age of Pirates 3 City of Lost Ships; a great game with mods, though it is somewhat buggy). - Should officers require pay to function (a good bosun would lower their wages by keeping them and the crew happy)? - Leading on from this, if officers have an XP based levelling function should they level automatically (thus requiring you to pay them more) or should you need to promote them. However officers that have gone a long time with max XP and no promotion may get a little annoyed and demand you promote them or you part ways next time you make port. - Should officers die upon sinking? Or should those that make it to a boat in time (wounded officers are slower) so having "fill boat" and a countdown running until all officers are on board (at risk of your ship sinking and you losing all your officers if it's taking on water fast) then a command to "Scuttle ship and escape" Any and all feedback is much appreciated, even if it's a link from a devblog going deep into officer mechanics and you calling me a fool for not finding it (I used both the forum search and Google, neither turned up anything like this so I'm sorry if I'm making you read the same stuff twice) anyway, that's all I've got to say for now until I retreat to the batcove and think of moar stuffs.

IRL - a captain would have a mate or a midshipman or a lieutenant available to remind him "Sir, we have double shot loaded on the port side - that ship is out of range" That could be emulated easily by changing the aim point (the red aiming bar in firing view) from a single line to a double line when doubles are loaded on that side. It would help me.