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A Naval Action guide to sailing and combat (Working thread)


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Greetings, all!

 

I am working on a guide for Naval Action with the focus on sailing and combat.

 

As mentioned in the foreword of the guide I do find that A TREATISE ON NAVAL ACTION: A COMPLETE GUIDE was far beyond my grasp when I initially started reading on how to play the game. It requires a level of understanding that neither me - and as is evident by the many questions in chat and judging by how people play the game - nor many others have, or at least had. It may simply be the language barrier - that one isn't used to the terms in English - or maybe one is completely new to sailing. Either way the target audience for that guide is a group already knowing how to sail in the game, and who are more familiar with naval combat and English sailing terminology.

 

My aim with the guide is to give a complete guide, ranging from the major components and terminology of the ships' construction, to sailing, combat, and line battle, so that a player can learn about naval combat with sailing vessels from scratch. The guide will however not cover any other topic, like how to best earn XP, do crafting, how to "game" the AI, etc.

 

At the time being the guide is purely text, but the intent is to complement it with plenty of graphics and images to help explain. The layout also varies in different parts of the guide at the moment, to test what style works better, but it does make it a bit of an inconsistent read.

 

The reasons I am posting this half-finished guide already is to prevent duplicate work being carried out by different community members, and to ask for people to give advice on how I can improve the guide, as well as to post requests for what should be in it.

 

DROPBOX LINK

A Naval Action guide to sailing and combat 2017-06-09.pdf

Edited by Inkompetent
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Excellent start Inkompetent,

May I suggest as you develop it you keep in mind that a guide should be printable in black/white, especially diagrams.There are many impressive looking manuals for games produced but printable they ain't.

That is the plan. All the graphics will be done either in pure black and white, grey-scale, or with colours that translate well into grey-scale when printed without colour. The front page is the only advanced colour picture I intend for the guide to have.

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Due to Sweden getting wiped off the map on PvP1 tonight I don't know if I'll have any motivation to finish this. Since there is no game mechanic even on the distant horizon (that I am aware of) to make the OW playable and reasonably fair and fun and last in the long run I don't know how long it will take before there's any reason for me to return.

Maybe I'll find incentive to finish the guide, but for now I think I will take a 12 month break and come back when there actually are some OW mechanics in place.

Edited by Inkompetent
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I can add that I've taken the step to order the 1807 book The Elements and Practice of Rigging, Seamanship, and Naval Tactics - Volume 4: Theory and Practice of Seamanship and Naval Tactics by David Steele. Not sure how much of it will be applicable for in-game help, but I certainly aim to expand the "information boxes" with more fluff through it.

I'm still reluctant to play the game even though Sweden has been given back a lot of territory, since there's nothing stopping it (one-night conquest of an entire nation) from happening again to either us or to someone else, but I still do feel like working on the guide.

Thanks a lot for your work - it is great!

Thank you!

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  • 1 month later...

I finally got my thumb out and put some more work into the guide.

 

Added an introductory chapter to explain the guide's layout, finally did the chapter on points of sail (only a picture for square rigs though), added a part about the game's 24-point compass, added additional information about ball shot and about the game's leaking, and tried to eliminate all talk about sailing/gunnery/survival/boarding mode in light of the new crew mechanics.

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Thank you!

 

And no, at least at this point editing for the changes isn't too bad. There hasn't happened too much in the game that actually affects the existing content of the guide. However I expect the currently 12 000 word guide to end up at 30 000 words or so, so in the end it might actually become more of a hassle. Depends on how well I manage to structure it I suppose.

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Thank you, poytwq! Still not quite getting to the tactics of Doran's guide, but at least it should provide enough understanding to actually be able to understand the aforementioned.

 

Couldn't stop myself either, a I have now started fleshing out the line battle chapter, and started describing basic manoeuvres (with pictures!!!!) like tacking, wearing ship, hauling the wind, bearing away, and veering.

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Have expanded the navigation chapter with explanation of "quarters" (as in the bearing), added a chase/pursuit chapter to advanced sailing, a boarding chapter for leeward/windward boarding techniques to advanced combat, and greatly expanded the chapter for line battle.

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Thank you :)

 

 

 

And please everyone, mention errors and recommend changes! Although a lot of stuff in the game is relatively similar to real life, there are also major differences. For example tacking takes A LOT longer in real life than in-game, and that difference may very well invalidate things in the guide.

 

I'm not one to min-max/optimize my playing style in games, so I am unlikely to find many of these things myself.

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Thank you!

Have now restructured the Basic Combat chapters, splitting it into three (ranged, boarding, and PBs), have added a first description of the basic workings of the new penetration system, finally added stuff to the Port Battle chapter, and have added new sub-chapters to the Line Battle one for target selection and for breaking a line. Especially the latter will need some pictures to describe it, but haven't got around to those yet.

Edited by Inkompetent
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Done more reworking on the chapter for ranged combat which should have it much better structured now (and with more accurate information), added a chapter for crew management, fixed some formatting (tables no longer split across pages if not needed), and added information about the damage to boarding-prepared crew by grapeshot to the advanced combat chapter.

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  • 11 months later...

It is now exactly a year since the last post in this thread, and the reason at least I haven't posted is simply because I quit playing Naval Action around that point. Now after the wipe and this far seemingly lovely changes to the game I am back and again have a reason to keep working on it.

I am currently in the process of updating the existing content to match the changes done to the game, as well as doing some improvements to the readability of the guide. No major improvements this far, but because of the guide's length (currently 61 pages) I am in the process of coming up with a structure for that, so that someone actually will endure reading it.

Once I am done with the actualization of the guide I will upload it as-is.

 

PS: Although I know that getting the thread going after such a long time qualifies as "necroing", please don't lock the thread.

Edited by Inkompetent
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