Identifying ship by name gives detailed information on screen - spie glasses observation, crew skill and admiralty communiques

[Destraex]

converted merchantmen

 

ship information book and sailor knowledge

I was just reading about a converted merchantman (hms drake) which was easily bested by the USS(?) Ranger. The reason for this was that she was a converted merchantman which meant she had less sturdy decks and rigging as well as not being able to mount heavier guns for her size because of this. It got me thinking whether naval action could have such lighter "pretend" ships in game and whether anybody would use them. Would they have a place at all?

Then I Started thinking about how meaningful the current ships buffs and perks were in battle. Whether anybody noticed them except for the captain himself.

Then (I know I am droning on a bit) I thought, what if naval action had a system in battle where you could gather the latest information given to you by the admiralty AND any switched on sailors or officers at your disposal to give you that information. But only after the individual ships name was identified by telescope of sailor or officer.

 

The conversation would go like this:

 

"Ship ho!"

 

"Can you identify smithy?"

 

"She looks like the ranger out of charlestown"

 

Captain looks her up in the latest admiralty communications. 

Finds information and pictures

 

Smithy comes down and adds that he heard she was fitted with extra ballast

and from what he saw through the spie glass she had re-enforced rigging and extra marines on deck.

 

Of course you would not get all the information and getting the information you do get would depend on crew skill and recent contact with a port or the admiralty.

 

Silent hunter did this well and I would like to see it on screen as an addition to the armour rating. Would be great to see a schematic like this overlaid as an old admiralty style paper in a book. This kind of information would give a lot more depth. Especially if the history of the ship in text was also given. Where it had been what it had done, who was on board and their history etc.

[Captiva]

I have always liked the ui and info available to the player from Silent Hunter. I've posted in the past that some of their ideas would, in my opinion, fit very nicely into Naval Action. So, my initial opinion to this idea is, YES.

[AKPyrate]

Not a bad idea, though I do think that the 'conversations' could get old pretty quick.  It would be nice having some sort of history and context in game.  I know there was talk a while back about having some sort of index of the different ships, with pictures/models, history and stats.  That could be expand to notable ports, historical actions, etc. as well.  I was imagining this in port, but it might not be a horrible idea to have it in the OW as well, and possibly force us to identify the ships instead of having the name given to us.  That way, you had better know the difference between the looks of the Constitution and a regular frigate, or a 3rd rate and a Santi.  Of course, being given the general class given to us, but forcing us to identify between, say a Trincomalee and a Cerberus.

 

This might be a little more difficult if they do implement different paint scheme options for vessels; if those are used to generate more funds and give a distinct advantage (say having a red frigate so people mistake it for a Cerberus), then I'd hate for this to become a pay to win kind of game.  But I like the idea in principle.

[Destraex]

we get the ships identified by class name now. I just thought it would be nice to have a system that gives more detailed info. In mechwarrior the longer you have anenemy mech targetted the more info on it appears including its current armour state by component. Of course schematics appearing by scanning with futuristic instruments is not possible in naval action. But through Intel and crew observation especially over a longer period of time some really lovely schematics and drawings could be shown.

[Destraex]

I mean how exactly did captains know enemy vessels so well?

[AKPyrate]

By showing class, I meant something as vague as '5th class', not 'Leda class frigate'.  As for how captains knew enemy ships...spies and peace treaties.  Some of the larger vessels would likely have service lives as long or longer than many of the sailors' careers.  And any new ones built would take years in which intelligence about them could be ascertained.  As for the frigates, they were often the newest, fastest designs and thus spies would try to learn as much about them as possible.  Then there's just the plain act of taking enemy vessels.  Often more than one ship was made to specific drafts, and thus characteristics would be shared between multiple vessels.  As for smaller boats, there were so many of them that they did differ quite a lot, but it also didn't generally matter in the case of them vs. frigates or greater.  There was a lot learned of these smaller boats during the chase.