O'BrianFan

Same here. Had an hour to myself while the kids were out at their Saturday morning clubs... server down the whole time. Back now with a spare 45 mins until we're all going out - server still down. Just the way it is.

Just wanted to quote all of this I love the manual navigation but the lack of tools to plot your course or a scale on the in-game map is a real problem. It's easy to sail from point A to point B with a single bearing and the wind in your favour, however if you need to repeatedly tack or you get distracted on a chase you can end up very lost indeed. I'm quite happy to do all the calculations (bearing, speed, time, etc) as I travel but we need a way to plot our information on the in-game map. If no tools like this are added or planned by release 1.0 then I'll write an external program myself to do it, but that really shouldn't be necessary. Silent Hunter 3 is the best example I can think of for the kind of thing we need. I also like the idea of being able to get a bearing once or twice a day, with a margin or error of course perhaps modified by officer skill, so you can make corrections to your calculations. If anything this will add even more skill to navigation (right now it's very much "point in a direction and don't turn until you reach the next land mass") as you will be able to keep track of your course more accurately and bringing your ship/fleet into harbour as directly as possible will be a great feeling of achievement. I did something like this last night when I needed to sail directly into the wind on a non-coastal voyage across open sea (10+ mins) where I timed each leg as I tacked using a stop watch (in fact I used a pocket watch from my collection with a ship emblem on which was rather fun!) and it was very satisfying to come across land very close to where I was aiming. However had I had to travel further and longer and so more likely with a changing wind or distractions of enemy to chase then this simple method would have broken down and I'd have also needed a way to drop some markers and lines on my map as the legs were no longer even.

It's G to start capturing a ship when the positions and speeds are correct - you get a pop up alerting you to it

I've noticed that the first hit the lynx takes is often applied to both side armours at exactly the same amount. Is this intended or a bug?

Fascinating. I would imagine the shot was somewhat easier with the cannon and the target both being on the ground rather than rolling about on the sea under enemy fire I read an interesting fact in the book "Trafalgar" the other day that one of the keys to accurate gunnery was the gunners ability to predict the time between the lighting of the fuse and the firing of the cannon. If he could accurately assess this time he could incorporate it into timing the firing with the roll of the ship. It was no use initiating the firing when the cannon was on the target as the time it took for the black powder to burn into the breech would be after this. Apparently this was one area where the British had an advantage over the French and Spanish in the battle as many of their cannons had flintlocks which had a more reliable and repeatable burn time until the actual firing as opposed to a matchlock which was a bit more random.

Indeed. I've often dreamed of that exact game whilst playing various incarnations of SH (and GWX mod). I believe that the sky dome in SH3 is so accurate that you can even use a mod of a sextant to take true bearings of where you are! Now THAT would fit an AoS game perfectly. From what I've read I don't think NA is going to be that game - although I might be very pleasantly surprised - but I would hope that if it's successful that maybe the existing graphics, combat engine and other related parts could be made into that game. In fact my perfect Age of Sail game would be all the game play from SH3, with the sailing model from the HMS Surprise program, with the graphics of.. Naval Action