Hamish Alexander

I would extend that wish to all of the ships with names of a class. Frigate, 3rd rate, Privateer; it's a little obnoxious to try to talk strategy about ships and not being able to talk about "frigates" since that's actually a ship.

Furthermore, it would remove the problem of Taggers and PVP marks I mention here. There's lots of people who are discouraged from being pure taggers in PVP as we don't get marks, this would solve that issue entirely. It would probably be smart to only apply PVP marks if the target does get killed, but still.

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.

AI fleet members are necessary for trading, but have limited utility in combat. I have two ideas regarding more versatile commands. 1. A command for AI fleet members to loot Since a major source of permanent upgrades (and the only source for some) is looting ships, it would be a fantastic addition to command AI fleet members to loot wrecks. Implementation could be simple, as in you tell an AI to loot a specific wreck, and he's programmed to approach and then some mechanic exists for looting. 2. A general "move to here" set of commands. There's lots of situations where you'd like an AI to perform an action, but have a preference of the route he takes to do so. As in you can tell him to flee, but he just automatically goes to his fastest point of sail, even if that's straight into a group of AI. We should be able to set waypoints that end on the desired action. Combining with my first suggestion, tell him to move to point x before moving to loot a wreck at point y.