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Inkompetent

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Everything posted by Inkompetent

  1. No. No. Just... no. This is a game about actual age-of-sail ships and combat in the Carribean. Not some made up monstrosities from movies or cartoons.
  2. Nor can I, really. That's exactly why I'd love to run a live server test for a few months to see how it actually plays out. It is a quite drastic change after all.
  3. 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.
  4. Then again real captains captured maybe... 0.2-2 ships a year, while we can cap fourteen in a day, so...
  5. I agree with most points here. We shouldn't be able to "snipe" masts, at least not nearly as accurately as now. Downing masts should be done with broadsides. As for felling masts IRL you are right there too. Generally it was done with chain and ball shot to tear off the standing rigging so that uneven stresses on the masts snap them off. Of course some lucky shots to the mast itself could be the critical component, but seeing ships have been able to sail with really rotten masts that still remained standing it'd take one hell of a hit to crack a mast with ball. The last point I'm not entirely sure of as I'm yet not convinced that one type of system is better than the other, but they certainly affect the whole dismasting-system and require very different balancing.
  6. Last battle I was in required 342 hostility to get to join early.
  7. Here comes the update! As stated in the earlier post the focus has been on simply actualizing the guide to the current state of the game. Not everything has been updated, and the most notable example is the port battle chapter which's contents have been entirely scrapped for now. I am sure that there are bits that I have forgot to update, at least entirely, but I felt it was better to get it out in its current state than to polish it for eternity. Some small layout improvements have been done for readability and also to make the guide more suitable to printing (even though I doubt anyone will print the guide in its half-finished state), but I especially need to get to work on more pictures. I guess it's time to dig out my Wacom tablet from the boxes in the loft. As always feedback is welcome! DROPBOX LINK A Naval Action guide to sailing and combat 2017-06-09.pdf
  8. We need several more ways to make money, I think. One is transport contracts, so that it's easy to get material X from port Y to port Z, without having to go there yourself. The other is bounty contracts since that can make it worthwhile for people to chase down someone notorious (or so annoying that he's got a bounty on his head) despite the risks; risks that would make the "normal" payout of a PvP fight waaaaaay too small for the risk being worth taking.
  9. Uhm... it was possible to repair sails before too. It's not a new feature. The only thing that has changed is how the repairs work.
  10. 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.
  11. This would probably be a good starting point. Means that point-blank chain does a lot of damage (as can be expected seeing the amount of canvas, and both running and standing rigging that would be hit with significant force), but chaining people down from range become a venture more of luck than anything to be relied on.
  12. Maybe something like a "Leak Shock" could be introduced, so that when enough leaks are caused simultaneously the damage control teams get overwhelmed and for a moment can't do anything about it?
  13. They are still awfully light, and quite blunt. You'll get some shallow cuts, but a lot will be stopped by a simple sailor's shirt, and even if you'd get a piece sticking a centimeter or two into you, how much would it bother you with a splinter the size of a pencil when you are pumped up on adrenaline? The few large pieces that fly, the very few pieces, those are really dangerous. But most of the fragments are nothing that'd stop a person in battle.
  14. Not really. There were of course moments when there were ships with enormous complements of marines, but these were usually specialized ships (for example a large trading vessel like the Indiaman pressed into that role, or a hospital ship being assigned to that task), but since these ships were very underpowered in a gun battle they required plenty of escort. In NA the boarding vessels of course get a significant disability in gunnery, and maybe in sailing depending on crew allocation, but they can still carry a full battery of guns. For example the Victory carried ~150 marines, and a decent 5th rate around 50. In battle the majority of these would fight from the weather deck and the like, and I mean... where the hell would you fit more of them? Sitting on their butt right between the cannons on a gun deck, being in the way for the sailors who are running back and forth to load the guns?
  15. Exactly, and as can be seen in that video the splinters produced by a proper gun are quite pathetic. Some harmful bits of wood are shot out, but most of the splinters produced there wouldn't do anything at all unless they hit you in the eye, and barely then. This is exactly why carronades were invented, so that you could hit with a large ball at as low velocity as possible while still penetrating, so that you produce large splinters instead of small. This means more damage both to the ship and to the crew. All of this is already abstracted in the guns' damage values, as for example long guns have less damage than mediums do, reason being that they produce less splinters.
  16. Yes. Gunnery skills, sailing, patience, and actual broadside-to-broadside matters more. It is still quite easy to sink a frigate, but unless you really outgun your target's armour you need to do it from up close, and I like that. Put a really high emphasis on shooting sails and masts though, and they seemed to go away awfully fast in 9.8.2, but since that's already an identified issue there's nothing more to say about that. I do. HOWEVER! They cannot be added into the game without giving incentive for them. Either the loss of a ship (especially sinking with all hands still on board) should be so punished that getting away is a relief, or there needs to be something that actually appears as a reward for partaking in and "winning" such engagements (i.e. wanting to and being able to continue battle, but being denied by the enemy sailing away). Using the 'carrot and stick' method you (the developers) can make people happy about undecisive engagements, which although not as lucrative and rewarding as decisive ones still makes it worth the effort and time spent. Not sure if marines are too powerful, but they most certainly are too hard to get. For a proper marines detachment onboard any man-of-war you need the green ('common' quality) marines, i.e. 20% of all hands on board the ship are marines. Having those 20% marines also makes it possible to at least defend against a boarder and disengage without catastrophic losses. However actually getting those marines has 0% to do with skill or effort, and 100% to do with luck, and that is not a good system. EVERYONE should be able to have marines on board their ship. Maybe Marines should be standardized more or less according to historical ship detachment sizes and be removed completely as an upgrade, and instead boost other boarding-focused upgrades to make those proportionally powerful with non-boarding upgrades. One upgrade for this could be one that only boost the marines' fighting capability, be it called "Experienced Marines" or something. Also, maybe there should be some upgrade to give synergy with not having an automatic super-advantage in boarding because of boarding upgrades, like "Heavy boarding ramps" or "Extra grappling hooks" or something to make the Disengage action take one or two turns longer (i.e. the opposite of Boarding Axes) so that they get sufficient time to win a boarding if they fight well. What does this mean? What will the change in ship behaviour be? I would personally love it if turning realistically became slower so that doing the right/wrong maneuver matters more. Now with it being harder to damage ships I think there is room for this change. If you for example are forced into irons and get several ships passing you to fire on the same broadside you will suffer dearly since you'll be stuck longer with slower turning speeds, but the enemy also had a much harder time to set you up for it and still need to get close and at a good angle to do damage, and thus should be properly "rewarded" (i.e doing lots of damage) for the effort and skill. The ability to "angle-tank" right now is pretty high since it's so easy to toss your ship around, and that makes it very hard to set someone up for proper damage. It would be nice to at least approach a break-even between turning and reloading. IRL it was always faster to reload than to turn any reasonably big ship, and here it is the other way around. We should try to find some in-between to make it a more skill- and situation-based choice. After all, when I can zig-zag behind someone in a 4th rate to alternate broadsides something is wrong.
  17. Shouldn't be as much technical difficulties as UI and control difficulties. The back-end ought to be relatively simple to code, but how do you make an untuitive UI for and controls that are easy to use, yet offer the functionality required? It is easy to go into the swamp of "too much to do" which'll end up being a fight with the controls and the interface more than a fight with the enemy.
  18. Although agreeing that the feature would be nice I do dispute the uselessness of the light guns that several SOLs (and other ships) carry. Exclude them from your hull-targeting broadsides of course since they are hopelessly useless against anything armoured, but instead use them to snipe crew off the enemy top deck. Six-pounders, and even four-pounders, punch straight through the weak railing up top and kill crew left and right. Definitely not to be frowned upon.
  19. 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.
  20. And here I thought that we have had quite a good fight already!
  21. Having peace talks do however mean that you ought to enable those peace talks. I do not mind their attacks earlier in the day, but initiating port attacks that will go on during the meeting itself is a very strong statement about what the French ​actually desire, and it certainly can't be peace. Otherwise they'd of course have made sure that both their own nation and the Danes knew not to attack right at that time. There really is no viable excuse for what they did as far as "good behaviour" goes. It was rude, and it was an aggression. I have never been to France so I am not certain how they do things there, but I do have trouble thinking that they'd punch someone in the face as a greeting when they want to come to a mutual agreement. Either way their demands and the way they conducted the meeting makes it obvious that they didn't want any peace anyway, but it doesn't make the presented behaviour more professional or sensible. If anything it reinforces the already very negative existing perceptions of their nation and its untrustworthyness and of their diplomats and leaders being "jackals".
  22. It is nice that the French are so honest, reliable, and professional that they ask for peace talks, and then start attacks 30 minutes before the meeting is due to start. If only everyone could be as trustworthy and professional as the French.
  23. But if we get this ship as a "one-ship-beats-all", then we clearly need the HMS Warrior!
  24. You have to realize that it is a huge difference between a "marine" and a "boarder". This is a marine: LINK This is a "boarder", i.e. a normal sailor: The marine's primary combat duty onboard the ship is to protect the ship against boarding enemies and sharpshooters, and to board the enemy ship if required. The sailor's primary duty is to man the rigging, cannons, etc, and during combat he can take to arms like muskets, pistols, clubs, pikes, swords, axes, knifes, etc. when being boarded/firing between the ships and having to defend the ship, or when being ordered into a boarding party to assist the marines in taking the enemy ship. TLDR: The marines and sailors have very different jobs. The marine is a naval infantryman, and the sailor runs the ship.
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