Snoopy

Yeah its going to be pretty difficult to balance this consistently. Endymion was oak, carried 24pd guns. Her sisters were fir and carried 24pd guns. Despite the oak Endymion was the fastest of the lot, too.

Fighting? On the WAR Server? This is unheard of!

Well moving those bonuses from ports to crafters could mean more mobility between nations and less 'all is lost' moments when a port is taken..

Selbst mit DLC is Wechseln eine Zumutung weil man die Kosten von crafting-Infrastruktur nicht wiederbekommt und man mit dem Grind dann wieder bei Null loslegen darf.

Turkish (Ottoman Empire) ships were the original rageboarders. Beware

Yes, it would be a big QoL improvement if you could finish delivery missions without having to move items from fleet ship's holds.

This is far too draconic and doesn't scale with server population. Who will decide who gets to sail a first rate? How are the optics for a new player to be told 'no, you can't have one'. It's far easier to reintroduce PB BR limits again to liven up the meta. Almost nobody wants to sail full stack first rate fleets, but that's what the meta is, and thats what ppl will do.

Candidate for bug fix imho.

I don't disagree about her ingame rating being lowered for the reason you state but i'd argue it only on in-game terms. It's a stretch to say 'historically she was x'. She wasn't, because the US Navy at the time didn't have such a rating system. She was built into a void of classification with a very sneaky idea in mind 'well, technically, it's correct to say it's only a 50 gun single gun deck ship, no threat at all, please don't mind the fact it has this berth deck that no other Frigate has and it sits a storey higher than the 50gun Frigates from other navies for that reason, its completely harmless, I swear, please ignore the fact it's hull is actually as high as this 74 gun two decker you have, oh and our ship is slightly heavier than the 74, too, that's just all the provisions and sturdy sailors, surely, we also made it the same thickness totally by accident, pinky swear ^^ (and we didn't tell anyone we made it from frikkin Live Oak shhh)'. "She was made to gank ships half her size" (and run away from bigger boys) is such a good description. This deception worked internally as well. When Constellation captured the French Insurgente they were eager to biggen themselves up, after all Constellation only had 36 guns to the Insurgente's 40, never mind the fact she carried 24pound guns vs the Insurgente's 18s... and the crew was paid more prizemoney than they would have for their 'heroics'.. even though most could see through this. That's why itll be pretty difficult placing the ships into the NA rating system. As a 4th rate she'd have a massive hp advantage over the other ships in that rating as it currently stands. Nerfing this would do the real ship injustice so.. it'll never be satisfactory one way or another.

Pavel was a much heaver ship than the Wappen. It was made to carry very heavy guns and their necessary crew of hundreds of men on at least two decks (24s+36s) and came out of the gate with 18pdr on the weatherdecks. The Wappen was made to look impressive as an escort but only carried a wild mixture of different small to medium sized guns (18's being the biggest pieces on her) and was built with draft constraints on her predecessor of the same name in mind. Wappen was never meant to fight, Pavel was.

That's what I mean

An indication when a battle is closed would be nice.. also better tooltips, for instance it's not obvious that second rates are not eligible for the dmg count in patrol zones.

+1 for dock space 😛 Extending the range to 1825-1830 is problematic because a massive power creep happened in RL after the Napoleonic Wars. You edge into the range of Paixhans guns and of all-deck 32pd gun layouts on first and second rates. It'll be difficult to not make older ships obsolete as they were in RL. I couldn't agree more on the lack of 64-80, especially 74s. They need a role in the current meta, too.

You brought the historical aspect up first: Then we tried to reign in your broad brush of historical 'facts'.

Well it's you who are confusing history and game here, @vazco is right: wooden sailing ships almost never intended to sink each other. Partly because it was impractical to actually do, but also because of prize money, a certain honor based combat etiquette, the fact that sailors couldn't swim etc.. A ship sinking after major battle would be the exception not the norm. If they really intended to sink the other guy as you claim, they were rubbish at it.

Overpens were a thing in the age of sail, there is at least 1 report during a brawl with 3 ships side by side when gun crews were ordered to reduce charge when firing on their opponent - because a friendly ship was on the other side and hitting them was a concern. This is also evident in the penetration tables of naval cannons of the era, as discussed here. RL ships did not have uniform 70cm armor, it was much less the further up the hull you go. For wooden sail ship and cannons, I think @vazcois correct - in RL you do more damage if you just about get a penetration, this will maximize the splinter size and the whole the cannon ball will tear. With too much charge the shot has so much kinetic energy it will create smaller splinters and a smaller whole "clean through".

I am frequently getting (at least 80% of the times) this dreaded error message of doom when logging in: Authentication error: UserId received from Steam is empty. I have debugged this a little and I can reproduce/work around the problem. I seem to have a fairly lowish latency (about 15-20ms) to the game servers and this seems to be causing issues. If I artificially increase latency on my end (for example +100ms) the problems go away completely and I can log in on the first attempt 100% of the time. I have asked others and it seems that lower 'ping' does correlate with these login errors, most are not nearly as impacted as I am, thankfully. The problems start appearing increasingly at about 50ms and below, with higher latencies only getting the occasional error.

William Bligh looks like Bilbo Baggins in his portrait. Now, you can't unsee it.

I think there is a disconnect in terminology: Yes DLC ships bypass some aspects (perhaps 1/3 of it - crafting of ships - you still need cannons and modules) of the economy and lessen the grind to an extent. This is time sink vs money - quite a few games have xp boosts, powerlevel, premium account whatever you want to call it. If their balancing is as it should be (like the Rattvisan) DLC ships give you 0 advantage in combat, and this is the most important part imho. I find it somewhat frightening (please don't take offense, everyone can play the game as they like) that you think the eco part 'is the game' rather than the combat part. Under that logic, I can now understand why you think it's p2w. To me eco is just means to an end not the actual thing. If combat isn't the goal but the economy - why craft ships at all?

I'm not discussing your personality (how could I, I don't know you) but I am referring to what you have said, which, surely is the point of a forum? This post would be fine - except for the last sentence. It's an accusation which had no context or point of reference in this thread. It makes it so much easier to simply put everything you say, even things that might be valid, to be put in the box 'malcontent' and get ignored. I'm not a developer but if I was in their shoes I would ignore posts that often contain insinuations and accusations, too, they have to. You are implicitly attacking their impartiality and character. The best answer you can hope for in that scenario is to get ignored, otherwise they would have to defend their viewpoints on basically everything and no progress in terms of game development happens. I know it can be frustrating at times, sometimes I hate decisions the devs have made but 'salty' comments are unproductive. You may have vented, but no actual change will happen.

Fair enough, but it would probably help his cause more without the passive aggressive snipes embedded in his posts.

I can live with that

Temeraire? pretty please?

The game (like most MMOs) has always been gear based since it left Sea Trials and entered OW, there really isn't anything they need to 'admit now'. The ships had different stats from day 1 in OW. It feels like you also seem to misjudge the strength of the DLC ships. Hercules could use a nerf, or better have a crafted counterpart added, but how about I gift you the Hermione to your Steam account and see how much p2w that is? (I really mean it). So far the DLC lineup is: Hercules: slightly op (mostly due to a lack of other shallow water vessels with 32pd nades), Hermione: total dog, and more importantly because its a two decke 4th rater: Rattvisan: well balanced, Agamemnon is slightly better overall. This is a far cry from pay to win.

Having to go through smaller ports before being able to take a regional capital should be the only restriction on RvR. This plus giving ports different max BR again (why was this removed?) means more diversity. As for the frontline system.. not a fan. We have ships that can literally go everywhere.. it is incredibly jarring to have trench warfare arbitrarily imposed on then.