Elysion

Batteries were not fixed like in modern warships, wasnt uncommon for a ship to have more guns than it was rated, and sometimes fewer if it were filling a purpose. Id actually kind of like if when the final game is.. finalized, we have the ability to customize the ships loadouts more to reflect this. Really there are only two considerations 1. weight 2. space What this means is that you should be able to take a 'standard' configuration, remove the guns and replace them with fewer, heavier, guns. As long as the weight distribution stays the same the ship should still handle fairly equivalently. Likewise you may be able to cut some space for a few more guns and sacrifice handling characteristics, or downgrade all your guns in size but keep number, to be able to take on more cargo or provisions. Things like that.

With out knowing too much about this, i would guess britain simply as a consequence of their greater need. Navies are important for running a global empire. Protecting shipping, moving troops around. When you are stretched all over the place even a minor power can cause you problems, so having precise logistical skill and ensuring that you get the most out of each of your ships capabilities seems to be the natural tendency. This requires consistent standards which can be depended upon.

You think that untill one day you are sitting in your nice windward position sniping with your long guns and it just rows straight towards you, laughing at the weather gauge. Thats the power of freedoms my friend.

This basically. A powerful draw for specific american ships (other than the constitution) may not be present, but the draw to the 'american style' of ship is. Its the fact that america did not have as long a time to build up an age of sail legacy as other nations that makes being able to experience american ships in a sort of 'what if' environment all the more intriguing in a game like this.

Id like to see some actual armed merchant ships, not the converted to 4th rate versions, but the regular merchant version. While these ships will undoubtedly be underpowered for their size, its going to happen in the actual game that an armed merchant ship will attempt to fight off someone attacking them, id like to see how it plays out.

Isnt this to be expected? A ship built for a purpose is better at that purpose than a ship modified to fill that purpose would be?

This is something ive been curious about too. Because other open world online age of sale games.. (which there are not many mind you) have had this, im hopeful, however its a lot to add and if they are not planning on implementing avatar combat or something for boarding or away-from-ship activity it would be a lot of work for no real practical benefit. It would be nice to walk around a nice 18th century town and have places to hang out, it would be nice to be able to walk around your ship for that matter, go below and look at your guns or cargo, talk to your crew... Or to invest in an economic structure and be able to go and inspect your papermill or whatever (for some reason i always enjoy making paper in games that let me...) But im just not sure they have that kind of scope in mind. Some sort of port interaction would of course be nice, and it would be nice to have a captains avatar even if he just stood on your ship and maybe you could get him (or her? did happen, captains wives that were on board have taken command in certain situations in the past) a few different kinds of fancy hats and coats. This avatar could then participate in a sid meyers pirates style of port interaction, where you have a nice little scene of a bar to recruit people, or of you talking to whoevers in charge, but nothing free-roamable and explorable. At least that would add to the immersive feel, but im not sure. With a hesitancy to bring up EVE, the whole push they had for walking in stations turned into a gigantic fiasco both in their ability to deliver and the players reaction to the effort they were putting into something that was not seen as particularly needed. Some sort of representation of the player character would be nice, and something more than just a menu when you enter a port would also be nice, but im not sure an actual open world on land would be a wise time investment unless they had more than just immersion planned for it. I would not of course be against the implementation of such a thing because again, if they were going to do something like that they would probably let you free roam around your ship which would be a lot of fun, but eh...

Ohio looks good. Like a nice sturdy bridge.

But she was built, her structure was complete, her design was realized. What would a more authentic 1820 set of guns have been? Im pretty sure the kinds of guns that one site reports were all in use at the time. Was there sufficient metalurgical progress in those 18 years that would have allowed the guns to be made significantly lighter thus making an 1820 version of the same weapons too heavy for her?

I like the paint, its like someone took a highlighter and ran it over the guns. "This is what you aught to be looking at, right here".

With the disclaimer that I am not a master bureaucrat... The expiration dates on my credit card always run through the month it expires, and it doesn't really expire until the 1st of the following month. So with that same kind of reasoning, 1820 as an end date would mean that anything in 1820 is fair game, its only ships launched January first 1821 and beyond that are out of that time frame.

Neat. Look at this http://www.ussohio.org/ohio_006.htm That seems like a far more sensible gun configuration than these silly sol we get with tiny useless guns on their upper decks. I really hate to be an america fanboy, but it seems to me looking at this and the constitution that the characteristic design tendencies of american ships can be said to be... well... superior.

I expect the standard 74 gun 3rd rates will be floating around in abundance and not be too hard to get ahold of. Many such ships were built by several nations, so they should be 'in circulation' so to speak. I expect the finished game to have more than just bellona representing this rather large family of ships. Honestly three deckers are not very good ships. They are powerful sure but too unwieldy and getting their full broadsides to hit anything smaller than them is hard and typically makes them waste firepower anyway. So when thinking about what american 'sol' may have to face, you really only need to think too much about opposing third rates. Large east indiamen were converted into fourth rates, and aquiring merchant ships will probably not be too difficult for any nation, so they just have to build big ones. The 44 gun frigates often carried more than 44 guns in reality, hopefuly this can be reflected in game, then you have the cut down independance to think of. All of these ships can be considered the equivalent to 4th rates, and a rag tag group of them with some 'generic 74 gunners' throw in could make a decent fleet to oppose the standard fleet of a bunch of 3rd rates with a first or second as flag ship. I admit thinking about how the US may do things like that and have to take more special measures compared to the more standardized fleets of the major naval powers of the time is very attractive to me, and makes me hope that such restrictive national characteirstics may exist. Cobbling togeather a large fleet when you absolutly need one, and then flexing your frigate muscle better than anyone else to try and win an economic advantage to ensure that fleet actually has a chance sounds exciting.

Yeah but its so very far up there in little letters away from the pretty boats =P I looked today. I seemed to be getting around 80 fps. Maybe ill change to the highest settings. EDIT: Wow, changing from high to ultra made my frame rate cut in half. 80to 40 fps. Thats pretty significant for a single step of the quality setting.

Windows 7 i5 3570 (non k, muh virtualization!) 8 gigs of ram gtx 760 SSD I run the game on 'high' settings, because thats what it defaulted to and i saw no reason to change it. I dont know what frame rate it typically runs at because its never started running slow enough that i felt the need to check.