Fluffy Fishy

I'll be interested when they start to post stuff more than paintings. Saying stuff doesn't make it worthwhile but its nice to see some competition in the market.

I'm not sure why seasoned woods have been introduced, seasoned wood is the default building material for ships of the period. Seasoning wood was pretty much done by almost every navy worth its salt at the time because the shrinkage created a much more stable structure for ships to be built from. People don't seem to have a particularly wide understanding of what or why it happened here. Seasoning wood was a fairly risk free undertaking and while seasoning could spoil the wood if done badly and exposed to weather it was very common knowledge how to do it properly. Seasoning is also something that still goes on today because its effective. The point of seasoning is to find the natural resting point and release tension in timbers so whatever is made from them has a more stable structure, it also allows the shrinkage effect of the drying purpose to make the difference in size and weight etc. because these factors can dramatically change structural integrity over larger projects like ships because typical woods have a shrinkage effect of around 5%. Seasoning can be done either in seasoning sheds or on the stocks and isn't a process that takes a defined time but can be done over a period of months or years for slightly different results with the longer the wood is allowed to settle and dry the better the long term results of the process, this is especially evident when looking at ships that had long build times and artificially elongating the build process to account for this tends to create much better ships all round. The result of seasoned wood is that ships maintain their structure much longer when at sea which means they stay true to their lines longer and also take less wear and tear from the continuous exposure to various flexing and strains put on them by waves and weather. The other noticeable effect is that once the ship is reintroduced to water having been properly dried out during construction is that you get a much better seal between the planking as the swell of the wood after launch tightens the caulking as it applies more pressure as the woods grow as they take on moisture again. The problem however isn't that the process is historical or not, the problem is that it only expands on the already somewhat imbalanced woods in the game. Seasoned woods will soon become the new meta which will have a negative effect on new players who can't so easily get hold of the resources to build the more expensive seasoned ships that in reality should just be the typical build. The other issue is it pushes players into DLC ships, as game labs have kindly promised that DLC ships won't be the best ships in their classes this just feels like a somewhat sly way to push players into DLC ships as the ships themselves aren't technically better but the ease of building them out of seasoned woods quickly makes them much more economically viable which can only have a negative effect on the game and create a secondary pay to win scenario. A more realistic and historical way to introduce wood tiers would be to introduce greenwood ships, much cheaper to build and more disposable as was done in times of oak shortage or elongated wars, it was also a fairly short term way for viable second power navies to quickly build large numbers of ships that could stand up to more powerful navies for a period of time but again it doesn't make a huge amount of sense by design to introduce a second group of materials to build ships from when there's already vast imbalances in the system we currently have to play with, let alone having to now balance a new meta.

Well it looks like we're getting two Temeraire class ships with some teases that point towards having both Redoubtable and Implacable. I for one look forward to the inevitable balance upsets where Wreker can put 36s on her main gundeck and 32s on her second, Temeraire can put 36s on her main and Montanes being a speed demon or the alternative of the massive arguments the ship's fan clubs will have for them not being accurate portrayals of their historic selves 😛

Some collections from general understanding of historic sailing from books like "Seamanship in the age of sail" and various publications by people like Brian Lavery and Robert Gardiner. The reports for the knots themselves come from The Admiralty reports from the back of "Nelson's Ships - A History of the vessels in which he served" by Peter Goodwin. There's a useful selection of reports and tables at the back and just makes for easy reference for this kind of thing, its a great book if you are interested in some examples of history of specific ships. The ISBN is: 0811710076

Sorry but this is entirely wrong and mistakes the comparison between modern ships and historic ships. The typical weighted keel of a modern yacht or ship behave in very different ways to the wooden keel and ballasting of a ship during the age of sail. Sails and rigging also behave differently enough to historic ships too. I went into some details why in my previous post here (https://forum.game-labs.net/topic/32055-seasonal-update-treacherous-waters-preliminary-information/?do=findComment&comment=680682) Smaller ships won't perform better in light winds at all, typically conditions of light winds actually favour larger ships due to their much higher rigging catching more winds much more than their weight and friction holds them back but there are more mechanics at play than a simple scale. Heavier ships may or may not benefit from gales too mainly depending on where their gun ports are and how stiff the ship is. Even completely within ship classes the difference between sailing characteristics are very dramatic. Take these examples: 28 guns HMS Albermarle HMS Boreas Topgallant Gale 16kn 7kn Topsail Gale 16kn 6kn Before the wind 8-11kn - 74 guns Vanguard Elephant Topgallant Gale 7kn 8-9kn Topsail Gale 8kn 8kn Before the wind 11.5kn 11kn First Rates San Josef (114) Victory (100) Topgallant Gale 7-8kn 7-8kn Topsail Gale 5-6kn 6-8kn Before the wind 11kn 11kn Others Bristol (50) Badger (12) Medusa (32) St George (98) Topgallant Gale 9kn 9kn 8-10kn 10kn Topsail Gale 7kn 7kn 8-9kn 10kn Before the wind 9.5kn 9kn 12-13kn 10.5kn You can clearly see there's no real relationship between size and sailing characteristics because there are far more important factors than size at play when looking at what conditions a ship is capable of sailing certain speeds at. It also shows that realistically we should stay a long way away from hullspeed as a thought for working out actual speeds of ships because its innacurate and unhelpful at best. When you look at applying this to the game you are probably better off flipping it over, leaving larger ships actually becoming more troubled by heavier weather especially the inability to use their main gundecks while smaller ships have a more constant speed but don't get their armament so affected by bad weather. This would also leave frigates in their place quite nicely as they tend to be much more weatherly than ships of the line due to their higher positioned main decks beyond the waterline. This is especially so when you look at the conditions of the game itself.

Sorry man, I think your are making this up lol. Yes it COULD be possible that heavier ships catching up with faster frigates, but ONLY due to being on better wind or other factors like if Frigate spent much time on voyage and have not done the careening to remove biofouling organisms growth on the hull, or had damaged sails or a drunk captain lol. But definitely not because the heavy Line Ship somehow had different wind approaching the Frigate from parallel reality. That is a fantasy Hull speed is fairly meaningless when it comes to the age of sail, there are far more important factors when it comes to determining speed from historical wooden ships. Historic sailing is so dependable on other factors like rigging type, stiffness, trimming/load and general hull form much more than modern vessels. Frigates aren't by any means faster than ships of the line, nor are larger ships of the line by default slower than smaller ships of the line. Taking just the easily accountable examples of HMS Victory, Bellona and Agamemnon, Victory sailed 11kn, Bellona 12kn and Agamemnon 9.5kn in their best wind conditions historically. Other examples from history that are easily accessible are the 24 gun HMS Seahorse who could only manage 11kns, HMS Lowestoffe at 32 guns who could do 10kn, Unite 36 guns at 13kn and HMS Badger 12 guns who could only perform a top speed of 9kn. Typical 74s tended to be around the 11-12kn mark although some are considerably faster, similarly some examples of 80 gunners could produce some really high speeds in comparison to frigates and post ships. Despite top speed being a a thing its more realistic to look at actual viable speeds which is represented in game fairly well with the sailing graphs where certain ships would perform better than others in certain directions due to the way their hull form and rigging made them behave. The most important part of this however is that certain sailing conditions favored some rigging types and sized ships much more than others, it all becomes very complicated though. In calm seas with low winds its not uncommon for a larger ship to catch winds much better than a smaller ship due to having much higher sails, while in heavier winds with calm seas sailing conditions typically favoured smaller ships. This all becomes much more complicated when you throw in things like stiffness and rougher waters where factors like how weatherly a ship was come into play much more, stiffer ships will sail much better in rougher waters, again potentially favouring larger ships, but again trimming, ballast and where the gunports sit compared with roll and heel become much more important than ship size. There are plenty of examples of large ships historically out sailing smaller ships. The nonsense of frigates being default faster than ships of the line is also a myth mostly propagated by bad history from all sorts of media. Even within the game we have fairly obvious examples from discussions on the forums like Montanes who could sail 14kn and Endymion who could sail 14.5kn vastly outrunning smaller ships.

It concerns me that we are modelling competitiveness with a game released in 2003. Something 16 years old simply shouldn't be a benchmark to be used to judge how effective the game marketing or player retention is although if anything it should be ringing some alarm bells that something so old which also requires an almost full time commitment as well as a monthly subscription is holding on to vastly more players. WoWs however is a completely different experience and probably not the best thing to compare to.

HMS Leopard is 1790-1814, not 1775-1790, she was being built between 1775-1790 she obviously wasn't an active ship over this time. Interestingly she was constructed at two different dockyards.

She was a 4th rate, simple as. There's really no reason to classify her as anything else. She wasn't however a completely new style of ship, super frigates were born in 1724 and 24lb frigates were first conceived in 1782. You can talk to death about her as a vessel but whether you think she more resembles leopard style 50 gunners, which really she does, or if you are under the illusion she is some kind of groundbreaking frigate design, which as much as the fan-fair like to pretend her to be she really isn't. She is still either a 4th rate 50 gun ship or a 4th rate heavy frigate. She should be a 4th rate.

I still can't get over the weird world where the USS Constitution and United States are 3rd rates, They are solid 4th rates and should be balanced accordingly. There is far too much of a lobby trying to push them to be godly ships capable of far more than they were historically both in a combative and sailing sense and the move to make them 3rd rates seems the obvious result of that push to make them much better than they really are. The Idea they both have better health than Wasa and similar structure values to Bellona is just frankly disappointing. The 3 ships should be 4th rates no questions asked, with Endymion being the heaviest 5th.

Not sure what this screenshot really means but the ratings given on these ships kind of scares me a bit I'd assume the numbers next to their name are something like a ship rating, which I'm shocked to see how certain ships are so highly rated, especially essex, constitution and requin.

I bought myself the middle option, I'm downloading it now and I'm looking forwards to giving it a go

If you wanted to do a Venetian DLC you'd have to focus on the career of Angelo Emo, who spent most of his career as a pirate hunter but was the last great admiral of Venice fighting in the Venetian Berber war from 1784 until his death in 1792 after which peace was reestablished. The last Venetian admiral who was Emo's second in command was Tomasso Condulmer who retired from service following the treaty of Leoben, briefly acted as a commander in the resistance to French and Austrian rule but soon gave up as it caused too much misery for the people in the recently annexed lands. Emo isn't really as interesting as a history as Nelson or JPJ, especially as Emo is partly made as significant as he was due to his various reforms and his appointment to Capitano Straordinario delle Navi and then even as Procuratore de Ultra before the senate started to worry about the French Revolution and started to favour Tomasso Condulmer due to Emo's aggressive attitude towards piracy and his costly campaigns in Northern Africa. More realistically I'd prefer to see DLC focussed on the 7 years war or War of Spanish Succession, Especially the 7 years war and its world spanning actions.

This doesn't really work with Constitution as an example, Constitution has far more mass under the water than Agamemnon and Rattvisan, Constitution is slightly thinner but has a much deeper draught. The illusion of Constitution being a much faster ship purely because she is a "frigate" doesn't really make sense. Constitution does have a better sailing ratio but this is only really due to her incredible length as a ship, Comparing hulls, Rattvisan and Agamemnon aren't too dissimilar shapes and aren't really blocky, if anything Constitution is a more square shape than the two ships you are comparing her to who both have some really quite nice hydraulic lines. Measurements: Length Constitution: 63m Agamemnon: 48.77m Rattvisan: 49.6m Width Constitution: 13.26m Agamemnon: 13.44m Rattvisan: 13.59m Draught: Constitution: 7m Agamemnon: 5.19 Rattvisan: 5.79m Tonnage (BM) Constitution: 1576 Agamemnon: 1,383.6 Rattvisan: (Around 1400-1425?) Plans:

Can you please remind me when Spain was ever great in the first place?