Fluffy Fishy

The classes of Sant Andrea 2 (1724), San Michiel Arcangelo (1740), Speranza (1752), Vigilanza (1757), all armed with 40 guns, and Fama (1784), with 66 were all considered Fregata grossa/super frigates, and most of which I would assume better fit your template of what a super frigate might look like although I don't believe I have posted plans for any of them except Fama, so its likely that it partly comes down to a lack of communication on my part. Interestingly Muiron and Carrere at 44 guns, built later were still considered as standard frigates or fregata leggera. I have mainly posted the various classes that are more equivalent to the standard ships of the line used by most western European navies, (The Leon Trionfante , San Carlo Borromeo and "1780"). I'm not sure what point you are trying to make when it comes to how they are heavily armed until you convert it to British pounds, I'm not trying to deceive by making out that those ships had heavier armaments than they did, the reason I try to include both is it shows context of local weight and what they are comparable to by another well known navy similarly to how Russian pounds are much heavier than English or French, so look comparatively lighter as armaments on ships. It may not be anti Venice bias as you say but to me it looks very likely, there must be a reason for the poor measurements taken and when you add the context of the humiliation campaign following the end of the republican period in 1797 it fits far better than just suggesting the French cant use tape measures properly because they are too busy drinking fancy wine and sleeping with each other's wives. As I have stated above is very real data showing wildly disagreeing data between the collective of Britain, Venice and Austria, in comparison to what is recorded by the French, with numbers being up to 7m in conflict when it comes to lengths, and 2.5m in width, the French records consistently showing the far larger numbers, something is clearly amiss here, and it cannot be the discrepancy between local measurements, as the records I have seen all convert their local historic measurements into metres for easy comparison.

It wasn't just a smear campaign against the Venetian marine it was something that was part of a larger plan to humiliate Venice as much as possible. Its background comes from a mix of Napoleon's Corsican roots, along side his deep hate for indulgence and a desire to pacify a territorial gain. Venice as a republic represented to napoleon everything that was wrong with a society, the city had long since been the original town of sin, similarly to its modern day counter part of Las Vegas. The town was overflowing with pomp, gluttony, lust, greed, pride and sloth, he saw it as one of the main influences that had corrupted the French aristocracy he had overthrown, who frequented the Venetian brothels, gambling and music halls. Venice's history is also one that had stood tall as a republic similar to the campanile watching over the lagoon, Venice was this stable and eternal republic immemorial, having been there, evolving since 421 defiant in a world of monarchies. Napoleon and his council knew that capturing Venice wasn't enough, they also had to destroy what it was that people admired about what made her different as a city, they shut down the casinos and brothels, imposed laws for excess and cutting down the carnival, which in the late 18th century had stretched out to about 8 months. The Bucentaur was burnt publicly to further symbolise the death of the republic and then the assets of the 1350 year old republic were taken down and shipped to Paris, a lot of which are still there now. Then came the treaty of Campo Formio, where after the impositions of the brief French rule, Venice was treated as worthless and simply given away to Austria. Following Campo Formio the French took great liberties to dismiss Venetian goods and produce of all kinds, their abilities as shipwrights and in naval architecture was only a tiny part of this, the French put out a campaign of propaganda dismissing everything that Venice produced or marketed, glassware, soaps, spices, fabric and clothes, books, art and music. The campaign was so successful that it was a considerable part of what impoverished the city throughout the Victorian Era, where it was responsible for a long collapse of Venetian industries, the only one left relatively unscathed was the glassblowers, mainly due to their unique skill and techniques. So its not so much an alleged smear campaign at all, sadly neither is it a conspiracy theory, its just a miniscule layer in a vindictive web, similarly to so much of history where its written down with some creative editing by the victors. Later on the French Bucentaure is thought to be named after the Venetian state barge, something that is said to have come from a vindictive rubbing of salt into wounds more than a mark of respect. Hope this helps clear a few things up, apologies for not going into more depth previously, its just that it seemed a bit off topic to do so.

This is simply untrue, Venetian warships were built mainly to protect Venetian trade interests, something that is vastly misunderstood, although the lions share of the Venetian navy was generally based out of Corfu or Venice during the period it was expected to be able to protect shipping convoys all over Europe and deal with the Atlantic, with their ships often frequenting the ports of Amsterdam and London. There is also protection work with regard to Atlantic crossings, Venetians had some significant trade interests in the Americas, mainly trading in glass, instruments, oriental goods and fine clothing in return for colonial goods like tobacco. The Venetian navy's ships were also expected to circumvent Africa now and again as part of its work maintaining the key Venetian trade in the red sea, protecting deliveries of Venetian vessels so as to be able to take part in this trade. To accomplish dealing with these issues the government bodies (mainly the Venetian equivalent to the Admiralty) responsible with this frequently staged various deep sea trials, usually off the coast of Iberia, mainly off Portugal due to the easier proximity to harsher seas than that of Spain, making sure their ships were viable for deep sea, but also helping their sailors could train and maintain experience in these sailing conditions. I would treat every French source from the late 18th and early 19th century on Venice and her ships with a great deal of care, there are some very deliberate and deep feeds of misinformation from the French with regards to the subject. The French records seem to note down grossly untrue dimensions of Venetian ships, Muiron for example is for whatever reason, 2 metres longer overall, with a 5m longer keel and being a metre wider, where as other ships Venetian seem to be consistently distorted with similar false figures. What make these French figures seem even more unreliable is that Austrian, and English statistics taken after capturing Venetian ships from the French seem to reflect Venetian measurements too. After the capture of Carrare the British wrote incredibly praising things about her and her qualities, with nothing reflecting flimsy build quality. On a whole the French were incredibly dismissive of Venice and her way of life, including her maritime ability, despite Venetian advances in the 17th century forming the skeleton to the advances the French made in the 18th. The Venetian state was something that caused a sour taste for revolutionary France for multiple reasons, Venetian sailors often fought as mercenary sailors for the British and Dutch fleets, The Venetian Arsenal still boasted more potential and productive capacity in 1797 than any French shipyard, even Toulon, The Venetian way of life of excess and sin upset the uptight revolutionary leaders for the same reasons they fought against the French aristocracy and probably most importantly as long as Venice existed as a state, France would not be able to be considered the benchmark republic in Europe... France set out on a major political campaign following 1797, during which they dismissed the Venetian lifestyle, disregarded her creations and history. Venetian ships became distorted, Venice was completely looted, with the entirety of the Arsenal paperwork being shipped back to Paris for major study, and then to try and make out that Venice was worthless she was simply given away in the treaty of Campo Formio something France would later regret as Venice is demanded back in the peace of Pressburg, when the French invested in the huge resources of the Arsenal. Taking this back to Venetian ships, one of the key part of the issues faced by the records kept by French officers was that the cabins were rather spartan and compact, especially in comparison to the spacious and large French built boats, they therefore made up poor reports. Interestingly if you compare a report from Venetian captains over their ships then compare them to what is said of the French captains its like chalk and cheese. Also its important to remember if Venetian captain's reports were doctored or considered false they would be subject to intense scrutiny from not only the Venetian "admiralty" but also likely come under fierce inspection by the senate and inquisitors. Pretty much all the larger ships Venice produced in the 18th century, especially the largest Fregata Grossa rated ships. The only large ship where this isnt so much the case is La Corona (1714). The Venetian doctrine produced fairly similar ships to that of the Dutch, where compactness was important, however Venice took more aim to create ships that were able to operate independently with great shock value. Its not easy to elaborate on a point that was made almost a year ago, so I'm not sure what I was originally saying to be honest, sorry.

It could be any of those things like you say, although I wouldn't place bets on it being an 18 gun corvette. It could just be a drawing done by an apprentice as part of his training in the Arsenal college. Its probably unlikely that it was kept from being a foreign purchase but there was quite often sales to other nations, especially smaller nations like the Papal states. The oar ports and hull date it at some point between about 1670-1750. The other thing its got a fairly high chance in being is a ship built in a private shipyard as an armed ship to accompany merchant fleets on their trips, and has no history as a navy ship at all, although I would still hedge my my bets she is Abbondanza e Ricchezza/Ve Appoggio, although interestingly the Ve Appoggio translating to I support might be a big hint, sadly I think we will never know for certain. When it comes to the hole at the very rear of the its an open deck, so there's no value in light there and knowing how other Venetian ships of the period have been armed its far more likely than not that they would stick a gun in the hole, its probably just an ornate gunport that looks a bit different as a chosen feature to compliment the carvings of quarterdeck.

I sadly can't promise its the right ship for certain but its by far the most likely match, The records for ships I have list no others of her size, which as far as I know is the complete list of military vessels under the catagory of terzo rango and fregata leggara. The only other ship classes built or operated by the Venetian navy during the time period are the Madonna Sella Salute (44), Sant' Antonio da Padova (44), Nettuno (50), Scudo della Fede (52), Constanza (28), Palma (38), Pallade (24), Cerere (32), and an unnamed 44 Cannoni (Muiron/Carrere). Pallade being a single deck ship with no quarterdeck armed with 24 20lb guns, her class is also constructed using different framing methods after the Emo reforms in the 1780s. The other possibilities are that she was a hired vessel, which seems unlikely because the Venetian navy thought it insulting to either hire sailors from foreign territories or ships from private individuals. She also has water lines not too dissimilar to the San Carlo Borromeo, a much larger ship that was built with very conservative features and deemed a relatively poor ship in comparison to her predecessor, the ironically much more modern design of Leon Trionfante. To answer your question about the guns, she has 12 on each side, you perhaps missed the one situated at the very rear of the quarterdeck, the source doesn't state how they were distributed but its more than likely there would be 18 guns on the gundeck, with the 4 heaviest 20lb nearest the waist, with 14 of the 12lb guns flanking them, where as the quarterdeck would likely have a couple of 12lb at the most forwards point, with the 4 6lb guns closest to the stern, a system that was eventually abandoned in favour of having single weightings on each deck so as to ease confusion in battle, a change mostly brought about by adoption of the line of battle, something that never really took off in Venice due to the composition of the Venetian fleet. When it comes to the ship itself, I was in a hurry writing the post, its likely shes not the Monton d'Oro but I used the class name to write the post, not the ship itself, the drawing of ship itself is much more likely to be the Abbondanza e Ricchezza, who operated into the 18th century, unlike her nameship sister, who as you point out from my post was destoryed in 1691, Its also likely he sourced the information that was available for publish from the Arsenal records, something that was kept from open released while ships were in current service. Fregata leggara is light frigate, she is however both a fregata leggara and a fregata corvetta. Fregata being a word that started to be used in Italy some time in the mid to late 17th century, while corvetta came into use at the turn of the 17th and 18th, and was used as part of the re-evaluation of Venetian ratings, something that took place gradually between 1710-20 that saw the integration between the traditional system of primo, secondo, terzo and quarto rango with the new system of rating frigates separately, the fregata grossa, leggara and corvetta. I hope this helps, let me know if there is anything else that you want to know more detail about, I hope this clears a few things up, as with many of these things I can't say that the ship is but this is the best educated assumption I can make

@BungeeLemming That looks genuinely incredible, will you be uploading it anywhere like sketchfab like steel does? I'd love to be able to look at your properly and give it the eyes it deserves. Good luck getting it put into the game, I'd love to sail her :).

As you have covered her history fairly extensively here are some stats for her; Crew: 430. Dimensions: Gun Deck: 164ft 4 1/2 inches (50.1m) Keel: 140ft 4 7/8 inches (42.8m) Waist: 43ft 1/14 inches (13.1m) Draft: 15ft 3 inches (4.64m) Hold: 1387 57/94 bm. Armaments as a Frigate: Gun deck Deck 30 x 24pdr Weather Deck 26 x 42pd Carronade Forwards Chaser 1 x 18/24pdr Armaments as a Troopship: Gun deck 22 x 32pdr, 2 x 9pdr Weather Deck 8 x 32 pdr Forwards Chaser, 2 x 9pdr.

I thought it would be nice to make a post to have a little bit of fun sharing some of the terrible moments from places like TV or film. We can poke fun at some of the more bizarre scenes or the utterly inaccurate, things like the more the awkward representations in things like Pirates of the Caribbean, Black Sails or Game of Thrones to name some of the most popular. Some of the amusing things that seem to be quite frequent are how paper thin the planking on ships are, or how easily 1 or 2 people can suddenly sail a square rigged warship. What has made me think of this is that have been watching something called Taboo recently, its a historical fiction set in 1813, during the Napoleonic wars, the backstory seems to mostly revolve around the war of 1812, and the interactions between the American and British during this time. One of the main themes of the show is the presence of the American Blockade of the Irish sea, and how it is causing a strain on British trade interests in Ireland and the west coast of Britain, there is also quite a few references to the omnipotence of the East India Company, who seem more powerful than the Crown Authorities but the main thing that amuses me is the vast exaggeration of American Naval power and how it affects the narrative. Below is the picture of the Naval blockade, the red crosses showing where the American squadrons are, the blue showing the Royal Navy. Assuming an equal spread those American squadrons are something around 3 ships each, mainly frigates, brigs and sloops, in comparison to the hugely powerful post Trafalgar British navy in their home waters. Maybe it was decided that the British public know enough history to vaguely recall that Nelson sank the Spanish and French fleet at Trafalgar but don't know enough to understand the American Fleet in 1813. One of the other things that always stuck out to me was the ships in Assassins Creed Black Flag, especially the number of guns, but even more so the rams, underwater rams having fallen out of favour by around the 10th/11th Century, actually come to think of it the Jackdaw (the ship you own) is just a mess, after fully upgrading her she ends up as an ironclad brig, with 46 guns (+4 chasers), a large iron ram, a mortar and puckle guns replacing her swivels. Jackdaw is apparently fully capable of taking out not only large Man o' Wars but also naval fortifications on her own, to the point of if it were true, there would be no point in building them anyway . She looks like a mess, and would likely have just sunk if she was released onto the open sea. having never played AC Rogue it looks like the Morrigan is just as bad, if not worse, as is the ship from AC3 and Freedom Cry so well done ubisoft. Having done some quick googling, it turns out the Jackdaw has sunk by the time it comes to the game Freedom Cry, having been attributed to an epic battle, not her own weight. Please share some of the ridiculous, amusing, or things that just annoy you, I'd love to see some more, hopefully you have enjoyed my petty niggles.

I might not be following your line here but 667,000/250 is 2668, so that suggests my original numbers aren't wrong or even far out, especially as some of those would likely be making pretty short trips to places like Florida, Cuba, Canada and Hispaniola, thats only just above one trip for each of the hypothetical merchant ships every year. The sailing time between say Boston and Havana, going at 8kn is only around a week, so including docking times its very possible that a ship could go both ways in a month or two if you take it easy, or alternatively allow speculation that anything as little as somewhere between 1/2 and 1/4 of the US merchant navy would be involved with international trading, while the rest dealt with domestic trade which is why I was curious if anyone had any information on domestic haulage. The idea that most nations tend to include their vessels in their trading capabilities is its not particularly wrong either apart from the inflationary values it causes in data, barges and river craft are rather important in foreign trade, they may not be doing the foreign part but they play a vital role in transporting goods from docks to warehouses or markets and therefore are an unmissable part of a mercantile fleet and this often reflects in the information and data you find on them. Calculating the difference between ships and vessels helps give a better understanding of the logistics involved in the same way that military fleets needed support ships. Without lowering the tone too much, the little sentence of "Although early American merchants did take some tiny craft abroad, adventurous and capable types that they were" did give me an image of that famous scene from the opening of pirates of the Caribbean, but lets not trigger the "Jakk Sparrow"/"Jsparrow"/"Cptn Jack" types

I don't see the issue with mixing the datasets to establish a rough guestimate of the comparison between merchant vessels and ships, population is fairly redundant in the situation because what I am trying to establish here is the rough mix between mercantile vessels and ships, not the ships to population ratio in the same way there are differences between boats and ships. The distinction between vessels and ships is important in the same way that understanding that not all military ships are 1st rates, its also something I would like to grow a better knowledge of Napoleonic US mercantile shipping. So I have not shrunk the US fleet to suit myself, merely defined the differences in its composition to better understand the topic properly. There is a distinction between a ship and a vessel, a vessel is defined as any floating object that can be steered or used to navigate a body of water, so can include things like river craft, barges and coracles where as a ship is generally defined as a large sea going craft, having multiple decks above the waterline and historically needing to be square rigged. Boats however are defined as smaller vessels for travelling over water, historically powered by a lateen rig or oars, but interestingly all fishing craft and submarines are considered boats. All ships and boats are vessels, but vessels are not necessarily ships or boats. Are coastal trader's definitely excluded from the totals above? I am leaning towards the idea that ships are included in vessels and don't see it as unreasonable that Britain had around 13000 trading vessels, combined with around 7000 ocean going ships, nor as I stated earlier that the USA had around 3000 ocean going ships to 7000 smaller craft. This also supports the seaman numbers quite nicely, due to the fact that not all 69,000 sailors would be working all the time, but also considering that some of these would be managing ships that aren't counted, and serving in the navy, which seems to work towards my rough numbers too. When it comes to trade distance, this is also of the time period where funding the construction of a ship and commissioning a voyage to India or China would repay the total value of the ship in 2-3 journeys, combined with the rise of joint stock companies the idea of the most well financed vessels making it to the far east seems a little redundant as it was so comparatively quite cheap to buy shares in these expeditions for middle class families, this growth in income and wages later becoming the main reason for the industrial revolution, this was especially popular in Amsterdam and Britain. Anyway by conclusion, it is important to define the difference between ships and vessels in this thread, mainly because it skews numbers too much to not do so, for example something I can talk to death about is Venice. Venice in 1795 had a population of around 140,000, like I said earlier they had about 320 merchant ships, and a navy of around 80 ships, they also had around 40,000 vessels in Venice alone during this time period, of which around 15,000 were commercial traders, 25,000 were personal watercraft, although some doubled up as both. By not distinguishing the difference between the comparatively small but commercially strong Venetian mercantile fleet in the much declined republic and her trading vessels the city of 140,000 people has 5000 more ships than The USA and their 5m inhabitants, surely this is wrong?

Thank you for everyone's input so far, it has been great to read, I am however concerned that we are looking at this slightly the wrong way. Looking back at what has been written by myself and others so far we seem to have been interchanging the words ships and vessels very freely, by assuming all vessels are ships, where having a further look into the numbers creates something a lot more reasonable if you start to extrapolate data a bit. Looking at the figures for London as I have some clear numbers for the city, the data states that the port of London serviced 11,964 vessels in 1794, also stating that 3,663 ships were serviced the same year, over half of the British merchant fleet during this period. This leaves you with two numbers you can play with quite nicely Starting out if we assume that the number of vessels includes the number of ships you gain a number of; 11,964 / 3,663 = 3.267 times the number of vessels to ships or 30.6% of the merchant fleet composition. If you assume that the numbers of ships and vessels are independent of each other, you end up with 11,964 + 3663 = 15627 Leaving you with a merchant ship composition of 23.4% of the total vessels. Now taking this data on, and then looking at the numbers for the American merchant marine, they have their vessels quoted at around 10,000 ships in the early 1800s, not too dissimilar from the numbers serviced by the port of London. Taking the numbers from what I have prospected above you either then get a rough estimate of either around 2300 or 3000 ships (give or take a couple hundred), which as a number looks a whole lot more reasonable. These numbers still bring some question to the severity of the issue of the Barbary pay off, $1m for 115 sailors still just seems excessive as does the huge price of $660,000 pay off for each Barbary state especially considering the relatively small number of ships and prisoners they had gained during the time period, each of these two situations accounting for around 1/10th of US federal revenues. I still can't see the justification for such a large pay out for such a tiny portion of seamen and merchant ships, was it a morale thing or was the value of their specific cargo that huge? Out of interest, does anyone have any information for domestic vs foreign trade, and the average distance travelled that US ships undertook in their commercial dealings? I imagine that these trips are somewhat lower mileage than their European competitors, therefore inflating the data slightly due to a high proportion of short haul voyages, to say Canada, the Caribbean or Central and South America, in comparison to the more global trade of say the British, Portuguese or Dutch and their holdings in the far east. Again thank you everyone for your contributions so far, I would love to hear some more.

I'd like to see quite a few more ships, and try to find a way where they feel more different in combat, currently too many ships feel like bigger or smaller versions of each other and it hampers gameplay. The more different ships feel the more incentive you have to try more of them and find yourself a favourite that suits a personal play style, where it makes sense to properly compose fleets to have some larger and smaller ships, hopefully as part of this there can be a serious look at how there is a very real tendency for each class of ship to have one that has a significant advantage over others with similar crew sizes, most commonly the way that Agamemnon dominates 4th rate port battles.

Can you not get round this by uploading them to somewhere like imgur then posting the image link directly into the post? That's what I do for my high quality images for ship plans and similar large images.

What is the rough cost for developing a ship, and is it plausible that someone could potentially fund themselves or perhaps find a deal they could reach with the devs?

At the advice of Prater I feel like it is only right to open up this discussion we have briefly had tonight, mainly due to my desire to understand the subject better, I will put the entire discussion so far into a spoiler so as not to spam a horrendously long black of text. The discussion so far has been as below; I would really appreciate if people could add some more depth and insight into this topic, as without sounding ignorant but I really find it rather difficult to accept that the US so quickly outgrew the powers of Europe in 1800, especially France Spain and Portugal, with all their colonial and trade holdings. My personal estimate to the US maritime fleet would be a much smaller number maybe around 1000 ships, however I am more than happy to accept if this is a gross underestimate. My initial reaction is that things don't add up properly. To reply to Prater's comments in his last message, it seems a disproportionate cost to paying off pirates, especially if the lions share of the state budget went to the Barbaries, considering they had around 100 US merchants travelling the area, for me there are just too many inconsistencies like this that I would really like to iron out in my understanding. Perhaps this number has somewhat of a distorted reality, where a huge number of these ships were infact fishing boats, barges and service craft like dredgers or pilot ships. With regards to the Barbary issue, the Barbary pirates were a huge problem in the 1770s and 80s, something that subsided slightly after 1786 but never really went away, the problem starting to grow significantly again aver 1792. it seems somewhat strange to imagine that the US shipping wasn't under considerable pressure from these unruly beyliks during this time period, they weren't exactly the kind to stop their piracy after being paid not to either. if anyone can spare some time to expand on the subject I would be hugely appreciative, and I want to say a massive thank you to Prater for the conversation so far.

Is there anything new that the dev team want us to look at deeply or are we just carrying on with the general testing and points that have already been asked for?

Its not often I get the chance to place something significant here outside of the Venetian ships thread, but I posted these to the private tester's forums but figured they were important enough to place here as well so can be seen and shared amongst everyone. I hope you all enjoy these, they are the data taken from the 1929 restoration of the USS constitution specifically the information about the dimensions of her masts.

Here is as I promised the second half of the ship history for the rest of the Fama class, these are the 4 ships under construction after the fall of the Venetian republic to the French in 1797. Diamante Diamante was like the other Fama class ships constructed in the Novissima Grande in dockyard 3. Her construction was overseen by the shipwright Piero Beltrame. When Venice surrendered to the French, Diamante was around half completed, still laid up in her covered dockyard, she was slightly damaged during the French looting period, where the French burnt or confiscated a large part of the Arsenal records and resources. The looting died down after approximately two weeks the French assumed control of the famous Venetian dockyards, deciding to leave her incomplete. Following the Treaty of Campo Formio in late 1797, Austria took control of Venice, and for 6 more years Diamante was untouched in her dock, however late in 1803 the Austrians had come under some financial strain, but needed to support a larger navy so it was decided that Diamante would be completed. After her repair and completion she was launched in 1804 serving to protect Austrian interests in the Gulf of Venice and the upper Adriatic, never straying too far from Venice herself, she continued her local patrols maintaining control of the Austrian ports along the north of Italy and Istrian region. Come 1806 The French resumed control of Venice and Diamante was set up as a permanent floating battery, protecting the French interests as they took a much greater interests in the productive capability of the Arsenal, when they started to launch numerous ships, most significantly the portion of the Pluton variant of the Temeraire class. This job of was crucial for the security of the French ship works at the Arsenal because during their occupation, the Austrians managed to survey and work out the protective shallows and channels of the Venetian lagoon, meaning the natural geography was no longer defence in itself. She continued working this important role as a floating battery until Venice came back under control of the Austrians in 1814, when she was found by her new owners, she continued being used as a battery for a further 11 years before she was demolished in the Arsenal in 1825 after her 22 years of service as the last of the Fama class. Le Beyrand Le Beyrand was laid down on the 8th of June, 1782, she was built in the Novissima Grande, dockyard 13. Her construction was overseen by Iseppo Livio, who saw her through from start to finish after being commissioned by the French Arsenal overseer to complete the project. She was launched on October 29th 1797, although designed as a 66 she was armed with 64 guns, 26 x 18lb, 26 x 12lb, 12 x 6lb. She was named after Brigadier General Martial Beyrand, who fell at the battle of Castiglione delle Stiviere (alongside General Frontin, who the Leon Trionfante ship Medea was renamed after), fought between France and Austria on the 5th of August 1796, during Napoleon's Italian campaign. Le Beyrand left Venice on the 18th of December and was sailed to Ancona, where she was based for almost a year, when she was needed and co-opted into the French relief fleet, with the intention to break the blockade and siege of Corfu, the relief fleet left Ancona on November the 28th alongside Laharpe (A "1780") and Stengel, however they were spotted off the island of Lissa (Vis on the Dalmatian coast of Croatia) by a larger Russian Fleet, and on December 12th forced to turn back to the safety of Ancona where she was payed off. Beyrand returned to service in the spring of 1799, when she was needed to deal with a severe Coalition threat to Ancona mainly comprised of Turks and Russians at sea, supported by Austrians on land. She was rigged up to form a floating battery in an attempt to protect the town's port and stop any landings by the enemy fleet. As a result of the military action on August 16th she was partially sunk and made useless for the rest of the engagement, the French surrendered the town on November 14th and Ancona came under the control of Austria. It was decided that an attempt to refloat Le Beyrand and the Austrians enlisted the Venetian naval architect and engineer Andrea Calvin, who thanks to centuries of Venetian maritime expertise of at sea repairs, managed to repair the ship and have her back afloat by the summer of 1800. After being raised she was sent back to Venice, where she was kept as a close patrol ship until 1803, when it was noticed that her framing had suffered wear during her time submerged in Ancona, she was signed off as unseaworthy and potentially dangerous, so was taken into the Arsenal and then demolished. Unnamed The unnamed ship of the Fama class was set down in 1795, in Dockyard 17 of the Novissima Grande overseen by Gerolamo Manao . She wasn't far constructed by the time the French took over Venice, where she succumbed to considerable damage during the unrest and looting following the occupation and on September 27th 1797 she was deconstructed, with the majority of her timbers being used as firewood. Le Stengel Laid on June 8th 1782 in dockyard 13 of the Novissima Grande, her early construction was overseen by Giovanni Battista Gallina, and she was completed under the French occupation by Iseppo Cason on the 2nd of October 1797. Like Beyrand, although her design was as a 66, she was armed with with 64 guns, 26 x 18lb, 26 x 12lb and 12 x 6lb. Her name comes from the Cavalry General, Henri Christian Michel de Stengel, who was killed at the battle of Mondovi on april 21st 1796, the similar tribute as with the other ships of the class. She was sailed to Ancona on November 17th 1797, alongside Laharpe where they were based before they took part in the expedition to relieve Corfu sailing on the 28th 1798. Following the pursuit by the Russian fleet off Lissa Stengel got separated from the main body of the expeditionary fleet and fled to the town of Calamotta, not far from Ancona where she anchored and was kept and used as a floating battery until the French surrender on the 14th of November 1799, when she was captured by the Austrians. After her capture she stayed in Calamotta until August 1800 when she was sailed to Ancona, where she finally joined back up with the main expeditionary fleet, now having been captured, where she took on supplies and was sent back to Venice in convoy alongside Laharpe. After her return to Venice, she came under a sad state, and through general neglect ended up in a semi sunken state, due to her lack of seaworthiness she was then patched up and became a pontoon, where she remained unarmed for some time. However, in 1804 she was taken for a more substantial repair in the Arsenal where she was made into a floating battery to protect the main waterway into Venice but following the French reconquest she was transformed back into a pontoon in 1806 where she would stay. Hopes for Stengel were briefly raised in 1810, after she was deemed to be of significant military value thanks to the success of the Fama class, and their revered history, documented by the Venetian naval officers, now having been read and digested by the French admiralty in Paris. She was inspected and surveyed but sadly due to lack of love and attention had become of too much disrepair, and sadly the project was rejected due to the excessive cost. Stengel remained as a pontoon until 1814, when the Austrians retook Venice, they found Stengel rotten and degraded, so in July 1814 it was decided that Stengel would take her final trip into the Arsenal to be demolished. The Picture above is small portion of a large picture documenting the various ships in the construction in the Venetian Arsenal in May 1797, from left to right it shows; Carrere, an unnamed "1780" that was never completed, Le Stengel, an unnamed San Carlo Borromeo that was destroyed in 1803, and the unnamed Fama class ship. These last two posts give a nice broad history of each and every one of the 6 ships of the Fama class. Apologies if it got a little bit repetitive in places, but I hope you enjoyed reading it and it allows people to understand a little bit more about late Venetian naval history. As usual if anyone wants to know any more I would be more than Glad to try and dig out any more information if I can.

While I like the sound of the remodelling of the USS constitution is it really necessary that we have even more US ships? this game almost has a far over representation of the US navy and it would be a shame to focus time and effort on this project while there are so many other totally unrepresented nations and ship types currently lacking from the game. I would much rather see campaigns to see a much broader scope of ships than more from the USA, before long this game will end up having the entire early US fleet modelled, which seems a bit crazy judging how small and, and apart from their 6 super frigates, pretty insignificant the US navy was. I hope others agree but I would much prefer to see some more ships for Denmark Norway, The Dutch, Portugal and the Italian states see entry into the game than too many more US ships, while you can never have enough ships, comparatively we should really focus on the unrepresented nations a little more.

I agree that she would be a better choice but then If rumours have it right its likely that we are getting a Temeraire class 3rd rate so this may cause some confusion if we were lucky enough to get both

I glossed over the idea slightly in the topic "Crew cost is obviously too expensive or..." by Wind but the idea simply comes down to splitting crew up so its handled slightly differently, to better show some balance and help give more of a curve to affordability of ships, rather than the fairly flat line we have now, while adding some realism and depth. It also adds a nice little complimentary idea that goes well with the officers, allowing for multiple ranks. The System in Basics: Able Seamen should be expensive and costly to replace, I would also be tempted to suggest that they should be of a limited supply so as to add a bit of balance for the smaller nations. The point of able seamen should be to keep a ship operating at peak efficiency, I am currently uncertain whether I would like to see a soft/hard/unlimited supply but I am leaning towards a soft limit, where the higher cost and lack of benefit by manning a ship with able seamen gives above what is needed. I am also quite happy to see a hard limit, for example, if a ship required 40% able seamen you shouldn't be able to have any more than say 50%, which allows a buffer for crew loss. Ordinary Seamen, these should be fairly cheap to replace, fairly if not totally unlimited and you can have the ability to crew any ship entirely with ordinary seamen should you wish, however, crewing ships with too many ordinary seamen would come with some fairly substantial inefficiency problems, things like yard turning and reload times should be affected, I'd even go to the point of saying everything should be affected apart from turning the rudder, or working the pumps which I can't see how having someone inexperienced would create a major issue turning a tiller or a wheel. Each ship should have a rough ideal number of Ordinary vs Able seamen needed to crew it effectively, and where we can start thinking about gameplay a bit more, smaller ships should require a lower percentage of Able seamen when compared to larger ships, allowing for a nice curve. My initial idea is to say that you would need around 10% of the crew on a Brig, or other ship around 120-130 crew, this goes up to around 20-25% on the Frigates and their crews between 200-300, with the need to have something like 40% able seamen on the large ships of the line. This would hopefully simulate the need for more skilled men on larger ships, able to operate more fluidly and independently with a longer chain of communication, where as the smaller ships can operate more efficiently with less experienced crew. Some of the Complexities Crew damage should be taken as a percentage, where if you are running with 30% Able crew, there should be a 30% chance that when taking crew damage that it should be an Able seaman that gets taken out, compared to a 70% chance for the ordinary seamen, I would quite like to see a historic weighting to show that a higher percentage of Able seamen would traditionally operate, there would be a higher chance of killing Able to Ordinary, and vice versa, however I would be more than happy to just see a simple model for now at least. Only the Captain of a ship should know how many of each crew he has onboard, while I like that you can see the amount of crew an enemy ship has, I don't think you should see the make up, or be able to tell how many crew of which type you have killed in a rake. Extras I believe this system would work nicely with the proposed suggestions to Marines and how they will eventually make up a percentage of crew, again using this similar system they could be well represented and generally use a lot of the same mechanics, so in this circumstance its pretty much 2 birds one stone. DeRuyter has suggested that we could also have Landsmen, I'm not entirely sure how I feel about this, but i thought it was important enough to be worth mentioning, in the circumstance it would be nice to see an extra little allowance for these unskilled crewmen, it would be nice to see them being truly unlimited and frankly disposable. It would also be fairly nice to see a small portion of the crew percentage allowed to be landsmen, where they can take part in the most basic tasks, such as running powder and working the pumps. My worry with allowing Landsmen as well is it may overcomplicate the calculations and am personally of the opinion that Landsmen should be suggested as part of the numbers of ordinary seamen, leaving us with three options Marines, Able Seamen, Ordinary Seamen. Thank you DeRuyter for your suggestion. Please do suggest any queries or quarrels you have with the ideas I have suggested here, thank you very much for reading. I would love to hear any ideas that other people might have on the subject, especially those who are more savvy to how ship crews worked.

Even saying that, the current state of the incredibly broken economy helps to mean the new people almost have an easier ride in a lot of ways now than we did when we were going through the initial levelling up a year ago, although there is no sensible long term solution there, I'd still say the proportional cost isnt too bad apart from boarding like I said above, but then I don't often get intimate with fishes these days, but you make a good point, I can imagine if you are continually having to bankroll crew sign ups when you are trying to learn the game it could be incredibly frustrating especially if you are continually coming across some of the incredibly skilled captains we now have knocking about. I'd like to see splitting crew between ordinary and able seamen, where larger ships rely much more on higher percentile of expensive able seamen to operate efficiently, even slightly against historical values, meaning that newer players and players controlling smaller ships get an easier ride but also limits the first rate spamming a bit. Say for example a brig needing 5-10% of the crew as able seamen for peak efficiency, a frigate can have something like 20-25% and a SOL somewhere around 40%, this gives a fairly nice staggered effect but also means new people can enjoy cheaper crews and gives some historical values too

I personally don't find crew costs too bad for general combat but they are extortionate for boarding, I used to enjoy a good game of underdog rock paper scissors back in the days of free crew but now its horrible, when you compare the value of the ship you capture is much lower than the value of sinking a ship thanks to damage its just unsustainable, it makes no sense historically or in gameplay terms to incentivise sinking a ship over capturing it. Although having balanced but worthwhile ship capturing may be a hard tightrope to walk in terms of design.