Fluffy Fishy

As far as I can see it might not be noted as 88 guns, it could be an 80 gunner where the quarterdeck armament is an afterthought, the 182 is also significant and will likely help you find some form of measurement. Other gun combinations could be anything between about 80-92, also noting that in the top left corner it says Portuguese ships as you pointed out, I would say Nossa Senhora da Conceição/Principe Real of 1771 or Vasco de Gama of 1793

So what you are saying is it should be much lower in general and threedecks is making a fairly major mistake? And when we look at ships like this they have bad calculations: https://threedecks.org/index.php?display_type=show_ship&id=7863 The 74 above is a useful one because it shows a rearm in 1822 with much lower numerical valued weapons, at least when you are considering the change in shot so it should be: 1792: Broadside Weight = 1032 (473.688kg) (Pre Metric) 1822: Broadside Weight = 732 (740.784kg) (Post Metric) That does seem much more reasonable and in line with other nations. Do you have any sources I can see, even if they are in Portuguese? Also out of interest what is your thought on how/why threedecks makes the mistake? Thank you for the help.

Thank you for your comment, I've been thinking about it today, mainly because I don't have a particularly useful sources on it. For Portugal I just used threedecks as I couldn't find anything better, Sella22 also doubted it saying they were the same as Spain but I was unsure, I might email the threedecks team to find out what they based their information on. My initial thoughts are that Portugal might have used the same weightings for land artillery as Spain but kept to themselves for navies. It does however seem slightly out of touch with the other European navies something I didn't think too much of because of the high weighting of shots used by Russia and the Ottomans, with the 1/4 Kantar and 68 Funt guns respectively both weighing not far off the Portuguese 36s, it also struck me how not many Portuguese ships actually carried their largest guns, mostly capping out at 24lb which doesn't sound unreasonable. If you have any sources on the matter please do share them, if not I will get in contact with threedecks to see what they say.

Thank you for your kind words. I wrote this in history not in suggestions for that reason, Its mostly something I have researched and written for my own interest, but I thought I'd construct a proper post about it and share what I have learnt over the last few weeks with the community here just in case anyone was interested. While I have presented it as potentially having some opportunities for the development of the game I won't feel hard done by if the devs take no notice, I was mainly just drawing parallels between what the game uses because it made me a convenient start for the project. Thank you kindly. I ripped the information for edinorog poundage straight out of Russian Warships in the Age of Sail 1694-1860, you are right they did use trade pounds over artillery pounds, I used the pounds given in the book, which as I read it the calculations have already been done and they quote numbers that have already been converted to artillery pounds. However if I have misread it and got it wrong I will have to modify it slightly. Here is a link for the section of the book I took the information from: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=70KyBgAAQBAJ&pg=PA42&lpg=PA42&dq#v=onepage&q&f=false I quite like the obusiers, they have quite a pleasing design even if they lack the quality of the carronade, I also find them pretty fascinating how they spread into Spanish use. The gun was tested with round balls as well as the ovoid its original designer intended, the ovoid shots performed significantly better than the typical round shot because they can't lose force on so many vectors so provides a straighter movement down the barrel which improves general accuracy, its a similar thought process to the sabot of the Paixhans. I'm not entirely sure how the mechanics of the system worked, I just know it had one, its built on a very light carriage and balanced in a way that made it easy to keep it aiming at its target, it also had a fairly complex range sighting mechanism, especially for its time but its important to remember the live aiming system was built for medium to long range combat. It fell out of use in the 1740s, mainly because it was fairly expensive to provide ammunition for when compared to standard guns firing round shot and this was a time that Venice wasn't fighting any major nations, only frequent action against pirates. Most of what I know about these weapons is written in these two essays: https://www.academia.edu/14823890/_The_race_to_the_big_calibres_during_the_first_war_of_Morea_and_Sigismondo_Alberghettis_guns_of_new_invention https://www.academia.edu/15084546/The_Russian_Unicorn_and_the_Venetian_cannone_di_nuova_inventione_ The testers were recruited for a variety of reasons I was given the position because of my research and postings on Venetian ships which I was lucky enough to receive praise from the dev team for, others were given the title for their work on improving gameplay or knowledge of sailing. There aren't any special perks for testers, they are just a core of specialists that just have access to a largely unused private subforum. I just provide some advice here and there on specific niche information that's not commonly available on the internet. If you are unhappy about what is happening to the game what are you doing to make it better? Please don't just attack other forum users for sharing work, especially as this has nothing to do with me being a tester or not.

By all means if you want to use any of the data I've collected to build suggestions I am more than happy for anyone to use it open source style. I would gladly suggest quite a few of these guns, the 2nd to last paragraph did have a bit of a suggestive undertone Thank you, I would love to see limited ammunition in the game but more than anything I would like to see a bit more diversity on how you can arm ships. I'd mainly just like to see the obusiers, bronze and different gun cuts.

Over the past few weeks i've been slowly working on this little project. I am aiming to properly collect and show the different weightings of guns used by some of the major navies of the 18th century. I'd also like to start out by saying thank you to the people who helped me collect some of the data and the advise they have given me while I have started the undertaking of the project, so to all those who helped me I very much appreciate it thank you. I started this project mainly to look at the various weapons we have in NA, and what we could potentially add to the mix to make a slightly more diverse game, with more load out options and more opportunities for sailing the ship set up you want to sail. Its also a pretty good insight into whether ships should or shouldn't have specific armaments available to them to be used, with some additional ideas from history that could be used. To get to this point I have spent quite a long time consulting my various books and also online resources and the communities here and elsewhere and while I have done my best to collect the most accurate data I can. I'm sure there are things I have missed or got wrong so please do correct me if that is the case, it would be great to see this grow into a wider community project where we can get specialists in their area to offer the best. Some notes that I took while researching this are as follows; I haven't included the USA, not because their navy isn't important but for all the data I could see, their guns and weightings are identical to those used by the British, so please take British values provided and don't get upset that I've not included the USA, the only real differences I have seen between the two are British guns were ever so slightly better quality, and they used a slightly different set of windage ratios, something I don't consider important for what I want to set out here. I've also found some evidence to Portuguese using carronades, but I am unsure whether they are British or Portuguese weightings, so haven't included them in my tables because I can't accurately say one way or the other. Something else I discovered, whilst doing this project was not only that British guns coming in short, medium and long differentiations but also that Britain subdivided their carronades too, carronades coming in a long or short version. The first table directly below shows the comparative weightings of what these nations local weight would be when considering the current NA gun lineup. I've done this so we can see an easy comparison between what say a Danish ship's guns would weigh compared to say a Spanish, so as to show for example the distinction between a Danish 24lb and a Spanish 24lb, it also means you can look at how a Portuguese 18lb gun is more similar to the power of a British 42lb, which seems crazy. Now lets get into the data itself, I have included because I think its important the localisation of the weights used, it not only makes it easier to discuss the particular guns involved but also creates a nice little additional flavour to the chart. Something I do find fascinating as it shows below is the complete range of weightings of the old imperial systems used by their respective nations, the difference between the lightest, the Venetian Libra Sotti and heaviest, the Turkish Okka being almost an entire kilogram at 981g in difference, not that it makes as big of a difference in the field as the 2nd table I have built shows. Its also staggering how different the weights can be between geographically close nations with Portugal using guns of almost double the weight of Spain. Typical Guns British (453g) French Livre (489g) Russian Funt (494g) Spanish Libre (459g) Turkish Okka (1282g) Dutch Pond (494g) Venetian Libbre Sottili (301g) Portugese Libra (459g) Swedish Skålpund (425g) Danish-Norwegian Pund (499g) 6 2.718 2.934 2.97 2.754 7.692 2.964 1.806 2.754 2.55 2.994 9 4.077 4.401 4.455 4.131 11.538 4.446 2.709 4.131 3.825 4.491 12 5.436 5.868 5.94 5.508 15.384 5.928 3.612 5.508 5.1 5.988 18 8.154 8.802 8.91 8.262 23.076 8.892 5.418 8.262 7.65 8.982 24 10.872 11.736 11.88 11.016 30.768 11.856 7.224 11.016 10.2 11.976 32 14.496 15.648 15.84 14.688 41.024 15.808 9.632 14.688 13.6 15.968 36 16.308 17.604 17.82 16.524 46.152 17.784 10.836 16.524 15.3 17.964 42 19.026 20.538 20.79 19.278 53.844 20.748 12.642 19.278 17.85 20.958 68 30.804 33.252 33.66 31.212 87.176 33.592 20.468 31.212 28.9 33.932 The second table, shows a list of the typical guns I have found used by each of the nations I have looked at is they most often use the same numbers, something that staggered me is the amount of different guns Russia uses, almost double the standard armaments I found for typical British ships. I also find it quite interesting to see that to combat the British carronade, the French supplied the Spanish with their own French made obusiers, which adds a slightly interesting relation in that they were supplied with french ball sizes, something that must have caused quite some chaos if not properly organised within Spanish vessels. I also found some pretty interesting and unusual armaments used by a few of the less typical nations, for example the giant turkish kantar guns, I will leave a drawing of these in a spoiler at the bottom. Overall I hope I have the entire collection, I've not included smaller guns like swivels here just because I don't want to fiddle around with largely incomplete and difficult data beyond a few nations. Britain (453g) France (489g) Russia (494g) Spain (459g) Turkey (1282g) Netherlands (494g) Venice (301g) Portugal (1012g) Sweden (425g) Denmark-Norway (499g) 42lb 36lb 68lb 36lb 14 okka 40lb 50lb 36lb 36lb 36lb 32lb 30lb 60lb 24lb 9 okka 36lb 40lb 24lb 30lb 24lb 24lb 24lb 48lb 18lb 5 okka 30lb 30lb 18lb 24lb 18lb 18lb 18lb 36lb 12lb 3 okka 24lb 20lb 12lb 18lb 12lb 12lb 12lb 30lb 8lb 1.5 okka 18lb 16lb 9lb 12lb 8lb 9lb 8lb 24lb 6lb 3 Kantar (169.5kg) 12lb 14lb 6lb 8lb 6lb 6lb 6lb 18lb 4lb 1 Kantar (56.5kg) 9lb 12lb 6lb 4lb 4lb 12lb 48lb Obusier (French lb) 1/2 Kantar (28.3kg) 6lb 9lb 4lb 3lb 48lb Obusier 8lb 36lb Obusier (French lb) 6lb 3lb 68lb Carronade 36lb Obusier 6lb 30lb Obusier (French lb) 200lb Tirar Bombe (30lb) 2lb 32lb Carronade 30lb Obusier 3lb 24lb Obusier (French lb) 120lb Tirar Bombe (20lb) 24lb Carronade 24lb Obusier 96lb Carronade 18lb Obusier (French lb) 18lb Carronade 18lb Obusier 68lb Carronade 12lb Obusier (French lb) 12lb Obusier 48lb Carronade 36lb Carronade 30lb Carronade 24lb Carronade 18lb Carronade 12lb Carronade 8lb Carronade 6lb Carronade 1 Pood Edinorog (63lb) 1/2 Pood Edinorog (29lb) 1/4 Pood Edinorog (9lb) I'd also like to post this picture of a reference I found in relation to the weightings of Bronze and Iron guns, with bronze being a fantastic ordinance metal, although not very typical outside of prestigious ships or ships that are in some of the less researched navies such as the Ottomans. The use of Bronze guns over iron creates some distinct advantages in that the guns can be recast almost indefinitely, they are less dangerous to their operators, they can also take more powder and offer less friction naturally whilst also not rusting so offering better range, damage and penetration. The other benefit to bronze weapons is they can maintain a longer sustained fire as the metal cools much quicker than iron does, with heat in general having a less of an affect on their performance. Their main drawbacks is they are massively more expensive, with bronze costing about 5-12x the price of iron depending on the time period involved making it hugely expensive to equip a navy, with their massive need for huge quantities of guns and also that bronze guns require slightly more maintenance due to the barrel tending to wear slightly faster, although the main cost of recasting the gun is the time and equipment, with the material being so easily recycled, but also being harder and more dense, taking longer to drill. Finally I'd like to talk about how this could change the game itself, I'd personally like to see more choice available I'd like to see the addition of short cut cannons, obusiers and bronze guns, I'd also like to see the division of carronades into short and long cuts each with their own advantages and disadvantages, for example bronze being much more expensive to craft and purchase but offer a minor bonus to combat statistics, with long carronades having a little more weight, but slightly more stopping power, whilst short ones taking less time to reload and being lighter. It would also be great to see the French obusiers make an appearance, being a middle ground between a short cannon and carronade offering its own perspective and use in combat. This all allowing for more historical accuracy and diversity within the game. Thank you for reading, please let me know any corrections of questions you might have, I am always up for a good discussion and hope you have enjoyed the data I have collected with the help of a few firends, sadly I haven't kept a list of sources so may struggle to find them again but if you want to know where I got any information I will do my best to relocate it for anyone who asks. Thank you again, I will leaves some pictures of some of the more unique guns in the spoiler below.

Just to clarify im not actually concerned about the actual money because im well aware you can make buckets more if you just do 1st-3rd rate missions or a spot of trading/crafting, its just something i thought worth pointing out because unlike the new paid DLC ships the Yacht is a 0g ship, it just seems a bit odd and when it comes to having more premium ships it will start to add up.

The thing I have been concerned with since getting them is that its just free gold daily, they should probably be set to 0, otherwise its 40k free for people who have the DLC on a daily basis without doing anything simply by selling the ships. Even though gold isn't exactly a major issue in the game the idea you can sell them for anything other than 0 seems a bit off, I bought them to support the devs not to unbalance the game.

Edinorogs are pretty standard armaments on Russian ships though, but their issue is that historically they were used pretty sparingly, mostly equipped in similar manner to large calibre carronades on ships of the line in numbers of around 6-8 on the upper decks, although they did get used in for an entire gun deck on some of the 18lb frigates, usually the weather deck, and assuming Hercules is of Russian origin (which to me looks most likely) she probably should be able to use them arguing historically. I'm personally quite split between how we balance the new ships, balancing the current roster to them seems a bit daft as does not letting them in port battles. Its probably better to look at these two ships individually, again looking historically at these ships for balance, Requin has armour that is far too thick, she's a xebec they are the paper thin ships of the age of sail. Hercules on the other hand is quite brick like, and should suffer more speed and agility issues when compared to the other similar sized ships, she should be more vulnerable to carronade armed small ships with higher mobility.

There's a project going on right now where they are remaking a Falmouth Pilot cutter at the Rhonda Mary Shipyard, owned by the Rhonda Mary Trust, a charity which specialises in teaching historic maritime skills to young people in Cornwall, UK. The shipyard is named after the famous ship of the same name, which they built a reconstruction of previously. The whole place is great little project making reconstructions of historic styles of vessels combining both traditional and modern methods of construction. I will leave a link below for anyone wishing to find out more, both the featured vessels are from outside of the NA timeline, with Rhonda Mary being a 1867 speed built trade schooner, whilst Pellew, named after the famous Cornish-man Edward Pellew, who people may be familiar with from their Maritime history and the Pellew sights in the game, is based on the 1852 ship Vincent, one of the best documented and historic of the Falmouth cutters. https://thefalmouthpilotcutter.co.uk/ http://www.rhoda-mary.co.uk/

It somewhat depends on the metallurgy of the nations that cast them at the time, where a lot of nations didn't have particularly advanced bronze smelting techniques because of its price, being around 5-10x as costly (depending on the period), although it was almost indefinitely recyclable. Good quality bronze was excellent for casting guns out of, but poor quality or the wrong mix of alloy makes somewhat mediocre cannons, for example the Ottoman guns at Lepanto were mostly made of melted down ingots from confiscated catholic church bells which were made of quite a spongy alloy so to reverberate sound well in call for mass rather than decent quality stuff used most commonly on land as a preferred material by men such as Napoleon because of its great characteristics when cast properly. On the whole bronze is a far superior material to cast artillery from, it doesn't rust, is less easily distorted and brittle, it also creates less friction which makes the guns longer range, with more stopping power and accuracy, whilst also having a far lower risk of exploding upon firing, something that was slight always a worry to artillery teams of the period, it would distort rather than break open, so had less chance of killing/wounding its crew, and when it did break it could just be recast. Another benefit to bronze is it cools much quicker, which means it can be used for longer periods of sustained fire, while iron guns need to be cooled somehow, either by waiting or with water (which could create fissures due to extreme changes in heat leading to detonation). Bronze cannons were also notably lighter, despite bronze being on the whole about 20% denser as a material increasing its weight, its better structure and resistance to heat and strain meant the guns were cast notably thinner whilst retaining values as good as, if not better than similar iron guns, see the table below. I'd really like to see them in the game, but i would worry it would create a bit of a meta, although its massively increased price should be reflected and make it far more risky to arm ships with. The main limiting factor of bronze is easily its cost and improvements in iron casting technology meant that the gap between iron and bronze guns gradually shrank over time to the point where superior bronze guns were less favourable when compared with being able to supply with more iron guns in total despite the noticeable quality difference between the two during the game's period.

I'd personally just like to see more ships and some minor customisation features for the ships, like naming, paints, sails and figureheads ect. A more diverse selection of ships in general from different nations trying to highlight their historical strengths and weaknesses of their design and construction doctrines, especially around the 3rd and 4th rate areas. Oh and it would be cool to get a more diverse selection of cannons like the french howitzers and the option to fit your ship with more costly bronze guns, things like that

Here is a nice video looking at the Venetian arsenal, it only really goes into the basics and doesn't really cover the period after Lepanto but its still a really nice introduction to the facility. Also it is a little misleading at the end where it downplays the complexes importance into the 19th century. Enjoy

What structure are you damaging? The reason you take more structure damage form when the sides are depleted is because that's where the knees are, the thin pillars in the ship aren't really there for major structural integrity they are mostly to limit hogging but aren't properly load bearing, they just stiffen the ship while large cross beams distribute the weight of the decks into the frame. If the vertical supports are destroyed they wouldn't lead to many issues beyond a bit of sagging, but there is little to no damage done to the cross beams or knees from a rake, the masts also tend to offer support for the deck areas too, which are too thick to do serious damage to low down. The main issue of rakes is they bounce about and ricochet inside the ship, losing meaningful stopping power that is able to as they do but doing considerable damage to crew and guns, as is reflected in the game fairly well. A rake simply doesn't have the stopping power to significantly damage the arrangement of structure lengthways down the ship, even when its a 1st attacking a 5th.

Rather than type it all out methodically I have taken a couple of pictures for you. From British Warships in the Age of Sail 1793-1817: From British Warships in the Age of Sail 1817-1863: Enjoy

The ship plan you used in the original post is the 60/52 HMS Java of 1815. Its a pretty famous design because of its legacy with the Southampton class as the text says. As far as I can tell none of ships themselves werent particularly well received though but i'm not very knowledgable about them, they may have a bit written about them in one of the later time period Rif Winfields books if you have access to them, if not i can look them up myself for you.

You are getting your ships named Java mixed up, the Java captured by the US Navy was the 38 gun Pallas class frigate, she also had no career for the USA as she was burned after capture, originally called Renommee and built by the French. There was also an American 44 named Java that did sail for a pretty long career the USN taking part in fairly mundane anti piracy cruises off the US coast and Mediterranean. Finally, there is also the ship you have the plans to the extract from Gardiner's "The Sailing Frigate" if I'm not mistaken, the 60 gun spar decked frigate with numerous postings and a long but again fairly uninteresting history. British 38: https://threedecks.org/index.php?display_type=show_ship&id=4937 British 60/52: https://threedecks.org/index.php?display_type=show_ship&id=4938 American 44: https://threedecks.org/index.php?display_type=show_ship&id=2414 I think the devs also wanted to avoid spar decked ships but they may have changed their minds now. Gameplay wise she would suffer from the same issues that Constitution does, being unusually long and difficult to turn, whilst not packing an exceptionally good broadside. If you want a ship to match Wasa you need to just make Wasa more realistically balanced, either by taking away some of her speed, turning and thickness, making her properly like Gustav Adolfus or by removing her 32lbs and again removing some thickness modelling her properly on Wasa. The balance on a whole needs looking at slightly, hopefully this will all be done for release.

Could this not all be fixed much easier by increasing the repair cost of large ships so 1st rates become much more expensive to repair similar to how they were envisioned to be when they brought in crew recruitment charges. Make frigates profitable in terms of output and repair cost, while the higher rate the ship the more exhorbitant the repair costs, where 3rds are quite managable 2nds get expensive and 1sts are potentially bank breaking.

The machine gun, now a staple of any military force the world over has long been credited with being invented in America in 1862 during the American Civil war, the famous Gatling Gun named after its creator Dr. R.J. Gatling revolutionised the world of warfare. The Gatling Gun itself was just the amalgamation of something that had been pondered over for millennia, with notable rapid fire weapons being designed throughout history, long predating the use of gunpowder weapons with inventions such the Lián Nŭ (The Chinese repeating crossbow). The gunpowder age saw many attempts to try and create a fast firing weapon system, most notably the Ribauldequin of the medieval era developing into a whole series of different mechanisms for multi barrel weapons, however none of these were true rapid fire weapons, they were just volley guns set to do devastating damage with long reload periods. The first potential example of a true machine gun comes about as a somewhat theorised mythological creation of Leonardo da Vinci, who allegedly designed a crank handle rapid fire weapon (brought to life in the assassins creed series), however its not clear whether the design if ever real would have worked due to it being lost to history. By the time we get to 1718 we see the invention of the puckle gun, which while saw limited service and response showed a major step forwards in rapid firing weapons, and while not remarkably fast as an action, requiring cranking forwards to use the next battle it was a huge step forwards, sadly not taken up by those it was proposed to, mainly due to conservatism the potential of this new weapon was never truly realised. Moving further into the 18th Century, a century known for its almost constant warfare between the major European powers we start to see some major lurches forwards in weapons technology as states competed for any advantage they could gain. The period also saw massive growth of instability as states fought themselves to bankruptcy whilst major climate changes left poor harvests and people hungry, these conditions created a sense of paranoia in Italy, the small nations with the best farmland in Europe saw increasing threats from international conflict capitalising on their wealth and land, these conditions lead to the Italian states investing huge sums into promising weapon makers exploding the 1770s and 80s into a golden age for Italian weaponry, with most famous example of inventions from this period being the Girandoni air rifle invented in 1779 by Bartholomäus Girandoni. Looking further at Venice in particular, the richest state in Italy you see huge external threats posturing for the rich farmland of the Po Valley and Fruili region as Austria sought to consolidate its Italian territory, Venice was also under increasing pressure from the Barbary states, who during the time were getting more and more aggressive as France and Spain were focussed on the war of American Independence, then later the collapse of the French monarchy. This period oversaw a huge update program as Venice modernised its weapons and fortifications to potentially deal with any of these threats, its during this period we see the complete overhaul of their naval framing and construction methods by Angelo Emo, the adoption of a new service musket, designed by Gasperoni Tartana a significant improvement over the Prussian Potzdam and the Austrian Kommissflinte it was based on. The other notable advancement of this period was a machine gun. The Machine gun was the brainchild of a gunsmith named Giorgio Bergamin, it answered a continual issue for the Venetian state in that they were forever pressed for manpower when compared to the other European states, despite both having a strong mercantile legacy as the largest traders in the eastern Mediterranean and and red sea whilst also owning wealthy land holdings on the Italian mainland. The benefit of this weapon is it dramatically grew the fighting capability of the main military needs of the republic, as a swivel gun on their ships and as an emplaced weapon in their fortifications, the lifeblood of the Venetian state. The gun itself was first presented in 1772, and appears in the 1773 inventory report undertaken by the Venetian senate, it works with the same paper cartridges used by the Venetian muskets, (18.3mm), these cartridges were stored in a magazine which was fed into one of the multiple barrels through gravity. The machine gun fired through a complex flintlock arm that not only set off the powder charge but also primed the barrel and cleared out any misfired shots. The barrels were easily removable, similar to the famous MG42, where after sustained fire they would need to be changed mainly to scrape out the fouling. This all meant that a team of 3 or 4 men could potentially deliver similar firepower as a small company, significantly levelling the playing field for the man strapped Venetian forces when threatened by larger foes. The weapon saw limited production, mainly testing models to take part in a long and drawn out trial period, where it was deemed potent but rather inaccurate, its inaccuracy and quite costly production coming under question by prominent members of the council of 10, who were concerned over the costing, preferring to have more accurate traditional cannons over this new rapid firing invention, Venice suffering an overly bureaucratic state of mind with a culture of military penny pinching that didn't respond well to the wasteful nature of these weapons and how rapidly they went through powder and shot. The council of 10 were also greatly concerned for what might happen should these weapons fall into the wrong hands or their enemies, mindful of the rising tensions of the era. Despite this a handful of these guns did accompany Angelo Emo's expedition against the Bey of Tunis, where they were incredibly effective in ship to ship combat whilst also offering a fantastic effect on opposed amphibious assaults and on the morale of the enemy in general, despite this success in the field they were still given a fairly poor reputation back home by the high officials of the Venetian government for being seen as an expensive part of an expensive campaign. After the cessation of the Venetian Barbary war those guns that saw service were mothballed and warehoused alongside those that had slowly been produced over the period, they remained a state secret until Napoleon's campaign into italy, where they were briefly discussed to be rolled into active service again, however the Venetian senate noted the complexity of the situation where Austria and France continually occupied and counter occupied various areas of the Venetian mainland meaning secretive deployment to important positions would have been impossible, furthermore it was discussed that the weapons should be dispersed secretively away from the conflict so as not to fall into the enemy armoury so these weapons found themselves hidden away around Italy. Following the fall of the Republic and the Napoleonic conflicts they slowly resurfaced mainly as curiosity pieces for Italian nobility, 20 making it back into the hands of Venetians. The machine guns were later used in the Italian wars of unification, although after around 80 years of weapon development they were somewhat outdated. Today the weapons are mostly prize pieces of collectors, however a handful of museums contain examples of these stunning weapons, most notably the Armoury of the Doge's Palace in Venice, The History Museum of Bergamo and the Italian Artillery Museum in Turin. There are also sketches of the weapon as part of the pictorial collection of Venetian weapons in Domenico Gasperoni’s Artiglieria veneta (1782), which provides detailed sketches of some of the most impressive, beautiful and horrifying Venetian weapons including some of their closest kept state secrets, copies of the book are scattered all around the world such as the one housed in the Wallace Collection in London. Thank you for reading

I don't think responses to all suggestions are a good use of development team time, What I would prefer to see is a community rating score so ideas can be bounced off a system of peer review then the better ideas would be more easily targeted by devs and hopefully this would also lead to better ideas getting the most attention too. Then say after so much score and votes the devs could give a response, although by no means should it stop a response happening earlier on.

There's an old topic we made a while back looking at the total composition of navies you might find interesting and useful for this chat, here's the link The problem isn't that first rates are too strong, the problem is that first rates are too cheap, 2nds are too cheap too, there should be much more of an economic barrier to making 1st rates more difficult to obtain and run, there is a reason why only 5 navies ever managed to produce them in this timeframe (England, Spain, Russia, Ottomans and France)

Why not limit the port battles to 20 vs 20 then get each side to be supported by troop ships for the aggressor and floating gun batteries for the defender? I guess you could have gun platforms for the aggressor too but there are fewer examples for them being used offensively. You could as the defender set where and how to use your platforms tactically, offering low profile fire support to the port as was historically common

Will grape/canister also be limited? It would be really good to see that happen too, i'd even call for round shot to have a high limit as well, say 60-80 shots per gun but as a few people have said, repairs do need to see a change to respond to this too.

As far as I can tell it dates back to the Roman era and was widely used as a symbol to want to arrange a ceasefire or surrender by the middle ages in Christian Europe at least. The idea seems to have a pretty consistent use throughout history since and then spreading around the world over time. As far as I can tell it seems fairly mixed whether it was a proper white flag or just a rag on a stick though, I guess most of the time it was just what was available. So It's not just a modern/movie thing.

Something I'm curious about since the use of the white jack by the French navy prior to the fall of the monarchy in 1789 (and also during the Bourbon restoration between 1814-1830), how was it that French ships surrendered in actions? Did they strike the white flag up the signal line or anything, if they did what happened if a de-masting situation meant that the rigging didn't support raising any flags? I would greatly appreciate any information on the subject because I can't say its something that seems to be discussed as far as I have seen. Thank you in advance if anyone can help on this subject