Brigand

Outside time frame, by a fair margin. (closing topic) ~Brigand

The Dutch colors and, more importantly, building shapes need to be different: references: klokgevel, dom toren Utrecht. ~Brigand

Tell me about it, in the Dutch republic they used different feet in different cities, so far I've encountered 6 different sizes and one reference to miscalculations (in the 17th century) as a result of the difference in length between the Amsterdam foot and the Rijnlandsh foot. Maybe some Spanish forum member has better access to historic sources and can come up with a more definite answer on the weight of a Spanish pound in grams in the 18th century? ~Brigand

If making money is to be the best argument in game development, quality and gameplay experience suffer. So far, Game Labs has shown (by closing the pre-orders) that they care about the gameplay experience first and money second. There are plenty of whaling ships out there that fit right into the presented time line. Although I don't really see why we would need one, because whaling has been mentioned to be a 'maybe somewhere in the future, but don't hold your breath' feature. ~Brigand

The best information we have on the time frame is: In the Player selected ship 2015 - Suggestions-thread, @admin mentioned: 1600-1830 hard limit, 1690-1790 preferred. Where many feel that 1830 is stretching it. In other words, this ship is outside the time line by a fair margin. ~Brigand

If you are sure about it, I could easily change it. How many grams would a Spanish pound be? ~Brigand

USS Essex (1799) added to the list. I could, but right now I don't have time to research the fate of each ship in the list. Cheers, Brigand

I've updated the title of this topic and added 'swifvel-guns' into the second-last poll option, just to avoid confusion. Cheers, Brigand

Please forgive me for dropping in on the French section of the forums with an English post. Some time ago, I posted a topic in the shipyards section about an indiaman 'prince of wales' (1740). However, there seems to have been no ship by this name at the time. Looking at her again today, her paint scheme reminded me of the colours used in France. (more images) Does anyone here know if this was by any chance a French ship, which was been decorated with an English name on her stern (by the model maker)? I would love to find some plans for her. Cordialement, Brigand

Since this thread describes four frigates, all going by the name of HMS Surprise (two of which happen to have also been known L'Unite/Unite), I think it would be most helpfull if, for the purpose of this thread, people would state which HMS Surprise they are talking about (preferably by naming a year). From what I can make up, @HMS Scatter is talking about 'L'Unite (1794) -> HMS Surprise' and maybe also about 'Fifth Rate Gracieuse (1787) -> Unite -> HMS Unite' ? And @Lieste seems to be talking about 'L'Unite (1794) -> HMS Surprise' ? ~Brigand

I've added a new paragraph clarifying my intentions for how morale should work. Moral is separate from winning or loosing a battle. What you describe with morale returning to its starting point is not far off from what I intend. Only I would not have it automatically return, instead I would let the event swing it around. Also, morale should not be influenced by morale. In other words, a low morale score should not increase the chances that morale will stay low. Or, in immersive terms: a crew with low morale has low expections, so exceeding those expectations is easier than if they had a high morale score. ~Brigand

A brig is a type of sailing rig. It says little about the size or sea worthiness of a vessel. Some brigs were large, some brigs were small, some had a very shallow draft. Some were build for use on lakes, some were used on the open ocean. The USS Brig Eagle was clearly not build for the open ocean. ~Brigand

Somebody mentioned DelftShip somewhere earlier. Do you have any professional command on that? How does it compare to Draftsight? ~Brigand

and Right now, if your ship sinks, control is taken away from the player. Taking away control from the player in case of really bad morale (crew surrender) is no different: it will only result in an alternate win condition; alternate win conditions are good. Loose conditions should be: 1. your ship sinks, or 2. your crew surrenders. A sunken ship will result in the ship being lost for gameplay purposes, Crew surrender will allow for an easy capture by the enemy.If the enemy does not capture the ship, the player could maybe regain control of his crew and try to escape (more gameplay options == good). However, morale is only part of the story. In point 3 of the first quote, you mention: "high base morale". Let's call this 'base morale' loyalty. So, we have both the slowly changing loyalty and the quickly reacting morale as the building blocks of our crew attitude system. Loyalty acts like a buffer: it defines the maximum and minimum effects of moral, in both positive and the negative extremes. If the crew's loyalty is very high, they will have faith in the captain, they will be more disciplined and fight ferociously. If things go well, the captain gets all the credits for it. If things go bad, they will be blamed on external factors (the enemy, the bad weather, etc.), they may be disgruntled, but at least they think the captain is not to blame. Most important of all, they will not surrender the ship in any case: they will stand with the captain till the end. If the crew's loyalty is very low, they don't have any faith in the captain, discipline is low and they would rather kick the captain overboard than safe his sorry ass, in a battle they think cannot be won. If things go exceptionally well, they will be happy, despite the captain. If thing go bad, the captain takes the full blame. If pressed for service after being captured, a high percentage of the crew will be willing to join the victors. If the crew's loyalty is Ok, you can expect your crew to do their duty, if things go well (high morale), they will shine, if things go bad (low morale) they will be more likely to give in. Building loyalty: Changes in loyalty take time. Basically, continued high moral increases loyalty and continued low morale decreases loyalty. Loyalty can be increased by continues success with the same crew. Building up loyalty can, for example, be done by winning a fight, feeding your crew well, giving them their regular shot of rum and providing them with a fare share of loot often enough. Loyalty will decrease if you threat your crew bad, constantly loose fights or don't pay them their wages. For gameplay simplicity, loyalty could maybe only change after a fight has ended or while in the open world; during combat, some may prefer loyalty to be a given constant. As a side effect, keeping (a portion) of your highly loyal crew after a fight gone bad, could be a good motivator for a player to surrender his ship, instead of fighting to the dead: starting out with a new undisciplined crew would be quite a setback. Morale is the short term swing of confidence of the crew. There are 3 separate cases where morale plays its role: In ship to ship combat:High morale will result in better performance, low morale will result in worse performance. Rock bottom low morale combined with a low loyalty and a badly damaged ship may result in crew surrender. In boarding actions:In boarding, morale makes all the difference. A crew who think they will win will fight better, kick harder and just outperform a low morale crew. A crew who doesn't believe winning is possible, will much sooner give up. Low morale will cause crew members to be more easily defeated, albeit, with lower fatality numbers. In the Open World:High morale will give you a slightly better performance, low morale a slightly worse performance. Rock bottom low morale in combination with rock bottom low loyalty should result in a mutiny. Low morale combined with low loyalty would highly increase the chances of desertion when laying in a harbour, etc, etc. The negative effect of low moral could partly be mitigated by good officers, who keep a proper discipline, even when the spirits are low. Morale changers: Morale is influenced by many external factors. Morale typically goes up if good things happen, goes up a lot if those good things are exceptional and go down when bad things happen. Let's say our snow is engaged by an enemy HMS Surprise: Initially, our crew is neutral, loyalty is quite ok. On our first broadside is fired from a long range, but happens to take down the fore top mast: morale of my crew rises spectacularly (cheers all around), while the moral of the crew aboard the HMS Surprise, drops a bit (but they are, of course, still quite confident they can win from snow). Somewhere next, the HMS Surprise at close blasts away at our snow with its carronades loaded with grape. As by a miracle, only two members of our crew get hit and crew feels that the lady of luck must be smiling upon them (morale goes up): they load the cannons with renewed energy and I get to fire a return broadside I might otherwise not have been able to bring to bear, etc, etc. Morale would take a hit if a ship is raked fore and aft and the blood spews out of the gutters (people don't like seeing their mates dyeing all around them). Morale rises if the crew thinks they win, or if they are fighting unexpectedly good against a superior enemy. Loosing against a smaller enemy would cause morale to take a bigger hit than loosing against a superior ship. As such, a good morale system can make battles far more interesting, maybe even more so in an uneven match-up. A well designed morale system would give a strong motivation to surrender to the captain, may even cause a mutiny if a captain doesn't care about their well-being for prolonged periods of time and would provide the motivation to higher good officers and train your crew to the highest levels of discipline and competence. The major changes to morale should not come as a result of winning or loosing the battle. Instead, the major changes to morale should be the result of how succesfull you are at beating the odds: if you fight better than expected against a superiour enemy, morale should be high (on the flip-side: if you fight badly against a weaker enemy, morale should be low). Also, morale should not be influenced by morale. In other words, a low morale score should not increase the chances that morale will stay low or vise versa. I could write a lot more about morale and how it could be tied into the intricates of the game, but I think my wall of text is large enough by now, so I'm going to leave my suggestion at this (for now). Cheers, Brigand

Updated title. ~Brigand

@admin made a relevant post to this: Hope this gives a bit of guidance, ~Brigand

Nice to see some more merchant vessels being added to the list. +1 for your nice and detailed method of presenting ships! ~Brigand

I'm not sure how it is by now, but cap-ship proliferation was (two year ago?) a serious problem. The number of supercaps alliances were able to field was used as a deterrent. It made sure big alliances stayed on top while smaller alliances were crushed. After you have build your 50th titan, they are not so precious any more and you can start having fun with the next batch, they did. To illustrate the issue: I like small ships (you my have noticed that I like small ships here, I liked small ship in EVE Online as well) and I like scouting. So, fleet commanders liked sending me out there in my 'big bad' dual prop Taranis interceptor. On some Friday, I was scouting ahead for a fleet which may or may not turn out big enough to jump in enemy null-sec for an fight that evening. I gate in, system after system. racing to my strategically pre-placed gate bookmarks until I get noticed by some drakes (no problem) and I jump the next gate. In the next system, I run into 2 supercaps (two Nyxes and a Revelation), waiting for me. These guys are bored and start chasing me. They predict my route or get intel on me and jump after (or ahead) of me. After 10? minutes or so of frantic racing and jumping (another revelation and a machariel had by now joined in)., I'm tackled and webbed after getting caught in a bubble resulting in me riding the clone express back home. In other words, some guys choose to chase (one of) the smallest ship in the game with some of the very biggest ones. So, will the most outrageous cost make sure people don't use the biggest ships all the time? In the beginning: sure, after a while? After a while, they are just expensive toys, used to trash boredom on whatever they come across. ~Brigand

I don't really believe it would be a good idea to shoot a side facing cannon mounted as shown in the OP. I thought cannons in small boats where invariably solidly attached to the hull/deck and front facing. I can only imagine a vessel like this would capsize by the recoil of the cannon. But, maybe there is good facts backing up the image? ~Brigand

This seems a nice solution: Edit: You could inegrate the loading indicator into it: ~Brigand

In this case I was referring to height above the water line. In other words: the Fridericus Quintus has more bulk above the waterline. Also, I'm not advocating against her, or at least no more than I'm advocating against anything with more than, say, 48 guns. But that is just me, I like the small ships. ~Brigand

I think they are not all that similar. Sure, they are both three deckers and if you only look at the gun count, the difference isn't all that large. The hull of the Fridericus Quintus is a bit more bulky, something which would influence her ability to sail close to the wind, but I don't think the difference is pronounced enough to make a huge difference. The sail plans however are a world apart: the most obvious difference is the lateen on the Fridericus Quintus for which the HMS Victory as a (gaff) spanker. Next come the size of the sail, the victory has smaller sail, which enable easier handling and finer control of the amount of canvas set. The total sail area for the HMS Victory is larger and altogether more modern. It thin that all the differences combined, I would definitely say they are not all that comparable. But then again, I don't see a need for them to be comparable either. ~Brigand

The best information we have on the time frame is: In the Player selected ship 2015 - Suggestions-thread, @admin mentioned: 1600-1830 hard limit, 1690-1790 preferred. But many feel that 1830 is stretching it. Ships currently confirmed to be in the game range from 1715 (Ингерманланд/Ingermanland) to 1820 (Меркурий/Mercury). Hope this helps, ~Brigand

Well, we have this: But it could do with an update. ~Brigand

The sail plan for ships of these times are not very imaginative. This is actually a good thing when it comes to figuring out what sail plan was used. The below image give a good representation of what you could realistically expect for a ship of the size and date you posted plans for: (minus the topgallant spar on the mizzen) ~Brigand