Francis Tabernac

A shattering indictment of USN customer service! I believe this calls for an escalation to their supervisor on the floor!

If he was telling tall tales, I suspect there would have been twice as many enemy ships and he'd have won, instead of reporting what could be seen as a draw or at best a pyrrhic victory (though no less entertaining for it!) Switching to a de-crewed ship mid-fight to continue the battle? Even if both ships had been lost with all hands, that'd still make for a good story. Salut!

Maybe they've yet to have any worth reading about?

Well they serve delicious Cornish pasties? If so I'm on board.

If nothing else, imagine the surprise of seeing a Renommee, for example, suddenly spring up right on your port side and suddenly unleash an broadside of explosive ammo. Even if half of them hit him instead of you, the shock might make the attack worthwhile all by itself as you're left thinking "what in God's name was that?!" I'm sure the novelty would wear off soon, but still. Why limit our options just because some may not be universally applicable? It can't hurt, just don't use them if you'd rather not.

Huzzah! A toast to our Swedish friends for a battle well-fought. Salut!

I prefer to do my drinking from the coast of South America, where the liquor is strong and the women are bountiful. Wait, they're all wearing wooden shoes, what in God's name....?!

I fear we're far too busy at the moment pretending to beat the Dutch right, left and center, my good sir.

'twas entertaining, and running with the various screens was amusing as well. Well-fought, gentlemen. I look forward to the next round. Salut!

Grim, no! All my very little work has been for nought, now! Curse you!

I'm quite certain it's been explained before, but I'll do a quick run-by as best I can. I'm a relatively new member, but a very old acquaintance has been a member since, I believe, '03, so I'll give it a try. The "Sealords Virtual Fleet" as a group has been around for years. They started in something like 2002 or 2003, maybe earlier. AFAIK they formed mostly around Age of Sail 2 back in the day (wonderful game), and created different fleets for RP purposes. At the moment the only active fleets are English and French, but they had Swedish as well as US once upon a time that I know of. There may have been others, but it's immaterial now. SLVF is a multi-national and multi-game community, which isn't at all uncommon. I've been a member of several over the years. Anyway, unlike Age of Sail, Naval Action offers the chance to actually operate as separate entities, and we do. The public section of the forum shows SLRN and SLMFr forums together as one greater "Sealords Virtual Fleet" forum - in the same way as any other forum has smaller sub-forums - along with currently-defunct forums for other fleets. What non-members can't see, obviously, are the private forums which are separated by fleet membership. While I may be a member of SLMFr and so a member of the overall SLVF community, I am in no way associated with SLRN, and cannot see any of their private forum sections. The same holds true for their members. When you join, you join a specific nation. I've never actually spoken with a single member of SLRN, nor even the gentleman that runs the SLVF as a community, and have only commented on 1 thread started by one of their members ever, something about problems getting TS3 to run with Naval Action. As for the other part, do people honestly believe that Charles Caldwell and Nakor are the same person? That's so foolish I'm not even going to comment on it. So yeah, we've nothing to do one with one another beyond agreeing not to shoot at each other should we happen across a member of the opposite fleet, unless war is declared between our nations; then it's fair game. We've never run coordinated maneuvers (French and British are operating in completely separate theatres at the moment anyway) and we don't even have the same diplomatic status with other nations. If US players insist on believing this whole conspiracy theory then hey, go for it if that's what they need to tell themselves. It makes no difference to me, and if they're insistent then we both know I'm not going to be able to convince them otherwise. In all honesty I thought it was just a running joke; if it isn't then that's kind of sad, and I'll continue to enjoy laughing at folks that insist on it

It's always the no-good-nik Officers. Ya just can't trust a one of 'em.

I have it on the best invented authority that they just happen to enjoy having their hose mended at the same shop, whenever they happen to be about town on business. With that said, I'd be remiss if I didn't include this:

Gin? Oh my heavens, we've been duped! Gentlemen, back to the boats!

I like the idea of being able to surprise someone with an unorthodox gun layout. As it is, the only question going into battle is "does he have cannon or carronade" but the ability to mix it up would add an interesting element.

Shouldn't you be rewarded for planning your attack in such a way as to take advantage of the wind, and punished for failing to take it into account? As the attacker the initiative is yours to take or not. To have good planning be thrown to the wind (ha!) because of random chance might be more realistic, but (in my opinion) it makes for poor gameplay, and as I mentioned above the forums would become inundated with demands to remove the random factor.

I kept calling it Chupacabra because it seemed to upset people that I was making literally no effort to pronounce the name properly

I assure you sir, my source is as reliable as he is imaginary, and he assures me that there's a conspiracy afoot!

Well, I can see some problems solved by that approach, but I have a feeling it may raise others. I just can't seem to put my finger on it...

I heard from an unreliable source I made up, who will be referred to as Anon, that the British and the Pirates are most certainly in cahoots! According to Anon, The British Diplomat and The Pirate Diplomat met under cover of darkness in a poorly-lit cabin in the woods. Hushed conversation was heard, followed by gentle whispers, a chaste kiss, and promises of a future rendezvous. Well I'm blowing the lid off of this whole sordid affair! The people have a right to know!

This might be the most ridiculous thing I've read on these forums, and I've spent most of my time in National News, so that's a pretty high bar. I'll fix your post for you: "Making the game about what you can afford rewards people for spending ANY amount of time in the game. If you spend a little, you're rewarded with a little. If you spend a lot, you're rewarded with a lot. Every game should be designed in such a way that your reward is reflected by your effort." Honestly, this sounds like nothing more than justification for your sour, sour grapes. You see other people with more than you and you want it too, by golly, but instead of putting in the time it's easier to call them losers for making this an unhealthy priority and then demand to have the same reward for nothing. Grow up. It doesn't matter how many days it takes you to put in the amount of time required for a given reward; what matters is that you do so. People don't tend to appreciate things given for free, and the whole purpose of incremental rewards is to encourage continued effort. Good lord. Here, maybe some hollow platitudes about effort will help: "We learn the value of hard work by working hard." "Nothing worth having comes easy." Hmm, what else.. how about "the difference between try and triumph is just a little umph"? That one's cute, right? You're welcome.

Those tend to be peatier (for simplicity's sake), don't they? That's more along the lines of my brother's tastes than mine. He's been slowing nursing a bottle of Ardbeg Supernova that, if nothing else, will certainly clear your sinuses! Edit: Got carried away thinking about scotch and forgot to answer the other part: no worries, the name was chosen only because I sail for France, and I only sail for France because a very old acquaintance that also plays has been a member of SLMFr for the last 12 years or some crazy thing. I'm originally from the west coast, but for all intents and purposes I'm a good ol' Albertan redneck

Quebecious? Perish the thought! No, it was more about teasing you for presuming to speak for "everyone," as it's done so frequently. Nothing personal; I would do the same to anyone that did so. I'm obstinate like that Scotch, always a fine choice indeed! I highly recommend Dallas Dhu 1979 (Gordon & MacPhail), if you can get your hands on a bottle. It's been my obsession since trying it at a tasting last year. Edit: cleaned up the formatting with the quotes, which I bungled like an amateur.

Well, yes and no. It would mean that Spain would begin a fresh map in the situation that, on PvP1, the US is currently in. They already started with a bunch of territory, and so further expansion should be difficult for the same reason that it should be difficult for anyone. I think I get what you're saying, in that Spain would start out in a position to be unable to do much expansion and would begin the game playing defensively rather than offensively like smaller nations would be able to, and that's true if the costs were related to number-of-ports-controlled. However if costs were related to distance-from-capital Spain would actually be in a very good position, as being fairly central would let them hit many places equally. If anything, this system would be a detriment to countries that begin in a corner, like the US. However instead of simply being a point against them, it could in a way be a balance against the fact that they've only one real front to contend with at the beginning, whereas larger (in area) factions like Spain or Britain have many. It should always be more difficult to defend more territory.

It's not about making things harder for the pirates, per se, it's about changing the mechanic of the pirate "nation" so that it's not just another country. Add some flavour and make it relevant and different, so that "going pirate" doesn't just mean "changing nations", as it currently does. The idea of the pirates existing as a faction that operates identically to proper nations, and actually captures ports and controls them like a proper nation, is just silly. I like the idea of having ports taken by pirates become free ports, or at least neutral ports to differentiate the two types.