Alex Connor

This system looks perfect. For other damage zones, I believe already stern shots result in more damage, is this also divided into zones? Shots from behind into the stern gallery would have a very good chance to kill crew and dismount guns, those glass windows and decorative woodwork are very little protection. Below the stern the hull is as normal, no extra damage there, but a possibility to damage the rudder. Although, like maturin said, the rudder isn't that easy to damage. Don't know exact figures but these rudders are huge blocks of wood, could easily weigh 15 tons or more. If you did manage to damage the rudder there would be no way to repair it in battle. More likely to be able to destroy the wheel or cut the lines leading up from the tiller, these would temporarily disable steering. Another damage zone could be the open deck, if you can shoot down onto it then more crew damage, gives taller ships that realistic advantage in close quarters (only reason the British kept building 3 decker 2nd rates instead of the otherwise superior 80 gun 3rd rates that the french built). I've seen masts falling on one hit in the gameplay videos, any plans to break up the masts into their 3 sections? The lower mast at least is quite tough, might withstand multiple hits from big guns, where the topmasts and above are more fragile. Also, would give more stages to a dismasting, not so sudden from intact sails to lost a mast and crippled...

Indeed. I hope the damage model is balanced to reflect just how much more powerful a ship of the line is compared to a frigate. Numerous historical examples to demonstrate this. Two 74s confidently attacking 6 french frigates. One 74 capturing 2 modern 18lber frigates. One broadside from a 74 completely dismasting a 32 gun frigate. One 64 attacking 4 spanish frigates, disabling one, driving off the other 3 and securing its prize. Typical practice was that if a frigate was running from and being caught by a ship of the line they would fire a broadside and surrender, or just surrender without firing. Even the Constitution, one of the biggest and most powerful frigates of the age of sail, has not much more than half the firepower of a 74 gun 3rd rate. The more typical large frigates, the 18lb 38s or 40s have about 1/3rd of a 74s firepower, the smaller frigates with 12lb or 9lb main batteries don't even have the weight of fire to contribute to a battle involving ships of the line. So yes, the role of frigates in a fleet battle was scouting, towing damaged allies out of the line of fire and taking the surrenders of disabled enemies.

This damage model is good. Perhaps consider the wooden hull as armor protecting the crew and cannon, as this armor gets damaged each shot will do more damage to the crew and cannon? Beaching could be an important tactic. Example, you are getting chased by a stronger force and will be caught. Run the ship aground, now they will not be able to sink you, they would have to send in the boats. Even if the enemy does, it will take some time to get your ship off, perhaps they will have to burn it, or they will decide your ship isn't worth the trouble and leave you. Better yet, ground the ship near a friendly gun battery, they would have to send in the boats and tow you off under fire. Probably too much effort and risk, where if you ship was just anchored under the battery they could cut it out quickly.

Used to read the Bolitho series, probably what got me interested in the age of sail in the first place. The WW1/2 era books by Douglas Reeman too (Alexander Kent was his pen-name for the Bolitho series). And Sharpe, although not a naval series has a fair few naval battles in there and very well written. Read some of the Ramage series too, its entertaining but not very realistic, in particular seems contrived that Ramage very rarely loses so much as a single crew member.

Ahaha yes. Forums were at least half the fun of PotBS. For me the forums going down was the last nail in coffin, stopped playing after that.

Wondering about using morale as a mechanic based on damage. After all, the objective of an age of sail battles is less to sink your enemy and more to force them to surrender. So if your morale is based on how much damage you are dishing out and receiving, the balance of morale between sides becomes an ongoing part of the battle. Focus fire on one ship and do a lot of damage, that ship loses a lot of morale, the rest of that side also loses some morale. Defeat an enemy (capture/surrender or sink) and that side takes a morale penalty, the side who defeated them gets a morale bonus. Turns the fighting sides into something of a whole, more than just individual ships sailing together. Then again, might make it very hard to change the course of a battle, turn defeat into victory. Would depend on how much impact morale has on your fighting ability.

Going off-topic here but IMO the way to get people to surrender is simply to make crew valuable. Have crew level up from 50% skilled raw recruits to 100% skilled able seamen, and crew lost in battle must be replaced with these raw recruits. IE, you have a 100% skill crew, you lose half and replace them with 50% crew, now your crews skill level is 75%. If crew take some time to level up and make a significant difference to how the ship performs that is a good incentive to surrender in a hopeless fight and keep them alive.

I don't know how far you want to go into PotBS style morale and skills, but they are not altogether unrealistic. For example, if you charge into the enemy line of battle like Nelson at Trafalgar, you are being fired on and cannot fire back, morale will suffer, men will be hiding behind bulwarks, less ready to fight when you reach the enemy. But with high enough morale you can give that signal "England Expects", the crews are inspired, they will stand firm under fire. Someone mentioned that having morale penalties for being outnumbered would be bad, but how about the other way round? You are alone and attacked by 2 enemies, you badly damage the first one and it limps away, now your crew has very high morale, they feel invincible. Meanwhile the second enemy has seen what you did to the first, they are shaken and have low morale for their attack. Of course, the weaker side is protected from morale loss and the stronger does not gain morale from doing more damage because that is only the normal outcome of the fight. Another thing could be that winning an even battle gives a morale bonus, but ganking or defeating much weaker enemies does not. So if I have won 3 even fights in a row I'll have very high morale, but if I get ganked by 2 people who have won 3 ganks in a row they will only have normal morale. So my crew will fight better, and if I can damage one of the gankers badly then that morale difference will get even bigger and I have a good chance to win.

Trincomalee is currently outfitted with hammocks in the nettings.

I like most of this but there is never an option for a naval officer to take your ship to another nation... For a start, the officers and crew would prevent this. By force. Even if you contrived to get the ship captured, the nation responsible will take the ship and throw you in jail to rot. Very bad idea for any navy to promote switching sides, might start happening to them. Trying to get around this by trading ships between alts should be punished by losing both accounts... Captains switching from one navy to another simply did not happen, the only exceptions being some of the smaller navies starting up would accept officers from friendly nations. Even then it would be the officer and not their ship. Now a captain might be able to join another side as a Privateer, assuming they don't have some huge reputation for attacking that nations shipping, but only privately owned (non-navy) ships and money could be transferred, and any assets left in the former nation would be seized as soon as word got out of the change in allegiance.

Was looking through my PotBS screenshots earlier, many names I hope to see again in NA even if its just to renew old rivalries

Perrick, I like your ideas, especially about crew. If fact, I'd go further and make crew the main focus. After all it is the men of a ship that make her fight, for all the size difference a 1st rate with only 10 men on board would be a helpless victim of a sloop with 50. The purpose of firing on a ship is not to sink it. Instead, the intent is to kill the crew and dismount cannon, destroying that ships ability to fight, or to bring down masts and rigging, to disable mobility. So in effect the hull is armor for the crew and cannon, as this armor is damaged, holes appear, it becomes easier to kill the crew and destroy cannon. Damage below the waterline produces flooding, this means the captain must send some of their crew to the pumps, there are now less men for the cannon and sail handling so the ships fighting abilities are reduced. Similarly, a fire means crew are needed to fight it, again less for the cannon and sails. Dismasting is a valid tactic in both large and small fights. In a small fight disabling an opponents mobility lets you take up a position to fire without reply and force a surrender, where for a larger fight disabling one ship lets you fight the rest at a numbers advantage (this was the french tactic). The two are more balanced against each other than PotBS, someone shooting at the hull may be able to kill enough crew and destroy enough cannon (which cannot be revived/repaired) that the enemy no longer has the firepower to finish dismasting. That point about crew morale and auto-surrenders is a very good one, this would give an incentive to surrender in a hopeless fight, keep your crew alive for a more worthwhile fight instead of sacrificing them in pointless defiance.

Only possibility of a long range fire is that the crew has failed to clear for action properly and have left something flammable on deck. As for magazine hits, on a Ship of the line the magazine is about 15ft below the waterline and protected by the hull, the deck above it and a lot of water, all but impossible to hit directly. I don't know of a single Ship of the line vs Ship of the line or frigate vs frigate battle that resulted in a magazine hit.

An Il2 Sturmovik style visual damage system would be perfect here (and main page says some team members of NA have worked on Il2 so really is perfect ). For people who haven't played Il2 I'll explain it. The main body of the ship (aircraft) is broken down into a number of sections. I'd suggest left and right bow sections, left and right centre hull, left and right stern, and the stern gallery and deck each as one section. So the hull has 8 parts. Each part has several damage states, undamaged, lightly damaged, moderately damaged and heavily damaged, each stage showing an increasing amount of cannonball holes and other damage (stern gallery windows broken, bodies on deck to show crew damage etc). This could be done with simple textures or perhaps "real" 3D damage (although the latter would require more work). Masts could just be broken into the 3 main mast sections and spars, no need for damage states, when a part is destroyed it falls or disappears, except maybe vertical mast pieces are replaced by a stump. Cannon that are destroyed can be shown by swapping the normal cannon model for a dismounted one. Il2 also had smoke and fire for engine and fuel tank damage, for NA fire could also be present (although it should be quite rare) and instead of smoke water being pumped. Last parts would be flooding makes the ship sit lower in the water (also affects motion in the water) and sails show holes from damage (simple transparent areas in the textures). With this system you could look at a ship and see exactly how damaged it is, no need for any type of health bar.

Ships shouldn't really be sinking at all, not unless there is a huge disparity in size and firepower. Even in fleet actions where you might end up with several ships firing on one for an extended period sinking would be very unlikely. Battered into an immobile dismasted hulk with half the crew dead and most of the guns dismounted, yes, but not sunk. To make this work in gameplay terms after a certain amount of punishment the captain (player) might be knocked out or wounded and the remaining officers haul down the flag and surrender.

I'm assuming they based her on the Victory but there are some changes, all of them bad. The stern gallery has been moved up about 4-5 feet to make the quarterdeck taller and more galleon-like, meaning the decks no longer line up with the stern gallery windows. You'd have half a window at ceiling level and the other half at floor level of the next deck up. Bow has been moved up too, general proportions of hull and masts are off and she has no tumblehome, the hull sides instead curve outwards above the waterline making the weatherdeck almost as broad as the waterline itself. Combined with the rest of the design would make her absurdly top heavy, I'm not even sure she could stay upright in calm weather.

Are Game-Labs interested in user made ship models? If yes, I would like to offer a model I am making for inclusion in Naval Action. She is the Leda class frigate HMS Shannon (1806), famous for defeating the USS Chesapeake during the war of 1812. Two of her sister-ships in the 47 strong Leda class survive to the present day, the Trincomalee and Unicorn. I started this model for Pirates of the Burning Sea, but it appears unlikely that any new ships can be added to that game, so the model is currently intended for a mod-game project called Hearts of Oak. I'd be happy to make any change needed to ensure the model is suitable for Naval Action. Regards Alex