Alex Connor

Looking good. Would recommend adding a few more vertical divisions to the bow (2-3x current), it's needed to give a smooth shape where the hull curves.

Yes, meant Swedish, my mistake

Well, depends how many ships we can get? IE if we've got two ships that fill the same role (British Leda class frigate and French Hebe class), the British get the Leda, French get the Hebe, and everyone else gets assigned one of those ships. And if we've got another two 18 pdr frigates (Cherubim and Essex) then the Russians get the Cherubim, Americans get the Essex, British the Leda, French Hebe, and other nations get one of the 4. Or everyone gets two of the 4. Gives each nation a distinct feel, plus the opportunity to tailor a nations ship set around it's historical role. IE the US might be a nation of fine frigates and privateers, the British and French traditional deep water navies, the Spanish similar but with access to polacres and xebecs for the mediterranean. Then the Russians and the Swedes have a mixture of deep sea warships and oared galleys, the Barbary corsairs have only oared vessels but get some special versions, etc.

So, there is some Constitution equivalent for other nations? Perhaps it's very difficult ship to obtain, or the US doesn't get SoL? IMO the Constitution should not be a common ship (after all, only 3 built compared to hundreds of normal 12 pdr and 18 pdr frigates), but how to restrict it's use in a fair manner... Would be good to see some differences between nations, perhaps each nation could have it's own shipset (don't have to all be unique ships, for example nation one might have Cerberus/Frigate/Trincomalee/Bellona/Victory, and nation two has Renommee/Belle Poule/Trincomalee/Bellona/Bucentaure)

I'd like to see a system like this, would make carronades more attractive because they remain workable down to even 2-3 crew members.

Yes, the 36-Livre gun should be added. But before you get too enthusiastic about it... From 4lb cannon to 32lb cannon there was a steady increase in crew size to cope with the additional weight of the gun and shot. So all these guns had similar rates of reload. But the 32lb, 36-Livre and 42lb guns are all about the same length, thus there is no room to usefully increase the crew size and they all have the same 14 man guncrew. As a result, the initial rate of fire is worse for the 36-Livre (39lb) and 42lb guns, the guns crews suffer more from the effects of fatigue so the fire rate drops off even more, and when you take casualties in battle the effects are more severe because the surviving crew are trying to handle a heavier gun and heavier shot. Using the 32lb gun was therefore one of the advantages the British had over their European rivals, once the benefits were realized the Royal Navy eliminated the 42lb gun and rearmed its 1st rates with 32 pdrs. The French and the American navies came to similar conclusions at a later point, France replaced her older weapons with a new system of 30-Livre (33lb) guns, and the Americans used different types of 32lb guns on all decks of their post war SoL and Frigates. Quite simply the 32lb long gun was the ideal naval weapon of it's time.

Pavel and Bellona are about equal right now, identical in armor and almost perfectly matched in armament. The Pavel is faster, but the Bellona turns better. Really though the Bellona should only have 32-18-9lb guns, not 32-24-12lb, and as a bigger ship perhaps the Pavel should have slightly more hp. Would reduce the speed a little though, if this is based on being a bigger ship then we'll end up with a 16kt Bucentaure than can outpace frigates. 14kts Bellona -> 14.5kts Pavel -> 15kts Bucentaure might be better. And yes, we need more 74s

The initial armament (36-24-18lb plus shell guns / 90 total) was insanity even considering the calmer waters of the Black Sea and short distances of operation. Sv Pavel's near-sistership Josif II was armed with 80 guns, 36-18-8lb, a much more reasonable loadout for a ship that's more the size of a big 74 than an 80 gunner (for reference, a later British 74 like the Vengeur would be 176ft, Sv Pavel was 180ft, the Temeraire class 74 was 183ft and the Bucentaure was 194ft). The reduced armament was 36-24-6lb, so yeah, 32-24-9lb is about right, although all the other SoL are heavily overgunned so this puts Sv Pavel at a disadvantage. Also, the armament layout is weird, the real ship had 15 pairs of upper deck guns and 11 pairs on the weatherdeck, here we have an empty gunport on each deck (14 pairs and 10 pairs) but instead the 2 pairs of gunports on the roundhouse have been armed (re-armed?). Should probably have bowchasers too, these were more or less standard on any SoL. Anyway, really like this ship, pretty model and as another 2 decker it's very welcome.

I wasn't too keen on having the lake boats in the open world, but that's a gorgeous model... Anyway, Niagra is very large for a brig, extremely fast, heavily armed, big crew. But all things come at a price, her draught and freeboard border on non-existent (I'm serious, she draws significantly less water than the Lynx), meaning rough weather would be "interesting" to say the least, and with such a large crew in a hull with next to nil capacity for provisions her range would be extremely limited. She was after all never designed to operate far from home, so that's how it is. But yeah, seriously pretty model, stunningly close to the real ship.

Quick comparison, Belle Poule: 16kts speed, 4.60 turning, 2503 armor, 280 crew, 28x18lb and 10x12lb plus 2x sternchasers. Cherubim: 16kts speed, 4.60 turning, 2276 armor, 280 crew, 26x18lb and 12x12lb plus 2x bowchasers. Basically the two ships are nearly identical except one has a little more armor and the other an extra pair of 12 pdrs. Plus bowchasers vs sternchasers. I've used the Belle Poule in PvP and it seems pretty competitive against against the Trincomalee, perhaps slightly weaker but more than capable of holding it's own if you have the edge in skill. Edit: Right, if the Belle Poule has an extra pair of 18s vs the extra pair of 12s that definitely gives it the edge. Really the leading pair of maindeck ports on the Belle Poule should be chasers angled at about 45 degrees (meaning you'd follow off someone's quarter and not directly behind them), normally these ports would be empty but if you needed chasers you'd move a pair of guns from the broadside ports.

Oh, nice find 18 pdrs make sense if she's supposed to be 145ft length. Only problem, the model was built to 135ft gundeck length (see build thread below), so it's too small and will need to be scaled up. Perhaps the modeller misread and took the length for the plate XXXIV frigate (which was a 12 pdr ship) http://hangsim.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=49&t=4367 These are the plans used, if you compare them to the model and the chapman plans its obviously the same ship. (ignore the different stern gallery, was changed for Naval Action) http://i.imgur.com/jPdPYOx.jpg?1 Edit: Being 145ft is great news, makes her a real rival to the Trin, could even increase the armor to match (just so long as the model gets scaled up).

Bit of a strange ship this one, but not completely invented. She's based off a Chapman frigate design but the plans were altered by a model kit company to portray a British frigate. I'm not sure sure if the original plans were used to build a ship, not all of Chapman's designs were used, but if this ship was built it would have been Danish. http://www.sjohistoriska.se/ImageVaultFiles/id_3063/cf_1768/33.JPG (Credit: Captain Armstrong found these plans) Oddly, this makes her quite suited to be a Russian ship, the Russians liked captured Danish ships and built several copies of Chapman frigates. They also had Royal Navy influences and built some ships from plans obtained from the british (including a class of 10 half-sisters to HMS Victory). The model itself we have here was built by Axionelis (spelling?) and given to Game Labs as one of the first ship models, it's been reworked a few times and only just reappeared. Not sure where the connection to HMS Diana has come from, perhaps invented by the model kit company. The armament we have ingame was definitely invented by the kit company, this ship is much too small to be an 18 pdr frigate. From the dimensions (135ft gundeck?) I would say that she is a 12 pdr frigate, probably with 6 pdrs on the weather deck, about the size of the Belle Poule. Now, there a few problems with this model (mostly left over from the kit company's conversion to a British frigate). First, this ship was not a true frigate with the normal unarmed gundeck and main battery on the upper deck like all the other frigates we have. Instead, the guns are carried on the gundeck, lower down to the waterline (because Danish frigates were for use in shallow waters and valued a shallow draught over being able to fight in rough seas). But the kit company has given her a british style stern gallery, and they've placed it about half a deck higher than the original (where a normal frigate's stern gallery would be), so it's not in line with the deck it's supposed to be on. They've also raised the sides of the hull, creates this odd appearance with a fairly normal looking frigate that for some reason has a very low gundeck. So what I'd suggest is either cutting down the sides and re-positioning the stern gallery as per Chapman plans above, or raising the gunports/decks/chainplates about 3 feet to bring the guns in line with the stern gallery, either modification would produce a "correct" and very attractive frigate. (assuming Game Labs is not tired of this model after 2nd rework and are going "F*** it, the ship is finished" )

Yes, the Ocean class were of course built as 118 (or 120) gun ships, where the Santisima is a mere 112 gun ship with some added small guns that aren't really worth the trade-off in handling (note, Spain did not convert any of their other 1st rates in this manner). So the Ocean class will be the biggest and most powerful ships ingame when they are added.

Elements of this ship look very American, indeed I am almost certain this is based on the Chapelle plans for USS Constellation (would link but difficult on phone). As such probably an invented ship, perhaps for a model kit.

It's the Belle Poule. Or possibly one of her sisterships, but probably the Belle Poule as none of the other 3 were famous. None of them were at Trafalgar though.

British ships were not as a rule slow... Indeed the fastest frigates of the era were either british, french or british copies of french designs. Not just the Endymion, the Newcastle (14kts) and Leander (13.5kts) were also superlatively fast, and almost every British 18 pdr frigate (even the smaller 36 gun types) could make 13kts. This despite the Royal Navy's reluctance to build bigger ships than they strictly needed, in general they never took the initiative in creating larger types and stuck with existing ship sizes until an enemy advance forced their hand.

Ol' Ironsides confirmed indestructible...

Did the Sviatoi Nikolai really carry such massive firepower as a frigate on a 150ft gundeck length? I was thinking this must a mix-up of units and the ship must be larger than that, but apparently the Russian standardised on the english measurements for ft and in... 26 guns on the upper deck, 22x 24lb cannon and 4x 36lb shell guns, then 20x 18lb cannon on the weather deck and another 4x 8lb cannon on the raised poop deck (again quite unusual for a frigate to have 2 layers of stern gallery). Be interesting to see reports of how this ship sailed if any survived.

Yeah, the Ingermanland (1715) is already WIP by devs so this ship shouldn't be a problem if someone decides to model it.

That's another way to do it. Something like every month a nation gets to vote for a period of time which side they want to be on. Have to be some kind of lock on switching to an grossly overpopulated side to prevent stacking too many nations on one side, also votes restricted to characters over a certain level and one vote per account to avoid voting being alt-spammed, but otherwise yeah, players in a nation would get to choose their side. I don't think there should be any form of picking sides during battles (at least not for anyone else but pirates), it will just lead to endless backstabbing between people who aren't supposed to be backstabbing each other.

Probably national alliances would be the way to do this. At the moment with every nation being enemies you get a feeling more of the OS being a free-for-all than a war. National alliances could be static, dynamic or scripted. So which nations are on which side might be fixed or could be changed up to keep the numbers of players reasonably balanced (every so often there would be a shake-up of which nations are on which side). Alternatively, might run through a semi-historical script with sides changing at intervals. That way, although every battle would still be 2-sided you'd be able to enter into the majority of them to reinforce your side within that battle, and this would greatly increase the idea that you were fighting a war alongside allies rather than mainly encountering different enemies and only rarely a friendly ship.

/tiphat WIS, remember you from Roberts and Antigua.

Not at all. The overall controls would remain the same but there would be 4 things you can do in order to gain turning performance instead of 3. I don't see that as a problem. Same accessibility, slightly greater depth. I do like the sailing mechanics, not very much left that could really be improved. If I had to pick one thing that is bugging me it would be the upwind performance of square riggers, but other than that no complaints. What I really want to say is that the sailing mechanics we have now are the equivalent of damage model 3.0 vs what could be damage model 4.0. Do they work well? Yes. Better than anything that has come before? No question. But could they be even better? It's certainly possible.

No reason not to add depth so long as the intuitive controls and accessibility we have now is not impacted. Indeed, the best and simplest way to model sailing characteristics might well be to model the sails individually. Simple wind force value based on sail area for each sail, applied to ship movement. That force then varies by the sail's angle to wind (controlled by type of sail, IE square sail, staysail etc). Then for fine details we have a multiplier for the effects on ship roll/heel (the higher the sail the more effect force applied to it will have on roll/heel), and a check for the sail being blanketed by others (if vector from center of sail to wind direction intersects another sail then force on sail reduced by 50-75%). And lastly you have drag values for the ships hull, resistance to being pushed forwards, resistance to being pushed sideways (more the ship is heeling, less resistance to being pushed sideways) which controls how much leeway the ship will make. I'm sure the likes of Maturin can fine tune details of how this system would work or point out errors, but it would allow very accurate sailing characteristics/damage modeling within a simple overall system that would be just as accessible for the end players as what we have now (indeed controls would be identical and for the most part control responses quite similar). Edit: Last thing, ships without any force applied to their sails would have a strong rolling motion, up to a point force applied to the sails would then reduce the rolling motion. Note: None of the above is needed to implement the original suggestion of being able to furl individual sails by clicking on them.

Quite simply, be able to furl and unfurl individual sails be clicking on them with the mouse (hold Ctrl to free mouse). Just click on sail to furl, click on furled sail to unfurl. Might have some highlight effect on the sail to be sure you are choosing the right sail, but not essential. Very simple system to use but gives players full control over the sails set on their ship (works in conjunction with the shortcuts for battle sails etc)