William Death

Magic ropes and sails for magic re-growing masts

Well, it looks great! (would look better with a pirate flag) The details really are quite nice. Excellent work, devs. Now if only it had the Rouge Noir paint scheme and a pirate flag flying at the mizzen.... Performance: I'm not much of a small ship fan, but since this one has 9pdrs, I'll make an exception I agree with what some others have said: make it a 6th rate and adjust BR accordingly. Moving on... Its fast and doesn't seem to be overly tough, so thats good for balance. Firepower is decent enough I think. Turn rate is ok, but since manual sailing to turn better doesn't seem to be as effective as on a square rigged ship...maybe buff it a little? Perhaps test a bit more first. I know it definitely needs some other speed "settings" besides all stop or full canvas. I don't know if they reefed lateen sails during this time period...if they did, that'd be great. If not, then maybe have the "half, slow, battle, dead slow" settings adjust the sails to spill some wind out and make the ship slower. You can do it with manual skipper but that is a lot of button juggling to keep the speed and course the way you want it. I'd also suggest replacing those 4 2pd bow guns chasers with 2 or 4 4pd long guns. I didn't like those little swivels on the LGV Refit and I don't think I like them here either. Or at least let us shoot chain and grape through the swivels. Bonus: ramming speed with no bowsprit worries!

Actually the amount that you can repair *seems* to have gone down recently. I took all the masts off of a ship a few days ago and he was only able to repair the lower section of his masts in one repair. If he'd had time to go and repair 2 more times, he'd have come back into the fight with a brand new ship, basically. With the old repair system (pre-wipe), he'd have gotten one full (or nearly full) mast and 2 partial masts back. Even though I hate the idea of re-growing masts and massive amounts of ship HP, people will complain way too much if they have no ability to repair their masts or hulls. The old system was better, in that regard: you get a limited amount of each repair per battle. Use it wisely. I like having some wind shifts, don't get me wrong, but it shouldn't be every 15 minutes and a random amount of degrees. It should be a very slow, but constant shift over a 30-40 minute time period, and no more than 90* from where it started. It ruins one of the major tactics: gaining the weather gauge. I feel sometimes like the game is: "Oh you just spent 10 minutes carefully planning that maneuver and waiting on your enemy to make a mistake so you could gain the wind? Guess what? SURPRISE!" RNG Wind strikes again!

I haven't had a problem with stern rakes. A good ball rake, Constitution vs Victory, will take ~40-70 crew and ~5-15 cannons, plus you remove all the stern armor. Follow it up with a proper grape rake and you should get ~150-200 crew and a Crew Shock if you aim even marginally well. More if you aim better. Do that a couple times and you'll have the Victory at a low enough crew level to board. Carronades are your friend when you are raking. If you are raking frigate vs frigate, or 3rd vs 3rd, etc...the same strategy still applies: rake with ball to remove the stern HP and take out some cannons and a bit of crew, then move in with grape, you'll easily crew shock the enemy. As others have said, we've already tried the "realistic" rakes where a decent ball rake crew shocks the enemy. It was fun but not very balanced. I think if we go back to that, we have to go back to paper masts and lower ship thickness and HP again. Not a good idea, IMO, as it seems to have taken ages to get the combat model somewhat balanced as it is now. Although I agree, endless repairs are just dumb. Go back to the old system: 1 hull, 1 rig, no necromancer to bring back the crew. Or, at most, 2-3 repairs of each type per battle. With the old system, uneven battles, or even semi-even battles were more challenging and you saw fewer lopsided victories where a few good players sink twice as many, or more noobs sailing bigger ships. Also, if you took a ship out of the fight, chances were that it would stay out of the fight, even if he repaired and got back some HP or some masts, he would never be able to sail back into the fight with a brand new ship 24 minutes later, as we can now. Also RNG wind ruins a lot of the tactical choices in battles these days, but thats another topic. Regarding structure damage and demasting with hull-shooting. I think its fine as it is. If you increase it significantly, stern-camping will be rampant again. Right now, if you aim well and have a bit of luck, you can take any mast (even the mainmast) by shooting the hull of a ship when the HP is down on that side (or bow, or stern). If you land a lot of ball hits in the bow or stern of a ship, you'll see the structure drop some. I've finished off the last bit of structure of the enemy by doing that. I don't like the idea of a moral bar and auto surrender. It would, again, encourage only stern-camping to remove that bar...thats not a good combat meta. Combat is balanced when hulling, demasting, raking, chaining, and boarding are all equally useful. We are close to that now, if it wasn't for unlimited repairs and RNG wind. Sinking a ship....the HP and structure system we have isn't realistic really, but its the best way I can think of to model a ship being removed from the fight permanently...if you must, you can think of it as the ship surrendering after being pummeled so hard by the enemy, that it is no longer fit to fight. The graphics show it as a sunken ship. Also, if you want to sink a ship with leaks, that is entirely possible to do...in just one well-aimed broadside

My theory: Sail two accounts side by side on the same computer. You can see the “issue” clearly: the separate game clients will almost always show the ships in slightly different positions relative to one another. I don’t think there is a “fix” for this, or even that it is an issue. Sometimes your ship will be 1-2 seconds delayed from its actual position, even on a good rig with high FPS and low ping. I’ve seen the tag circles fail to represent area available to tag numerous times. I think this is the same reason why join circles aren’t always accurate, sometimes you can go right up to the line, just outside the line, or sometimes you have to be well inside the line to get the “join” button to appear. I STRONGLY doubt there is an exploit here, most likely I think it’s simply a bit of lag somewhere. The fact that the tag activated just as you left the green zone is bad luck on your end and good luck (I’m assuming) for the enemy. I had a special somewhat similar occurrence recently as I made the dash down the “Channel of Death” between La Tortue and Port-de-Paix: despite several tags by the Prussians, I managed to outrun each one, and make it to port, just in the nick of time. One of their tags went all the way to 0s while I was still in the circle but I wasn’t pulled.

+1 to paints. This would be a great, non-advantage-giving way to spend PvP marks. Buy individual paints for 10 PvP marks, everyone gets to customize their ship, battles look better and more diverse. These are already in the game, we just need to see them used again!

+1 When I saw the depowering update, I first thought that it was what you describe, I was disappointed when it wasn’t. I’d like better ability to customize sailplans, this seems like an easy to implement option to do so.

Just a couple 5th rates and a bot. Good fight Pirates. Was fun o7 #creatingcontent

For shallow ships, actually, its the NavyBrig that has the invulnerable bowsprit. Mercury's is nothing special, several other shallow boats can knock it off. Now that Hercules has been introduced though, it may be able to snap a NavyBrig's bowsprit, I'm not sure. Prince loses a bowsprit to basic cutter LOL. Regarding larger ships, Pavel's bowsprit is a toothpick and will fall off if you look at it the wrong way. Or ram a Constitution. I've used Victory to take the bowsprit of of Santisimas several times. Thinking back, I'm not sure if I've ever taken a L'Ocean's bowsprit with a Victory before. I think I have, but I'm not certain. I know I've lost a bowsprit on Victory before. Santisima can easily knock it off. Interesting topic to think of. I usually try to avoid playing bumper boats with my own bowsprit though

A tale of seafaring shenanigans, naval combat, and some brave skippers... There we were, Mal Function and I, a light (Mahogany/Bermuda Cedar) Bellona and an Endymion, sailing to the patrol zone at Aves. We spotted a British squadron of two ships, a Santisima and Trincomalee returning to Aves. We maneuvered to engage and simultaneously signaled to our friends in harbor to assist us. This is a breakdown of the battle that ensued. Shaky Beginnings: Being the closest ship to the Santisima at the start of the battle, my driftwood Bellona was destined to take some damage. I managed to carefully avoid the worst of the Santisima's opening broadsides and positioned myself to stern rake. Shortly after the battle started, we were reinforced with an Indefatigable (unfortunately, the ship was not supplied with repairs and only equipped medium cannons), Captain Teutonic; and an Endymion, Captain Coraline Vodka. After opening the stern armor, I was able to make a pass with grape and incapacitate 180 of the brave souls aboard that first rate. By this time, my sails had been shredded and my ship was fairly damaged. I ordered my crew to patch the hull and signalled the frigates to move in to chain and grape the fleeing enemy. The Chase: Captain Ghostwork, aboard the Santisima, showed great skill in placing his chainshot into our fleet. Together with his friend Swakara in the Trincomalee, they managed to maintain their distance for a considerable length of time. Eventually my crew managed to repair the hull and patch the sails well enough to move my rotten old Bellona back into the fight. Meanwhile, our frigates had managed to rake a significant amount of crew off of the Santisima and damage the rigging and hull of the Trincomalee. Unfortunately, Mal Function's foretopmast went by the board, having been shot away at the cap by a shot from the stern chasers of Ghostwork's Santisima. Closing In: With my ship repaired, I moved back into the fight. I expended the last of my chainshot taking the sails of the Santisima down to 68%. With assistance from Coraline Vodka, I attempted to push the Santisima into the wind to board him. Captain Ghostwork expertly handled his ship and avoided a boarding engagement. He was also able to repair his sails again and gain some distance on us. Needless to say, we were discouraged. A Risky Maneuver: My crew once again climbed the rigging and repaired our sails. Mal Function and I moved in, determined to take that first rate's mainmast. Meanwhile, our other two frigates engaged the Trincomalee, inflicting heavy damage. Taking a risk, I decided to maneuver alongside the Santisima. My gunners trained their double-charged cannons on the mainmast while Mal Function's gunners did the same. The Santisima's broadsides were devastating to the ancient timbers of my Bellona. Despite taking heavy damage, we stayed alongside the enemy. At last, the very last shot of double charge aboard my ship caused the Santisima's mainmast to fall by the board. The Santisima was ours for the taking! It Worked: My crew threw down their slow matches and ramrods, and took up their boarding grapples and weapons. With the Santisima's boarding well in hand, our two Endymions fired grape into the stern of the first rate and continued chasing the heavily damaged Trincomalee. Teutonic stayed behind to claim some repairs from the loot. Just minutes after the capture and scuttling of the Santisima, the Trincomalee slipped beneath the waves. ...Ok, thats enough of the roleplaying (I'm not very good at it anyways). It was a fun fight. We had the BR advantage, but they had the firepower and some tougher ships (my Bellona was an old speed build: mahog/cedar, and the Indefatigable had medium cannons and no repairs). The British players fought well. That Santisima's sail repairing ability was simply astounding. Also, those big carronades with chainshot HURT! o7 and thanks to all who participated.

Basically this. I'm not really deterred by the reinforcements anymore. If I'm careful, I can sink the player and get out before reinforcements ever get to me. If the reinforcements spawn too close for comfort, I can out-sail them. AI isn't very smart and will repeatedly turn into the wind while trying to chase me close-hauled. In the battles we fought together, our team of frigates could easily smash a trader's fleet before the reinforcements become a problem. Additional players joining late, on the other hand, is something for the hunter to worry about. It recently cost me a 3-wood type Surprise. RIP. Good fun though.

All valid concerns, but most were already addressed in previous iterations, or easily addressed in future implementations of Outlaw Battles. Now, another exploit (already mentioned in other posts): Using an alt to start an Outlaw Battle so that nationals who own the alt can join. This was abused on the PvP2/Global server by several nations/clans to force Pirates into unfavorable battles. The suggested ROE change to remove ability to Outlaw Battle in the Reinforcement zone is a fairly easy fix for this. It would mean that, if you are in the safezone, you are safe from your own nation as well as enemies. If you leave it, you better be ready to fight or escape . Bring back Outlaw Battles! I know that was a major feature for many of us who played Pirate. I certainly enjoyed being a Pirate a lot more when we had Outlaw Battles. If they are implemented again, I may just have to find the old jolly roger and hoist it again.

Update 2 May, 2018: I have received my ship, upgrades and cannons back in the form of redeemables. The ship did not turn out 4/5 as the one that capsized was, but I appreciate having it back nevertheless and understand that it may not have been possible to ensure the ship turned out 4/5 when redeeming it. Thank you @Ink and Game-Labs for resolving this issue.

I don't know if its intentional or not...but its been like that for as long as I can remember. You get used to it after a while and then the aiming isn't too bad. IIRC, Wapen has a similar issue with the sprit topmast in the bow chaser aiming view.

SERVER: PvP1/PvP Caribbean TIME: April 24, 02:30 Server Time (April 23, 10:30 PM Eastern) PLAYER NAME: William Death [note: two spaces between the words] I was sailing my new Rattlesnake against an AI Trader's Snow. After messing around with it for a bit, chaining and seeing how much damage I could take, I went in for a boarding action. I touched the stern of the TSnow and pushed it upwind to board. When I pulled the AI for boarding, my Rattlesnake capsized. I won the boarding and was put aboard the TSnow. I sent an F11 after the boarding was over and took a few screenshots. This seems a lot like the Ingermanland and Wasa capsize bugs others have reported. The Rattlesnake I lost was a blue Mahogany/Teak (which I mistakenly referred to in the F11 Teak/White Oak) with 4 permanent slots. I had equipped: Navy Hull, Bovenwinds, and Light Ship Hammocks. I'd appreciate another identical ship (or you could...ya know...upgrade it to a gold/orange Mahogany/Teak/Very Fast version ), thanks. Be careful handling the Rattlesnake around other ships! also #TSnowOP Hope this is in the right forum section...

I notice it quite often on the PvP1 server. I rarely, if ever, had these issues on the PvP2 server.

I prefer Endymion for the 24pd longs to demast at further ranges. Also you can demast first rates (had some fun in that battle, hehe) from reasonable range if they don't buff their masts, something the Trinc's 18pd guns may have more trouble with. Also I like the Endymion's stern guns for when you have to run . That being said, Endymion is pretty squishy compared to some other 5th rates--you have to be careful about taking hits--so maximize your hull shape advantage and get some angles to bounce shots (as you always should). Trincomalee is also quite nice. Handling is overall better than Endymion, and the four bow chasers are certainly nice. However the lack of stern guns can be concerning if you are trying to run from a ship(s) that is nearly as fast as you. The 18s on the Trincomalee are nice for brawling, but they seem lack the pen to fight at longer ranges (not always important, just depends on your fighting style). Really, you should try both and see which one suits your style better. I like both ships, but if I could only have one, it would be my Endymion. I don't sail a fir/fir one, but I am fairly confident that I can always outrun the ships I can't outfight...I can't say the same for too many other 5th rates I've sailed.

Yeah thats the way it has been for a long time now. Ever since the removal of outlaw battles IIRC. Maybe even before that.

Because you put staysail force (jib sail force) modifiers on it: Pirate Rig Refit, Staysails, Treatise on Staysails Trim. Put the same modules on the Trincomalee and the Bellona will not be faster when sailing upwind. Take a look at the sailing profile of the Trincomalee vs the Bellona: Trincomalee is faster upwind, at all angles, actually. You can use modules and books to change the profiles (to a certain degree) to suit your purposes. Your Bellona is only faster than your Trincomalee upwind because you altered it to be that way. This is not an issue and doesn't only apply to the Bellona. Furthermore, Bellona is not "faster" than Trincomalee at all: base speed of Trincomalee is higher than base speed of Bellona. You can change the wood type, add speed upgrades, or use modules to change the sailing profile, but no matter what, a Trincomalee built the same way and with the same modules will always be faster than the Bellona. You are comparing apples to oranges by using different ship builds and possibly different upgrades as well. Just to clarify, I'm not a fan of all the mod stacking either, I liked the old system of 1-3 mods in each category, but thats a topic for another time.

Wouldn't it be nice if we could have this screen, at the end of battles, that allows you to collect your loot, have a look at your combat logs, and manage the number of repairs? Maybe take a quick 15 minute break, grab a snack, smack talk the revenge gank in global chat, etc. Honestly, the end-battle screen was great, IMO. It had problems but they could be solved, it didn't need to go away. Just have the battles kick players out 5 minutes after "Battle Over" and send them to the end battle screen. They can remain there a maximum of 15 minutes, at the end of which they are kicked to OW. Don't allow logging out in the end-battle screen if that is something we are trying to avoid (I liked it but I can understand why some players don't like allowing the log-out). Loot would be distributed in this end-battle screen. Each AI ship carries repairs, cannons, one book, and one module. If you are the only ship in the battle, you'd get all of that loot, if other ships did damage, they'd get some of the loot. RNG would determine who gets what, with quantities given out based on damage done. So if I do 70% damage on an AI Santisima, I would get 70% of the loot from the Santi, maybe books, maybe cannons, maybe modules, maybe a combination. The other 30% would be split among other players who did damage on the Santi. This is not a suggestion to remove the current looting mechanics. I like having the ability to access hold in battle. In fact there should be an option to "open hold" to allow other ships (friendly or enemy) to inspect your hold and take repairs or whatever if you allow them access to the hold. Furthermore, the current looting mechanics could stay, just have it so if you loot a ship in battle, you won't receive the loot from that ship in the end-battle screen. That would be my suggestion for the looting mechanics.

@William Death doesn't know what u talkin 'bout? Best thing about that old graphics card: when all of you guys dropped by like 25 FPS in the big PBs, I'd only drop by 1-2 FPS. When you don't have much to start with, you don't have much to lose!! That being said, smooth 60 FPS is...a nice upgrade and I've almost learned how to aim again. I'd also like to know what that little ship in one of those images is, and if/when it would be put in the game...it looks...interesting. Regarding Edinorog guns...maybe just bring back the long reload? They honestly weren't bad even with the 100s reload but very high damage output. Could buff it to...65-75s maybe? Definitely longer than what it takes to reload double-shotted 24s

Actually that is just the knot meter playing tricks with you. It confused me at first (and still does somewhat LOL), but Admin explained it in another thread. Here is my understanding of it: the knot meter tracks the movement of the ship, in any direction. If the ship is moving 2kn sideways and .1kn forward, you will see 2.1kn on the knot meter. If the ship is moving 2kn sideways and .1kn in reverse, you will see -2.1kn. Keep in mind also that the weight of the ship and any wood types or modules which increase acceleration and deceleration time can help to make the tacking smoother, sometimes even eliminating the need to reverse,. Which is why you can watch a Santisima come through the wind without really reversing any noticeable distance: in fact, with proper manual sailing, the knot meter never displays a negative unless you began the tack at a slower speed than usual. Some lighter ships, however, like Bucentaure, Bellona, Ingermanland, etc, seem to almost always reverse when you tack them, but that is alright since the transition from forward to reverse to forward again is very smooth (remember that most of the time you are moving sideways when coming out of the wind, and only slightly forward or backward). Historically speaking, most ships would pick up sternway while tacking. As far as speed in reverse and accelerating to that speed: remember time is compressed so acceleration happens much faster in the game; and I've yet to see a ship move more than about 6kn in reverse (14.8kn Endymion, depowered, sails backing, dead in the eye of the wind, no rudder input). When tacking Ingermanland, for example, I can come into the wind with about 6kn, lose headway and begin to sag to leeward, at a speed of "-2kn" (remember, the knot meter tracks movement of the ship, not the speed in forward or reverse: most of that -2kn is the ship sliding sideways, with the bow sliding faster because the sails on the foremast are backing as close to 90* to the wind as I can make them, and the rear sails are luffing as much as I can make them [not to mention, the bow of most ships usually have less draft than the stern, since it makes turning easier]), reversing rudder helps bring the bow out of irons, and the ship begins to accelerate forward. I don't think demasting has gotten too easy: its become popular because of a silly patch ages ago that made mast thickness very high and mast HP very low. It becomes very popular in battles these days to throw a few broadsides into your enemy's masts in the hopes you get lucky and they're not running mast mods. Because if they aren't, and your cannons can penetrate their masts, it only takes a few shots to disable them. To make demasting balance, decrease mast thickness, increase mast HP. Masts will be able to be shot off with smaller caliber guns, but it will take a long time. Demasting was much more balanced when the game worked this way: all 5th rates could demast at least one portion of another 5th rate's masts, but it took varying numbers of shot, based on the mast HP. I remember it taking 11-14 standard ball shots of 42pd longs at the lower section of a first rate's masts to take it out, compared to the 7-9 double-charged shots that it takes now. Doesn't seem like a huge change on paper, but most players are lucky to be able to hit 3-4 single-shots into the same mast out of an entire broadside, perhaps fewer if they just lob a broadside into your mast. That is assuming you are properly maneuvering to make demasting harder for your enemy. Players who have practiced for a long time have much higher mast hit ratios, but that is skill-based, and skill deserves to be rewarded. And no, I very highly doubt a pine mast will bounce a cannonball. A quick internet search yielded some useful information: a 32pd cannonball fired from a long cannon develops around 1.2 million foot-pounds of muzzle energy. That is a lot of energy for a piece of wood to stop. Pine is a very soft wood. A heavy cannonball fired from reasonable range will smash into the mast and take out a decent chunk of it...something tells me a mast that is already strained by the sails and the rolling and pitching of the ship in the sea, is not going to be standing for much longer...if it doesn't fall almost immediately upon impact . All that is really irrelevant though, since the primary method of removing masts or spars was shooting chainshot into the rigging to either shatter the fragile yards (which are under enormous strain when a press of canvas is set) or yard slings (ropes holding the yards up), or in the hopes that the chainshot would cut through enough backstays and shrouds that the mast becomes too weak to continue to bear the press of canvas and falls spectacularly. Of course, some chainshot impacting the mast and splintering out small chunks of it would help to ensure that it is weak enough to fall.

Agreed. Adding too many consumables will just make gameplay more tedious than it already is. I personally preferred the old system of 1 sail repair and 1 hull repair per battle, using repair kits bought from any port that were stored in your ship (I'm referring to the old system where you filled up your ships "gas tank" of repairs; this was seen in port on the main screen, right in the center: "repairs: 25/27"). About limited shot (round shot, at least): to my knowledge, there are very few historical records of ships running out of shot in battles. I'm sure it happened a few times, and probably came close to running out on various occasions, but it is important to remember that these ships carried thousands of cannonballs and would, of course, feel no remorse in taking a few hundred appropriate-sized cannonballs from captured prizes before sending them away. One similar idea to yours which I've heard and do like is the following: unlimited round shot: admiralty provides it to you chain shot limited to 4 shots per gun grapeshot limited to 4 shots per gun double charge/double shot follows the same system that we currently have. optional 1-point captain perk that allows you to have 7 shots of chain/grape per gun I like your suggestion (with a few adjustments) regarding guacata gunpowder and almeria gunpowder. I'm just not sure of the best way it could be implemented. If it is made super-rare, then it will become just as broken as bidding for cartagena tar. If it is made easily available for little cost, then it will be the only gunpowder used. If it is limited by shots per battle & automatically refills after every battle then we basically have double-charge v2.0. It could, maybe, be limited in the following way: Regular gunpowder is provided to all captains at no cost by their admiratly All types of special/superior powders are available from the admiralty for combat marks A keg of special gunpowder (+3.5% pen) is enough for 50 shots (I made that number up but it would seem ok) A keg of special gunpowder costs 15 combat marks A keg of superior gunpowder (+6% pen) is enough for 50 shots A keg of superior gunpowder costs 30 combat marks You would have a new box in the ship UI in port where you can drag and drop kegs of gunpowder. They don't add weight or slow you down since your ship is going to carry gunpowder anyways. Their "negatives to prevent everyone just using the good powder" are the high cost and instant-loss if you sink (unless a player loots your ship and takes the gunpowder). Combat marks are plentiful, sure. You can get loads of them from doing missions, but 50 shots per keg is one first-rate broadside: you'll shoot through 30-100+ marks in a single battle if you only use the special gunpowders. It will be impractical to only use the special gunpowders, even with frigates, since you will shoot more combat marks out of your cannons than you will gain from sinking the enemy. Ideally, you'd use your special or superior gunpowder to double-charge your guns with, at least until you ran out of the regular powder, or used all the double-charge the perk allows. Maybe have it in the UI as a toggle function with a gauge showing how much powder you have left, so you know when to use the free regular powder, and when to use the good stuff. Furthermore, it would be great to select what decks to use the special powder on. On a first rate, I'd only want my lower and middle gundecks to be loaded with special powder. The upper gundeck and quarterdeck guns can be charged with regular powder, since the 12pdrs and 42pd carronades are practically useless, at all but ideal angles, even with pen mods.

+1

Here are my suggestions. wind changes Slow it down (a slow shift over time) and make them less dramatic (wind should shift a maximum of 45* from the starting wind over the course of an entire battle. That is, it should move a maximum of 45* either way from where it started: It might slowly shift right 45*, then slowly shift left 90*, bringing it to 45* left of where it started. Then it might move 30* right, and then 15* left. And so on... heel It seems alright, I would say that heel-reducing modules (like optimized ballast) need to have a clearer indication of what they actually do. Is it 7% less roll, meaning 7% less than 10*? Or is it calculated some other way? If it is done the first way, the module seems useless to reduce roll: 7% off of a 10* roll would barely be noticeable. leeway (sideforce) and ship differences I feel that leeway is balanced between most ships, but maybe a tiny bit too much overall? Tune it down, just a little bit. general turnrates (using rudder or yards or both) Constitution needs a buff. Turn rate is way too low. L'Hermione could use a small turn rate buff, it is currently only .01 more than the Trincomalee. Maybe increase it by .1-.2. speed curves and ship difference Ingermanland needs a slightly better upwind performance in battle. I think that there is a bug in open world, my Ingermanland seems to drop to 4.0kn when sailing upwind (maybe around 30* to the wind it happens, and it stays at 4.0kn all the way, even straight into the wind). Please have a look at the OW sailing profile for this ship. Do something for the Le Gros Ventre Refit. I paid 50 PvP marks for mine, and I feel like I've been cheated. I know the players who spent 150 for theirs must feel even more cheated by it now. It is absolutely horrible. The swivel guns are worthless for anything but stern-rakes. We should be able to load other types of ammunition in them, besides just ball. Please buff the sailing profile to make it better upwind, and allow us to unlock all 5 slots on it. Maybe a small (.10) turn-rate increase wouldn't be bad either. L'Hermione needs a better sailing profile. Look at the following sailing profile chart. Why sail L'Hermione when I could sail the much more powerful Indefatigable with basically the same (or slightly better) sailing profile? It doesn't cost PvP marks either. I've included the Endymion's sailing profile, which is closer to what the L'Hermione's should look like. Do not make them exactly the same, but the upwind performance of L'Hermione should be better than what it currently is. Buff the thickness by 2 (from 58 to 60) and maybe give it 75-100 more HP than it currently has. Release the Hermione/Santa Cecilia to the market. We need more 12pd frigates, and we need to test the balance between the frigates. I can understand wanting to have a special gift ship, so maybe keep the "Santa Cecilia" on as a paint scheme for the Hermione, or as a separate developer-gift that comes already fully unlocked. From what I've read, Santa Cecilia/Hermione will need some buffing to balance it. The sailing profile I think is rather poor for it, and I've heard the sail HP is very low. Third Rate ship buff. I like that you gave it 32pdrs on the lower deck. Still, I don't see a reason to sail it over the Bellona. I'd suggest you give the option to have it be a carronade loadout ship: 42/42/32pd carronades would be pretty cool. Lots of damage up close, but not too good at range. Of course it would still have the option for 32/18/9pd longs. If you do this, it also needs an HP and thickness buff to make it the same stats as the Bellona. Pavel: bring back the Pavel's speed. You have it slower than the Bucentaure right now. That was one of its main advantages for me and many others who sailed the Pavel. The old speed you had for it, 11.99 kn (if I remember that correctly), seemed quite balanced against the slower but more powerful Bucentaure. Victory needs a little bit of a sailing profile buff upwind. It used to be the best upwind, now it has no noticeable advantage over any of the other first rates in terms of sailing profile. tacking time Ingermanland needs some buffing here. I know it is not, and should not be the best upwind sailor, but it is fairly sluggish through the tacks. Give it a small buff. The Le Gros Ventre Refit needs a major buff here. As I mentioned earlier, it needs to be faster upwind, but should also tack much better than it currently does. downwind turning time Seems alright on the ships I've tested. Things you didn't mention but should be adjusted: BR Rebalance. Please, we need this. This will help a lot with the second point Wasa nerf. You've nerfed it some, but having it the same BR as other 4th rates means it will still be the pretty much the only 4th rate seen in port battles. A BR increase would be good. I'd also suggest nerfing HP on it some. First Rate thickness rebalance: Hulls of 1st rates are too thick. I would suggest nerfing the thickness by 5cm, and eliminate stacking of Cartagena and Navy Hull Refit. Demasting rebalance: please nerf mast thickness, but increase mast HP. Once you've done this, you can then fine-tune demasting by increasing or decreasing HP. I would say the thickness of a mast should be such so that the largest-caliber gun the ship carries can penetrate it out to 500m with regular ball shot. Start there, and make minor adjustments as needed. Currently, you have masts that are very thick, but with very low HP. This means that masts are hard to penetrate, but easy to snap if your cannons can penetrate them. It should be the other way around: you can penetrate the masts of a frigate with any size cannon, but it will take ages to make it fall with 6pdrs, or relatively quick to make it fall with 24pdrs. You have a good system with making the upper masts thinner and with less HP: easier to demast than the lower sections. Please keep that system. To clarify this point: I'm not suggesting we have paper masts that fall if you look at them wrong; instead, we need masts that take a while to fall, but will eventually yield to sustained fire.