Idle Champion

On a point of clarification, brought up by this discussion of all ships of smaller rates, but Cerberus is listed as a 6th-rate on the opening list. I know HMS Cerberus was a sixth-rate ship as far as the Royal Navy was concerned, but isn't Cerberus a 5th-rate in game? (second level shipyard, mid grade notes, deep water warship, frigate class as regards the mastery perk, the whole ball of wax)

There are details of some real pirate ships out there. Black Sam Bellamy's Whydah Galley had enough contemporary notes and images from her construction and pre-pirate career to verify the wreck itself and there are model-building plans of her though I don't know what they are based off; it's probably the best-understood Golden Age of Piracy ship. The idea of a commerce raider, faster and more offensively armed than a trader but with more carrying capacity than a warship, appeals to me and a pirate ship is a good way to bring such a ship into the game.

Are we? Endymion and Indefatigable will outgun any fifth-rate presently in the game and the question regarding the Kepler is 'how heavy will it be?', rather than 'will it be heavy?' A newly-arrived ship of the line with Bucentaure, four more definitely in the pipe, with Ocean and Agamemnon suggested to be just around the corner if they are to be tournament prizes. There are nine potential wild cards from the last poll that are heavy frigates or ships of the line, and only four that are corvettes or brigs. Not saying that more diversity would be bad, but Post Captain and up are being looked after pretty well. There's still no real alternative to the Bellona and no Post Captain fourth-rate, but it's the light ships and the bottom half of fifth-rates that need some attention now.

When I said libra grossa I probably should have said converted pounds. I was just curious because he was not just converting to British measurement, but also rounding to British/in-game armament weights and 8-pounder was a break in that pattern; for now I'll assume he's referring to 12ls cannon.

Are those 8 pounders on Enea in libra sottili or libra grossa?

I doubt I'm the only one to do so, but I suggested a version of this using the F1-F4 commands to lock a gun deck to load and ammo commands as well as fire, so you could make the sorts of adjustments being discussed here. http://forum.game-labs.net/index.php?/topic/15179-loadammo-orders-and-locked-gun-decks/

The British really tried to keep going with the fifth-rate two-deckers as long as possible, even after they had 18-pounder single-decker frigates with weather deck carronades that could match them or beat them for firepower. There's still Hunt's Adventure-class after the last Roebuck-class ships were finished - meanwhile, the French and Spanish had totally abandoned them decades before. They had the benefit of familiarity, they were cheaper than fourth-rates, and they were available for quite a lot of less glamorous but necessary work, but none of them had particularly great careers. I have to think that stubbornness or an out-of-touch navy board played a part in continuing to order ships that were, compared to their contemporaries like the Perseverance-class frigates, obsolete.

The British would use sloop-of-war, noting the vessels rigging as ship-sloop or brig-sloop, for a vessel suitable for a Commander and post ship (always ship, there were no post brigs) for a ship that suited a Captain but was not a frigate. The French and other continental navies described these ships as corvettes - the British only really adopted the term in the 1830s. Unlike 'ship-sloop' and 'brig-sloop', ship-rigged is implied in corvette; a ship-rigged corvette is simply a corvette, a brig-rigged corvette is distinguished as a brig-corvette. The French Bonne Citoyenne-class is corvettes, the French Palinure-class is brig-corvettes. Lightly-armed ships or brigs that are in naval service but aren't set up for fighting don't count as corvettes or sloops of war. Currently, the Cerberus's armament has been tweaked to make it more like a heavy corvette than a frigate, and the Surprise sits on the margin of heavy corvette and frigate. All of the brigs in game are powerful enough to count as brig-rigged sloops-of-war or brig-corvettes, but none of them are French and they wouldn't be labeled as brig-corvettes. Rattlesnake is the corvettiest ship in the game, and is pretty lightly armed. But yes, I would like to see more corvettes in the 50-100 BR range. Bring on the corvettes.

The Roebuck-class ships, as Talos mentioned, were suddenly becoming useful with the American Revolutionary War providing a theatre that suited them - that might have been enough motive to tinker with them. There are plenty of constructor variations between the Roebucks, but Serapis, Mediator, and Resistance each have their own design variations rather than starting from the same lines. Still, Winfield is my source for Slade being credited with the Roebuck-class design as well as credited with separate designs for the variants above; I'm content to stand corrected if he feels the differences are within the class. Talos, is the Brandywine you're referring to the 1825 American ship?

With the battle rating victory condition in port battles, BR values aren't all created equal. The recent BR tweak for Pavel and Bucentaure, putting them both on 630, is a clear indicator of this. Bucentaure has the heavier broadside by cannons and carronades, the more effective weather deck guns, the bigger crew - even before its speed and turning comes in it is quite simply the more powerful ship and the old 700 vs. 600 BR reflected this. Hopefully once the port battles change there can be an overall finessing of BR. The Diet Bellona, on the other hand, is my least favourite ship. There's no distinctive flavour, no hole card that gives her an advantage over Bellona, just a weaker ship with identical sailing that feels like a placeholder.

The single continuous gun deck is a very late 18th-century/19th-century definition for frigates. Previously, it refers to a man-of-war ship without raised upper works, having a flush forecastle and a quarterdeck only, and tumblehome sides. A 17th-century ship of the line that was frigate-built rather than galleon-built might be called a frigate or a great frigate, and plenty of 18th-century two-deckers and demi-batterie ships were referred to as frigates. Meanwhile, single-decked ships that were not frigate-built were still being referred to as flutes, armed ships, gunvessels or just plain old ships even up to when Roebuck was built. Serapis, along with Resistance and Mediator, were not Roebuck-class ships but were one-offs built to separate revised designs.

That was definitely a pretty major defect of small two-deckers and demi-batterie ships but it was one that did get ameliorated over time as the ships grew up, both in the sense of better designs and of bigger ships. There's a pretty solid size gap betwen the 1745 group Rainbow belongs to the Lark group introduced at the start of the 18th-century - Lark is a 1703 ship and is very much an example of the 9-pounder main, 6-pounder upper gun deck type you are describing. Rainbow isn't just bigger than Lark, she's bigger than HMS Antelope, the largest of the 54-gun ships of the line contemporary with Lark, with very similar length but greater beam and much greater depth in hold; you can also see in the plans for her sister ships that the main gunports aren't the waterline-hugging features of smaller two-deckers and demis. A 9-pounder two-decker that regularly had to deal with the main gunports closed or awash and only had a 150-pound broadside even with them open probably wouldn't be that appealing to play. That said, some of the less powerful demis and two-deckers are still interesting - L'Atalante (1741, 32-gun demi-batterie with 10x12 pounders and 22x8 pounders) would have a penetration advantage over Surprise or Renommee, while something like Tigre (1689, 36-gun Dunkirker with 18x6 pounders and 18x4 pounders) would be a polar opposite for Niagara.

I'm saying initial stability isn't wholly a product of hull form, unless hull is contiguous, watertight, and provides all the necessary torsional rigidity. Without such an ideal hull, construction strength becomes relevant. I'm ascribing a similar relationship between hull form and initial stability as there is between length at waterline and hull speed; a known and strong relationship that can be limited by other factors. Imagine a ship that looks to have good form stability by design but is of weak hull construction. Rolling, pitching, heeling, any of those motions would apply torque to the ship - once the ship approaches the limit of its torsional rigidity it will flex and behave as a tender ship just as surely as if it had poor form stability, with slower rolls through a greater range of motion and slower righting with broader recovery angle. Giving the same ship internal reinforcement to support the hull would improve its initial stability within its other limits, up to the initial stability possible for its hull form. A 1740s ship does not have an ideal hull - not contiguous, not wholly watertight, and providing limited torsional rigidity. I doubt that either a 1740s 44-48 two-decker and a similarly loaded single-decker built using 1740s techniques would have the initial stability possible by their hull forms, but I'm claiming that the two-decker would be the less tender of the two ships by virtue of its torsional rigidity.

I don't see that as an 'of course'. The additional enclosed deck and its framing does raise the centre of gravity, yes, and a high centre of gravity does erode overall stability. But an early 18th-century ship gets most of its structural strength, including its torsional rigidity in every direction, from the skeleton. It may be more often expressed in terms of load-bearing and resistance to hogging but I am using the term to suggest that the additional gun deck, in the absence of later construction techniques and designs that can make up for the loss of strength in other ways, makes the ship stronger and less tender despite the raised centre of gravity. Perhaps I'm wrong, and I wouldn't make the same argument of a late 18th century ship or a 19th century ship, but I would say it of a ship of Rainbow's period - 1769's L'Africain is probably the first single-decker frigate with a broadside weight like Rainbow's.

We may be using the same term for different things here, or you may be using the game term for the sailing characteristic. Stiffness refers to a high degree of initial or form stability - stability characteristics from the hull, its shape, and its materials. Aren't you referring to weatherly vs. leewardly, rather than stiff vs. tender?