Idle Champion

Yep, crew costs are unpleasant at Flag Captain to Rear Admiral, but looking at the sort of earning power people have at Second Lieutenant and First Lieutenant and the level of protection small ships provide their crew I'd imagine its easy to get stuck in a rut or even get kicked back down into the Basic Cutter (barring bypassing crew costs with the to-be hotfixed cutter trick). Reducing crew hire costs for the ranks that could previously hire NPCs before the current fleet setup, along with increasing the chance of getting med kits from NPC traders and search and destroy missions seems reasonable, even necessary.

I'm aware that there is plenty of information about the De Ruyter and the other Wreker-type two-deckers. (from threedecks: http://threedecks.org/index.php?display_type=show_ship&id=24682) Main gun deck: 28x36 pounders (Dutch) Upper gun deck: 30x30 pounders (Dutch) Upper works: 2x60-pound carronade, 6x30 pound carronade, 14x12 pounders. Translating her upper works to 22x12 pounders and her 30-pounders and 36-pounders to 32 and 42 pounder guns, her armament comes out at 1200 pounds. If you do as was done with the Bucentaure and add an extra pair of guns to her main deck, it comes out at 1242 pounds, all of highly-penetrative guns. The poll post really undersold her - a Wreker-type like De Ruyter or Chattam would be an impressive second-rate in-game.

(Please note that the following is intended as a critique, but not as a criticism) In the previous poll there were 4 Dutch ships, which did split up the 'vote for something Dutch' votes more than was necessary; two (Vrijheid and Mars) were addressing roles already covered by existing ships rather than gaps in gameplay, while Admiral de Ruyter was presented largely on its name and there wasn't enough information to clearly differentiate it from the Pavel. That left Dordrecht, and a two-decker with less firepower than the Constitution is going to be a hard sell. If a future poll comes around, there should be a discussion about picking one or two Dutch ships with distinctive roles to bring into the final poll.

There are other classic Dutch flagships which do fall in the game timeline - I'm struggling to find much in the way of details of the 1694 De Zeven Provincien, but there's a few contemporaries of note with information available - like the 92-gun Prinses Maria (1683), the 90-gun Beschermer (1691), and the 96-gun Vrijheid (1695) - and a few ships that would be interesting if information could be found, like the 100-gun Eendracht (1703). Beschermer is a famous name in and of itself, while the ship has 36-pounders on its main gun deck (most of these ships are listed as carrying 24-pounders) and, for bonus points, is a false three-decker like the 1665 D.Z.P. so would have a very similar silhouette.

I don't think AFK fishing in the protected zone is killing the game, I just think it adds relatively little to the playing and testing experience and would prefer if no-risk, no-player input strategies like it weren't rewarded.

You set sail from your capital; perhaps you see a handful of ships, perhaps you see a forest of masts, but you see it all the same. The AFK fishing fleet. I wouldn't say I hate the AFK fishing fleet, but I do find it dispiriting. High-ranked players, ships of the line at anchor, people I've seen in port battles just sitting there, not really doing very much and not getting very much tested for mild profit, no risk, and no player input. As a way of rewarding players for the open world sailing they get done, I actually like fishing and wreck-diving, but the fleet of ships and players that are there when you log in and there when you log out in the same spot collecting fish and hoping for bottles doesn't add much into the game. Suggestion 1: The protected area as a non-yielding fishing area. Pretty simple - deep water fishing catches big fish, shallow water fishing catches little fish, and protected area fishing catches either nothing or nothing worthwhile. Clumps of seaweed. Old boots. Waterlogged planks. Loose rusty anchors. Suggestion 2: Stationary fishing in general encounters diminishing returns. After a given period without moving (not just keyboard activity, but actual sailing), fish stop biting and the fishing returns aren't reset until you travel a distance greater than the span of a protected zone. Who else would like to see the game reduce or remove rewards for AFK fishing in the green zone? Are people in the fishing fleet just doing it because they can, or is safe fishing something they want to see kept in the game?

The navy was authorised to order ships of the line in 1816 - USS Pennsylvania wasn't even lines on paper then. Technically, she was commissioned in 1837.

Yeah - it may be well defined today, but it used to just refer to a three-masted vessel that wasn't fully ship-rigged. A recurring definition referred to a ship that carried only one sail on the mizzen, but it was largely a broad category.

This is an 18th-century polacca rig and not identified as a barque latine rig, but it indicates another style in which a three-masted 18th-century ship might carry a lateen sail apart from a lateen mizzen.

I'd bet on a Temeraire-class ship for the unconfirmed third-rate in development, but it could be all sorts of things. Thanks for the signs of Kepler to come - I wasn't expecting a 36-gun ship; I thought it might be a 'Pavel's Indefatigable' of about 50 guns with big guns on both gun deck and weather deck or a 50-54 gun spar deck frigate. Even with 36 guns, though, I think it will have a broadside to suit a fourth-rate.

Query to Arvenski: looking at the possible ways a Pavel-derived frigate could turn out, it could be a fifth-rate, but it could very well match or exceed the Diet Bellona for firepower; what made you count it among the fifth-rates?

As much as I like the idea of a set of in-game navigational tools and an interactive map, I'm afraid I can't let that sentence slip by without also asking if you dreamed a dream where God was kind. As for the maps, the 1775 west indies map looks great, but it isn't the most straightforwardly usable map - there's a degree of flourish and little details visible at the full 'zoomed out' scale that make it very busy. The licornes map or Prater's re-styled version of the current in-game map have a good age of sail flavour but are much more accessible for a map you can bring up with a keystroke and examine quickly while on the move. It'd be cool to see them or something like them when the UI updates come.

Indiaman was initially slated to be based off the VOC ship Amsterdam, but the original plans weren't found and the replica is not based on the original design - the in-game Indiaman is based off an EIC ship built to a Swedish design. The first page of that poll says 2 ships will be selected (Christian VII and Diana are vote leaders) and no wild card has been confirmed. I'd like to see Venus, but neither Venus nor Wasa have been confirmed. The schooner brig Prince de Neufchatel has been indicated to be in development. The US currently has Lynx (with it the Trader Lynx and Privateer), Brig (with it Trader's Brig and Navy Brig), Rattlesnake, Niagara, Essex (barring its capture by the British), and Constitution. Including Traders and variants, there are more American-built ships in game than any other nation.

There are plenty of American ships in game, and one more is confirmed to come. I'd agree that American ships are over-represented compared to their relevance in the period, and that ships like the Essex and the Fair American Brig/Navy Brig fill roles that could have reasonably been filled by ships of another nation, but Lynx and Constitution are suitable examples of ships in their roles. Pickles are not a generic type - HMS Pickle is an individual topsail schooner. Pinnaces (referring to ships rather than later pinnaces as boats) are older than the game's time period. Galleons filling the smaller man-of-war roles predates the game's timeline - galley-frigates and early sailing frigates had wholly subsumed them by 1670 (current earliest date for ships to be added to game) and even the largest ships of the line were frigate-built rather than galleon-built by 1715 (launch date for Ingermanland, current oldest ship in game). The galleons in service in the 18th century were solely large armed merchantmen (such as the Manila Galleons). Eventually the game may have enough ships that every nation could fill all roles with their own ships, but that is currently pretty far off. The British are currently the only nation that can fill most roles, while the Danes and Dutch have no ships in game at all.

The Temeraire-class feels like a must-have; more than the most numerous 74 or ship of the line built to a common design, it is the most numerous man-of-war ship altogether. The only designs more numerous are man-of-war brigs like Cruizer and Cherokee or gunboats - there simply isn't a better representative of warships from the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. The summary in the OP's link is light on for crew - Le Redoutable carried 700 by design and reportedly carried 690 into battle at Trafalgar.

There's definitely room for directly trade-related upgrades or officer perks. Some ideas: "Light Ballast" - Regular Upgrade, craftable. Increases ship's roll angle by a flat percentage across all quality levels. Slightly increases ship's hold capacity, improving by quality level. "Cleared Bulkheads" - Permanent Upgrade, craftable. Increase chance of damage to crew. Increase chance of damage to pump. Increase ship's hold capacity, improving by quality level.

While the game seems to bias loading port guns over starboard guns in equal conditions, you can (within limits) already solve that by F5ing the port reload off for about half a second. Gunnery crew shifts to the starboard battery without getting assigned out of gunnery at all so there's minimal delay. The 'fully load port battery first' setup when everything is empty can be frustrating at the start of the battle or when you fire both broadsides and need everything reloaded but you are only engaged on your starboard. Rather than loading priority of one broadside over another, I'm talking about loading priority and other control for individual decks on each broadside.

Current system: the F1 to F4 buttons let you lock a gun deck so that it will not fire. There's a reasonable collection of strategies permitted with this - locking carronades when firing at long range with other guns, going for the thickest part of an enemy's hull with your more powerful guns while aiming for the gunwales or sails with your lighter weapons, saving up your big guns until they're all ready to fire while you keep peppering away with your faster-loading secondary weapons, so on and so forth. My suggestion: Locking a gun deck locks it to all commands, not just firing. An order given on a broadside to stop reloading or to change ammunition only affects unlocked decks. By locking and unlocking a series of decks and issuing load or ammo orders, different load and ammo order can be given to different gun decks. The intent is to open up more options for gunnery control and crew management. Compared to the above examples, rather than simply not firing your carronades at max range you could dismiss those hands altogether, or you could load your weather deck guns with chain to go for the sails while still loading your gun decks with ball and going for the enemy's hull. Other options become possible as well - using the double charge perk, a captain could load their smaller weapons with double charge separately from their lower gun deck to make the best sustained use of the penetration bonus. In the absence of a 'grape and ball' perk, loading lower decks with grape and upper decks with ball might provide an optimal raking broadside. Trying to slow and dismast an equal or more powerful ship might work better with the lower decks firing ball and any decks that deal negligible damage to the mast loading chain. On the face of it I don't think it would be especially difficult to implement and I think it would add to the combat without jarring with what's in place - the current gameplay is already very much about setting up in advance of firing. What do people think?

She's got such a big spanker that without the deckhouse the poop deck would be an enormous empty space. As a detail in and of itself it is... well it's a shed, isn't it, but I think she looks more resolved with it than without it. She's a very imposing-looking two-decker; well done the design team.

The figurehead is a feminised Hermes - Hermione is a feminine name rendered as 'gift of Hermes'. The ship looks absolutely lovely - rich wood stain for the masts and planking, subdued brightwork. Her rig, with no spritsails and very upright fore-and-aft elements, is nicely distinctive. I'd say well done Ragnar and everyone else who helped finish her, and I look forward to sailing her.

HMS Hermione was built in Bristol by a British builder. There were other Spanish frigates called Santa Cecilia you may be thinking of, but Hermione wasn't even captured by the Spanish - she was purchased (at a pittance) from the mutineers by the local authorities.

I get that they can't call her Hermione, but as Santa Cecilia all the Bloody Hermione did was sit in Puerto Cabello until Surprise's crew cut her out. Retaliation or Retribution suits her much better.

I would have referred to Pavel's guns on the roundhouse as poop deck guns; Bellona and Victory have guns in the roundhouse itself that are counted as part of the weather deck armament.

Roundhouse and quarterdeck guns are combined into a single deck for other ships and the extra pair of guns on the main battery is in keeping with the pattern seen in other in-game ships. They could bump up the crew a bit, though.

You may be overstating how differentiated the in-game Trader variants are from the standard warships. All have identical structural strength and armour with their warship variants, all have the same turn rate. The Trader Brig and Snow are slightly poorer sailors as they approach the wind compared to the warships, the Cutter and Lynx have identical sailing profiles as Traders or warships. It appears the Trader's Lynx has a smaller sailing crew than the standard Lynx, and the Trader's Snow has a larger sailing crew than the Snow (5 being the difference in each case). As a whole, they are slower as a substitute for a cargo encumbrance model, they have more fragile sails and masts to facilitate disabling and boarding, and they lack the weapons and the gunnery crew requirements of the warships. With hired crew replacing automatically generated crew, ships being crewed to their needs rather than their limits seems likely to become the norm, and armament becomes the only salient and naturalistic difference between a Trader variant and a standard warship. You describe them as "very different" - I see them as very similar. Perhaps there is a case that a ship might be sitting low in the water if it were a laden trader, but in-game Trader variants are identifiable as such even when laden. As for their armament, no one would mistake an eight-gun schooner for an unarmed merchantman with its guns run out and matches burning, but otherwise the two look much the same. Why is a Lynx recognisable as a Lynx when it is unarmed and a Trader's Lynx recognisable as a Trader's Lynx when unladen? Why can't an unarmed Lynx carry cargo or an unladen Trader's Lynx carry weapons? Basically, what difference which actual ships might have is the game attempting to represent? If it's just cargo capacity versus armament, then the difference being represented as inherent to the ship is only a difference in material and equipment brought aboard the ship which could be removed or replaced.