[Royal Armed Yacht]

love this. does Admin intend this vessel to be used as an auxiliary unit alongside another ship, or is this something an avatar would only use in port?

[Little things you'd like to see]

Guns we not sure yet. You can change gun types on each deck and will be able to pick the number of guns on it. But inside that deck they will need to be similar (technology and ui limitations).

 

 

 

I hope that choosing more/heavier guns will impact the sailing qualities of the vessel

[Little things you'd like to see]

I would like to see sails ripped off/damaged rigging if captains choose to push the limits of their vessels in heavy weather.

 

I would like to see the names of each crew member, and a burial service for each time crew members die.

[Sailors and sailing]

I appreciate the WASD control system mentioned elswhere, but really the point-and-click of E:TW is maybe closer to a captain's experience. 

 

why not both WASD and point-and-click? 

 

zoom out and the captain can tell the helmsman/master to go "there", and they will navigate as best they can, but the captain should be able to take over the helm when he feels it is necessary (navigating tricky passages, for example). same with gunnery, no?

[Sailors and sailing]

My hope is that there is a lot of crossover. I know there is a large debate about the "simulation vs. arcade" nature of this game, but i think there should be ways to accomodate both, with realistic sailing that doesnt require a non-sailor to learn how to sail a square-rigger (I myself have been sailing most of my life, but have never set foot on the deck of a square-rigged ship).

[Please don't make us sink everything]

at a certain point, the game must take the decision out of human hands to prevent the irrational and trolling behavior that would otherwise ruin the gameplay.

Once a ship suffers too many casualties, the crew will naturally run down into the hold or otherwise stop fighting from exhaustion, demoralization or plain attrition. In this case, the officers should either automatically surrender the ship, be considered disabled/killed, or the game should communicate to the opponent that a boarding action would now result in effortless victory.

 

My thoughts exactly! If you read accounts of historical single-ships actions, there are a couple of things that stand out: 1) most actions end with one boat fleeing; 2) the ones that don't rarely end up with one of the boats being totally destroyed; 3) casualties on the losing side are usually limited to 10-20% percent of crew (and that's a heavy battle), which implies that most battles end in surrender

[Maps and combat scenarios - help wanted]

Not sure what maps you've ended up working with, but i would actually suggest a larger area so that players don't end up near borders. so, would want 15 miles in each direction from the starting point.

 

 

14 knots is 16 nautical miles per hour.

So for a maximum comfortable battle length (1 hour) we can assume that 10-15 miles is more than enough.