Jarlath Morrow

When you press "T" to depower, your crew reefs the staysails. Simply put, you want to depower anytime you don't want acceleration from your triangular sails. This is easier said than done but with experience it will be easy. The possibilities are probably endless but I can think of a few useful examples. In terms of sailing: Except for running straight downwind and pointing dead into the wind, your staysails are always providing significant acceleration. You can really notice this at beam reach and even more at close-hauled - as your square sails start to be less effective heading upwind, a bigger share of the sailing force comes from the staysails. So long as your ship doesn't slow down to the point that its rudder starts to be less effective, depowering at the right times allows you to pull off tighter turns, both tacking and wearing. In terms of gunnery: Especially at points near beam reach, the force from both types of sails causes your ship to heel. If you are taking an elevated shot to windward, this heel can be beneficial. However, if you are aiming low to windward or high to leeward, this heel might make your shot impossible. Depowering halts the wind pressure on the staysails - this allows you to quickly and easily limit heeling. Reducing the heel coming from the square sails is another matter, and requires you to reduce sail and/or turn the yards. In terms of self-defense: In PVP fights, players will try to damage your rigging. Depowering will reef the staysails, hiding them from taking damage from cannon balls and chain-shot. Because of heeling, all ships are vulnerable to leaks on their windward side (shots below the waterline that let water into the ship). Having a leaking ship is not a fun experience, and ranges from inconvenient to deadly. Depowering when a windward enemy fires on you protects from leaks.

I would like to officially volunteer as a moderator on PVP-Global. Other than the "another language," I easily meet the requirements. Please message me if you need to ask anything. Cheers!

Hey, I have heard of this once before in this thread: Very disappointing if you thought you were buying a book! I hope they can fix it for you.

I think Caguairan used to have a good role as a budget wood if you didn't have reliable access to Live Oak or Teak. Right after the "big wipe" Teak was only available in like 5 ports. Live Oak is still mostly limited to the American coast, but now that Teak is available in more than a handful of ports I imagine most people just build out of that.

This is an interesting question. I'll hold off voting until I think about it more. If we want to make chain-shot less of a go-to in battle, there are a bunch of changes that could be made: Increase load time for chain-shot Increase ball damage to sails Reduce chain-shot accuracy (deviation from point of aim) Worsen chain-shot ballistics (worse arc and/or slower projectile) More aggressive falloff for chain-shot damage Personally, I like one or more of the last 3 on the list. Talking just about the endless repairs in battle (separate but related issue), I have some ideas: Increase weight of hull and/or rig repairs Increase time needed to repair sails Increase the crew needed to repair sails Give all repairs diminishing returns (next repair will restore only 75% of the HP the previous repair gave you) Personally, I like the last 3 that I listed. If we want to get crazy, during sail repair we could allow hits to the rigging to do damage to crew. Can you imagine patching canvas while cannonballs are flying through the rigging? To the crews in Naval Action, that's their everyday life!

I really like the idea of a wide variety of upgrades in this game. In fact, I think we need even more to make a greater diversity of builds. But some upgrades will always clearly be best-in-slot, a choice with no downsides, or both. Cartagena Caulking is the both. When upgrades are too strong, it actually detracts from the variety of builds I hope we can achieve, since everyone feels compelled to use it. This one could definitely use a speed debuff - after all, we are apparently applying such a great quantity of tar that the ship itself thickens. =)

There might be alts that enter the fray, but there are plenty of real players too. Help chat today was full of a stream of new captains with all kinds of questions, and some days that channel is pretty dead. I wish there was a tutorial I could point them to other than saying "go to youtube," but it's good to see new players nonetheless. =)

Few things irk me more than people describing good seamanship, organized groups, and a taste for battle on the seas as "pirate like." Maybe I'm not as well read as some, but what historical pirates engaged in gunnery duels? Just because the standards from PVP2 are woefully low, doesn't change the fact that most of the incredible stories of age of sail battle involve naval captains, not pirates. If King of Crowns can inspire some of the national players to act more like the real captains that inspired this game, then I say it's a good thing.

Reliably, the only person claiming the pirates are the "biggest pvp nation" is you. And always, it is said with a tone that somehow you are owed a fight. At some point, you might need to come to terms with the fact that it's far more realistic that you just aren't that fun a fight, than we are hiding a bunch of pvpers somewhere and you just aren't invited to the party. Focus on building your own nation and the grass won't look so green on the other side. =)

In my experience a bad attitude makes people want to sail and fight with you less, not more. While the original post is pretty terrible, I understand where he is coming from as a person looking for fights. The strategy I might use in your situation: "Now that you have a safe zone to replace a lost ship, why not come out and have a fun fight with me." I would guess that isn't your style, but even so you can see where I'm coming from. Call me old-fashioned, but getting people to want to fight you goes a long way. Of course it doesn't always work - a guy just declined a fair fight with me (Surprise vs Hermione) because he "couldn't trust me." =)

A very cool idea. Right now it's exactly like you say - crafting ships is like throwing darts at a board in the dark. You just hope you make a build that someone needs that week.

As I recall, you hover your mouse cursor over the name of the ship in the "x" menu (the menu that lets you exchange crew and items). Then, a tooltip with the ship-card should pop up.

Aye, the Wasa has mostly replaced the other 4th rates and so there isn't much money in building 4th rates. What is interesting is that the Wasa has pretty much completely replaced 3rd rates on the open world. Like you say, there is no reason to build and sell 3rd rate ships with the Wasa available.

I play on Global so I can't participate, but I think it is a really great idea. When I was really new to Naval Action, I heard about a tournament (I think it was in October of last year). I caught a glimpse of one of the matches and not only was it fun to watch, but it got me even more interested in the game.

Maybe with the upcoming ship rebalance? =)

It seems that the mail that is usually sent after a contract is finished buying / selling isn't working.

Love the idea of reinforcements responding based on the difference in BR. It will give a more organic feel to reinforcements when they occur and probably end up with some interesting fleets in the battles.

The fact is, Naval Action takes place in a sort of alternate-reality world where all ships go down fighting, even poor merchants! In this world, crewmen are in infinite supply and their lives are worth pitifully little (less even than an Oak Log!). There are many nuances from the Age of Sail, and you can't replicate all of them. The "rules of engagement" from that era could get exceedingly complicated. Surely we don't want a game that replicates months of diplomatic tension after some frigate attacks the HMS Little Belt.

Honestly, from the original post it sounds like a very cool idea. I really like built-in replayability mechanics in single-player games. If they are done well and handled elegantly, I'm sure it will be great!

@Wraith That sounds like a good setup =) These set-up fights could be lots of fun. It worked in the past!

I think this last point is a good one. This game is excellent at letting one play an age of sail captain. But that was a profession that left one at sea for months at a time - many players don't have time for extended play sessions (or have time only certain days of the week).

If this thread gets even one new captain interested in trying his hand at PVP, then I say "good job!" (Not a USA captain so I will refrain from posting down the line.)

"Hardware upgrade" sounds great. Thanks for info by the way.