Digby

Its a very interesting and appealing style, quite unusual. It reminds me a lot of my old miniatures wargames table on which I used 5mm troops. Will the buildings give defensive bonuses, or will there be ability to occupy them? At the scale of the map shown it looks to be too large a scale for stone walls to be shown; what are your plans to show the important walls such as The Angle and the wall west of the Maclean Farm on Oak Ridge where Rodes division was so badly cut up on the afternoon of the first day?

It was a strategic Union victory. The battle forced Lee to use up almost all of his artillery ammunition and with all of his divisions damaged to some degree he had no option but to retreat back the way he'd come. The battle resulted in his offensive camapign in the north ending in failure. The Union did not however follow up rapidly and aggressively enough to prevent the Army of Northern Virginia getting away across the Potomac, so it wasn't a decisive victory. As the first really successful major Union win in the east it was also of great morale significance for the North.

Every time you post now, I am disliking your attitude towards game development less and less. I can see I made a mistake hoping this game would be what I wanted. In the end far too many devs just want to make money, sometimes even in a seemingly greedy way, and are not committed to designing a great or groundbreaking game. If the game is going to be a WoT clone you can have the ships behave like rubber ducks, because the kinds of players you'll attract won't care.

Just to close this part of the discussion down and I don't want to wander any more off topic but sadly DG had other problems. It had a rather invasive DRM which caused big chunks of the gaming community to distrust the devs and boycott their game and unfortunately the AI was extremely weak. MP play though was superb and it was there that the gunnery and damage models really shone. It was a great pity, since this aspect of the game was brilliant but it was sunk (literally) by other problems quite unrelated to how good the physics engine was. You chose two rather unfair examples to compare it to though, since DG was a niche game by a garage company aimed at wargamers so it was always going to have a small market. Football Manager has a VAST market and ArmAII's sales exploded in May last year when the DayZ mod was released. Football games and zombies have a much wider appeal than WWI warship combat... and considerably more than the Russo-Japanese War! But anyway, enough about DG. But there's lessons to be learned there regarding DRM and good AI. You need not go for a calculation of every shot fired and where it hits if the sheer numbers of shot flying around the battlespace are too high - and I can well imagine they might be once you get around 8 ships or so in an action. I gave some rough percentages of where shots ought to strike (80% on thin upperworks where the damage falls on crew and guns but ship itself is not injured; 15% main above waterline timbers where apparent damage is minimal, few or no loss to crew and guns but streess cause leaks; 5% shots low on or at waterline where again apparent damage is minimal but leaks are worse). With most of the shots hitting the upperworks in your game calculations and a crew morale check system you should find that most ships will strike their colours before they get near a risk of sinking, so such a system is still a practical proposition even without a specific ballistics model per shot. As to ships pumps which were hand-cranked as Barberouge was saying, putting more crew onto the pumps would mean you'd have men spare and resting, and not tired ready to take a "shift" on working the pump, so with a number of rested or semi-rested crewmen available the averge speed at which the pumps could be worked would be higher. One group of about 10-12 men would work the pumps in a frenzy, very fast and they'd tire quickly, but then the next set of 10-12 guys would take over. Adding more men adds more "shifts" so each "shift" can rest longer and be more efficient when they take over but you waste many men idle awaiting their "shift", so it becomes a minigame within the game if you like - not always a good thing. I personally would not want to see too much crew- and ship- systems micro-management as the game may be in danger of becoming a click-fest and that would spoil the mood of an age of sail battle. Perhaps a player could have a set of "automanage" buttons to set various tasks to different settings and then forget about it. Sorry... OT, we were talking about a sinking and damage model.

It might be fun but I disagree it would be realistic. It would be complete fantasy.

BTW, just so you are aware, Storm Eagle Studios "Distant Guns" series uses an individual shot trajectory and point of strike system in its calculations, so an accurate ballistics system is practical. Their games are set in the 1905 Russo-Japanese War and WWI so the kinds of damage done inboard with an explosive shell are a lot different, but the fundamentals are the same. And their ship to ship combaat is stunning, the damage modelling is excellent, which is another reason to take such a route. Your system described with points 1 thru 8 is fine. It'll work because that exact same system has been used in dozens of games, going right back to board games in the 1970s like "Men of Iron". What I'm saying is that by taking a different approach, something different and ground-breaking (which in itself becomes a strong selling point of the game) you'll get a much better game, far more realistic.

As Admin said in one of his posts aabout a week ago, the devs need to focus on how real battles were fought, not on odd inventions that in reality may have existed but were never used. The Puckle gun existed but was impractical - the technology was not there to support the idea and in fact the Gatling gun of the 1870s was a more robust concept. Devs could sink 100s of hours of time into coding those weapons and their effects and graphically making the models and of course players would want to use them and you end up with a stupid fantasy world with every ship toting fantasy weapons and the game ends up nothing like an age of sail game. This is where PotBs went wromg, by failing to focus on the core gameplay and doing odd crazy stuff. The Devs need to focus on what was normal and average in the era, on how battles at sea were fought.

I would not have stern and bow "armour", these two aspects of the ship were highly vulnerable to enemy fire, but not in terms of a target to sink them, but in terms of firing cannonshot down the length of the vessel and so disabling more crew and guns than a shot coming inboard through the broadside would. The large glass-paned windows of the stern cabins were easily the most vulnerable part of a ship but firing into them would hardly add anything to contributing to sinking it, it would though disable far more crew on the gundecks. Shots fired along the decks from a bow position were likewise effective at disabling crew and guns, though less so. So shots fired into these two areas do not contribute to sinking the ship at all, or very little, but just do much more damage to crew and guns, stern raking shots more so than bow raking shots. The masts could even be severely weakened by shots striking them where they pass through the lower decks. Also note that stern/bow rakes to be effective need to be done at extremely short range, something under about 100 yards probably so that the gunners can be sure of getting a shot on target. Point blank is obviously best. Please do not use a system of armour/strength and gun HP. Its a horrible system, really crude and cannot replicate reality at all. The concept of "armour" and HP is a really primitive gameplay idea that has been in use in games for decades. With a computer you have the ability now to actually detect where individual shots are travelling and where they strike. Can you not design a system that relies on actual ballistics and where shots fall? You can punch huge holes in a wooden ships side all day and it won't sink, if you're hitting well above the waterline (which is where most shots were aimed). Some stresses will be transmited to the ships structure by any heavy blow so some minor leaks will start after a ship has been hit in most places low in the hull. A ship sinks in a storm often because the pounding and shifting sea is placing undue strains on the hull, opening up seams so that leaking water overcomes the capacity of the pumps. So there would be minor stress and strain that induces leaking from some shots. You need to do calculations on the mass of shot against the thickness of the timbers at the point that shot strikes to determine how much strain/leaking could be caused. A shot punching a hole right through some light scantling is going to look impresive and it'll disable crewmen with splinters but it won't cause leaks. However a 32lb heavy shot thudding against a 2ft thick main sidewall is going to impart stresses deep into the hull. It'll bounce off without going through and hardly appear to do any damage at all, but deep in the structure of the ship, it'll cause stresses that will shift timbers against each other and maybe start leaks. So some shots that seem to be causing impressive damage high up on a vessel's sides should not be doing very much to a ships vitals at all - but they will be disabling many crew. This would be about 80% of all shots hitting (that are fired at the hull - shots at the rigging are not being discussed here - that's a different topic). Crew and guns are what suffer most. Other shots that strike the main timbers will not penetrate - 2ft thick oak will keep out any low-velocity black powder iron shot with ease - though lighter vessels like frigates and sloops would be in serious trouble. This is why sloops and frigates stayed away from ships of the line, because their weight of broadshide stood a high chance of punching through the smaller ships side timbers and letting in water. This might account for another 15% of hits. So you have shots striking thin upper areas, passing right through gunports or coming down the decks from stern or bow rakes all doing a lot of harm to crew and guns, and possibly having a small chance of striking a mast and weakening the main rig. Almost none of these shots seriously harm a wooden ship. A few leaks, but probably nothing the pumps can't cope with. Then you have shots striking the heavy main timbers which keep them out and don't seem to do much damage but do all have a small cumulative effect on leaking. These shots do zero damage to guns, crew and rig, but harm the water integrity of the hull. You might then get a third kind of shot that strikes very low on the hull side and does not penetrate but where it hits is on or below the waterline so that the effect of its force more directly causes leaks in a more vulnerable area. Here is where the other 5% of shots might strike. Big wooden warships very rarely sank in battle. They were usually so shot about and the rig shot away and unable to manouver, and with so many crew disabled that the surviving officers would strike their colours. There are some beautiful painings of Trafalgar that show French and Spanish ships disabled and helpless but still very much afloat and still fighting. Its generally a rule that the crew of a ship will surrender long before any chance of the ship sinking takes place. Please make this a feature of your games. The crazy, silly Hollywood crap in Empire: Total War with ships blazing like torches, exploding and sinking everywhere is complete rubbish. Please, please don't make a game as dreadful as that. Fire was very rare, ships almost never burned and the accounts of wooden ships burning at battles are well-known because they were significantly rare, such as L'Orient burning and exploding at the Battle of the Nile in 1798. Ships did sink - I mentioned above that small ships like sloops, frigates, brigs, etc had such thin wooden walls in compariosn to SoLs that heavy (24lb, 32lb) shot could punch straight through them and sink them within a few minutes, but a frigate fighting a frigate would mean that neither ship had sufficient weight of shot to seriously compromise the integrity of their opponent's hull. And ships of the line pretty much never sank in battle. The mass of the striking shot should be calculated (6lb, 9lb, 12lb, 18lb, 24lb, 32lb, 36lb - all impart a greater and greater impact) against the thickness of the timbers at the point of strike. You don't have to do lots of research to get this data. Every solid shot weight and force is found by simple calculation. Once you get a decent drawing of one ship of each type you wish to use you can use the thicknesses on the different parts across all ships of that type (but add variations such as green timber which the Russians often used), etc. So your game engine will know how powerful every shot is, where it is hitting, the thickness of timber at that point, where the waterline is, what crew are nearby, etc, etc. A proper ballistics and fall of shot model is the only way to do this properly. It'll give you such a superb game as well and will produce authentic results. So many ships sank after Trafalgar because their hulls were strained and leaking and the subsequent storm placed stresses on the weakened hulls that they could not contain, letting in more water than they would have in an undamaged condition. So your average Age of Sail combat is about forcing the other crew to give up, more than trying to sink his ship (in fact, you didn't want to sink his ship, you always wanted to take it as a prize and get the prize money - or if you were a pirate, sell the cargo and ransom the passengers). Work your design on those lines and you'll have a great game.

LOL, yeah, comics tend to have cool stuff in them that isn't real!

Greek fire or things like it were not used in this period. Fireships were almost always only used against a fleet at anchor in harbour because ships able to maneuver could easily avoid them. Forts had shot ovens to fire red-hot shot at ships to set them on fire but ships themselves almost never fired heated shot or use combustible weapons because the danger of fire on your own ship was too great. Bomb ketches were not ship to ship weapons, their principle use was to bombard shore targets. I would prefer the devs to concentrate on the basic combat environment and not waste time on all the silly fancy add-ons which were of little use in actual sea battles. Every ship's crew fired muskets and such at very short ranges. You don't need a specific game mechanic to introduce this, it should just be assumed to take place once ships get very close and so there becomes a risk to crewmen in exposed positions.

Thanks Barberouge, I can see where you're coming from now and I think we are all saying the same thing in the end.

I couldn't even see the minimap, or concentrate on it with all that distraction. Music? What music? I just heard about 20 bulls being slaughtered.

Three reactions to that: 1) Terrible, terrible game interface, its so crowded I can't see a thing! 2) Dreadful choice of music. WTF? I switched off after 10 seconds. 3) Clicking between window and full screen on YouTube briefly brings up a view of a naked female. You need to watch what kinds of links you give.

I've seen "sandbox" used a lot to describe exactly what Verhoven is describing. Its how I think of it. You are given a space to play in (open sea or a map with island(s)) and a set of toys (list of available ships/types) and you make up a scenario using your rules (as in what ships or crew types each team has, strengths, missions). That to me is sandbox. We should probably try and agree on some terms. I use "2D map" and "campaign map" to mean the open world and "3D battlespace" or "3D instance" to mean a meeting of 2 opposing ships or sides on the open world that generates an encounter. The "sandbox" would be a completely separate entity and used for either team co-op play vs the AI or faction (or casual) battles.

That seems to sum this discussion up. Sales are more important than accuracy. I was hoping for better from this team.

All I am suggesting is - and it is only a suggestion - that you don't go for the famous ships just because they are famous, or the plans are easy to get hold of and end up with a mess of ships from all across the history of the age of sail - but you choose a starting point in history because its interesting and because the naval powers at that time are more balanced then set your world game running from that point. I think a very good point to set the clock running is about 1740 for the following reasons: 1) Piracy still happening quite a bit - not as much as the 1600s but still some. There was literaly zero when Constitution was launched. 2) British, French, Spanish fleets very much equal. The British dominance of the end of he century isn't there at this time and both Spain and France have strong ships and good commanders so a balanced world is easy to set up. Dutch less so but still with some seapower. 3) More primitive political power projection. After Britain's and France's experiences in the SYW and AWI they learned to handle distant conflicts and colonial interests and trade much more effectively. Prior to those wars they didn't so the independent traders and mercenary guild type players have more clout and the colony ownership setup is much more fragile with frelancing and illicit trading going on under less professional and scrupulous governors noses. The whole colonial world was more like a wild frontier prior to the 1790s. Then it began to get seriously more organised. 4) No true frigate existed in 1740. The type was developed over the next 20 years and I think a game without this critical ship type in would be extremely interesting since again, it helps the pirate types and makes life tougher for the nation/state/fleet players. 5) Technology was advancing but not quite there yet so you could concievably still have ships steered by whipstaff instead of wheel and make that a technology advance, likewise coppering, flintlock gun firing, spritsail deletion, general rig improvements and a few other interesting developments could be in the game and make complete sense in the timeframe. 6) Battleships are smaller and in my view, more interesting. The 74 hasn't reached the pinnacle of its power yet and are rare. Mostly they stay in European waters. Out in foreign waters the 64 and similar ships (62s 60s) are common with the 90s as admirals flagships. You get a lot of 48s, 50s, 54s and 56s, strange but fun vessels and also the old style 40/44 "frigate" which wasn't but had 2 gun decks, usually 12pdrs over 18pdrs so they were not good sailors (being high sided for their length) and their gun weight was low. They were not good ships until someone suggested slicing the top gun deck off and the true frigate was born with an all 18pdr armament. Below the 2-deck 40/44 was a big gap down to the 20/24/26 gun sloops. So the whole 32/36/38 gun single deck ship class that made life so short and nasty for many pirates isn't there and piracy can flourish. The whole early period is more pirate friendly and more suited to an MMO setting that encourages sneaky dealings, clever trading and cunning technology advances. And it has the more interesting vessels too. Constitution is such a game-breaking ship. Faster than anything that outguns her and stronger than anything that is faster. Your game will end up with 100s of Constitutions on the high seas and nothing else. Please give it some thought. You don't have to specify any actual year or have a game calendar running, just say the game is set in the 1740s or 1750s and it will all make sense.

Humour isn't helping here. Please be serious and respond to your players concerns. Thanks. By having ships in the game from the very end of the era (whose performances must make sense for that ship) you are kissing goodbye to a whole 100+ years of more interesting naval warfare. If your game was set in, say, the 1740s, before even the frigate as Nelson knew it was in service, you give your players a game world which grows and develops and in which new technologies and ship designs can realistically and logically be introduced as the game goes on. With no true frigates in the 1740s the naval factions will also have a more awkward time combating pirates. One of several issues that spelled the end of mass piracy was the frigate design, pirates had no counter to it.

I support both the above posts. A game can also be a great educational tool, making modern gamers realise how sailing ships manouvered and were fought. A lot of us have only films to watch and these are rarely realistic. A game that punishes mistakes and has a steep learning curve in its tactics and sailing model will also be extremely rewarding for a player who learns the system and can become a good sailor. There's a big ego boost in just sailing a ship well and being able to efficiently deal with problems that arise like a sudden wind veer or gust, or getting off a lee shore.

I would prefer to see player skill be a far bigger factor than luck. Of course any computer game runs millions of calculations all the time so the result of any activity has an elelment of uncertainty about it but a player should have an idea of the possible outcomes and I would not like to see "good luck" become something so cheesy as a player "skill" so that he gains a basic advantage in certain things. We're heading off into PotBs territory again there.

Hm, so ships from completely different eras? That's disappointing. Will they be kept separate in separate eras or will they all be available side by side in the main game world? Will players still have a 'tech tree' to be able to add improvements to the ships, such that everyone starts with a basic level of technology and it can be improved?

Does this mean you have decided on a timeframe for the game?

1) Yes, sure, they can choose to, but it would mean taking men off the guns. 2) In writing this I meant that the side with the wind gauge dictates if there is a battle or not, and if they bring on a battle they clearly would be expecting to win it, ergo, more/better/bigger ships or more skilled players. A side that expected to lose and had the weather gauge would be pretty stupid to let themselves be drawn into a battle.

What period? Uniforms changed completely between 1650 and 1805. I think you guys need to choose a historical period and stick with it, making ships of that era at least initially, then when the game kicks off you could run different servers/worlds set in different periods. France didn't have marines as we think of them (British Marines, a corps specifically raised to serve aboard warships) so French warships would have soldiers drafted aboard from whatever regiment was available in port or a nearby garrison, so soldiers can have any line infantry uniform, even red coats if they happen to be Irish or Swiss Netherlands 1753: http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/dgkeysearchdetail.cfm?trg=1&strucID=124064&imageID=92395&total=58&num=40&parent_id=120473&s=&notword=&d=&c=&f=&k=1&sScope=&sLevel=&sLabel=&lword=&lfield=&sort=&imgs=20&pos=50&snum=&e=w http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/dgkeysearchdetail.cfm?trg=1&strucID=124063&imageID=92394&total=58&num=40&parent_id=120473&s=&notword=&d=&c=&f=&k=1&sScope=&sLevel=&sLabel=&lword=&lfield=&sort=&imgs=20&pos=49&snum=&e=w Dutch Naval officers uniform 1775: http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/dgkeysearchdetail.cfm?trg=1&strucID=123794&imageID=93213&total=44&num=20&parent_id=120479&s=&notword=&d=&c=&f=&k=1&sScope=&sLevel=&sLabel=&lword=&lfield=&sort=&imgs=20&pos=33&snum=&e=w Spain, 1760: http://www.nimix.net/paginas%20de%20items/N36%20Fusilero%20Inf.Marina_ingles.htm http://www.nimix.net/paginas%20de%20items/N35%20Oficial%20Inf.Marina%20_ingles.htm I came across this while looking for Spanish uniforms. No marines but the re-enactor photos give some great inspiration for sailors, smugglers, pirates and local militia/armed citizens units if you ever decide to do ports 'n' forts: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?408128-Spanish-Units-Uniforms-in-the-XVIII-Century

I think wind direction and gaining the weather gauge (getting upwind of the opponent) need to be in the game. I believe that goes without question or else the most basic building block of the age of sail is lost. There have to be real benefits from being upwind. The only real benefit from being downwind is you can try to refuse battle or flee. Ships didn't tack in battle. It took too long, required too many crew aloft and for fleets was almost impossible for them to remain in formation due to the different tacking quallities of different ships and the different skills of captains and crews. I mentioned before that in battle almost no-one is in the rigging changing sails. A sail ship did not have enough crew for this. When the enemy was close all hands were on deck (that's what it literally means) manning guns, pumps and acting as marines. Ships were not sailed in battle, they were fought, please get an understanding of this. So in battle ships are only ever going to wear about (come onto the opposite tack by presenting their stern to the wind). This is possible by crew loosing and hauling the lines that swing the yards and these can be controlled from the deck. It still takes some skill though. When a ship wears it should (if the captain/player knows what he's doing) come about onto the opposite tack as close-hauled (to the wind) as he can, so that again he's making upwind. Always make upwind. Always. Make it your mantra. You will never win age of sail battles by sailing downwind. That should be a game design truism. Before battles happen there should be a manouver phase in which ships start far apart (4x , 5x cannon range at least) and players can attempt to manouver upwind of the enemy if they wish. I think that's an absolutely essential factor in naval combat, letting the skill of the player or the weatherlyness of the ship gain them an advantage. I would like to see a world map where 2 players are sailing near each other and when they get close the game takes them out of the world map into a 3D battlespace with a map that replicates the area they met in, centred between them, with the two ships and the wind direction being identical in the 3D battlespace to what it was in the 2D campaign map. A 3D encounter is then played out. This may or may not result in any combat. One player may flee, be downwind and have a faster ship, or he may be upwind and sail away close-hauled and the opponent being downwind cannot catch him. After a fixed time without ships being in gun range, or shooting or landing a shot on target (whatever criteria you want) the 3D battlespace encounter ends and the players are returned to the 2D campaign map. So wind does not just affect combat but it decides if combats even occur. This is really important! Generally if both sides are attempting to gain the wind gauge naval actions actually should not tend to drift downwind but really should slowly make progress upwind. If in your experience battles move downwind then the captains are either not skilled enough, not trying hard enough or there's something wrong with a game's sailing/wind/combat model. Once you are downwind of the enemy you cannot win. That should really be true in 90% of cases, so battles are all about manouver beforehand. A skilled captain upwind can dictate the range at which action opens and he can dictate if a battle happens at all. If he's got a weaker/smaller ship then obviously he's going to sail away and refuse to fight. If the smaller/weaker/faster ship is downwind, ditto. The ship that is downwind cannot beat up to the opponent with the weather gauge to force a battle unless the upwind ship lets it do so and then it should really pound the poop out of it as it slowly approaches. If a player chooses to flee and refuse battle he should be allowed to try and escape, so you might want to think of your maps not as fixed squares of real estate but as the rolling continuous belts of running machines, providing extra sea in any direction a player chooses to sail with a maximum limit and when that limit is reached ships are removed from the "battle instance" and placed back on the campaign map. As above when a time limit is reached in which nothing significant happens, end the encounter. How big are your battle maps? You need HUGE areas of sea to do sailing naval warfare and tactics justice. I'd suggest at least 10miles x 10miles for 1 vs 1 combats and up to 50mls x 50mls square for fleets of around 30 ships. A WWI naval combat game I played a couple of years back had 3D battle space instances 200miles on a side giving a battlespace of 40,000 sq miles and that did not seem big with light cruisers doing 28 knots and battleships doing 20. We frequently sailed off the edge of the map. Sailing ships will be moving at about 1/3 those speeds and moreover may need extra space in one direction. I am okay with ships turning more quickly than they could IRL, or else we'll all be here til tomorrow lunctime playing. Guns likewise need to fire a little faster than IRL and damage accrue faster. Perhaps you should write a set of combat game code at fully scale speeds and then just 2x it and see how it works. I am okay with wearing being relatively easy and mistakes not occurring. It was a basic manouver and only the worst landlubbers might mess it up. I would prefer not to have a game which penalises players for doing things right but where there's a 'bad luck' element that ruins their game; I'm for a game that rewards skilled play and knowledge of the periods tactics. Yes running onto shoals will indeed ruin your day and be game over. I would prefer combat to be much more based in blue water away from land. All this dodging in and out of pretty islands with white beaches and palm trees stuff is pure Hollywood, please try to avoid that. A map that's all sea or has a straight-ish coastline just down one side is also much easier on computers; land requires much more rendering, and shoal water requires more calculations. If players enter combat in shoal waters they should be allowed to do so but make it unforgiving, especially if its a lee shore. Once they've wrecked their ship on a beach or rocks they'll think twice about fighting near land again. Design a game that teaches people as they go. Make it real enough and they will begin to make the same correct decisions captains of 250 years ago did. I wouldn't say collisions with other ships is fatal unless they are a great deal bigger, but two squareriggers colliding will almost always tangle rigging and become fouled together meaning that one side or t'other tries to board and one ship is usually taken as a prize. I guess fatal in the mid-term then, but not fatal from the initial collision. I hope this is useful, especially my thoughts on how the 2D campaign world should directly influence 3D battles. An online game set up on those principles would be fascinating and engaging.

Signal flags would not be a fake feature in a game with fleets and squadrons in battles fought between organised and mature groups. It would be easy to police as well. I am in a group right now that plays online Napoleonic battles where Teamspeak is available but we agree not to use voice comms and instead use in-game written messages sent by mounted couriers. It works brilliantly. I see signal hoists as a very similar feature; a slower, more anachoronistic but very immersive gameplay element that would not be used in the MMO game but in stand alone squadron/fleet battles between friends could be, and to great effect. I can explain it but I guarantee it would work and so would be worthwhile thinking about including.