akd

I heard they were sweet.

One if it reaches the first rate. What are you doing up so early thinking about setting things on fire?

Until they wise up and learn to shift fire earlier based on judgement rather than direct quantitative feedback. Then that team wins faster. There is no mechanic that forces you to fire on a single ship for any given amount of time. It's either "I think we've hit him hard enough, judgement call: let's shift fire" or "based on health bars I can see we delivered exactly the right amount of damage, now let's shift fire and deliver exactly the same amount of damage to another ship before repeating the process." But again, the real factor that will drive the average fight longer is lack of surrender, regardless of damage feedback. In fact, in a system where damage feedback is limited, but there are real incentives to give and take surrenders, fighting your ship far past the point of no return would be an interesting tactical decision only taken in extreme situations, rather than the current norm.

I haven't and don't see this happening. You are acting like the only trade-off is time, but the time your team spends hammering a defeated ship is time the other team is using to hammer you, which means you lose faster. Now mind you, in the absence of incentives to surrender, fights will extend past the point where one side has already lost, but I don't see enemy health bars driving that. Incentives to offer surrenders and accept surrenders are far more important.

Yup, crew size is vital info that in real life could be deduced from observation.

I disagree. The more you facilitate long-range gunnery, the more you will see fights devolve into long-range gunnery duels with the only maneuver consisting of edging in and out of max range. If gunnery at max range is effective, you will see fewer short-range fights involving more maneuver, the sorts of fights that can result in decisive outcomes more quickly.

In my opinion, the current gunnery system in game imparts the benefits of tangent and dispart sights and a central director. We already fight our ships more like Broke than traditional captains. The accuracy we can achieve in game is so far beyond what was typical at the time, I'd be hesitant to push it up much further. However, gun locks and powder upgrades could have practical implications, the former reducing the overall time for a broadside but with a chance of misfire, and the latter reducing range dispersion and/or increasing velocity.

Maybe, just maybe, confine suggestions to the guidelines posted by devs?

An Algerine Xebec and La Capitana, a galley of Malta: http://www.sjohistoriska.se/ImageVaultFiles/id_3089/cf_1806/58.JPG

Ooh, here is an idea for a pair of ships that satisfy both requirements and are famously linked to eachother in history: 1. HMS Pandora (a 24-gun Porcupine class post ship), which was sent to hunt down: http://www.super-hobby.com/zdjecia/0/0/7/2420_1-r3.jpg 2. HMAV Bounty (a former merchant turned transport armed with 4x 4-pdrs and swivel guns) and her mutineers. Both ships are very well-documented in the Anatomy of the Ship series: http://www.amazon.com/24-Gun-Frigate-Pandora-Anatomy-Ship/dp/0851778941 http://www.amazon.com/Armed-Transport-Bounty-Anatomy-Ship/dp/087021280X/ref=pd_sim_b_2?ie=UTF8&refRID=1N3AJDJK02QH8MAFH366

No, the point is number of guns doesn't narrow down exactly what niche the devs are looking to fill. I can find examples of ships in this timeframe with 24 guns that are 350 tons or 1000 tons, or that fill very different roles. My guess, however, is that the devs are looking for a small cruiser (cruiser in the original sense) type of ship, i.e. a very small frigate or large corvette.

On #1, I assume you mean actual number of guns carried, not rated guns. Is there a preferred timeframe? Type (and size) of ship with this number of guns can vary widely depending on timeframe. Circa 1740, both a British establishment 24-gun ship (6th-rate frigate) or a French 3me Ordre frigate would nicely fit the bill.

Okay, well it's a very loaded question and an odd way to ask it. I was thinking perhaps you thought it was written by someone alive during War of 1812.

???? What does that mean? It was written by a historian.

Hold on now. Those sorts of charts are seldom to scale and often involve significant passage of time.

Current gunnery in game allows you to do things that were impossible in this era. No more crutches and aids to gunnery are needed.

I would much rather sail with a friend in my line than a friend in my hold.

I think if a bomb came aboard a ship (likely penetrating top deck in process) then detonated, it would be absolutely devastating, probably achieving more destruction with a single shot than a full broadside. You don't want the fuze too long when attacking an area land target, because the bomb bursting in air would achieve a wider area of effect against exposed personnel. Not sure the same dynamic would apply if the gunnery system allowed you to easily hit a point target like a ship directly. Hitting a ship directly with a "delay fuze" bomb would be quite desirable.

Yes, please leave sails white and keep customization to paintschemes, flags, pennants, and (hopefully) ship's names. Ideally each ship would have at least one national (factional) flag, and one personal flag.

Not surprised since PotBS didn't have a real damage model. Who cares about a single 32-pd ball when you have juju magic?Gunboats would also be an interesting way to experiment with player control of AI ships, with a single player controlling a group of gunboats. They make little sense for anything other than playing around at a ratio of 1 player to 1 boat. To be clear, no ship in game "has armor", and viewed in those terms a gunboat only has incrementally less "armor" than, say, a schooner.

Which is how it should be for small ships on the open sea. Ships with small numbers of guns are interesting because they place a real premium on gunnery skill. You better either be a great shot, get in close, or run. Personally, I think gunboats and other small vessels could be an interesting dynamic if handled somewhat separately from normal player ship progression, possibly as a mix of AI-only boats and boats that could be taken for free by players, but only used within a limited range of a major port. Could be an interesting way to add another layer to port defense. They could also play an interesting role in battles that are limited to smaller ships (e.g. a Great Lakes-type battle).

I think he means it would be more responsive than turning a ship that is simply stopped in the water without sails set (we are currently allowed to turn slowly as an abstraction of using a sweep or towing the ship's head around with boats). Anchoring would be great, but I think the most important element to get right is the gunnery. As long as it is setup such that the player wants to be stationary while firing and can only use the mortar against a large, stationary target, whether stopping is accomplished by anchoring or dropping all sails is immaterial. You should not need to make large and sudden corrections to azimuth while firing the mortar, anyways. I think the essential elements to getting mortar gunnery right have mostly been covered, but could be elaborated on a bit: 1. Range should be set by amount of powder. The range (powder level) should be selected when the mortar is loaded, not just before the mortar fires. The mortar should also have a fairly significant minimum range. No loading the mortar with a tiny charge, then suicide charging ships at close range and firing so that the bomb only flies 10s of meters ahead of your ship into the enemy. I like the idea of a bar that can be "filled" by an analog player input from minimum charge to maximum charge. But again, that minimum charge should still have the mortar bomb flying hundreds of meters. 2. Azimuth should be set by ship facing, although a limited arc of traverse for the mortar might be allowed (iirc, some were fixed and some could traverse). 3. Mortar bomb should have a variable fuze. However, setting fuzes is probably a step too far for direct player control and could just be set automatically based on the powder charge/range selected, incorporating some random error. This error could be reduced by crew or technology upgrades, but would always be fairly variable, so that some bombs would burst at the right height, some on the ground and some too high to have effect. 4. Don't forget the smoke trail from the bomb fuze. This will look awesome and help players understand the ballistics.

If they make them capable of ship to ship combat outside of anything but the most extraordinary circumstances, I suspect damage and combat system will be totally unbalanced. The ability to deliver explosive shells onto woods ships brought about fundamental changes to naval combat, bringing an end to the era of wood ships and iron balls. But this was not achieved with mortars / bomb vessels. Delivering a high trajectory mortar shell onto a target is a huge gunnery problem requiring enormous skill and technical knowledge. You need a relatively stable platform (thus the need to anchor in calmer inshore waters), a special rig that allows your high trajectory weapon to clear the ship without destroying the rigging or setting her on fire, an advanced knowledge of ballistics to deliver the round accurately down range, and on top of that you have to set the fuze just right so that the bomb bursts at the exact moment it arrives on or just above the target (else you get "bombs bursting in air" harmlessly).

why would she have a small crew if fitted out as a privateer or warship? You can't fight that many guns with a small crew. As noted above, as an Indiaman, she carried upper deck armament only. In her battle with HMS Serapis, she had 50 guns and a large crew.