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What if there were? Personally, I think experience should be accumulated in your crew, preserved if you strike, but lost entirely if the ship is destroyed. This would be a core mechanic in encouraging players to strike rather than fight to the death. Combine this with a severe disincentive to reject an opponents surrender, and we will have much more interesting win-loss dynamic. In fact, the disincentive to reject surrenders could be the same as the incentive to strike: you destroy a striking a ship and your crew deserts you refusing to serve under a dishonorable captain, causing complete loss of accumulated experience. There could be material incentives on both sides, as well, of course. For example, you sink and you lose easily "portable" wealth (e.g. gold, silver, jewels) and your cargo, while your opponent gains nothing (no floating cargo salvage BS). Sinking a ship should be lose-lose, not a normally sought outcome but an exceptional occurrence in extreme circumstances. Strike and you keep your portable wealth and your opponent gains your cargo.

Lucky Jack Pack. All ships Jack Aubrey sailed. http://www.ctbasses.com/misc/BruceTrinque/aubrey4.html

Other crew members would be replenishing shot and powder as needed. Gun crews would never stop fighting the guns and walk away to fetch more supplies in the middle of a battle. If you want reloading to slow over time, crew condition (fatigue and dead/wounded) is the proper dynamic.

Heh. Taste is taste. I love the look of later ships, plus they were more refined instruments of war in every way. Better sailers, better guns, more seaworthy, on and on. I hope the developers will not attempt to achieve some sort of artificial balance between the early ships and later ships. The looks of early ships (aside from superficial decoration, of course) often translate directly into poorer sailing qualities and bad gun setups.

Sailing and damage model determine the core combat that everything else will be built on. More ships or an open world won't help if the underlying combat is shallow.

Cannons fired with full loads. Note recoil. Also, I think you can hear shot going down range.

Another concern I have about "armor" reduction directly resulting in quick and irrecoverable sinking is raking fire. Raking fire should not directly make a ship more vulnerable to sinking; it should make the ship more vulnerable to loss of crew and cannon as any penetrating shot will pass down the length of the deck (not to mention more vulnerable to rigging and mast damage, since it increases the probability of any single shot coming into contact with multiple parts of the rigging and masts). And of course the weak stern galleries make the ship much more vulnerable to raking penetrations, but this primarily concerns Zone C. Zone B and Zone A are not significantly more vulnerable on the bow and stern than they are on the sides, and in fact might be less vulnerable since there is less overall area between wind and water, and this area is less likely to be exposed by heel. I'd also like to note that ease of sinking is not just a concern based in devotion to historical reality. I think it has real implications for gameplay, particularly for the dynamics of small ship vs. large ship combat and for potentially accelerating the advantage of the winning side in a fleet battle.

This description seems to be on the right track, but is this implemented currently? Ships seem to sink very easily, and even concentrating fire high on "Zone C" seems to fairly quickly lead to sinking, while at the same time very little damage is done to crew, cannon and rigging. In fact, I'm finding it very hard to test damage to rigging, crew and cannon at all. Is it that "armor" stops most damage from round shot to crew, cannon and rigging until it is reduced to zero, but when reduced to zero the ship sinks almost immediately? Is the integrity not tracked for each zone separately? Is the observed behavior a product of the current sea state? For example, I can imagine a situation where a ship is heeling away from the direction of fire and is taking so much shot into Zone B that ports are starting to get battered in and more and more lower deck cannon and crew are lost, but until she changes tack and heels the opposite way, this loss of "integrity" would not lead to her sinking directly. Also, can you provide any more info on sail, mast and rigging damage? Perhaps a similar diagram?

Excuse me, not "toy" as in children's toy, but half-scale working replica of real thing. Not really. Not at all, in fact. Unless you just mean barrel diameter, which is somewhat meaningless.

Pretty sure that is a toy...

You would need a shortcut for centered rudder, otherwise you be constantly fiddling with A and D trying to get the rudder neutral with neither the tangible feedback you would have in reality, nor a subordinate who carries out your wish without micromanagement.

The more frigates the merrier! Beautiful ships!

Please clarify: are you looking at a theoretical unarmed Victory or a Victory that has pushed her guns overboard? Interesting tidbit from Forester's The Age of Fighting Sail: starting ten tons of Constitution's water over the side would make an inch difference in her draft.

Well, probability of such hits should be very low, i.e. critical locations should be hard to hit and should have a chance modifier applied to the outcome. Plus there should be more opportunity for careful aim with chasers versus firing full broadsides, i.e. there should probably be cannon dispersion (and possibly sea state dispersion if devs chose to go with a "stabilized" firing platform that ignores pitch and roll) applied to careful aimed fire with chasers, and cannon + crew dispersion applied to firing broadsides. Furthermore, many such lucky shots could be reparable in a reasonably short period of time. If all chasers have is a chance to do 1% of the damage of a broadside, then they would be useless weight and players would be robbed of one of the essential elements of the thrill of the case. Imagine if chase scenarios were nothing more than firing a chaser 40 times with no chance of doing anything more than achieving the same incremental damage effects of a single broadside.

That isn't achieved by overpowering guns. It is achieved by a realistic damage model that allows for lucky shots that do critical damage to rigging or steering.

Well it was boring. Point your ship straight into the wind, go slow, reach destination, repeat. If you actually had to do some planning, sailing and navigating and had react to changing conditions, a longer trip would not necessarily be inherently more boring than a shorter trip.

I think custom sail colors and decals would really ruin the look of the game. Flags, banners and pennants are the perfect avenue for personal expression. Hull paints are also a great idea, if kept within a reasonable norm. Not sure how flexible the 3D ship models are, but "prestige" figureheads would be another great thing to spend some real cash on.