Crankey

The French navy had some excellent officers and elite crewed ships, though mostly frigates and smaller unrated as these would have been more active during times of blockade than the ships of the line. The larger ships would have found it harder to slip through the blockades, although there were some exceptions. Redoubtable who engaged Victory closely during battle of Trafalgar would easily represent such a vessel. Using the wiki I list below you can probably find specific literature against each listed battle for more specific information. Good Luck http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_naval_battles

A Merry Christmas to you all.

Crew mixture and animations. More crewmen and mixed animations, serving guns, sail drill, climbing shrouds, running to repairs.... officers on deck strolling, aiming to fire. Marines, manning sides and tops.

Merchnat ships werre generally made robust enough to sail, no additional thought to its ability to withstand fire. Its all about profit. Warships were generally more robust and in case of SOL very robustly built.

Victory was 600mm planking thickness at waterline http://www.contemporarysculptor.com/hms-victory.htm These were HUGE ships, and yes unless a light ship put a shot through a gunport, or window, it was unlikely to tickle a first rate. Ribs were obviously huge for such a large ship, and added tremendous strength both against the elements, incoming fire, and recoil of its own guns.

Situation: So we have an hour to play a PVE match, Its stormy weather, half your squadron chases ai ships 1 way, the other half the opposite direction. After 30 minutes you find you are the only ship left and the remaining ai ships were with the group who went the other way. You sail back on roughly an opposing course to 10 minutes but fail to see enemy ships. Can we have an option to either finish match earlier if we are out of visual range for say 10 minutes of last enemy ships, perhaps stating whether the 'withdrawel' would be a loss, win or draw depending on current score. Or possibly a trigger once every 5 minutes or so where you can force an ai ship to set off a signal rocket (Yes these were used historically) so that we can see a flickering light on a horizon for say 15 seconds which will give us a rough heading toward them. i know I state PVE in the topic title but this could also be a voluntary action by pvp captains in the same situations.

Thats Awesome thankyou

Is it possible to have the option to see more spray animations, particularly on heavy seas when the bow slams into oncoming waves. Also the option for ship wakes, for those with insane graphics cards to waste their bucks viewing I would in extreme weather imagine spray to be hurled as high as the foremast and a cloud of spray fly back over the ship, large amounts of water running along the ships deck and out through the scuppers or gunports etc. I realise this is purely a graphical enhancement and as such would not be a priority, but nevertheless I would request it is considered.

I think crew casualties and morale levels could probably be a measure used to effect a targetted ships behaviour if all such acts are programmed to cause an effect. Also I have not noticed gunnery or sail drill being adversely effected either through tiredness or loss. Often only the first two or three shots at best were fired as a broadside, after this independant fire was often used due to faster guncrews being held back when waiting for all to load. (Yes in smaller vessels space bar hitting would reflect this, but in the larger vessels you simply wouldn't be able to spam the space bar fast enough, to reflect this) Another thing I have noticed is that Ball doesn't seem to cause too many crew casualties, even when you double shot at close range into the hull. Perhaps something that is being gauged atm by the devs. And what happened to mixed grape and ball loads ? not used often but undoubtebly an option for the bloodthirsty close up captains out there, and would definitely effect crew losses to fire, which would have effects that the OP has listed.

Some great points above. Historically there were several ways to see how damaged an opponent was. (If the detail can be incorporated in the game, then perhaps visual GUI aides would not be needed, or could be reduced. Inevitably, fleeing the battlefield or surrendering were probably the 2 most prevalent occurrences. Ingame atm, surrendering doesnt exist except to log out of a battle, and fleeing outside of a pvp circle with no intention of returning, there is no way to force a ship to reach a point where it automatically strikes... should there be ? even if lack of activity on your opponents part, allows you to recover and renew aggression or flee. Tattered sails, missings mast sections. Mast sections trainling over the side, acting as anchor and dangerous to fire through until cut away. Stove in section of bulwarks/stern glass windows, guns upended and not returning fire. Technical difficulties becoming aparent due to steerage damage, taking on water etc, Blood ! blood flowing out of gunports, occasional supine casualty figures visible. Rate of fire, sail drill effect, repair crews all acting slower and slower as casualty levels increase. MORALE !!!! so far pretty ignored, but in my opinion should very much effect all aspects of a ships behaviour along with its striking its colours, I have no idea how this could be represented visually aside from striking (Surrendering), after sufficient damage or casualties etc are caused. Lack of friendly ships nearby, increase in enemy ships nearby, quality of officers etc etc. Lots to consider on the OP's subject

Greater shot dispersion at range is there ! Woot, I think it will make a great game even greater Fingers crossed I am correct

It would force development of the use of ships boats and kedge anchors with springs attached in order to move or turn a broadside to face a threat.

I joined a pvp experience in my Victory and was set in a game with 1 cutter 1 brig. 1 surprise and 1 constitution (or Trincomalee) I felt guilty that I was in the battle. First comment on screen was "We're screwed" - I sympathetically agreed, had a general discussion about the lack of visibility of who was entering the match as it could be so one sided. We had a fun game and pleasant chat throughout, the hardest part was trying to hit the cutter which was the last surviving opponent, Oh was also Heavy/Storm conditions I think. We had a great time, but the MM was extremely 1 sided. A pity you dont have the choice of leaving a pvp match. I would have voluntarily left ot leave them a much more even experience.

Ye Henry I totally understand that some charts especially near estuary outlets may well be very different today, however even so a modern 'data dump' would give an awfully good starting point to work on, and if original charts are available for the time period of the game, perhaps the modern data dump could be easier modified than building from scratch. Also I have further googled into the subject and a lot of the data is free source. For instance googling "NauticalFree" offers just such a service, there are many. I hope its something that will give the Devs some food for thought, even if not for the original release point of the game.

I have no affiliations , The screenshot is of the first such product I googled.

Are you planning to create all of your map locations from scratch ? I was thinking that perhaps a current and real digital charting system out there for real navigation purposes could be utilised. This way 'encounters' of any kind would use correct data anywhere in the world. You wouldn't need to create a map for each encounter type, merely pick a real world location and you have the chart info, this would provide a truly free and real world opportunity for battles to take place anywhere. Yes of course slight tweaks may be needed to 'demodernise' some aspects of some coastel or harbour areas, especially when land based locations are involved, but you wouldn;t have to create your maps, shallows, coastlines etc from scratch. To re-enact famous battle locations, you just summon up the data for that area of the world, voila' chart complete. Is it possible to openly use a product with their permission ? once you have a terrain snapshot, you would not need live data or ongoing support Just a way of adding realism as well as shortcutting potentially a lot of development hours that could then be used on other project areas

Don't you just love talking about all this 'stuff' No wonder we're all head over heels about this games potential

Interesting post , there were certainly quite a few examples of galleys still in use both as national ships or privateers / pirates. As well as the oared unrated/small rated ships the OP has already mentioned. galleys particularly in the Mediterranean, Caspian, Black sea, Persian gulf etc. an interesting addition to the game whether as player commanded or AI as opponents. Perhaps we will sea their use in specific missions. Lets not forget the large harbour guard boats that carried a varied sized cannon or carronade in the bows, quite lethal against grounded or becalmed vessels.

Yes totally agree Sir Cunningham, my own OP would be relevant to all nations gunnery as an over-all observation. The game-side relavence does however come into question for nation specific benefits. Perhaps the advances in gunnery you list are in the background as personal captain rewards, but I'm unconvinced that allowing such historical advantages to be nation specific in any realm v realm confrontations, unless each advancement has an equal and similar or alternative advancement to equal out game play. It is going to be very interesting to see what degree of detail the game takes on board and how it is implimented

I'm not sure where the original quote comes from, but historically no sane captain would fire his broadside at range without at least a couple of ranging shots, as such i think the game brings in a very accurate and usable system for judging your broadside accuracy. I'm not sure you would walk the entire length of each gundeck on Victory firing single 'space bar' shots for the entire ships sides, but certainly in smaller ships/vessels firing individually would be possible, and having a gun captain or other officer aiming each shot was not unheard of, but on ships with multiple decks, each would have its own gun captain or even multiple gun captains per deck. I have posted elswehere my thoughts on dispersion for when that broadside arrives on target.

I am not sure how the developers intend to run the games naval battles etc once going live. But remember that the Constitution was designed to be able to outfight any 'frigate' class one on one, outrun anything heavier and interrupt commerce in between, not unlike the Graf Spee of Deutschland class 'pocket battleship' in WWII. The British answer was to build itself new heavy frigates and also to create Razee class ships as previously mentioned. Each had its own good and bad points. We also know that player ability can be a great leveller. I'm looking forward to see what additional ships will be released and how match making will be handled.

Thankyou Patrick and yes, the only true way to benefit from your stern or bow rake is to be rewarded by all or at least most of your shots to be on target. Either a new order to 'fire as you bear' or possibly an option to concentrate your broadside to a smaller pinpoint accuracy, only useful at short range and in a rake situation, could be introduced.

I will do my best to find links to appropriate technical data. My knowledge came from a study of the napoleonic navy some 15 years ago. Just as a basic reply, the equipment and ammunition could not be compared to rifled guns and mass produced ammunition of the 'modern' era, Quite often guns were miss-matched at fitting out, with ages and manufacturers varying greatly throughout a ship, basically utilising whatever the dockyards had available. And ammunition that had to have rust knocked off with hammers before being fit for firing could not all be perfectly spherical.. I'm on night shift tonight but will revisit some old sites and even the library to provide info.

Hello Devs, We all know why broadsides were fired, it was to put as many shots as possible into a target 'area' where our enemy had the miss-fortune to be. Now, at point blank range, we wouldn't expect many shots to miss if any, as the shot would be flying horizontally to the sea and the enemy would be in the way, but as range increases the broadside would be fired in a higher and higher arc and produce an ever growing area of effect where its shot fell. Caused by many things, poor aim throughout crew and officers, inconsistency in weight of charge, irregularity of cannon ball shape, roll of ship hull etc etc. I have seen so many times every single shot of a long range broadside falling just inches from a ships hull, and at the same time so many long range shots where every single shot hits. There seems to be a little more dispersion left and right than there is near and far. I understand that we need some skill in learning targetting etc, my point isn't that the targetting needs reviewing (Please don't hijack this thread along those lines !) far from it I think the ranging shots, leading and height adjustment mechanics are just fine as they are. My point is that these ships cannon just weren't that accurate, you would expect misses, and the further away, the more misses you would expect. Imagine a huge rough tear drop shape on the ocean where your target ship sits within and the narrow point of the teardrop points at your ship. Hopefully you would judge correctly where the majority of your shots would fall, but even if you judged it wrong, you may catch it with a few shot that were destined to be slightly off centre. I don't know if you plan to add accuracy enhancing features in the release version and reduce accuracy until these are achieved, but for me the shot fall area at range is far smaller than any captains expectations should be.

You are very welcome. It's why we are here before release after all