BobW-Bristol-RI-US

Thx - Great suggestions. Appreciate it muchly.

Hail All! BobW (Muttley), curently hove to in Bristol, Rhode Island. USN retired. Gawd I love this game (even if testing - grind, reset, grind, reset.) Casual player tho, 'lest I anger Amphitrite, otherwise known as the wife of Poseidon (and my girlfriend) - who will smite my wee vessel with hordes of angree sea creatures and banshees if I play this game too much. Only got to Victory before OW and a late invite. But I digress... I've seen a few of you online already - current status: - Lynx (still) - One Outpost - Mimbres - Had 2600 gold but squandered 2K on 18 pd carronades which I can't fit on the Lynx and can't sell back. Grrrr. Costly lesson learned - won't repeat. Been mostly operating out of Bahia Honda - grinding Trader Brigs for coins to level up. Better options? Qs: 1. Best first purchase? 12 pd carronades for Lynx? (have useless 18 pd carronades for later) 2. Best second purchase? [Weigh in please - your insights greatly appreciated] 3. Are any of you finding Trader Brigs closer up the US coast? Or are we far better off working the Caribbean? 4. Tips with the bots? (AI seems brutally accurate gunners, even in smallest armed vessels - repeatedly getting sunk) 5. Is USA Online chat the best place to ask Qs or here in the forums? (Don't want to be annoying or get snapped at, but the [pet peeve] endless answer in game HELP chat to even easy questions of 'just watch RAM's videos' - with all due respect to his not-insignificant efforts - is IMHO a painfully inefficient way to learn a simple game item, like 'How do I know what guns fit my ship?' I fully realize that some my Qs might seem silly (or lazy), but I only get a few hours to play/test per week. With no game user guides or help available yet at this stage, I'd rather spend those hours playing then slogging through long drawn out youtube videos to find answers to simple Qs. Hopefully, my fellow US sailors won't find that arrogant or impatient. If so, my humblest apologies. See you in game. Let me know whenever or however I can help. Open to teaming up on bot fleets, other countries. It's a long, slow slog... I'm still at the Lynx and can use all the help and advice I can get. Regards all, Bob W (Muttley) Bristol, RI "Fair winds and following seas"

Ya - Didn't notice anything in the UI about multiple ships/fleet - thought it was just one Lynx - so I must've missed any other multi-ship info visually (honestly I don't recall if I actually 'hailed' it, or if was one of those jump on you 'So and So is battling you in ## sec' popups) And as far as sending the Snow home as a prize... seems like my reaction to getting at this time was almost like the 'bait car' TV show reaction in the ghetto... was enjoying the 'Cadillac' Snow experience far too much to have realized I should have sent anything home.... (I didn't even know it had damage until the pirate fiasco). Lesson learned. Thanks for weighing in all. Back to the grind. But what a lovely grind OW is. Regards, Muttley

So, in my 2nd day of OW... sailin' my l'il Lynx to and fro (dodging larger armed vessels) looking for trader brigs.... enter a battle, offer to help - larger (more experienced) player offers me a wonderful gift of the surrendered Snow (greatly appreciative... would skip four or five ship steps of 'grind')... then on the way home (now a little cocky) am waylaid by what appears to be a single Lynx Pirate, then (too late - battle's started) I realize it's actually FOUR pirate vessels, and even after sinking two (AI obviously much better in OW), I succumb to my wooden wounds.... so I lose my prize Snow, and am back to the Lynx once more. Lessons (? open to suggestions from all)... should have 'teleported' home immediately - had too small a crew to sail/fight effectively, also had damage from initial (prize) encounter... could have slowly improved from the Snow level instead of retrograding back to Lynx. Questions: Does the game know that I'm sailing a prize and 'sic the AI pirates, hostiles on ya because you're sailing a prize? Or is it that (what I suspect) that I was just dumb and full of ego? How do I know if I'm about to run into a fleet of pirates when hailed it just says Lynx pirate? Did I miss something in the OW UI that tells me this? WHAT AN INCREDIBLE, GREAT GAME. Regards all, Muttley Bristol, RI, US In a Lynx... (row, row, row your boat...)

Today, MikedaBike wrote: "22,567 posts on this already why not one more ...." Guess I'm clueless and missed over 20K posts. I didn't know this either. In fact, this is the first I've heard of this... I just assumed that I was to blunder along until the game got to full release, then would be invited in. Really enjoy the game, but I think that sometimes what's (apparently) very obvious to the heavily involved player... is not horribly intuitive to some of us that... still love the game, but only have the time for casual play. Mike, thanks for repeating the info - hadn't seen or heard of this elsewhere. Regards, Bob W, Bristol RI, US

Woo Hoo!! (accidentally left my power cord at work, so not good running games on battery) Had to use my little mini Dell flippy screen tablet/laptop XPS 12" laptop to try to play AND IT RUNS FINE. Dell XPS 12 Intel i7 4500 2.8 Ghz 8 GB DDR3 RAM 128 GB SSD 12.5 " HD Screen @ 1920 x 1080 Happy, happy running fine with Ultra graphic setting

Related dopey Q... Anyone got any idea what the range is when the ship (player name) ID info first appears above the ship? Is that at/around max effective range anyway? If someone knows, share please. I was just trying to guess at range to run from the big ships anyway. Regards all.

Naval stadimeters weren't invented until the 1890s, but you can create a simple graticule on a post it note which you can simply stick to the side of your screen with precalculated ranges vs. masthead height in degrees. To get there, the stadimeter formula is obtained by high school math: (1) Divide the masthead height (about 120 ft for smaller brigs, cutters, about 200 ft for first rate) by the tangent of the angle (1 - 10 degrees) from the visual horizon to the top of the mast... (2) This will yield you a top of mast range table, like this: Brigs/Cutters 1st Rates Top of Mast 120 FT 200 FT Range to ship from horizon to top of mast at: Brigs/Cutters 1st Rates - 10 degrees = 225 yds 400 yds - 5 degrees = 400 yds 750 yds - 4 degrees = 500 yds 950 yds - 3 degrees = 750 yds 1300 yds - 2 degrees = 1100 yds 1900 yds - 1 degree = 3300 yds 3900 yds - 0 degree = HORIZON The next trick is visually guestimating the height of 1 through about 10 degrees on YOUR display... a little harder, but not too.. I found an excel spreadsheet visual calculator through some guy at the Univ. of Toronto (link is www.psych.utoronto.ca/Fusers/barense/links/ACLab_Visual_Angle_Calculator.xls ), that allows you to simply plug in your display size (H vs. W) and resolution (# x # pixels), which will help you convert pixels to degrees, then inches (or millimeters) and then create a little post it note graticule with the ranges and tick marks for brigs and 1st rates on the side of your screen at the general (unheeled over) horizon. Hope this helps someone out there - I know it's probably horribly crude to the experts, and does not take into account the deck height of the viewing platform (your ship) but I had fun doing it, and it seems to work ok so far as a simple aid. BTW, I didn't calculate any further in depth, as I thought the max range of most of these guns is about 2,000 yds, and max effective for a 12 or 24 pounder was only about 1,200 yds, no? Regards all, Bob W. Bristol RI, US

After seeing the title of this post, has me kind of curious about maybe the Victory At Sea soundtrack (and thus begins the internet rabbit hole / time sink of seeing if I can find, purchase and play it as background music while playing game.) Thoughts? Ideas? Sorry if this has already been asked / answered... but are there plans to have any background music in the game? If yes, then I'll hold off. Regards all, Bob W. Bristol RI, US