Robert Danforth

Captured without a shot fired, even. I'm pretty sure I've posted this before, but this is me and some former co-workers aboard the Lynx: I'm the one who is obviously a fan of the Age of Sail.

I just want to echo what others are saying in support of variable winds. I think not to do so is a mistake.

Geez, this is tough. Vote is currently for the Rattlesnake, but I might change my mind later.

Yes, they were divided by deck, side, and sometimes even subdivided, depending on the size of the ship. Typically a good job for your midshipmen.

My inkling is to say "no" but then I'm not sure what skills or empire-building is going to be like in the game. In EU IV, religion is extremely important, but that's because there are a lot of factors going on in building an empire. In Naval Action, we're mostly shooting at each other for much more specious reasons. For example, as a Captain in His Britannic Majesty's Royal Navy, it's pretty likely I'm going to hate the French regardless of what their religion is. And despite Spain's Catholicism, it may be possible that I'm allied with them, and that's more important. Religion was fairly important in this era, but most of the time it was just used an excuse to go to war, not the real cause (which was probably greed more than anything else).

She's pretty famous in her razeed configuration, not so much in the full frigate config.

The Trincomalee was built in India

You know, I completely forgot about Comte D'Estaing, you could read about him, too.

Nowadays that's probably true. Starforce was notorious for it. And it's completely unobtrusive. Steam has been around for over a decade at this point (oh man I'm old), and it's safe and good and nice and pleasan Silly Luddites.

Ideally, it would be the ship's name, not the player, and those could be changed before the battle. That would give us some idea for recognition of friend or foe, and while slightly game-y, it adds a bit of realism in that you can't see it until you're at a range close enough that your midshipman has identified the vessel. In the meantime, maybe just the class (although with [tab] you may know who is who anyhow).

Actually, a lot of DRM tends to break the game more for legitimate customers than people who crack it and remove the DRM anyway. And Steam doesn't really have much in the way of DRM, if any at all.

So your justification is "it's a game" which is fine, but it can be a game without enemy health bars too. Frankly, the health bars now don't tell me much other than "they don't have armor". I can tell they're damaged by the giant holes on the hull and sails, and the way they list, and really I don't care if the ship has armor or not; it's my enemy and I'm going to keep shooting it until is at the bottom of the sea.

Exactly. I'm not voting for ships because they did or didn't come from specific nations, I'm voting to fill gaps in the lineup, and because they look awesome.

There was the Quasi-War very early on

The armament is an easy enough fix by adding those options to the configurator.

Well, 116 people (so far) disagree with you. A justification of why you believe so would be helpful.

That big ol' horse would make a great target.

The boats were usually towed anyway, which would also make that hard. Sucked to be a sailor in the age of sail.

Most sailors couldn't swim, so if you don't rescue them right away, you're not going to be rescuing them at all.

Oh I forgot Six Frigates in my list, good call. An excellent read.

A pretty simple fix would be making it so guns always fire fore-to-aft regardless of which side the ship is on. Then you can just tap spacebar as needed. Maybe eventually a way to reverse direction in case we need to fire aft-to-fore.

I woke up this morning with a much simpler thought. At least for now, if the griefer reaches a specific threshold (see above), it just kicks them from the match and zeroes out their damage earned.

I'm pretty sure the only way to deter constant offenders is a ban (temporary leading to permanent if continued), but that would be more of a release kind of thing. I haven't really experienced the friendly fire, but it seems like it's becoming a bigger issue every day.

I suppose if they're griefers, you're right that they won't care about being independent targets. But at the very least, it would mean you could earn points for shooting back at them, and that matters more than winning battles at the moment.