Robert Danforth

I read a similar thing from the English side of the channel about algae in the water.

World of Warships has something like that for AA guns to fight off the aircraft from carriers. You can turn that off (in their case for stealth reasons), so that might be worth looking at.

Wow, thank you for posting the HMS Pinafore video. I know what I'm watching today! Also, I love sea shanties, I have like 10 albums of them, but I might be a bit deranged.

Neither X-Plane nor Prepar3d are 10 years old (although the latter is a lot of patches on said 10 year old sim). And there are plenty of military sims without full crews either. It's taxing.

Well yes, firing while also getting shot at is always different, except that these were trained Marines. Still unnerving, but less so when you're basically used to that idea to begin with.

Then you can paint your ship like a whaling boat, so when the Acheron comes upon and says "Eeenglish Whaleeuur!" you can blast him!

Wow. What a great spritual successor to Sid Meier's Pirates!

Honestly, most volunteers in the Navy (those who weren't pressed) joined for adventure and stability in their life. The Navy, unlike the Army, was also a good place to better yourself; plenty of officers started as seamen (but then didn't we all, hurr hurr). It was never as glamorous as it was made out to be, of course, but if you were poor and had no real prospects in life, may as well go join the Navy for the chance of something special. Plus the usual patriotism that inspires many a man to fight for his country. For that matter, I don't think it's all that different today.

Yes that could have been more clear. Guns are loaded. You hit the button to load double, it queues so next time the guns go off, that's what's loaded. If you hit the button twice, it unloads the current load and loads the double immediately. Speaking of double, I was surprised to read how many ships used treble-shot at Trafalgar.

Well not people HERE who know how awesome the game is. But people out there, in the dark, unaware of what they're missing, annoyed by my constant prodding.

Oh man how I love Star Forts. I can take some good photos this year of Fort Ticonderoga and probably a dozen buildings in Boston and Portsmouth, NH. I do American War for Independence reenacting, so I'm around those places a lot.

Yep, and I've posted a thread on Something Awful's forums that seems to have enticed a handful of people to pre-order already. I never shut up about this game, people probably hate me.

So the way World of Tanks does it? You hit '2' for your HE or whatever next round, and if you hit it twice, it loads immediately?

Two things: 1. In Trafalgar, once the grand melee started, musket fire was actually incredibly effective. You had ships literally bumping sides, and the men in the tops were clearing the decks like crazy. It's also how Nelson died. 2. Muskets are inaccurate, but not as inaccurate as people seem to believe. At 50 yards, you will hit a man-sized target, it is not 50%. I know this because I own a Brown Bess and use it frequently, and in my reenactment regiment, we have taken muskets to the range and fired as a group as well as individually, and no one really misses at 50 yards.

You can play some of it now, you know?

Well I like my healthbar (actually not as a bar; some kind of damage report would be better, like specific parts of my ship in colors or whatever). I don't like enemy healthbars, which is really what the thread was about.

My point is more the manageability of it given that this is a game, and I'm not actually standing on a deck. I'd actually love voices coming from my officers, reporting things from the crew, but I think it needs to go hand-in-hand with some kind of visual representation.

But in that case, the Captain wouldn't need to do anything, really, because the crews should be repairing things themselves.

While I get that for realism, I think you have to remember that this is a game, and that we don't have a decade of sailing experience like most of these officers would. There's got to be a balance where we can keep in mind the whole situation of the ship even as we're focused on one particular aspect in the moment.

Well they're using the same engine.

American War for Independence - either Cowpens or Saratoga.

And, much like here, most planes don't have crew either. Occasionally you can see a pilot/co-pilot. You'll almost NEVER see passengers.

Well, the only time I could see it being useful is to have my carronades loaded with double, waiting for me to get close, but in that case, I'm probably going to want to wait for the lower decks to load up double anyway.

I think seeing one's own damage is fine, and it makes sense. You're getting damage reports from your crew.

Easily solved: get in closer.