Domox

I'm considering using Fusion360 for creating the hulls consider how clean it's T-Splines end up being. WIP Video: http://cl.ly/3Y0b372T460w

Once I have an ideal process that works well I'll see what I can do.

Piracy along the gulf and west indies continued well into the late 1840s, enough to inspire several schooner designs to try and combat the problem. It's just that ~1726 was when the flagrant and oft romanticized pirates were afoot.

Work took off again and I haven't had a chance to do any more modelling in awhile. Another reason I slowed down was thinking about different ways to create fair hulls without lots of fiddling with nurbs or tweaking verts. Here's a WIP of a new process I'm trying (video preview): http://cl.ly/1B0z0D3f092T

Having recently spent much time battling higher BR ships due to ganking etc, and usually giving as good or better than I got. I've become frustrated with the XP/Gold not reflecting my performance. Recently I fought a player surp with a player snow and an AI rattlesnake. As a privateer I got his hull down, killed some crew, several cannon, started a fire, spent about an hour maneuvering and doing my part. Of course the AI ship was useless, and the player snow promptly sank. The results for battle? A few K gold and ~50xp. Now, of course the battle was challenging which I can admit was partly fun, but considering you lose a dura for what's an inevitable defeat (it will take every bit of two hours if you're lucky and they're crap, to sink a surp when piloting a privateer) the compensation is wanting. Please don't confuse this with salt. I enjoy the smaller craft and some sort of reward for performance or valor besides this pittance of compensation would be nice? Even achievements for mismatches would be nice. Thoughts?

How about making ports show how many players (ships) are in them? Then players will be able to see (much like reality) if there's people laying in harbor waiting, and to get around players logging off and laying in wait, show the total number of players that would currently be there if they all were online. Much like counting masts in a harbor, if there's a ship sitting there it can come out and get you. Players will soon essentially memorize port populations (like sailors learn ports) and know when it's more full than normal and things are afoot... I really do think all these fictional timers/barriers in the game make for a worse experience. Hmmm well I know there's a battle here but there's this magical cloak up that prevents me from seeing/interfering/hearing it. Oh and I can't see them once they leave. How mystical. Another point, it feels like no one ever gets aided or saved in this game because no one seems to ever fight when it's 'fair' (or even equal). It's either a gank or pretty severe outclassing with the rest being flights, and the outcomes are predetermined from the get go (besides duration) much of this due to the fact that once a battle starts it'll continue with impunity regardless of the situation outside (people sitting outside the magical battle bubble), and our fairly small 2minute vision range. I honestly am not sure what would satisfy all parties, and if it's not possible I'd argue in favor of no barriers and artificial timers to combat. (Similar to early days if I recall?) Another thing that I'd be keen to see is don't allow fleeing unless they're out of gun range, and if someone has escaped, place them well outside the engagement distance and put everyone back into the OW according to where they were when they left...

IMHO Ships should be repositioned outside of engagement range from the aggressors if they've successfully fled from an OW battle, and fleeing ships should be outside of gun range for a small amount of time rather than this silly 2m timer that lets ships vanish from point-blank, right under your guns range.

I had this on burningsail.com for a bit but it only met limited use, there was also the issue of people posting notices in places to lure people in. But maybe it's better than nothing?

So this likes it'll potentially slow ship production (a good thing?) and increase the number of goods in the economy and smoothing out prices so all the value isn't all tied up in a few resources (again a good thing?). But besides that I'm not understanding what major benefits this brings to the game. TBH ship role/variety would be improved more by additional player motivated traffic and ship diversity, but that's another discussion altogether...

I love these propositions. I think all of them are good, except I'd like to see less arbitrary constraints and have the limits be more cost associated. One suggestion rather than requiring prizes to join your fleet I propose this: It was common practice with privateers to send crew back to port with the prize/prisoners, and there are a few recorded instances of a captain re-encountering a prize after it had "captured" it just the day before due to it being intercepted again. What if you could assign some crew to a vessel to have it return to port and have it sail by itself to that destination. This would be a risky thing BUT for the privateer that's busy and doesn't want to spend half the day escorting it could be worthwhile. This would increase traffic to prey on, increase the air of mystery when one of your prizes never shows up, it could also lead to interesting dynamics where you have to capture your prize twice in contested waters...

Redone transom to a style that fits the profiles and is more similar to the typical designs I've seen. I suspect I did it wrong because it took so long... -__- I need to work on the deck some more. Soon it'll be time for cutting holes for entry ways, add masts, rigging, channels, deadeyes, steps etc. As a heads up, it's so high poly because I turn on smoothing to see how it looks for when I'll bake normals etc. if this was to be used in a game I'd drop a ton of polys and then use the hi-poly normal maps on the low res mesh.

Stanchions are in along the bulwarks with new railings. After looking at it all day I think I need to redo the transom again, it's wrapped nature is bugging me and while it fits the profiles it doesn't look like a classic baltimore clipper. :/

Redid the transom as a separate mesh and followed the drawing a bit better. I also got more of the rudder and tiller completed. 6ft tall box for reference...

Not sure what you mean? Today I realized my transom was not quite as good as it should be. Time to cut it off and create a separate piece...

I've been streaming my progress as I go. Thanks for those of you who tune in and keep me company! I've modelled out the basic geo I can use for a Sub-D mesh for baking/texturing. Next up will be the rudder and tiller. Then it's fun things like trim, pinrails, timberheads, bulwarks and other furnishings!

Today i'll be setting up the stations in Fusion 360, and hopefully getting a loft done! https://www.twitch.tv/d0m0x

Sorry lol wrong domain, and definitely not my twitter account lol https://twitch.com/d0m0x

Consider it done! Starting the stream now. https://twitch.com/d0m0x

I found some distortion in how they printed it, so here's the final corrected version. Next I'll be tracing the buttocks, waterlines, and centerlines to create the scantlings so I can loft the hull easily. I may even stream it if anyone is interested?

Today I setup a quick "book scanning" station. I've found a plan for an 1819 man-of-war schooner in a different book I grabbed the other day I think i'll make.

Yes, they had a few others but i'd blown my budget for the day, and this one seemed the most relevant (era, size wise). I'll have to look for Longdride's book. Thanks for the tip!

I've had some projects slow down and I miss modeling so it's time to dust off Maya, etc. and play with some fine lines. This effort is also backed by some excellent reference material I found today at a local antique store (I left a copy of The Anatomy of Nelson's Ships behind though, they just wanted too much)...

Yes under chrome://flags. Sorry for the late reply!