hoarmurath

Oh, and in case you insist with the special ship... My favorite ship so far is the Renommee... Not trinco, not Frigate, not Constitution, no ship of the line (even though i intend to give a try to bucentaure). But it's really not necessary, i'm going to craft and nothing make me happier than crafting my own ships... (I'm actually expecting i can craft Renommee). I think it's better to forget the reward. (Yes, and that mean you can forget about that statue too!!!) Hélène de Montfort busy trying to find a passage to go past Sumatra... Damn reefs

I wonder what could be the coat of arms of the De Montfort... de gueules au lion d’argent Hey, that remind me something!!! It's actually MY coat of arms, the one i have as avatar! So, the first thing i want to say is... It was an accident. I never intended to do this!!! Well, maybe i intended to do this, but i never thought it would actually work!!! It's not my fault!!! What? Reward me? So, you haven't found out yet? Good!!! For the reward ship, it's not really necessary, i haven't done what i have done for reward, just to help newcomers... Hélène De Montfort, who isn't sailing accross the indian ocean right now... No sir, that's not me... Must be some mirage...

There's a problem with chat today? Since the server restart, the chans disappear when the interface get reloaded, so when i enter battle, port... And i have to relaunch the game to get them back.

port interface with animation of outside weather

It's a very bad idea. It would be like an invasion of rage boarders, as ai would board every time it has the occasion. That's why ai boarding was disabled in potbs, it was just awful when they had it.

This topic find its origins in a discussion ingame with Bjorn. He asked specifically for upgrade suggestions with both positive and negative traits. Considering the Lucky figurehead, it all come to sailors superstition. If they think a figurehead brings them luck, then it can make them do whatever is necessary to create their own luck. And i wondered at what you could consider unlucky : the ship catching fire, sure, but also losing your rudder in combat (i suggest you read about the Bismarck sinking), and losing a mast to ennemy fire... The lucky figurehead just reduce the chances for these unlucky events to occur.

Figureheads Name of Upgrade/Module: lucky figurehead Positive traits: - fire chances + rudder hp + mast hp Negative traits: - crew hp - preparation for boarding Name of Upgrade/Module: Dreadful figurehead Positive traits: + morale + preparation for boarding + attack Negative traits: - brace - defend Name of Upgrade/Module: Neptune's favor figurehead Positive traits: + speed + turning + rudder turning speed Negative traits: - reload - crew SAILS Name of Upgrade/Module: light fabric sails Positive traits: + yards turning speed + sails setting speed Negative traits: - sails hp Name of Upgrade/Module: heavy fabric sails Positive traits: + sails hp Negative traits: - yards turning speed - sails setting speed FLAGS Name of Upgrade/Module: Dread captain Roberts flag Positive traits: + morale + attack Negative traits: - brace Name of Upgrade/Module: No quarter flag Positive traits: + attack + muskets Negative traits: - defend - brace Name of Upgrade/Module: Honor flag Positive traits: + defend + brace Negative traits: - fire deck guns - fire grenades SWIVELS Name of Upgrade/Module: Light swivels Positive traits: + attack Negative traits: - fire deck guns Name of Upgrade/Module: heavy swivels Positive traits: + fire deck guns Negative traits: - attack

confirmation of bermudas ports localisation : http://hpics.li/bb85053 http://hpics.li/ce2b7ab http://hpics.li/6ccf2f6

logbook 15 January 10h20 "departure from Fort Royal" 15 January 16h30 "Engaged by a british Surprise frigate at 14°53'38.1"N 61°56'37.0"W end of battle at 16h47" 16 January 7h10 "Engaging a pirate navy brig at 16°25'00.9"N 62°42'53.0"W pirate navy brig sunk at 7h23 pirate brig sunk at 7h34 end of battle 7h34" 16 January 19h25 "reached Plymouth port after 2 days of sailing"

Not long ago, i had the occasion to capture a Renommee frigate. During the fight, i made a gun explode, the ship started burning and finally exploded. After boarding it, i took control of it. It was completely demasted, the side armor was blown away, it had half armor on one side and one fourth on the other, there was a lot of damage all around the ship. Excepted the cannons, all were intact.

No, ai doesn't seem to fight under same rule as for cannon damage. I usually aim specifically at gunport level, and their gun number don't change. At the same time, i can lose as much as 25% of a broadside, and even have guns disabled from the opposite side i'm taking damage. A couple patch ago, i could occasionnally make a cannon explode, but it doesn't happen anymore. The only times i see ai guns made unable to fire is when they start to sink and the lower decks are under water. Making a F11 screen of this is quite hard as what happens is, precisely, nothing... Hard to tell if something should have been disabled and isn't, especially with the smoke and without the ability to pause the game.

No problem with constitution being US only as long as we get a La surveillante class frigate...

i have started thinking the same, the rank progression isn't adapted, we need something to encourage players to play smaller ships, especially in the 5-6th rate range.

So, I thought a lot about open world map and what could be done with it, and how exploration could be integrated in the game with these map mechanisms. Here is how I think that open world map and exploration could together to give the game a sailing navigation feel and reward explorers. The open sea map : My vision of the open sea map is a map with only the land mass, and a grid to help determine the longitude and latitude on map. No port, nothing beside landmass, the islands, the shores, that’s all. Then, everything on this map could be added by annotations, let call them bookmarks. There could be three kind of bookmarks, with different purpose. Also, the map wouldn’t show your ship position, to know where you are, I imagine a navigation skill with 30 minutes cooldown that would allow you to know where you are by giving you your longitude and latitude, up to you after to check on your map where it is. Precision and cooldown could be affected by special items owned by the captain, like various quality sextants and marine chronometers for example. The Port bookmarks : A beginning player would have a few bookmarks on its map, mainly the closest ports from its starting port. Then, there would be two ways of adding a port to your map, either buy navigation maps of certain parts of the west indies that would add ports to your map, or explore yourself to add ports as you reach them (every time you enter a new port, it adds a bookmark). The personal bookmarks : Every player could place personal bookmarks on its map. These marks would be only for its information and for navigation purposes. I suggest that each player should be able to see on open world the position of its bookmarks, so he can use them as visual helps for navigation. Each player would only see its personal bookmark, so the open world and map would not be overloaded with infos from other players. To get a better effect on open see, it could be possible to chose when placing the bookmark how it shows in open world, as some sort of buoy for a sea bookmark, or as some object like a wreck, a temple, a distinctive rock, a tree, a lighthouse, a ruin for a land bookmark. Additionnally, these personal bookmarks could be copied and exchanged with other players (like the old eve online bookmarks) , so they could share meeting points or location of places of interest. Exploration bookmarks : These would also be kind of personal as no two players would have the same, and as they would show on map as on open world only for the concerned player. However, these marks would not be placed by the player but would be generated by the system according to the exploration game (I speak of this after). These bookmarks would represent localization of ressources that would reward players for exploration, they would stay as long as there are ressources left on it, or as long as the layer keep that bookmark. It could be erased, but also could be exchanged, with the difference that only one player at a time could have the bookmark, so it wouldn’t be possible to copy them, only to transfer them to someone (sell them). The bookmark would not only show the location of the ressources, but also their type and remaining number (to reduce chances of scam, like let sell bookmarks with only one resource remaining). The exploration game : Every player, upon discovering a new port or exploration landmark, could earn exploration experience. Along with its combat rank, he could have an exploration rank that would give him, as it raise, access to more places to explore. A player with a given rank would have generated for him, in the open world, a given number of exploration places. They would be personal and no two players would have the same. The players would not know where they are, just that there’s something that wait to be discovered by them somewhere. These places would be shown on that player open world as some sort of object, just like a personal bookmark. Each such place would contain ressources that the player could take, that’s the reward. Every time a player exhaust an exploration place by taking all the ressources, another one could be automatically generated so the player always have the same amount of places to be discovered. When checking the exploration place, a bookmark would be automatically generated for him so he can come back later, or in the case he want to sell the bookmark to another player. In that case, the buying player would get the bookmark added to its map with the corresponding place in open world, while the selling player would have that bookmark and places deleted and a new one generated. The exploration rank would be different for each part of the world so a player that is a top explorer in west indies would still be a novice explorer the first time he goes to Europe (and vice versa).

Carronades were introduced at the end of 18th century, and became obsolete during 19th century. The fact is that they were only useful at point blank range and that the development of naval artillery quickly made the range of engagement greater as the gun was quickly winning its race against armor efficiency. The current carronades we have currently in game have nothing in common with the real ones. The real ones wouldn't damage hulls like they do here, they were mostly used to decimate the ennemy crews at close range before boarding. For this, they were great. But once it became too dangerous to approach in range of cannons again, carronades just stopped being used. I think that the importance of carronades in the current game is too big, and that it could use some tweaking if we want the game to give them a place more according to the one they had historically.

there are so many discussions everywhere, i'll link it

First, sorry for all the english bad grammar and vocabulary, it isn't my first language Well, i have been thinking about ganking, how it works in other games, how it is adressed in other gaming environments, and how it could and should work here. The first part in my reflexion was understanding why people gank. Some may find it obvious, but understanding what it’s really about is a mandatory step in looking how to handle the phenomena and keep it under some sort of control. ========== So, why do people gank? To win? For rewards? Of course, ganking is all about winning, but it goes farther than the usual winning spirit, ganking isn’t just about winning, it’s more about crushing the opposition with overwhelming strength. Do you need to gank to win? Of course not, just a couple advantages in combat are usually enough to ensure your win. Concerning the reward, it seem obvious that by having to share the same amount of gold/xp/loot among a greater number of players, the reward can only be lower than in fair battles. So we can assume that the usual rewards aren’t what the gankers are looking for. So, why gankers gank? The answer may be in the various battle reports that can be found posted by gankers in forums. Most of the time, when I read such battle reports, the main motivation of the poster seem to be the ultimate humiliation of the opponent. In fact, I noticed that nothing make a ganker happier than to have made someone ragequit the game. This being said, why ganking is bad and should be restrained? It is obvious that for those of us that plan to invest in a game for a long time, having the game successful and attracting other players is a must. It’s also obvious that for a game company, attracting players and retaining them is good for profit. Two reasons why having a pool of players whose intent is to humiliate other players to the point that they ragequit the game is a bad idea. It’s a bad idea for long term players, and it’s a bad idea for game developpers. ========== So, enough reflexion, now I had to ask myself the ultimate question: what can be done? Enforcing “fair” battles according to battle value or number of participants is generally unsatisfactory and open the game the another plague, the griefing. Reducing the rewards for gankers seem also totally pointless as they obviously think that their ultimate reward is their opponent humiliation. They really don’t care that much about xp and gold, so they don’t care either about their reduction. That makes things hard to have the gankers think twice before ganking, doesn’t it? So, I had to think about the various ressources in game, and which one would really affect all payers, including gankers. That’s when I thought about a universal resource in all games, one that is vital into the gameplay design : time The amount of time a player have to play is limited, and he naturally want to get the most for its playing time. So, why not make gankers lose time? At that point, I started to have a lot of ideas coming (yeah, I’m a genius!!!). The first idea that come to mind is, of course, a “ganking cooldown”. Once the ganking battle is over, have the gankers waste time by locking them into battle for some time until they can leave and look for another target. You can also make it progressive, the bigger the gank, the more they outnumber/outpower their opponents, the more time they stay locked. Then, I started to think about what could be done with that time. Something that nobody likes, including gankers, is to be ganked, of course. They want to humiliate others, not to be humiliated themselves. So, why not using this time to prepare them their own medicine? In faction games, factions tend to care for their own, and while they don’t care for other factions getting ganked, they certainly tend to take action to ensure their faction isn’t ganked. If someone is getting ganked somewhere, a faction will tend to assemble other players to chase off the gankers. By locking the gankers in their initial battle, you can give that faction time to react and prepare for retaliation. All they need, is to know there was a gank, where it was, and when it occurred. Of course, someone ganked can give these informations in faction chat, but newbies and non English speaking players may have trouble communicating efficiently. So, as we have a mechanism to lock the gankers into battle, why not have the system make that information available for everyone in the faction? You can even go farther, and ensure the people that come to gank the gankers aren’t victims of the same game mechanic. Instead of having them start a whole new battle with the gankers, you can reopen the locked battle shortly before end of lock, and make it so if people enter the battle at that stage, it restart the battle timer. The good points about making it that way is that it will make gankers lose more time and protect the retaliation force from the antiganking mechanism. ========== Well, I believe that ends my suggestion for ganking. It doesn’t prevent people from ganking, but bring consequences for doing it. I also left aside discussion about the exact point when fairness ends and ganking starts. This is number crushing that is more for the devs to decide.

The poll isn't really clear... i voted yes to remove the names over ships, at least ennemy ones.

On aura peut être le choix dans la personnalisation des navires, ou verra bien

Napoléon c'est 1805, et les bateaux vont de 1690 a 1790, non?

i chose four : open world prototype full line of ships crew management officer management

Ce qui veut dire que 90% des plans fournis par la communauté sont, à priori, illégaux. Seule solution, s'adresser aux musées et fonds d'archives directement.

Ah oui pardon, c'est bien un 80 canons mais ce n'est pas un classe tonnant, il est venu juste avant, et en fait les Tonnant reprennent certaines de ses caractéristiques et non l'inverse.

I'm against health bars, there are already plenty of ways to know if a ship is crippled or not, and it can only improve as more details are added. I think battles would be far more interesting without these health bars.

J'ai rassemblé ici les quelques pavillons que j'avais créés pour POTBS :