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I don't see the point of having this QoL feature as part of the perk selection to be honest. I am fairly certain no ship was sent to sea without navigation tools at the time the game is supposed to take place. We also have other workarounds to tell us our location and thus the perk is only QoL and even if trader tool, coords and everything else will be removed eventually, almost everyone will run Sextant perk anyways, so what's the point? I'd much rather have the sextant perk as default but maybe not as accurate as it is now, it should give a more general location instead of pinpoint accurate GPS.

Navigation in open world seems to be a challenge for new players and few of them are complaining about it. For me it is a part of game play that i enjoy and find very unique. So i decided to compose this guide for everybody so that they can enjoy the navigation as i do (hopefully). The situation is clear. There is no pointer in the game that would tell you your position and it can be hard for somebody to navigate. 1) Attitude I think most important is how do you approach the fact there is no pointer in map and travel is not super easy. a) It is a challenge, it is not so hard and you will learn how to do it. Difficult things make games fun and learning new things is fun. And this is not so difficult, there are no currents, the wind has constant speed etc. Getting from point A to point B it is an achievement. Be proud of yourself. You are sailor now. Not some kid playing MMO with **** arrow on ground navigating to another quest. You are better. c) Navigation for historical sailors was important and it wasn't without problems. It is immersive. You can feel like real sailor. d) Enjoy that you get lost. It is an adventure. You will get into unpredictable situations. It is fun. It is experience. It is unique. You will have stories to tell. Once i wanted to travel to Philipsburg but I ended in from of Gustavia, the capital of Swedes, our enemies. They attacked me before i could even approach the port to see its name. I was faster and i managed to escape. Then they attacked me when i wanted to get away. Four ships against my noob cutter. I realized i am not in the trading whip i wanted anyway and i wasted 10 minutes of sailing (lol moment) so i gave them their battle. I damaged two of them very hard and scored 2x my hp of damage before they sunk me. Got very nice xp afterwards. I would never experience it with GPS navigation. 2) How to do it a) Keep attention to your surroundings. Always compare what you see with the map and always try to determine your current position. Try to guess the isle you can see by the looks of the shoreline. The map is accurate and represents it correctly. Also you will look at Caribbean. It is beautiful. There are navigation points on map everywhere - ports on every mile of the coast. When you see a city name, you know exactly where on map you are. c) When leaving port, look at map and decide where you want to go. Look at the direction (north, west etc.) and plan your path. You should always see navigation points, shore and ports on your way. d) There is a compass and it is your best friend. Use it. e) Before entering battle, remember your position and also how the shores around you look etc. It will come handy when you go out of battle and feel disoriented. f) Don't go to open see unless you feel really comfortable with navigation. g) When you need to go west for example and the wind blows in opposite direction, go NW and then switch to SW for the same time period. This way you don't deviate from general west direction. h) Print a map of Caribbean or the are you sail in and put it on your desk. You can make notes on it etc. Maybe I will put the map here in future or some helpful developer share it with us... I am a bit tired after week of work, also English is not my mother language so pleas feel free to point out any misspelling, factual error or bring your ideas, you are welcomed. Also if you make/made guide for new players and find information in this one helpful, please link it in your guide or feel free to copy the text. The downside of copying text is that you wont have updates if i make them. Edit: Changed "sees" to "seas" in topic :-D

Prologe: Current NA Navigation is based on straight lines if not other extern tools are used like Stopwatch, certain extern maps, f11 coordinates (that will vanish with release). But what if i want to sail to a destination that is direct into the wind. Currently we have 2 options stay on course and be slow. Or do it realistic and tack. The 2nd option is lacking some tools in my opinion therefore... Suggestion: Lets introduce the hourglass an ingame Event timer This tool will allow the captain to keep track on time spend on a certain heading and notify the next tack to keep on track. Pros: makes OW navigation easier Cons: more UI stuff

The in-game compass rose currently has tick marks every 15 degrees, which means that the full circle is divided into 24 pieces. With the current in-game compass, there are two tick marks between North and Northeast, dividing this space up into thirds. A traditional compass rose is divided into 32 points. Each point has a specific name. Halfway between North and East is Northeast. Halfway between North and Northeast is North by East. The traditional 32-point compass is a cornerstone of age-of-sail lore. It appears everywhere, including books, paintings, carvings, tattoos, and everywhere else imaginable. To connect this back to the in-game compass, there needs to be either one or three tick marks between North and Northeast. The current in-game compass has two tick marks between North and Northeast. The current in-game compass makes it very difficult to use traditional terminology when interacting with other players. This seemingly minor thing has a massive impact on immersion. Changing the in-game compass seems like it should be an incredibly easy thing to change. It's just a single image file. Making this change would be a small investment, and would be quite a substantial positive impact on immersion.

Hi there, The recent national rework that saw most ports revert to neutral control was perhaps logical for PvP but makes little sense for PvE where port conquest is not an option. My perception is that PvE is more of an environment for players who generally operate outside of clans/groups and on their own--much as single cruisers (frigates, sloops of war, commerce raiders) did in the Age of Sail. As such, the national structure is more important to PvE than PvP, which is now experimenting with a much more clan-centric model that explicitly requires conquest. It would be great if the PvE server could see ports revert to national control and orient itself around the activities of cruising warships rather than battle fleets. This could harness the open world by including historically realistic trade routes (the British, for example, sent their convoys outbound from the British isles to Barbados, to Jamaica, and homeward bound from Jamaica to Belize, around Cuba by the Florida Strait, and across the Atlantic by way of Nassau and Bermuda) for commerce raiding, and adding new categories of missions like convoy escort and attack (which would encourage players to take more full use of the open world map by sailing longer distances), and single/multiple-ship (i.e. not fleets) port raids (which would deliver goods and prize money, and possibly ships in the case of a cutting-out expedition). These would require the restoration of national control over ports, and in the case of the long-distance commerce-related missions, a means of plotting positions on the chart with a similar resolution as can be accomplished with a sextant and chronometer in open ocean (so something similar to, perhaps slightly less accurate than the previous GPS-like system, but much more accurate than the current, rather unhelpful dead-reckoning only method). Many thanks--

I have some suggestions for some elements I'd really enjoy in the game. 1. Navigation I love the idea of exploring the open world map, but it's very boring and time consuming, and it can get a bit difficult at times. Having more navigation tools would make it a more immersive and rewarding experience. My suggestions are as follows: - you should be able to plot a course on the map, more than just a straight course with a protractor (if you need to follow a winding course next to land masses) - re-introduce the ship's present coordinates. Back in the day they would perform daily noon observations to work out latitude, and they had chronometers for the longitude... It doesn't have to be super accurate, but for example every day at noon the ship's current position can be obtained (if it's not cloudy or raining) and a cross placed on the map, so you can see where you are. dead reckoning with just orienting by islands is not enough, and it's too tedious. - a wonderful example of navigation tools is the implementation in silent hunter 3. again, it doesn't have to be super accurate, and indeed errors can be introduced, for example proportional to the number of times the ship changes course, turns, etc, and an error can also be associated with the noon observation? 2. Crew I think that for a really immersive age of sail experience, there should be more adequate crew uniforms. A captain pacing the quarterdeck would be really cool, and maybe even marines firing muskets when engaged battle, officers giving orders to the gun crews etc... If officers or the captain are killed, a morale shock can take place. At the moment the crew looks like a bunch of golfers taking their yacht out for a spin...

Hi there, Could you please bring back the position tool in the map screen? Mariners in the 18th century would have been able to get a fix at sea with a reasonable degree of accuracy using celestial navigation, sextants, sun shots and the like--it wasn't all dead reckoning like the present in-game system. Without this tool players cannot take long cruises and end game sessions out of sight of land lest they come back and not know where they are--which given navigational technology in the game period, is ahistorical. Many thanks--

The protractor is a fine tool, but what about giving us the possibility to draw circles on the map? What would really be fine is a tool that would allow us to chose circle center position, then it's radius. If we can do this with three circles, it gives us the capacity to try to guess our position by triangulation from our distance from ports, since they are given in the trading tool.

I'm still not sure why the map coordinates were done away with, I am sure there was some issues with exploits on the PvP server, but I don't think those issues are relevant on the PvE server. So, would people want to see the coordinates back on the PvE server?

I was wondering if you like or dislike the navigation grid or is historical value more important.

To everyone who has been supporting my little trading company. We spent several weeks at Savanna la Mar. Each day reviewing and judging the markets and trying to determine a decent cargo for our run to the west. Eventually we made the trip under clear skies. We were happy to see lots of British ships off the west coast of the main island. Cheers to everyone who patrols Jamaica. Soon we were all alone on the open water with no land in sight. I’m starting to like it out there where we can see so far. This ship (The Little Tuck) is really fast. We arrived in Cayman Brac, sold our cargo and established an outpost. Here they love Caribbean Goods and in La Navasse they like Pirate Goods. I made 4 delivery orders from here to Navasse and am eager to find out if they survived the trip and what the profit will be. I've had lots of people give me advice about how to make the deliveries work and I have my fingers crossed I was successful. Should know when I reach La Navasse in a couple weeks. If they worked well I’ll set up some deliveries (of Caribbean Goods) back to the Caymans. If they didn't work I've squandered a huge part of my net worth. I have also received a letter from The British R. Admiral Young encouraging me to sail soon to Castries. He says there is lots of action there as it is close to the front. I’m not sure why he thinks that a simple trader like myself would want to be near action. It sounds dangerous and risky. But the crew are all excited and think we should go. It is a long trip from La Navasse to Castries. Two weeks unbroken sailing on one straight heading. Much longer if we have to run from hostile foe. On the way we can stop at the local ports and clean up my outstanding contracts. Who knows when we will be back this way.

Hi there, Right now in the open world map the coordinates are given as longitude, latitude. This is somewhat confusing, as in real world navigation coordinates are always given as latitude, longitude. If this could be addressed in the next patch that would be most wonderful. Thanks--

Hello captains, I've been playing NA on and off since January and would like to give a few suggestion based on my background irl (active tall ship sailor and occasional computer game player). First I must say that I really enjoyed playing this game when I have time, specially for the realistic battle where wind tactics allow to take over your opponent, but also the open world and the crafting/trading system. However there are few points that I would like to comment on, and give my opinion. Two minor incoherence concerning the map and navigation system: - In the map window the coordinates start with the longitude West. irl it would always start with Latitude North or South. For me (and I guess for other players with navigation background) it is hard to get used to it. - On the wind direction and ship direction diagram (bottom right in OW, bottom left in battle): the wind direction arrow is pointing on the compass where the wind is going to, not where the wind is coming from. Same here, irl the convention is the opposite and would show the direction from where the wind is coming (see image of a conventional instrument plotter, wind is represented as the yellow arrow with letter T). Concerning the open world navigation system. I would suggest the development of a more realistic navigation system including wind direction change and wind patterns, currents, leeway, weather changes, clock system for longitude, poor latitude position in case of overcast (cannot fix the sun with the sextant) etc.. Making a more realistic navigation system would attract a lot of people from the traditional sailing community that would see this game as a simulator from the age of sails. Moreover I've been reading a lot of complains on the forum about long and boring OW navigation. A more realistic navigation system would bring more dynamics to the OW and offer more challenges and tactical decision, making long OW navigation more fun. I know that represents a huge amount of work for developers, but might be worth considering. That's my suggestion for this wonderful game. Developers keep on the good work!

Simple navigation tools could be made to mark the map. Or a different navigation chart on which we can write on. Simple tools; Pencil Ruler (to scale if possible) Protractor Eraser One could plot the actual course of a vessel on high seas (cross-referencing the map coordinates) on a seperate chart (or simply write on the world map). Sail-on!

И это не сарказм. Еще с ранних тестов игры многие заметили что ориентироваться в открытом мире с успехом можно при помощи окна баг репорта F11. Система координат в игре представляет собой Х(горизонталь) и Z(вертикаль) значений положения камеры(не корабля!). Отсчет ведется от нуля по центру карты, ровно под Ямайкой, рядом с британским портом Carlisle. Соответственно: влево идет -X, вправо;Х, вверх:Z, вниз:-Z. Моей целью было создание прототипа карты, позволяющего с помощью показаний по F11 без помощи каких либо сторонних утилит-онлайн карт, точно определять свое место положение. Каждый здравомыслящий игрок может без труда ориентироваться. И подобная система является идеальным образцом порядка навигации. Не хватает разве что минимального набора: карандаша и ластика для отметок на карте. Огромная благодарность XpointAX и @slik за помощь и содействие! Предыстория карты: P.S Карта в "альфа" версии, постепенно думаю приведу ее к более лучшему виду.

It is clear that navigation tools are conspicuous by their absence, especially on a player’s initial experience with the Open World. I too noticed it immediately when OW started 6+ months ago. Rough count has 13 active threads on the topic in the last 2 weeks. I hope this qualifies for a sticky post. However, let me lend you the voice of some experience. TL;DR: Shut the $*&%!@* up about navigation debates. Instead, try out the player-made tools and give the community feedback in the Maps subforum.. I think the tools we and others have built can help the community to move the conversation in a productive direction. IMHO the player made tools can be seen as prototypes of what you all are asking for and debating about. Background: Early in OW members of TDA charted the whole world as you see it now with no tools other than the XZ co-ordinate system. (The F11 function was critical to that effort) We visited every port multiple times, and followed every coastline We built some experimental tools that would blow your mind, but which were completely anachonistic and are now obsolete. Points on which we all agree: No one in their right mind wants an exact position. Instead, we want tools that feel like what mariners of the era had. It’s a pain to be lost at sea. It happens to us in the game when we’re not careful. Facts: The game world is FLAT. This means that straight lines, the in-game compass and the distance formula we learned in school are sufficient for navigating from a known location. There is no leeway, no compass error, no currents or tides. This is not true in the real world which is why chronometers, sextants and tedious math were needed. The in-game maps and the compass have enough accuracy that all but the longest journeys to small targets are risk-free. (The one challenge is getting to Bermuda. But if you notice, a course due east from Wilmington bisects the islands.) Opinions: Fancy in-game navigation tools beyond heading lines will quickly get tiresome. There is no skill involved in taking a noon-sight with a sextant, only the possibility of error. If the game forces the occasional error, we’d get frustrated and just go with dead reckoning. This is my opinion based on thousands of sea miles over many months of playing I reject the idea that mini-games about finding our way will have any staying power or interest. Recognizing that the NEW PLAYER experience is important, I can strongly recommend the realistic behavior of STICKING to the COAST until you are comfortable venturing out of sight of land. It won't take you long. There is a LEGITIMATE desire for a convenient way to see course headings, so that captains know what course to steer. There are several of these tools made by players, and you can make your own using any drawing tools you want: Paper & Pencil, MSPaint, PowerPoint, and hundreds of better tools. You can even hold a protractor up to your flat screen monitor!! There is a LEGITIMATE desire to judge travel times. We had this on an earlier version of TDAMap, and I am considering re-implementing it. (The map makers on this forum have recently agreed on a shared definition of distance and speed, so our various implementations will be consistent in the times we give you. Domox has one now.) You can even hold a ruler up to your (on-screen) map and determine the distance and thus the travel time for you own ship. That's what real mariners did. Remember, the world is FLAT. Accounting for wind direction is a MINI-GAME you can play in your head. If you are concerned about getting LOST AT SEA, use techniques that are similar to what real navigators used: Write down your position and heading occasionally in a LOG BOOK, so when you forget if your battle was off Almeria or Almirante you’ll have notes to look at. For those wanting REALISTIC TOOLS, this is about as realistic as it gets. Head in the direction of known land, duh. Try out the noon sight feature at TDAmap.com and post your feedback here. My Rants: For heaven’s sake, stop filling the forums with new threads and debates about the obvious. Instead, look at the available tools and tell us how well they work for you and whether or not you find their implementations useful, convenient, and sufficiently realistic. I sincerely hope this moves the discussion FORWARD, and PERHAPS gives the developers some good material to work with IF they choose to implement an in-game feature.

Hi dear Developers. I write this post to give some ideas about oceanic navigation in OW. One of the best things in this game is that it was GPS less, (excepting 3rds apps like vedmed map and others). But the map included is very simple and we don't have any tool to navigate properly. You should use a better and map and add to it some tools like a ruler, a protractor, a pen, a drawing compass and a clock. To allow this you should take out the F11 coordinates tool or change the mechanics to be able to use it only sometimes in a day. You should put some 3d landmarks in main islands, capes and gulfs like towers or lighhouses (maybe with a name over them like in the ports) The OW spyglass should have a compass to know where are you looking at. Thanks

I like the navigation as is, its part of the history to me, what I find missing is land features seen from the sea. They would of had some written accounts of land features seen from the sea. ridges, mountains. Maybe the map could put noticeable features mountain top elevation marks etc. Alesfred

I think if you have visited a port before the name should be visible as soon as the port is. Realistically, it would be marked on the ships charts so you would know it.

Greetings, I realize this has probably been suggested in the past, but I’d like to throw in my cents on the matter. I believe we need implement a spyglass when we’re on the world map, perhaps one that you purchase for gold, this would be both sensible and reasonable considering the state of navigation at the present time (I adore how we can’t see ourselves on the map). To have a spyglass might also add somewhat to the immersion of the game, and certainly ease the navigation, at least a little bit- After all.. You might spot land from a greater distance if you have such a thing, and if you spot land you can work out a rough estimate of where you are. The second thing I’d like to suggest is the ability to open and close the gunports on our ship, this might not appear as a big deal, but it does have an element of pure awesome to it, there you are- Sailing up alongside a trader or enemy- And suddenly you open your gunports and the cannons slide out- The showman in me can’t help but adore such a thought. Such a suggestion would not be purely for show however, one could add a small increase to speed from traveling with them closed, after all- Cannons slid out of the ship will cause more drag resistance against the wind, and therefore slow you down in comparison to the other guy. So yes, these are my two suggestions, and why I'd like to see them added. Please vote on the poll.

Even though I can somewhat see the charm of trying to find out your position on the open sea and such, there's really in my opinion a need for at least some crude navigation aid. If you are about to meet up with someone, or if you're out in on the open sea in search of a mission while there's a fog, having somewhat a clue of where you are wouldn't only be helpful, it would also be logical since I assume that on these vessels we sail, one of the crewmembers will be a navigator. Of course, it's important for the captain to know navigation as well, but the expert should be the navigator, or he could be called First mate as well. For these reasons, I suggest the following: A permanent crew member, the navigator/first mate, who individually gain XP and progress. This person start out as a true rookie, having more or less no clue what's rear and front of a boat, but has been assigned the role of navigator. Twice every hour (30 minutes cooldown skill) you can on the map ask for your position, wich will then be referred to you as a circle. With a rookie navigator/first mate, this circle would not only be pretty damn big, there could also be an offset in N/W/E/S direction. Offset and position circle increases the further away from land you are and/or the longer you've been at sea (up to a max value) As this person gains skill, the offset will get less and eventually go away completely, and the circle will be gradually smaller An expert navigator/first mate will give a position with no offset and with a small circle, giving you very good information on where you are The navigator/first mate will be positioned near the rudder wheel of course, and can in battle if this part of the crew is hit get killed, say a 5% chance. If that happens, a new crew member is called into this duty after the battle, and this person start out as a rookie on navigation, and will have to gain the XP and progress again. If the ship is sunk, there's a chance (10%?) that the navigator/first mate drowns. If so, a new crew member is called into duty and start out as a rookie on navigation. edit: added suggestions.

I really appreciate not having my position pinpointed in the map, it really adds to immersion in the game, but can not understand why we are indeed worst equiped than our historical counterparts, as they can accurately calculate latitude (i.e. map-y coordinate) with a sextant and a clock.

I love that there is no icon on the map to show your position and I love the gameplay spirit that this creates: one of having to navigate for yourself just like the captains of the day.I think though, that the current system of OW navigation is too simplistic and could be improved without making something so complex as to be a turn-off. I propose that a ships’s log mechanic be introduced into the game, along with the ability to mark the in-game map. I would also love to see leeway added to ships but I suspect that this idea has already been rejected by the devs or we would have it in game. SO: how would the ship’s log work? At appropriate intervals your log would record your average course and distance travelled for that period. This would build up into a table of records with which you could plot your course and (if done well) derive your near exact position on the map. (Let’s not forget that, far from being lost in the open ocean a good Captain of this age had the tools to accurately fix their position on the globe within a very few metres). Plotting your position Give players the ability to freely add simple symbols to the map: I suggest an ‘x’ and a line. I would love to see this skinned as a pair of dividers and a pencil Taking distance and bearing information from their log, players would mark their point of departure and then plot the information from the log on to their map resulting in a series of marks giving them a good idea of their current position even when out of sight of land. For example: I've marked an x on my map at my last know location e.g. Kingston. As I move my cursor away from this x the UI tells me the length and bearing of the line that I am drawing. I match this to my ship's log, placing another x and repeating the process for each log entry to build up my course. Not sure if you've sailed past that mission in the fog? Are you just being impatient or might you need to turn around? Now you know: reassure yourself by plotting your course on the map! Advanced players could even fix their point of departure EXACTLY by taking bearings from headlands in the OW view and plotting intersecting lines on the map! Other minor tweaks needed The ability to take a bearing when sailing in OW would be nice. This might either mean a change to the compass UI to give you a bearing as you pan the camera, or an additional tool like a hand-bearing compass view (similar to the spyglass view from battles) which would allow you to take your bearings. I hope you’ll agree with me that this would be a great addition to OW navigation and add meaningfully to the gameplay.

Not sure if this has been suggested before, but I would like to see a representation of elevations on the map. In other words, so you can see hills on the map and once you get within viewing distance of a landmass you can work out which hill is which. Not asking for much detail just a rough representation. Don't get me wrong I like the no aids Navigation in the game, I actually use a protractor to navigate, but a hill or two would be nice to help find your way when you are near the coast.