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Yet another map which uses the in-game map and live data: na-map. I hope this map is useful and I am happy to receive any feedback (bugs, feature requests). Source on github. Changelog

*****G'day. I now have enough time in-game to offer advice. Here's a substantial list of suggestion topics. Points to raise as suggestions- batch 1 *Manual target selection options; I want to be able to launch just one launcher at a given target. I'd like to be able to fire each *tube* individually, but I'll settle for each launcher. I don't need my destroyers emptying their entire stockpile into a transport that only needs one or two. Ties into another idea; where mouse-overing a weapon icon would bring up a separate simplified ship display that only displays that weapon type, say two inch single mounts (current display is too busy to easily read; look at World of Warships for inspiration). To complete implementation, I want to be able to click that weapon icon, locking open the simplified display screen, and then assign a target to each of those weapons by clicking them and then a target. Applies to guns too. For double points, make the individual weapons display individually show reload status for each mount (I suggest green colouration for ready to fire, fading from red through yellow when freshly discharged and reloading, and have them blink purple when they're currently bearing on a target they can reach, or blink pink when they can't bear on their selected target). I can never remember, in a heated battle, which torpedo launchers have fired and which are ready to engage, and the current display only displays the *longest* cooldown for that weapon type which is very unhelpful. *I also want a manual firing solution order to fire torpedoes on your personal command- select a bearing, watch the torpedo aiming reticule appear telling you were the AI would fire if it was commanding them, and you can manually fire with a "fire now!" button once the launchers train, roughly when those torpedoes line up with the targeting line (this allows targeting the AI ships doing the incredibly effective steady slow turn tactic to avoid all AI-fired torpedoes by firing them inside the AI commander's targeting line, thus predicting where that curve will take them). in general, the launchers will work better if selecting a torpedo target pre-trains the tubes in that direction, as I wouldn't need to have an agonising wait between authorising torpedo release and those launchers having to turn from travel positions to firing positions, which often causes me to lose my destroyer unnecessarily. The alternative is to let those destroyer miss wildly if left to their own suicidal devices. Seriously, around a quarter of my fleet at most will have launch authority at any given time as they don't anticipate friendly vessels occluding their path or backlighting the target. *The underwater tubes are often unresponsive even when presented a perfect target at point-blank range, and have no 'having to traverse into position" excuse. Widen their firing arcs to correct this for gameplay reasons. At least thirty degrees for all mounts, but I'd prefer fourty, twenty either direction. *Display torpedo launcher current orientation with green shadows on battlefield when each launcher icon is mouse-overed (so we can tell where the damn things are pointing) and have them show red as they traverse through parts of their firing arc when they can't fire without landing a live torpedo on your deck. Again, to reduce frustratedly yelling "Fire, damn you!" at our captains as we all so often do when there's no explanation for why they're not doing so. *Allow avoid torpedoes button for ships not in a division. If the AI gets torpedo evasion hacks I want them too, while controlling all other ship functions. I'm going to use manual control almost all the time but mate sometimes the battle winds up in three or more places and I can't be everywhere at once. Effectively, as a fold-out menu from the AI Control button we have now, I want the full "AI Control" button, and I want an"AI Helm Control" only button, in addition to an "AI Guns Control" button and finally an "AI Torpedo Control" button, in case one feels suicidal. Two of the latter three buttons should be able to be turned on simultaneously, but selecting all three just flicks the ship over to the first full ship command button. *Have a button for detach all ships from divisions (to save pointless micro at start of every battle). Better yet have an option in the pre-battle screen to detach all or even better create your own formations and place them in the positions you want. *All weapons should be capable of independent firing- if a ship has secondaries (or spare primaries) on it's other side, I want them to fire on any targets of opportunity they see, instead of being only able to target one thing per entire type. I see my cruisers and battleships just ignoring free targets because they're focusing all the secondaries (which I remind you ring the ship's superstructure) on something else of their other side. It's even possible for the ship to be locked onto a craft it can't bear on, leaving them silenced entirely, when other valid targets existed. Effectively, I want a behaviour coded to take guns currently out of axis of engagement to engage whatever it can reach, unless under player direction. *Unrestrict barbettes. Entirely. I want to place them wherever they'll fit. Screw whatever dumb idea it was to implement them in current form. *Unrestrict number of main guns placeable on early ships. *Allow use of outdated techs, weapons, towers and hulls. I want to use 200 tonne torpedo boats late-game. Also I may have reason to use old hulls for other things, and I certainly can want to use cheaper components for some vessels to save costs. Furthermore I *hate* being forced to use only one of each tower module simply because the devs decided to tie a noose around my creativity's neck- this game has strong creativity tool elements, *don't* restrict them. It's counterproductive and indefensible from a design perspective to remove older options that either look better or better suit my current design needs. On a related note: *I'd like non-barbeted options for all towers that have built-in barbettes with the same stats excepting lower weight. Keep the secondary mounts- I would like more of those actually. But I have to go many towers back in the quality list (assuming you even left me that option) to get weaker towers to mount my heavier guns without having a mixed main armament. Of course, having those towers open a fold-out menu that offers different barbette sizes including none would be just perfect.. *Build times should be affected by cost. My five million dollar escort-type destroyers should not take as long to build as my thirty million or fifty million dollar super-specialised destroyers. *RADAR and hydrophones should be modules, not a modifier to towers. Adding RADAR to a destroyer still leaves it essentially legally blind for spotting purposes, and that's not how that worked historically. Further, it shouldn't cost a thousand tonnes plus to add RADAR to larger ships. Have them be attachable modules that fit into specialised slots on towers and under hulls instead- with towers limited by modernity and size to mount larger RADAR systems, often with a spare on the back with less range and maybe some side ones to aid fire control or short-range spotting, and hydrophones and SONAR being mounted under the hull- again, with at least two slots please, so hydrophones can be combined with SONAR to get maximal short range detection and overall better close range coverage but also keep the wide search value from a SONAR, the same way I envisage multiple RADARS of different sizes all acting together to increase detection chance for each RADAR spotting and how close they are versus their detection profile. No graphics needed for hydrophones but spinning receiver dishes would be appreciated. *Would like to be able to armour magazines in addition to current options, to reduce flash-fire and detonation chances, and effectively permit the use of increased shell and torpedo complements and heavier shells without being a particularly impressive firecracker. Sometimes, the weight would be very worth it... *Would like modern torpedo boat hulls, please. They'd be a lot easier to add than subs... *Would like to advise caution in sub and carrier implementation; sub encounters are shockingly boring most of the time in other comparable games. Carriers could trash all balance very quickly too. I was enjoying just having surface combatants sans carriers, y'know... *Would like to alter how transports are implemented. Instead of them being "universal" and auto-generating at each encounter, I'd like to be able to build them myself (with adjustable hull sizes and preferably several different hull options), so I can personally choose to arm every transport in the dang fleet to the teeth, and/or give them RADAR and underwater detection. Further I want to control them- start them as they are, already retreating, just let me over-ride their orders as needed- I'm meant to be the ultimate admiral, after all. I can make use of some armed transports in some of those battles. Would also like to be able to build dedicated Q-ships and use them either offensively or defensively. To implement, have a second fleet tab for merchant ships under the fleet menu. When a convoy is created, each route should pull ships from this pool as needed, selecting either the cheapest ships by operating costs, the most defensible ships, the fastest, or can be manually swapped out with whatever the AI selected to make mixed fleets before being created. With each merchant ship being tracked individually- Q-ships (or normal transports, if one desires) should be able to be transferred into use as normal warships, albeit poor ones, and presumably in desperation or for ploys. Conversely, warships can be sent to be transports which gives them medium combat penalties for being overloaded, but allow the warships to serve as emergency transports as needed. This would allow fine control over which convoys are prioritised in times of shipping shortages too, by taking ships on or off convoy routes. This would also allow the dedication of warships to specific convoys as escorts- from each convoy route that needs filling, you could have a button labelled "assign escorts" that allows the selection of ships either by name or by map selection. This would make for a nice jumping-off point for: *Invasion fleets. Selecting some suitable port should have an option for "Create invasion fleet" that allows packing troops into merchant ships, preferably landing craft and passenger transports (with the merchant ships, they should be specialisable into cargo, fuel or passenger transports during creation, see above, with either being able to perform the other tasks at reduced efficiency) and assigning an escort of warships. These fleets could then go attempt to occupy an enemy province, making it far cheaper in the peace deal and providing some of that province's income to the occupier in the meantime. Would also like to include landing ships, which though being military ships are sent to the merchant pool on completion of their construction, so they can be stuffed with troops as aforementioned. They'd mainly serve as targets to destroy before their arrival that improve invasion efficiency if they get to land. I don't necessarily want to include modeled ground combat- that *sucks* in Ultimate Admiral: Age of Sail- but I do want to launch and repel naval invasions, modeled simply as troops, munitions, military equipment, fuel and supplies depleting each others local stockpiles until one side loses-the remainder of the invasion fleet would then have to go home, providing another chance to attack it. Provinces that directly neighbour others should be able to use their troops, munitions and military equipment (modeled together for simplicity), supplies and fuel to invade that province without the use of ships. See War at Sea for inspiration- I never want to see an actual person modeled in this game, please. *Would like light machinegun and other AA mounts, but assume they're on the way. A simple M2 Browning can seriously hurt a destroyer, especially if there's lots of them, and I want more light ship options that would make good targets for them. All AA mounts should be able to engage surface targets too. *Would like fleet tenders and support ships. Refueling ships can add range to task forces once implemented, munitions transports can rearm ships at sea, hospital ships recover lost crew and return it to the crew pool (whilst also being a source of major opinion maluses if you sink them), seaplanes tenders can scout an area, increasing favourable encounter rates in a given sea region, etcetera... *Would like to be able to demand more money from my government when in dire straights, possibly at cost to naval prestige and unrest. More economy decisions in general would be a good thing, too. *Would like to fight port strike battles in sight of land, both blocking some avenues of running away from the cowardly AI and allowing ships to engage shore defences, which is something they did a lot of in reality. Such defences should be simple; for each port map (and you won't need *that* many; re-use them as needed, we understand dev-hours are finite) there should be a grid to place defences: gun batteries, essentially a concrete platform that you mount extant naval turrets to; torpedo launchers that must be on the shoreline but work the same way; breakwaters and quays to make safer harbours for your ships; AA positions for the upcoming carriers; RADAR installations to increase port readiness if attacked and provide better interception near shore; minefields and sub nets to help make it dangerous to approach or enter a port. These would be built like ships- you place a simple template and then after sufficient time the structure completes construction and becomes a usable defensive work, and its costs reduce from the higher building cost per turn to their relatively minimal operating costs. They should naturally consume upkeep, but be cheap both to build and maintain compared to warships. Similarly, they should be mothball-capable, so unneeded defences can be abandoned. Some basic civilian structures can be modeled as well, providing opinion maluses if destroyed-raid an old SimCity-esque game who's license expired or were never filed for models if required. Related note: *Would like to be able to build naval academies in provinces. They can stay unmodeled, but provide more crew per turn if built or captured, in exchange for upkeep. Alternately, you could make a structure model for placement on your port maps that can be shot up if desired. Naturally, I would like to be able to mothball them. As a possible extension of this, I'd like to be able to invest in arms factories that make more cash over time, essentially obviating the need to spend cash on civilian-made guns, armour and munitions. You could also add drydocks, armour smithing facilities, heavy gun foundries, and other things required to make heavy ships, with losing them seriously hampering your ability to use tech upgrades- better Krupp technology is useless if you don't make the factory to produce it, and the armour thicknesses available could be gated by the armour smithing facilities being too underdeveloped to actually make the dozen-plus-inches of plating you want on that super battleship. Similarly, guns could be limited by factories being large enough to make them, and carrier planes could require factories to replace- even torpedoes need to be made, and that factory could be either a province upgrade or a port model. Ground-based airfields can be included the same way. *Would like mothballing to have a slider that goes between unmanned but completely maintained (no deterioration) and completely abandoned, where they would slowly lose integrity until they eventually become completely unsalvageable and are scrapped for a pittance. The rate for that deterioration should be slightly randomised, to reflect how some ships and defence structures simply last better than others when abandoned. *Need to be able to upgrade port capacity. Presume that's coming. Would like to be able to make my own ports from scratch, too. *Would like to be able to interact with neutral ships. Even if they use extant and planned merchant hulls, it'd add some life to the empty expanses that are sea battles now. Also, sinking them will tick off the owner. *I want to add smoksecreen generators to whatever ship I please. They're cheap, weigh very little in naval terms, and the Germans proved they work well to protect heavy warships time and again. They could also be a port structure that provides protection to the gun batteries present to defend the port, and any ships anchored within. Gun batteries on land are already notoriously hard targets, adding smoke would make a well-defended port capable of holding off a decent force even if empty of ships. Ground RADAR would also be nice, where it'd serve to warn the port an attack is coming- modeled by having the defences already fully manned and functional upon enemy arrival, instead of needing some time to reach full effectiveness. *Depth charges should have a manual launch now button too. If I can sink surface ships in War Thunder using them, I bet I can manage it in this game too... *Would like to be able to sell ships for profit, or get or make your own orders for ships to be made by other powers that are friendly enough. Half-built ships can then be realistically seized if war breaks out unexpectedly. *Would like smoke warnings to continue for unspotted ships even if one or more is currently visible. I often run into the convoy escort without ever seeing the transports because a battlecruiser or heavy cruiser is spotted early and then all warnings stop. Smoke warnings should only stop when all active hostile craft on the map are visible. *Would like to see the introduction of structures to place on hulls. Simple boxes, cylinders and other geometric shapes that we can both intersect with other components like towers to change their appearance and install casemate weapons into and turrets atop them. Provided the R and T keys rotate function sticks after mouse movement, which has to happen regardless for quality of life complex configurations of these structures could be built on our ships almost freely. More complicated structures with multiple mounting points that can function as additions to the towers (possibly providing another rangefinder, torpedo spotter and damage control station for the ship for the big ones) and compatibility with extant barbettes could allow more faithful recreations of historical ships and offer more variety than just picking the two towers that currently serve as our only choice for ship design both aesthetically and mechanically- which is boring. Add connective components to link separated towers, raised funnel mounts so we can make our towers not look idiotic when only one (if we're lucky) mounting point is offered by a tower combination, outcroppings we can mesh into the towers to add a second tier of raised secondaries so they can superfire over the beam or connect barbettes to the towers, simple wave shields and rings to surround turrets (save making those aggravating designs with "fixed" mounting points where placing guns effectively would look stupid or worse be impossible... Make the base hull in a realistic shape, but leave placement of wave shields, coloured rings, national decals, etcetera to us, please. This simple thing can solve many problems. For the dev-time needed to make a few new hull and tower combinations we could have near-total creative freedom to design ships- these thing are boxes and other simple shapes with decking and ladders and such. Make them weigh virtually nothing unless they're mechanically functional (say, they have a turret mount on them) in which case make them weigh what that size barbette should plus a little but make their weight scale barbette and superstructure armour. I especially want to connect my barbettes to my towers so they look like single structures- then painstakingly arrange neat rings of AA mounts all over the top of them. So long as sufficient clearance is given we should be able to build directly over our extant turrets and add more things still- ruining our pitch and roll values but looking spectacular. Furthermore a list or nurnies and greebles would be nice too, even if they don't add anything mechanical, though I'd like to add say air intakes to slightly improve engine efficiency, hull hatches that increase crew survivability in the water (see later regarding hospital ships and rescue craft), my own casements to hulls with enough freeboard for it, and lots more. A structure I particularly want is the whole upper deck on battleships and battlecruisers so I can make versions of them that don't guarantee a huge forward offset if filled uniformly by lengthening the nose sections so the casemates are more evenly spread, using several sliders if need be. Which brings me to: *So many ships just have intractable forward weight offset due entirely to their build- like those battleships and cruisers with raised casemate decks which build historically have 30% fore offsets. Also, side underwater torpedoes also seem to favour the front weight-wise, worsening the issue substantially. This loves happening with early designs where your options to fix it are giving the ship a non-uniform main gun load or just wear the huge offset penalties. More options in general for these many hulls of all eras up to 1930 (later if you keep using them to make cheaper battleships) ships is a huge desire of mine, as in making the latest ones as customisable as possible *I want light torpedo boats and motor gun boats. All the way through history. Use the extant models for now by never obsoleting them but please make a few later models too please- they are cheap and cheerful and great at responding to air threats due to their natural speed. Two hulls per nation should be enough and they're tiny and won't take long. And yes, I *would* like to put a RADAR module with a fixed and decent ten-twelve kilometres range on them, because, y'know, they did that. *Would like quad, quintuple, hextuple and octuple mounts for secondaries, with the octuples having two layers of four each, one stack atop the other (or other arrangements- surprise me). Ever seen an octuple pom-pom? That's nearly an octuple 2-inch gun. Would like quintuples and hexruples for mains too. Just because it *wasn't* done doesn't mean it *couldn't* have been; plans were drawn using such things if never completed. *Otherwise uniform main guns in different sized turrets (like the Pensacola class) can both share ammo and not take an aiming penalty for mixed main armament seeing as they aren't mixed at all, and the game doesn't accommodate that. I'd like it to. If my three different sizes of two inch guns all use the same shell they should be able to pull from the same pool. *Light cruisers should be able to be use four and five inch guns as either mains or secondaries. Mogamis, Brooklyns, and more all were light cruisers, were built during this game's active period, and mounted five-inch secondaries. Of course, for these weapons to show up secondaries you'd need a main gun larger than the ones you want as secondaries. Destroyers with five-inch or six-inch guns should consider everything beneath that secondaries too, and the Germans proved you can make a six-inch armed destroyer and it works fine too, so I'd like destroyer to have access to six-inch primaries in addition to secondaries up to five inches. Cruisers should be able to consider all guns smaller than their mains as secondaries. Worst case scenarios these ships should be able to use guns two sizes smaller than their mains secondaries. But a destroyer with one 2-inch gun on either side but a primary battery of five inch guns shouldn't be penalised with reduced aiming times for them- also I want more fine control over said destroyers' munitions choices; their fives can engage a cruiser with AP while the twos engage transports with HE. ***** If you made it this far, good work. You still understand the value of reading :) More ideas will likely come. Some will be awesome, some may suck and be ignored or even ridiculed, some will just be basic improvements, but I feel most of this is useful. Thanks for reading,

With the new power of the next gen consoles id love to see a port of this game, id be willing to pay 60$ for it now that the campaign is out and I've seen a little. I know it's rough right now but it's basically a pre alpha and it's still amazing. If games like Stellaris and Crusader Kings III can make a amazing port with a good UI im sure this game could too. Id love to hear from the devs or your thoughs

We, as a clan(FPM on PvE), have done numerous port defenses and I would like to make a suggestion please. The NPC/AI circle control and attacks are extremely difficult. I will be nice if the NPCs numbers, and capture control points could be reduced sligthly (I recommend a start of about 20-30%). I suggest instead of 6 Indiaman- 2 total and their number capture points reduced by half. If the war ships capture points could be reduced by 20-30% that would bring it to a more attainble level and contribute to a more engaging battle. The crew/hull numbers reduced sligthly the battles would be more engaging and maintain their challenge; our last defense battle the Bellonas had crews of 797ish - consider 650 to 695. Right now, port defense it's extremely difficult to win. The few we have managed to win and where very close to a loss, sometimes within a few points short of the 1000 (maybe increase the capture number to 1500). I understand the setting the bar high will turn ports over to the Raiders for attacks by other nations and give clans a teamwork challange, however, please consider these tweeks for future port defense battles. Attacking port battles; the defending NPCs could be increased (I shudder to say this) slightly. I suggest NPC defenders be given a ship or two more or increase their BR at most. That would bring the challenge up slightly for now and once the dust settles you could look at the challenge factor again consider further modifications. Another idea I have, please bare with me. What about Raiders attacking more unused or lesser used ports including Freetowns or Freeports such as La Mona, give the Freetowns guns emplacements and make those "tough as wallnuts" to crack.

The game is of course a wargame and the battles and fighting are at the moment the most important part. However i think that that a lot of people would like to see both the economic side and the port handling side be improved so that the game can also cater to people who do not want to fight continuously or like me lack the skills of fighting 1v1. I want to explain the things that I would like to see for ports and this is just my personal opinion. I do believe that the interface of the ports and the management system of the ports should be increased. Also i would like to see that a clan leader who is now responsible for the port, can delegate this responsibilty to a port administrator (call it whatever you want probably per nation there are some fancy titles) This administrator would then be responsible for the running of the port and at the moment that isnt really a lot because there are not so any things that you can actually do with a port therefor i would like to suggest some options that could be implemented and that would stimulate also a bit the trade between ports. The administrator would have access to the port warehouse a bit like a clan leader would have access to the clan warehouse. This would be used for storing the goods that you would need for running the port and its defenses. Like a normal warehouse this can be expanded to store more goods and a different variety of goods. Later will become clear what types of goods i am thinking about and why it would be important to have these goods always in the warehouse. This would not be like your own warehouse where goods are stored but this would be more for storing the goods that are consumed every day. Forts are probably one of the main features of a port. A well defended port is harder to take and every port should start with 2 basic round towers that are next to the town. The administrator would then be able to add additional forts on places he believes are suitable for the defenses of the port. I would like to see it like with a shipyard that you will have to upgrade the forts that you build. Fort level 1: Basic round fort as we know it right now. To build it you will need to have stone, oak, muskets, provisions, iron, canons and a certain amount of gold. This fort could be placed anywhere on the map but depending on the location this can be upgraded to a bigger fort. Fort would also have to be maintained every day and would require a certain amount of the materials that are used for building it as well as gold for daily maintenance. Also after a port battle the damage would have to be repaired a bit in the same way that we have to repair our ships after a battle. This would also be necessary for the larger forts that follow but of course the bigger the fort the higher the maintenance. Fort level 2: This would be the basic suare fort like we know it now. This would only be available if you have allready a round fort in place and could only be placed on certain areas of the map to account for the underground etc etc. I would limit the amount to 2 forts of this type per port to avoid a port being cluttered by forts. Fort level 3: This would be the highest upgrade and i would call it a bastion. These would the upgrade for the level 2 fort and there could only be 1 of these forts per harbour. The places where these forts could be built should be limited due to there extended size. the most important change for these forts would be heavier guns and also mortars to defend the harbour. It would be important for the administrator to always keep the resources available to maintain the forts because if certain resources are not the there the fort will start to decay. This will be shown in the port battle as a damaged fort allready and therefor will take less hits before being destroyed. Same thing would go if the administrator does not repair the forts after a port battle they would still be damaged. Forts should only count as 300 points maximum in a port battle, no matter how many are destroyed, this to avoid too much emphasis being put on destroying only the forts and not fighting a battle with ships. The BR of a port battle should also depend on the size of the forts there are. A shollow water port with only 2 square forts should only get like 750 BR where a deep water port with 4 round forts, a square fort and a bastion would be 9600 BR or more, and maybe with other multipliers like county capital to go to 11000 BR. The prices for the maintenance should be set high enough that only the most valuable ports or the ports that a clan really wants to keep out of a strategic perspective, would have the biggest forts. A useless port would then also show up on the map as useless due to its BR. Trade should also be steered by the administrator and a bit more then it is now. instead of the random dropping of goods per port the administrator should be able to attract traders or trading companies from different nations. He can then choose for instance to have a dutch trading company of level 1, 2 or 3 in his port and the highest level would then drop the rare dutch goods like Grietje van Dijk. I am just giving an example. However if the dutch trading company does not make enough money of course they will not come with the rare resources and they will not drop. This would stimulate the trade between different ports. Of course having a trader in your harbour would also mean that he needs to be supplied with certain goods which would increase the import and export of a harbour. Natural resources that drop in a port can of course not be changed by the administrator, or only in a way that it is now. the benefits of an extended harbour management system would be increased trade, less gold in rotation, other gameplay options, port battles would be more important, important ports would be harder to take not like at the moment where ports are constantly flipped and changing hands. It would also give the nations an option for a long time investment in a port and would make the loss of one of those ports really hurt.

When you enter a port and open the "SHOP" you see to the right of the shop-window what this port produces and what it consumes. Wouldn't it be a good idea if a few lines were added here to show the settings of the clan who owns the port like "40% Discount on Crafting" and "40% Bonus on Production"?

Are there any plans to implement port battles into PvE?

Heyho, I leave this here, but I think wraith solution might be the better one. You'll find it here:

My Fellow Sailors: A few ideas i have thought about, and talked about on global, have finally been written down. A few of these have been brewing for awhile, and a few came up while writing. Im sure most of these have been talked about, and may be in the forums. No, i didn't search the forum for these topics. No, i don't really care if there are other threads covering these. These are my thought, basically as they came to me, either through reading notes or remembering conversations. Lets help the devs bring out the potential of Naval Action. ------------------------ Fire Barrels ------------------------------------------------------- Ships with horrible turning can be destroyed by smaller ships. A surprise can stern camp a santi and take it down without too much trouble(Just tons of time). Trading ships also have a habit of being ganked, chained, and capped. To offset these annoyances, i propose fire/exploding barrels. The intention would be to deter or slow down a following ship. It would be a barrel dropped off the stern of the ship, with a timer set by the player(slider?), and it explodes and causes a large flame. The barrel wouldn't be meant to destroy the ship, just cause minor damage. It could potentially catch sails on fire, and cause some sort of crew or rigging shock. If the barrel exploded towards the rear of the ship, it could cause rudder damage. The timer would have a time to detonation range of 3-30 seconds, so it has the ability to damage pursuers that are further away, as well as close up. The timer would need to have a variable on the actual set time (due to a fuse having to be measured and cut in battle) between a flat 15-25% time variation. The other option would be 10% on the "too short" side and 25% on the "too long" side. This allows for the chance it can prematurely explode and damage the ship of the person dropping the barrel. Each ship shouldn't have more than 3-5 barrels, scaled to the rate of the ship. 4th-5th rates have 1 or 2 barrels, 3rd rates 3, 2nd rates 4, 1st rates 5. If a ship is carrying barrels, no less than 2 should be carried in case one doesn't explode. Rates lower than 5th shouldn't need them due to shallow hulls/lack of player use. The barrels could be an upgrade option (non permanent since its only barrels) with each "tier" allowing more barrels than the last (Basic -> Exceptional). Also, a prep time should be included, with the option to drop the barrel early. Dropping the barrel early would increase the "error" range of the fuse, up to 15% greater than a fully prepped barrel. This also opens up the option for a skill, such as decreasing fuse error or lowering the prep time. The purpose of the barrels wouldn't be to act as a main weapon, but as a last resort for defense. ------------------------ Officer Skills ------------------------------------------------------- Officer skills allow us to make our sailing styles a little more unique. Sadly, the skills don't vary enough to keep anyone guessing how an enemy ship will handle in battle. I propose keeping the officer skills, but also adding Captain Skills. Your officer gets 1 "skill" point per rank, with a max of 10 points. The diversity of skill choices to ship choices isn't that great. Captain skills could be implemented to switch that up a bit, make people guess a little more. Captain skills would be attached to the players avatar, not their officer, and would gain a few points at certain rank milestones. The captains skills could include things like cannon trials(reload speed, dispersion,etc...), rigging specialist (Sail rising and yard turn speed, lower damage to sails), shipwright (adds extra bonuses to ships beyond what the regular player makes, use less LH or supplies), boarding training (similar to marines, but for the crew), wind master (adds slight speed bonus to ship), entrepreneur ( better prices in port shops, lower costs for contracts), hull tech (better/faster repairs while at sea or in battle,High enough level allows 2 repairs in battle), shipboard defense (better defense against boarders, defensive only), leadership (adds more overall crew to the crew pool, not to the ship itself). The milestones could be set points between each rank. Each rank could have 2 milestones( current level -> milestone I -> milestone II -> next level), with each milestone giving a certain amount of skill points. Rank 1(Thief) starts with 3 points, milestone I gives 2 points, milestone II gives 1 point, rank 2 (Rascal) gives 3 point, milestone I gives 2 points, milestone II gives 1 point, etc . . . up to rank 10 (Curse) which will give 3 points, but no milestones since it is the highest rank. Having a system like this will make grinding feel more rewarding, while making each player more unique. The skills could be categorized by sailing, crafting, and trading. Having the option to choose a captain skill, without the risk of losing them, would make players feel more connected to the game community. It would also allow specialization of each player, such as a player being a dedicated ship builder, but not having the same sea prowess as a dedicated fighter. This wouldnt negate the "perks" (no longer skills) one would get from their officer. The officer perks would allow everyone to have a baseline set of attributes so they could still do a little of everything. ------------------------ Port Shop ------------------------------------------------------- The port shop needs a little streamlining. If i sell something at the bottom of a list (i.e resources), it sends me back to the top of the list. While it is only a minor inconvenience, that little bit of time adds up to a lot of frustration when trying to sell quickly. The slider when buying/selling is also a pain to use. Using a +1,+5,+10 next to the slider would be helpful. When buying cannons the shop only allows 1 purchase at a time. I think the maximum should be raised to at least 5 when buying. If i want to use the same cannon for bow/stern chasers and broadside, i would like to be able to buy them all at once. With the lag in the system, that can also become frustrating. ------------------------ Warehouse ------------------------------------------------------- The warehouse can become extremely cluttered, and difficult to find something. I know there is an option to show certain types of items, but being able to create my own tabs would be beneficial. Tabs such as "ship build", "future upgrades", or "trade-able goods" would make playing a little less cumbersome. An option to "Show items in shop" would also be appreciated, so i can choose to not see the items in the shop and accidentally sell them. ------------------------ Ship Docks ------------------------------------------------------- Currently we can only have 5 ships docked at a port. I think the maximum should be raised (8-12) through gold purchases. To keep it a little less cluttered, a building (private dockyard) could be built, and each upgrade increase the maximum ships allowed in the port. ------------------------ Clans ------------------------------------------------------- Clan ranks are a big miss when it comes to forming a community . The current system of owner/officer/member seems a bit shallow for a group of people playing together. The ability to have more "ranks" in a clan would give people a view-able goal to strive for, and to show their value to that clan. It can also be set up to allow clan members to be easily recognized of their role (crafter, trader, raider OR Leader,1st mate, 2nd mate, senior crewman, junior crewman, recruit). Having the ability to transport goods from ANY city to the clan warehouse would be nice, or showing on the clan page where the warehouse is located. I appreciate everyone who took the time to read through, and all comments will be appreciated, and discussion is encouraged. Great games are not made. Great games are shaped. Shaped by the ideas of players, and the following discussions. Naval Action has a ton of potential, and i would like to see it become one of the greats. Fair winds and following seas --- Wonderbread O7 Please excuse my lack of observation, I did my best to make sure there are as few grammatical errors as possible.

I believe it's bad that currently players are concentrated in the capital waters, leaving a huge % of the map almost empty. What devs could do to encourage a player spread around national ports, just an idea : - Port would record the admiralty orders they deliver and their completion. - Depending on the amount of completed admiralty orders in the port per day, the reward for admiralty orders is increased or reduced. - Players should have a visibility of completion % in national ports so they can decide "hey let's do missions in this area, it will be more rewarding". Lets call it "Port national activity" - The activity pool would be balanced between regional capitals, deep and shallow harbors. Completing a mission in a shallow water harbor would give more %. PvP kills and deaths in a circle around the port could also impact the Port national activity, maybe trade too. Extra (not sure if viable) : If a port sits at 0% activity for a week, it turns neutral. Lore wise, it would reflect the urge of isolated ports in seeing navy activity against the pirates.

Just an idea, it would be really nice to buy or somehow aquire more dock spaces.

Just a question; I would really like to see port battles of some sort in PvE. I speak for a group of us whom feel the same way about port battles in PvE - it would sure add a new interesting dimension to PvE even if the battles are held by AI.

This game in my opinion has an issue regarding port timers. In its current form a defender can simply set a window for times where the server has a low player count. With servers having such a large swing of players from down time to peak times this has created a situation where almost all port battles will be left to a small number of players around DT. Leaving most players to only spectating, opening the map when they log on to see what has changed on the map. I am sure this could be verified if devs have the ability to see when port battles have been fought which I am sure is the case. So to change this I recommend switching to a system with vulnerablitiy windows every 12 hours instead of every 24. Still allowing the owners to pick the window of attack they can either choose to have one window they are very strong and one undefendable, or split their strength by have each window a little before and after their nations peak times. This all taking into account the strength of the enemy. It adds more strategy and allows more to participate. Everyone wins. Please take a close look at this issue because I feel it will only get worse if not fixed.

I was just wondering if the devs have discussed further plans to make the towns/ports become more interactive. Past from the current 2d Menu state. Into something like an actual 3D Port that you can roam around with many differing locations: Warehouse, Tavern, Brothel, forts, houses, governors mansions etc. You could even bring some life into the land mass and make instanced areas as jungles with wildlife, hidden special locations, hideouts. One could go wild with ideas into making naval action's lands become more lifelike rather than just coming into port and transitioning into a 2d menu. And also if the devs have ever considered bringing in FPS into naval action. I guess for now having first person view in ports and the ability to run around checking out the locations would be an awesome addition to more content that is planned for this game. What do you guys think? P.S I just realized how much bigger in game file size this would be if implemented with more content into the huge open world map with all that land mass. Wow. I mean gosh that would be a big undertaking. I have faith in our Naval action devs

It's just me or the look of the interface when you are in ports is way too "modern" and "technological", thus breaking so much the immersion in the age of sails? I was wondering if it's in the programs of the devs a revamp of the aspect of the UI in order to give it a more "old" flavour.

I have a suggestion for the movement of the ships while near a town port on the open world. Instead of having ships moving super fast, perhaps when you enter the radius of a port, the speed of the ship is reduced to 1/2, 1/3, 1/4? This would eliminate the zooming ships in and out of a port. Where the change happens in the game mechanics could probably be at the same radius where you see a town's name. Just an idea.

Hi all, How can I upgrade my Port? Some guides telling that it is possible to Upgrade your main Harbour to gain more Port Docks and store more than 5 ships. Maybe someone can explain that to me? Ive tried to upgrade my Port by doing following: At Capitol Harbour ive bought an additional outpost bur now it says under Outposts "empty". I dont know what to do next.

When you get in to Port it's blue and dull, could it be possible to get a background picture of a port or something instead of that blue screen or maybe a green one Should not be the hardest thing to do

Ports. All of my comments below are relate to coastal locations. I see no point in pondering if inland zones have any value to the game at this time, aside from supplying suitable resources to its nearest coastal locations. Raw materials, crew recruitment potential etc. Major Naval countries of the world have a historically good starting infrastructure already in place. Assuming we have historical placement of the Nations perhaps pre determined towns/harbours reflect a point in history for creating start locations for each nation involved. (Any country that the game has starting Flags for perhaps) Major Ports. Defences, Known Resources, Major Ship Building facilities, Dry Docks, Major Economic Districts. Expensive Player investment area. Lesser Ports. Minor Defences, Some known Resources, Minor Ship Careening facilities, Minor Economic District. Average Player investment area. Minor location. Fishing Village, Unknown Resources, Undeveloped. Cheap Player investment area. (Possible player selected locations, Pin on a coastline map - we'll build here) Lesser and Minor could be reclassified as Player investment expands them, or indeed they are targetted and reduced due to military action. Some restrictions on what can be developed until reaching a higher classification. (No Major ship building facilities if the rest of the location has remained the basic fishing village etc.) Each stretch of coast no matter how remote would have the potential to become a player base area by upgrading a 'fishing village', Not only providing Guilds a base to work from but the investment will potentially locate a good raw material resource, and create somewhere that may be worth defending and fighting over. Minor Nation Champions It may even be possible for guilds to decide that they wish to champion a minor nation and if they are the only guild doing so, they can 'vote' for which major coalition they become allied to.

So we've been asked which Nations do we want to see in the game. That question alone opens up so many gaps to be filled either with current plans or new suggestions, so here goes. 1) If, assuming we do actually have Nations, there are going to be a fair few of them because I'm sure NA members will be of many different Nations. Thus, will we get the Globe as it is known today, or to save time and resources will each nation be given a fictional stretch of land? If we DID have a fictional map, it would be slightly better in the sense that devs could perhaps make travel time's shorter, it would also allow for capture of Islands which may not actually exist which leads me onto point 3) 2) Islands. If we DID have a fictional map, we could have groups of islands, some big, some small which offer different economic bonuses on capturing, and depending on their location, varying strategic value. Usually a well dug in island I believe would have up to 3 coastal batteries, a island just landed on would only have 1 battery, each battery hosting about 7-9 very heavy cannons. This leads me also onto my next point. 3)Wars. As far as I can understand the game revolves around PvP. Great. And there are Nations. Right...So are we going to have 20+ Nations constantly at war with eachother? Will that be good for trade with other nations etc etc? Again as you're reading i'm hoping you are thinking of some answers to this too, but here is my suggestion: Each Nation will have a ton of fleets [guilds/groups/clans], why not make a system that allows for members of the more prominent/illustrious fleets to be voted in as Admiralty. Everyone in a nation has a vote, they can pick who they want to fufill which role. Roles: - Lord High Admiral [1] = Overall commander, has the final say. - First lords of the Admiralty [5] = Almost like the High Admiral's war council. - Admirals of the Fleet [10] = Significant leaders of Fleets. What sort of duties would these leaders have? - Providing the safest and most economically stable country for generations to come. - Securing Islands of importance, economically or strategically achieved with constant communication and management of the most powerful fleets. If the above duties require a Nation to declare war on another, so be it, let the PvP commence. Obviously it is difficult to get every fleet to action, especially the smaller ones, which is why it may be worth creating some sort of Squadron linking bigger fleets to smaller ones, each giving each other support when required. Let me know your thoughts & suggestions on all of the above.