Razee Ships

[BungeeLemming]

I was just reading in an old webside about warships in the napoleon's eara when I read about Razees again.

 

A Razee is a ship like the famous "HMS Indefatigable". She was designed as a 64 gun ship of the line.

But instead of commisioning her as an outdated ship they stripped her down to a heavy Frigate.

 

That means she still had her main batterie with all the 26x24 pound cannons but got cutted down to a frigate size. The draft for example was raised from 19 to 13 feet.

More details to be seen in the famous Wikipedia since I lack english knowledge to explain technical details..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Indefatigable_%281784%29

http://home.arcor.de/thomas_siebe/indefatigable.html <-- sry for german language..

 

 

Its only a suggestion but It may be worth having a look at.

 

It would give players some sort of freedom to arm and design some ships for their porpose.

I dont know how to achieve such features ingame but maybe one could simply use the same model with empty gunports for raised speed and other features..

 

best Regards

[LTao]

Giving players the option to decide on the number and positioning of their weaponry is certainly being looked at.

[Barberouge]

Sounds good. What about throwing cannons over board while sailing to fasten one's ship ?

 

But I think the OP was more about new ships that had bad sailing characteristics. The height of the lower gundeck, the height of the rigging, the width of the hull, the height of forecastles sometimes made a ship too slow, hardly maneuverable, subject to leaning, or disabled its lower gundeck in big swell. One deck was then razed to increase their buyoyancy (or even their rigging shortened or the poundages decreased).

 

Badly designed ships wouldn't make for such a good feature indeed, but the possibility to raze the forecastles or the upper gundeck in order to increase the sailing characteristics could be interesting. Then it would be about designing ship types that are slightly different from their original model. It would be both realistic and creating gameplay options: the upper batteries usually made for good close range anti crew firepower.

 

Maybe not necessary if guns can be chosen and removed of course.

[BungeeLemming]

In fact It was a suggestion on how they could "recycle" some ships.

 

It seems that the "old 64 ship of the lines" were made razees since they were.. old/obsolete in a time when the 74 gun ship became standard.

 

But Those ships are a way to counter supergrigates like the USS constitution

[Barberouge]

Yes I understood that, but what I meant was: in a sandbox game with no historical evolution, what's the point of including a ship model if its razee type is clearly better than the obsolete original ? Same goes with construction: what's the point of introducing a badly built ship ?

 

But as I like the razee principle (not number and poundage of cannons only, but upper works), maybe a player could build either an original ship model, or a model with less forecastles/deck. It would be a tradeoff rather than a clearly better ship.