Patch 9.8 - Damage model 5.0, Server merges, Bird is a word (19th may)

[Captiva]

With more and more new upgrades appearing will there eventually be more upgrade slots available on all ships?

[Baron Von WeisenCracker]

per the patch notes.. (or absence thereof) we are not doing CREW MANAGEMENT just yet, correct?

 

 --- that is, not having to replace lost crewman for losing that last Durability on a ship.

 

Thanks,

-Yank

[victor]

It is so that you cannot TP your materials/resources. 

 

Instead you will now have to use the Delivery system or sail across the Open Sea.

 

Is there a delivery system (or just the free port one)?

[Jean Ribault]

Capping player traders is far from a walk in the park...

 

You are probably right about that, perhaps it isn't boring....once or twice.  I just don't think that this patch is going to cause players to all of a sudden make free port jumping their primary gameplay.  That IS boring, even if you can now do it.  As I mentioned, the change of teleport to capital with goods has no effect on players who trade where the price is right, not just at capitals.

[SirYogos]

Damm good release

 

I love bow chasers on Rattlesnake

[Pagan Pete]

A good patch!

 

Can we get at least a 30m minute timer on teleports? 

[Brunwulf]

Me and 2 friends went into a fleet battle with the intention to experience the new armour system.

 

We were in a bellona and 2 3rd rates, joined by an AI st Pavel, bellona and  a 3rd rate, and our fight went fairly well at first quickly dispatching 2 constitutions on the enemy team.

 

We then turned our attention to the enemy bellona, 2x ingermanland and 3rd rate and hell was unleashed.

 

Broadside after broadside was unleashed and 3/4 of our shots bounced. We weren't at an angle so that wasn't the issue. When a shot did penetrate the damage was minimal. I love the idea behind this system, but so far what it has achieved here is making battle ridiculously tedious. It's fine to have battles that last longer and having to put more thought into positioning, but when I'm alongside an enemy vessel and most of my shots bounce then there's something not quite right.

 

This was using 24pd and 18pd long cannons and 32pd cannonades, no matter what part of the hull we aimed at in a parallel broadside battle.

 

You now need a pavel's guns to match a pavel.

This is a good change because huge ship 1-2-3 rates didn't realistically get torn apart from much smaller vessels.

[Kolakhan]

Num Enter on keyboards can also send messages now

 

Any way to turn this off or change it?  I use the numpad for everything and this change screwed up my control scheme.  TY.

[Peter Fouche]

Excellent work gentlemen! Thank you!

[Azzak]

You now need a pavel's guns to match a pavel.

This is a good change because huge ship 1-2-3 rates didn't realistically get torn apart from much smaller vessels.

 

He wasn't fighting a Pavel. He was fighting 3rd rates with its 3rd rate. Most rounds bounced and the battle wasn't over even after 1h30.

Edited May 19, 2016 by Azzak

[oldcrankyman]

I can't seem to find our clan warehouse anywhere on the port screen.   How does one access that?

[ciccseven]

Other changes

• Spyglass added to open world

 

 

Fantastic!!!!!!!!!

[Jean Ribault]

I like the new clarity / intensity of the battle screen sights.  Much better than before.  Nice job on that simple change.

[Quineloe]

Personally, it's just about to make me quit. Sailing traders from Belize to Jamaica IS time consuming, meaning I probably won't have time for even crafting anymore. Time and resources spent setting up shop across the map gone down the drain. Just spent two weeks working towards a trader hunting ship I now have no use for.

 

Yeah, hail devs !

You have time to capture dozens of traders, but no time to sail them to PR for an hour?

Does not add up.

[Quineloe]

Having my prime activity from Elite Dangerous now in Naval Action ( along with piracy of course ) makes me such a happy muppet. Thanks guys.

Smuggling in ED is a joke and is in no way comparable to smuggling here. With smugglers entering your ports, they can place buy contracts for the port production above your own, forcing you to sacrifice precious labor to obtain resources instead of just buying them in bulk.

 

And I disagree with Euro traders being bad. They're a perfect money sink.

[Quineloe]

One raider intercepting a trader IS NOT A GANK.

 

Sorry for the voice tone, but it crawls up my nervous system that you call such a simple situation A GAAAANK !!

 

I'd usually strongly disagree with this, as a gank is any completely one-sided fight, but there is not a single ship in the game capable of catching a LGV. Any 1vs1 the LGV gets away.

[Hethwill]

Smuggling in ED is a joke and is in no way comparable to smuggling here. With smugglers entering your ports, they can place buy contracts for the port production above your own, forcing you to sacrifice precious labor to obtain resources instead of just buying them in bulk.

 

And I disagree with Euro traders being bad. They're a perfect money sink.

 

Yes, I do not disagree with you. Still AI in E:D hunts me which has its own interesting layer, but I digress.

 

Got confused about the contracts. Can a smuggler do that ?!...

 

Regarding Euro Traders I simply wish for a more historical approach to what was imported from europe versus what was sent there.

Actually this can evolve into intra-caribbean trade as well, with or without NPC help.

 

 

 

About the gank, we have to agree that we disagree.

 

A 48 vs 2 is a gank. A 1v6 is a suicide. A 8v1 is a gank. A trader intercepted successfully on a 1v1 is a happy crew.

[Quineloe]

About the gank, we have to agree that we disagree.

 

A 48 vs 2 is a gank. A 1v6 is a suicide. A 8v1 is a gank. A trader intercepted successfully on a 1v1 is a happy crew.

 

a trincomalee joining midshipmen in their missions and blasting their cutters 1vs1 . gank or not?

[Hethwill]

a trincomalee joining midshipmen in their missions and blasting their cutters 1vs1 . gank or not?

 

As a good politician I will evade answering that with an appropriate reason ---- I am discussing trader hunt, which was labeled as a gank.

 

Jumping missions is not even eligible to be named. It is scum behaviour.

[surfimp]

a trincomalee joining midshipmen in their missions and blasting their cutters 1vs1 . gank or not?

It's a good opportunity for Midshipmen to learn about the superior windward performance of their Basic Cutters... ?

I'm not endorsing mission jumping, but hanging around and letting a Trinc blast you when you're perfectly capable of sailing away from them upwind is part of the learning process of this game.

[B4N4N4J0E]

He wasn't fighting a Pavel. He was fighting 3rd rates with its 3rd rate. Most rounds bounced and the battle wasn't over even after 1h30.

Yes. This has to be reworked. Takes way too much time. Some Players are seriously annoyed by this after the first fleetorder today.

[admin]

Yes. This has to be reworked. Takes way too much time. Some Players are seriously annoyed by this after the first fleetorder today.

 

The line fighting and lack of focus fire was ineffective

 

Tactical stagnation in the mid-18th century[edit]

When the conflict came to be between the British and the French in the 18th century, battles between equal or approximately equal forces became largely inconclusive. The French, who had fewer ships than the British throughout the century, were anxious to fight at the least possible cost, lest their fleet should be worn out by severe action, leaving Britain with an unreachable numerical superiority. Therefore, they preferred to engage to leeward, a position which left them free to retreat before the wind. They allowed the British fleet to get to windward, and, when it was parallel with them and bore up before the wind to attack, they moved onwards. The attacking fleet had then to advance, not directly before the wind with its ships moving along lines perpendicular to the line attacked, but in slanting or curving lines. The assailants would be thrown into "a bow and quarter line" – with the bow of the second level with the after part of the first and so on from end to end. In the case of a number of ships of various powers of sailing, it was a difficult formation to maintain.

The result was often that the ships of the attacking line which were steering to attack the enemy's centre came into action first and were liable to be crippled in the rigging. If the same formation was to be maintained, the others were now limited to the speed of the injured vessels, and the enemy to leeward slipped away. At all times a fleet advancing from windward was liable to injury in spars, even if the leeward fleet did not deliberately aim at them. The leeward ships would be leaning away from the wind, and their shot would always have a tendency to fly high. So long as the assailant remained to windward, the ships to leeward could always slip off.

The wars of the 18th century produced a series of tactically indecisive naval battles between evenly matched fleets in line ahead, such as Málaga (1704), Rügen Island (1715), Toulon (1744), Minorca (1756), Negapatam (1758), Cuddalore (1758), Pondicherry (1759), Ushant (1778), Dogger Bank (1781), the Chesapeake (1781), Hogland (1788) and Öland (1789). Although a few of these battles had important strategic consequences, like the Chesapeake which the British needed to win, all were tactically indecisive. Many admirals began to believe that a contest between two equally matched fleets could not produce a decisive result. The tactically decisive actions of the 18th century were all chase actions,^{[citation needed]} where one fleet was clearly superior to the other, such as the two battles of Finisterre (1747), and those at Lagos (1759), Quiberon Bay (1759) and Cape St. Vincent (1780).

British naval innovation was retarded by an unseemly dispute between two Admirals in the aftermath of the Battle of Toulon. The British fleet under Admiral Thomas Mathewshad been unable to draw level with the French fleet but Mathews nevertheless ordered an attack, intending all the British ships to attack the French rear. He had no signals by which he could communicate his intentions, and the rear squadron under Vice Admiral Richard Lestock, his rival and second-in-command, obtusely remained at the prescribed intervals in line ahead, far to the rear of the action. A subsequent series of courts-martial, in which political influence was brought to bear by Lestock's friends in Parliament, punished Mathews and those captains who had supported him in the battle, and vindicated Lestock. In several future actions, Admirals who were tempted to deviate from the Admiralty's fighting instructions were reminded of Mathews's fate.^[11]

 

Developments during the American War of Independence[edit]

The unsatisfactory character of the accepted method of fighting battles at sea had begun to be obvious to naval officers, both French and British, by the later 18th century and began to be addressed during the numerous battles of the American War of Independence. It was clear that the only way to produce decisive results was to concentrate the attack on part of the enemy's line, preferably the rear since the centre would have to turn to its support.

The great French admiral Suffren condemned naval tactics as being little better than so many excuses for avoiding a real fight. He endeavoured to find a better method, by concentrating superior forces on parts of his opponent's line in some of his actions with the British fleet in the East Indies in 1782 and 1783, such as the Battle of Sadras where Suffren tried to double the rear of the British line. But his orders were ill obeyed, his opponent Sir Edward Hughes was competent, and the quality of his fleet was not superior to the British.

Similarly, the British admiral Rodney, in the Battle of Martinique in the West Indies in 1780, tried to concentrate a superior force on part of his enemy's line by throwing a greater number of British ships on the rear of the French line. But his directions were misunderstood and not properly executed. Moreover, he did not then go beyond trying to place a larger number of ships in action to windward against a smaller number to leeward by arranging them at a less distance than two-cables length. An enemy who took the simple and obvious course of closing his line could baffle the attack, and while the retreat to leeward remained open could still slip away. Like Suffren, Rodney was a great tactician, but a difficult man to work with who failed to explain his intentions to his subordinates.

 

At the Battle of the Saintes on 12 April 1782, Rodney was induced, by a change in the wind and the resulting disorder in the French line, to break his own line and pass through the enemy line. The effect was decisive. The guns of the British ships were concentrated on a handful of French ships as the British broke through the French line in three places, and the tactical cohesion of the French fleet was destroyed. By the end of the battle, Rodney had taken the French flagship and four other ships. The successful result of this departure from the old practice of keeping the line intact throughout the battle ruined the moral authority of the orthodox system of tactics.

 

  Sir John Clerk of Eldin[edit]

The inconclusive results of so many battles at sea interested Sir John Clerk of Eldin (1728–1812), a gentleman of the Scottish Enlightenment, illustrator of geologist James Hutton's Theory of the Earth, and great-uncle of James Clerk Maxwell. He began developing a series of speculations and calculations which he initially published in pamphlets, distributing them among naval officers, and published in book form as An Essay on Naval Tactics in 1790, 1797 and 1804.

 

The hypothesis which governed all of Clerk's demonstrations was that as the British navy was superior in gunnery and seamanship to their enemy, it was in their interest to produce a mêlée. He advanced various ingenious suggestions for concentrating superior forces on parts of the enemy's line – by preference on the rear, since the centre must lose time in turning to its support.

[admin]

the goal of new penetrations (which are of course in need of final tuning) is to bring combat closer to history and motivate closer range action, proper positioning and focus fire (especially bow and stern raking)

 

ps will repeat.. some guns need to penetrate better which we plan to tune in hot fixes. But the "clicker heroes" must happen less

[Maxus]

The line fighting and lack of focus fire was ineffective

 

Tactical stagnation in the mid-18th century[edit]

When the conflict came to be between the British and the French in the 18th century, battles between equal or approximately equal forces became largely inconclusive. The French, who had fewer ships than the British throughout the century, were anxious to fight at the least possible cost, lest their fleet should be worn out by severe action, leaving Britain with an unreachable numerical superiority. Therefore, they preferred to engage to leeward, a position which left them free to retreat before the wind. They allowed the British fleet to get to windward, and, when it was parallel with them and bore up before the wind to attack, they moved onwards. The attacking fleet had then to advance, not directly before the wind with its ships moving along lines perpendicular to the line attacked, but in slanting or curving lines. The assailants would be thrown into "a bow and quarter line" – with the bow of the second level with the after part of the first and so on from end to end. In the case of a number of ships of various powers of sailing, it was a difficult formation to maintain.

The result was often that the ships of the attacking line which were steering to attack the enemy's centre came into action first and were liable to be crippled in the rigging. If the same formation was to be maintained, the others were now limited to the speed of the injured vessels, and the enemy to leeward slipped away. At all times a fleet advancing from windward was liable to injury in spars, even if the leeward fleet did not deliberately aim at them. The leeward ships would be leaning away from the wind, and their shot would always have a tendency to fly high. So long as the assailant remained to windward, the ships to leeward could always slip off.

The wars of the 18th century produced a series of tactically indecisive naval battles between evenly matched fleets in line ahead, such as Málaga (1704), Rügen Island (1715), Toulon (1744), Minorca (1756), Negapatam (1758), Cuddalore (1758), Pondicherry (1759), Ushant (1778), Dogger Bank (1781), the Chesapeake (1781), Hogland (1788) and Öland (1789). Although a few of these battles had important strategic consequences, like the Chesapeake which the British needed to win, all were tactically indecisive. Many admirals began to believe that a contest between two equally matched fleets could not produce a decisive result. The tactically decisive actions of the 18th century were all chase actions,^{[citation needed]} where one fleet was clearly superior to the other, such as the two battles of Finisterre (1747), and those at Lagos (1759), Quiberon Bay (1759) and Cape St. Vincent (1780).

British naval innovation was retarded by an unseemly dispute between two Admirals in the aftermath of the Battle of Toulon. The British fleet under Admiral Thomas Mathewshad been unable to draw level with the French fleet but Mathews nevertheless ordered an attack, intending all the British ships to attack the French rear. He had no signals by which he could communicate his intentions, and the rear squadron under Vice Admiral Richard Lestock, his rival and second-in-command, obtusely remained at the prescribed intervals in line ahead, far to the rear of the action. A subsequent series of courts-martial, in which political influence was brought to bear by Lestock's friends in Parliament, punished Mathews and those captains who had supported him in the battle, and vindicated Lestock. In several future actions, Admirals who were tempted to deviate from the Admiralty's fighting instructions were reminded of Mathews's fate.^[11]

 

Developments during the American War of Independence[edit]

The unsatisfactory character of the accepted method of fighting battles at sea had begun to be obvious to naval officers, both French and British, by the later 18th century and began to be addressed during the numerous battles of the American War of Independence. It was clear that the only way to produce decisive results was to concentrate the attack on part of the enemy's line, preferably the rear since the centre would have to turn to its support.

The great French admiral Suffren condemned naval tactics as being little better than so many excuses for avoiding a real fight. He endeavoured to find a better method, by concentrating superior forces on parts of his opponent's line in some of his actions with the British fleet in the East Indies in 1782 and 1783, such as the Battle of Sadras where Suffren tried to double the rear of the British line. But his orders were ill obeyed, his opponent Sir Edward Hughes was competent, and the quality of his fleet was not superior to the British.

Similarly, the British admiral Rodney, in the Battle of Martinique in the West Indies in 1780, tried to concentrate a superior force on part of his enemy's line by throwing a greater number of British ships on the rear of the French line. But his directions were misunderstood and not properly executed. Moreover, he did not then go beyond trying to place a larger number of ships in action to windward against a smaller number to leeward by arranging them at a less distance than two-cables length. An enemy who took the simple and obvious course of closing his line could baffle the attack, and while the retreat to leeward remained open could still slip away. Like Suffren, Rodney was a great tactician, but a difficult man to work with who failed to explain his intentions to his subordinates.

 

At the Battle of the Saintes on 12 April 1782, Rodney was induced, by a change in the wind and the resulting disorder in the French line, to break his own line and pass through the enemy line. The effect was decisive. The guns of the British ships were concentrated on a handful of French ships as the British broke through the French line in three places, and the tactical cohesion of the French fleet was destroyed. By the end of the battle, Rodney had taken the French flagship and four other ships. The successful result of this departure from the old practice of keeping the line intact throughout the battle ruined the moral authority of the orthodox system of tactics.

 

  Sir John Clerk of Eldin[edit]

The inconclusive results of so many battles at sea interested Sir John Clerk of Eldin (1728–1812), a gentleman of the Scottish Enlightenment, illustrator of geologist James Hutton's Theory of the Earth, and great-uncle of James Clerk Maxwell. He began developing a series of speculations and calculations which he initially published in pamphlets, distributing them among naval officers, and published in book form as An Essay on Naval Tactics in 1790, 1797 and 1804.

 

The hypothesis which governed all of Clerk's demonstrations was that as the British navy was superior in gunnery and seamanship to their enemy, it was in their interest to produce a mêlée. He advanced various ingenious suggestions for concentrating superior forces on parts of the enemy's line – by preference on the rear, since the centre must lose time in turning to its support.

 

That just seems exceedingly unhelpful in any way. 

[Quineloe]

Then please take away AI boarding bonuses if we're not supposed to sink them anymore