All the Ships at Sea

[Intrpid2759]

Land Ho!  A sea port emerges out of the haze. Friendly? Enemy? Usually unknown until you sail close enough to dock. I would like to see a pop up title when the town is moused over, or clicked on, whatever. Having to alter course to see the name is a bother. My two cents. 

[DeRuyter]

Goes along with the suggestions for a telescope in the OW.

[admin]

Land Ho!  A sea port emerges out of the haze. Friendly? Enemy? Usually unknown until you sail close enough to dock. I would like to see a pop up title when the town is moused over, or clicked on, whatever. Having to alter course to see the name is a bother. My two cents. 

 

Which city is that?

 

We do not like handholding unless it is absolutely necessary in design or required by systems.

Knowledge of the port skyline, its exact location and local waters is an achievement and gives advantage to the player. 

If you were there a couple of times you know the name of the port - if you have never been there and you don't know.. you have to sail close and see for yourself. what city is that.

[DeRuyter]

If I had a telescope I could tell you

Seriously, as you noted it is partly a matter of familiarly with the skyline shape and the land around the port. However currently you do have to sail in pretty close to get the flag and name to display. The city in the photo above looks to be 20km or more away.

If you assume that the captain or sailing master has a chart and a telescope they should be able to tell what port it is from further than 500-1000 meters. You could probably see the flag from at least that far out with a telescope. Having said that I agree that familiarity by sailing and exploring should be an advantage as you said.

[BungeeLemming]

You forget about time and distance compression.

We are several kilometers away from the cities when the names pops up.

Having a telescope will help spotting the flag. But not identify the port name. Only if your familiar with the citie's shape

[akd]

Which city is that?

We do not like handholding unless it is absolutely necessary in design or required by systems.

Knowledge of the port skyline, its exact location and local waters is an achievement and gives advantage to the player.

If you were there a couple of times you know the name of the port - if you have never been there and you don't know.. you have to sail close and see for yourself. what city is that.

Isn't this kind of pointless since you provide in-game coordinates and log coordinates in files, allowing development of tools that undermine any real map fog of war and make such local knowledge gained through sailing other than at the most micro scale (e.g. presence and layout of shallows) largely irrelevant? You are just punishing new players and players without access to out of game tools.

[mouse of war]

In real life even if a captain didn't immediately recognize a port then someone out of his officers or crew would.

 

So why not just get rid of those immersion-breaking towering letters and just allow us to click on a port to ID it?

It could be just like hailing a ship

 

regards

Edited August 3, 2015 by mouse of war

[mouse of war]

We do not like handholding unless it is absolutely necessary in design or required by systems.

Knowledge of the port skyline, its exact location and local waters is an achievement and gives advantage to the player. 

If you were there a couple of times you know the name of the port - if you have never been there and you don't know.. you have to sail close and see for yourself. what city is that.

Edited August 3, 2015 by mouse of war

[Macjimm]

So why not just get rid of those immersion-breaking towering letters

It would appreciate if the text would disappear with Ctrl H. Or at least the second Ctrl H.

Thanks for rewarding local knowledge and navigation skill. Seems fine currently. Reasonable balance. Players do not need to dock in a port to discover it's name and the name is not magically available from an incredible distance.

[marecek05]

Which city is that?

 

We do not like handholding unless it is absolutely necessary in design or required by systems.

Knowledge of the port skyline, its exact location and local waters is an achievement and gives advantage to the player. 

If you were there a couple of times you know the name of the port - if you have never been there and you don't know.. you have to sail close and see for yourself. what city is that.

 

Is it Santo Domingo?

[Robert Danforth]

All the ships at sea and she had to sail in to my port.

 

She was bluff in the bow and round in the quarter. She looked fast, very fast if well handled. Her topsails were hoisted but I could see the rigging clear enough. Something told me I ought to just weigh anchor, but I hailed her anyway.

[Intrpid2759]

For all you sage, and wise Admirals sailing around this game. Up until a few weeks ago we had greyed out Silhouettes of towns in open world. Now you're telling the lower ranks to identify a city by its skyline. Get real!!!  They hardly qualify as cities or towns. Merely a collection of small buildings in a group randomly thrown together. I agree the very large lettering hovering over a town is unrealistic. That's why I suggested a mouse over to bring up a small title, very much Like Booyah's map. 

[Schuetzengel]

Which city is that?

 

We do not like handholding unless it is absolutely necessary in design or required by systems.

Knowledge of the port skyline, its exact location and local waters is an achievement and gives advantage to the player. 

If you were there a couple of times you know the name of the port - if you have never been there and you don't know.. you have to sail close and see for yourself. what city is that.

 

This is Nieuw Amsterdam

[Destraex]

For all you sage, and wise Admirals sailing around this game. Up until a few weeks ago we had greyed out Silhouettes of towns in open world. Now you're telling the lower ranks to identify a city by its skyline. Get real!!!  They hardly qualify as cities or towns. Merely a collection of small buildings in a group randomly thrown together. I agree the very large lettering hovering over a town is unrealistic. That's why I suggested a mouse over to bring up a small title, very much Like Booyah's map.

its the coastline you need to recognise not the town and more town model types are coming iirc.

[Booyaah]

Which city is that?

 

We do not like handholding unless it is absolutely necessary in design or required by systems.

Knowledge of the port skyline, its exact location and local waters is an achievement and gives advantage to the player. 

If you were there a couple of times you know the name of the port - if you have never been there and you don't know.. you have to sail close and see for yourself. what city is that.

 

New York duh