Ship Combat

Paradox.
On the former forums there has been a lot of discussion about the ship combat and naval physics.

Please give the naval aspects enough reality when it comes to wind, ship handling and canonfire. It does not have to become a simulator. But at least make it better than Empire Total War, where they have chosen for a very arcadish game.
Already the number of naval games in Total War multiplayer games is dropping. As it is a actually a 1st rate vs 1st rate game. You will not see any other ship battle unless all players have a agreed not to choose SoL's.

Also, please
- make ship battle a slow paced game. These ships were slow.
- make ship battle a tactical thing, where opponent have time to outmanouvre eachother, or where teams have time to set up formations.
- dont put all kinds of "warcraft" spells in the game, just give us some realistic ships, let the real skill depend on the player.
- make broadsides and gun fire that is not guided by missile control. Gunnery was primitive in those days, that is why they needed broadside fire.
- make ships sturdy enough to have battles long enough to have fun.
- make control over individual ships where you have to turn the wheel and raise/lower the sails manually. No waypoint system.
- make large arena/maps
- make maps for multiplayer with minimim fixed parameters and maximum game setting open for the host to decide
- make an in game general lobby where players and clans can find eachother (so you do not need to use any thirdparty, like steam or GS to find eachother)

Greetings Verhoeven,

Verhoeven said:

Paradox.
Please give the naval aspects enough reality when it comes to wind, ship handling and canonfire. It does not have to become a simulator. But at least make it better than Empire Total War . . . .

Click to expand...

I agree whole heartedly with your list. Except I would like the tactical naval portion of the game to be more of a true simulator with the ability for simplify based on the player's tastes. I would love to fight a battle in a roaring gail were I would need to strike the t'gallent masts to the deck, tripple reefed topsails and have to worry about rolling the old girl on her beam ends while maneuvering. But that may be asking for a bit much.

Greg.

Ship-to-ship, fleet-to-fleet combat (MOW II did it right)

Here, here...

I agree with what I've read in this thread. As a player of Man of War and Man of War II the control system (flag based between ships) was very realistic and provided a bit of the "fog of war" based on whether other players in the fleet followed orders, or not. A player could effectively control a squadron or fleet with the command structure.

A simulation of ship-to-ship combat with the creaking of the deck, wind in the sails, anchors being weighed, and the sounds of the guns roaring, men shouting and cutlasses in boarding actions made those games. While the graphics were rudimentary in their time they set a standard. The playability of those games is still there with the inclusion of a scenario editor, various classes of ships, selection of shot type, application of crew to repairs, guns, boarding, full sails, battle sails, or fully reefed sails, and victory conditions.

Some of the limitations included no land masses, reefs (depth restrictions) and a lack of forts. However, the "feel" of standing on your own deck, in charge of a squadron can't be given its due in this small write-up. We had players meeting each week at the same time, and additional times to engage in single ship and multi-ship actions. Here's the kicker...that was in 1999 - 2002.

The limitation of requiring a Windows 98 environment for MOW and MOW II killed it for many of us due to the roll-out of Win XP. As we upgraded for our work many of us upgraded our home PCs. A few of us even partitioned our hard drives to handle multiple OSes just to be able to keep playing this game. (Now that's a following)

Make the ship-to-ship combat a "real feel" simulation with a scenario editor and you will have followers for a long time.

Adm. Wellsley (aka David Wells)

Hehe, knew I would find some familiar names here.

I also agree to the wich list Verhoeven made.
This is not any wich list, it is the accumulated experience from almost 10 years of sail ship games.
"Sea Lords Virtual Fleets" has played just about all the sail ship game there is since 1999.
We pretty much know what works and what don't.

Well, atleast for our own tast

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I found this in the game description:
"For greater tactical depth, you can, at any point, take direct command of any of your ships and feel the battle close up!"

How much close up are we talking about here?
Is it deck view, like in Akellas Ago of Pirates?
That was kind of cool, to manually aim the guns and break the main mast of the enemy.
Also gave a very different experience when standing on the deck instead of hovering over the ship.