There is no pirate nation in the game, but nothing prevents player from committing piracy upon ships of other companies. You can actually make large profits from it and use it to get items you would perhaps not otherwise have access to (situation where all gold ports would be ruled by other companies for example).
Other companies naturally do not take this kind of action lightly. I mean, if you attack someones ships, kill their crew and steal their cargo, you should not be surprised if that makes your relationship with them to deteriorate and eventually they would declara war on you.
We have recently added three modes dubbed arcade, normal and simulator. The mode affects certain aspects like ship turning arcs and how strongly wind affects the ship. In simulator mode it can become almost impossible for single ship to reach certain point on the world as side wind can push the ship so strongly.
Ships do not stop and furl their sails upon reaching the last waypoint. They continue with their current sail mode to the direction they are heading. We did experiment on this quite a lot with different approaches and felt that this was the best.
In addition, waypoints enable the player to give her ships specific plotted courses. This is important not only for tacking/beating in the wind, but also for manuevering your ships to optimal positions in general. Naturally, taking direct command enables you to do this yourself manually.
We have recently added three modes dubbed arcade, normal and simulator. The mode affects certain aspects like ship turning arcs and how strongly wind affects the ship. In simulator mode it can become almost impossible for single ship to reach certain point on the world as side wind can push the ship so strongly.
Will nations go to war with each other anyway? And if they do can the player join in with privateering?
I assume you can use this as a rule for setting up multiplayer custom battles? Is it also possible to set the available "warcraft" skills in a multiplayer game? Or be able to set them to not available?