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unmerged(137712)

First Lieutenant
2 Badges
Mar 19, 2009
225
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  • Commander: Conquest of the Americas
  • East India Company Collection
Greetings me hearties,

The much anticipated ship of the week has be posted on the EIC game site. There are three new screen shots and short video.

The gunport action on the video is pretty nice looking.

Please do not take the following wrong as EIC's ships are some of the best depictions of sailing ships I have ever seen in a game. Overall they are the best. ET:W has very nice billowing sails until you see them pop behind the mast.

The only nit I see is that some especially this one appears a little shallow in the draft. The distance from the lower gunports to waterline looks about right. But I would not have expected to see the turn of the bilge. Most accounts I have read about ships this size, as well as paintings from the period show the tumblehome coming right down to the water such that you could climb the side almost like stairs. She does not look like she has a deep enough hold to carry all the shot, powder and provisions necessary to support 600 men for an extended cruise.

Greg.
 
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Link

EIC Development Team said:
Ship of the Lines were the quintessential battleship of the era. Though they were slow and sluggish to manoeuvre, Heavy Ship of the Lines were the most powerful sailing vessels on the high seas. They were often ranked 1st or 2nd rate in a company's fleet. Though the first models were already built during the 15th century, this type of warship had an important role in naval battles all over the World spanning the 17th to 19th century. Ship of the Lines often had over one hundred cannons spread across three decks and a crew of more than one thousand men. Fighting in formation, with a long line of ships sailing one behind the other, they bombarded their enemies with devastating broadside attacks.

Something very fine in detail which would be a very nice touch (IMO)... will the ships have their own names/insignia?? Something so pathetically small I know haha! :p
 
Looking at history we see the British Navy carried less than a hand full of first rates on their books. The bulk of the line of battle ships were rated 74 - 80 guns. I just hope they are so expensive in the game that their numbers are kept low. Other wise battles will turn into E:TW engagements where everyone has a 1st rate.:wacko:

Greg.
 
Agree completely - I hope SOLs will be a rare sight in EIC.
One way of course is to make the upkeep so high that it gets impossible to field more than a few.
Actually, when push comes to shove, I think I'd rather have some kind of hard-limit in place than risk an ETW-like battle scene where every fleet you meet has a SOL or 5.

And ship-names will be in.
I saw it in one of the screenshots.
 
Not so sure on the whole hard limit thing - seems restrictive. I think the way to tackleit would be to have huge costs to build and maintain. The more lucritive your trading (and so the more powerful you are) the more you can 'field'.

Good about ship names then. I hadn't noticed in any of the screen shots so far.

Oh yeah... and there should be some more details of the game coming around in the next few days. The developers are at that game conference in the USA from 24th-26th March.
 
The Heavy Ship of the Line looks great! good job on developing the ships! Overall, everything on the ships looks perfect and just about right, only thing I see is the distance of the lower gundecks to the waterline, that's not right. I see that on frigates too, as well as on East Indiaman. The heavy ship of the line looks very much like the HMS Victory, but as many stories and facts about the SOLs say that those SOLs' lower gundeck was so close to the water that it couldn't be used unless the water was absolutely calm. The waterline problem is the only unrealistic thing I see about the ships, everything else looks great, and they indeed are the best ships I have ever seen in a game. The second best ships in a game are from Pirates of the Burning Sea, The ships in there don't have any gunports, and the water can sometimes rise over and cover the entire deck, which made no sense at all. The heavy ship of the line shows that EIC's ships will have opening and closing gunports, which is very impressive, and the water seems great too, so we just need to combine those with the correct waterline height, and then the ships will look just like pictures of real ones.:) There are some pictures of the HMS Victory in water if anyone wants to know what I'm talking about with the water line. And by the way it would be great if the name of the ship was carved into the stern, like real ones, and also, if possible add customizable trimming options like stern designs and the bow spirit as well as the other carvings, so there would actually seem to be more different ships than just the 11 types. Don't forget to let us be able to paint the ship different colors as well!:)
 
If you browse the screen shots ship tweaks appear to be implemented. At least in the form of multiple painting schemes which means I am sure they can do Ship Names.

What would be ridiculously sweet is if on top of having tweaks, they actually had different designs for each type of ship.

Like a French or Spanish designed frigate that you could learn to recognize from a distance. Way more fun than cookie cutter designs with slight variations. And if instead of every Ship of the Line Heavy having exactly the same # of guns there was a huge variation, some have 80, some have 100.

Not only do you bring a whole new (realistic) tactical level to the game, but it would be sweet if you could deceive other ships and lure them in with trickery.

The waterline looks pretty close to me in comparison to this photo of the HMS Victory

Also I wonder if the ships will sit lower in the water with a full load on board. Maybe this is with a light or empty cargo hold.
 
I do hope we can mod ships and their textures/skins. They can look even better in the right hands ;)
 
The picture you provided of the HMS Victory was being fitted with copper plates on the bottom of the hull at the time when the picture was taken, if I know correctly. And yes they definitely emptied out all the cargo and excessive weight, so it would be easier to reach the bottom of the hull. When the ship is loaded with the cargo, ship provisions, ammunition, as well as 800 crew, the ship should be quite lower than what is shown in the picture.

Sorry about long posts:D
 
The picture you provided of the HMS Victory was being fitted with copper plates on the bottom of the hull at the time when the picture was taken, if I know correctly. And yes they definitely emptied out all the cargo and excessive weight, so it would be easier to reach the bottom of the hull. When the ship is loaded with the cargo, ship provisions, ammunition, as well as 800 crew, the ship should be quite lower than what is shown in the picture.
Yeah that was what I thought too - that the ship wasn't fully loaded at the time of the picture.
Sorry about long posts:D
Haha! Is that in reference to my signature?? If so, don't worry, it really wasn't aimed at any of you lot (inspired by a thread on the HoI3 forum here). Plus that post REALLY wasn't that long. :D