pre1700 naval battle mods?

[KingKnudthebloodthirsty]

Hey guys, do anyone think about mods about great naval battles before 1700? there are many, such as lepanto, the spanish armada, sluys in the hundereds years war, and even further back, Actium in ancient rome, and salamis in ancient greece. Any thoughts? i believe itll be awesome

[Herkus]

Yes, those are great settings. I am very sure there will be mods about pre 1700 see battles. ~;)

[Celtic_Punk]

Speaking of which, I do not claim to be a 1700's naval historian, but did wooden ships in that period use the tactic of ramming? or did it just see a resurgence with iron clads? in ww2 if a sub was surfaced, destroyer and cruiser captains would usually charge for them guns blazing and ram them, if hit they tore the top right off the bow of the sub and most of the time the entire crew would be killed.

[Belgolas]

Well it all depends. If the game doesn't do ramming so well then I suspect it would be vary hard to do the fun time periods of like greece and rome.

[Nelson]

Speaking of which, I do not claim to be a 1700's naval historian, but did wooden ships in that period use the tactic of ramming?

If you look at a full rigged sailing ship and imagine how they moved and fought you can see the problems inherent in ramming. They are numerous.

1) You would have to approach the enemy bow on and invite a close range rake from the target’s broadside. That’s exactly what the enemy wants in the first place. He hammers you with all he’s got while you answer with a bow chaser or two.

2) You would need to go as fast as possible to do the most damage in the ensuing collision. That in turn means the wind must be at whatever point moves you best. Most inconvenient.

3) If you are lucky enough to hit your opponent squarely at say, 10 knots, the sudden jolting stop could well bring down your own masts! Your own bowsprit would be fouled or wrecked at the very least. The odds of become fouled were excellent. Fine if you want to board but terrible when you want to…

4) Disengage. These ships don’t back up very well at all. Ramming could get you hung up for a long time.

5) For all of the above reasons, the hulls of rigged ships have no rams. Collision damage would not be catastrophic without one and hence almost never commensurate with the risks inherent in the attempt.

Deliberate collisions did occur when a captain wanted to board his enemy. Then the boarding parties would decide the action.

Historically, the kind of precise control that galleys could achieve in calm water was conducive to ramming. But even they disappeared eventually as broadside batteries became so powerful.

[Sheogorath]

Well, the game SHOULD (of course, it seems there's a good chance it wont, since, with all the emphasis on naval battles, CA hasn't mentioned them) feature galleys, which would make pre-age of sail mods somewhat easier to set up. Of course, I'm pretty sure your average 18th century galley bears about as much resemblance to a Roman trireme as a Model T does to a Ferrari, but the basics are still there. Just slap a couple more rows of oars on and stick a ram on the front.

[Mailman653]

Well, the game is supposed to be highly modable, does that mean there is a small chance for some kind of model creator?

[Polemists]

Well, ramming may be difficult but I fore one hope I can light my ships on fire and ram them into enemy ships as a last ditch effort. It may not be practical, but it would look cool :)

[Sheogorath]

They did mention in an interview that ship collisions will cause damage, which means that ramming is possible, just, probably, not very effective.
For mods, I'd guess it would just be a matter of fooling with the numbers to up the collision damage for certain types of ramming.

[batemonkey]

I thought they had mentioned galleys - Any way they def should be in, the danish, swedish and russian baltic fleet had loads of galley's as much of that area is impractical for big ships of the line

[Knight of the Rose]

Fire ships, and I'm not talking about putting a regular ship on fire, was an integral part of any 18th century navy, and deliberatly sailed into the enemy trying to make them catch fire.

So I'm quite convinced that you'll have some cool looking fire displays in naval battles, though it has yet to be seen in any of the trailers...

/KotR

[Ituralde]

On the topic of Galleys, this might be interesting for you.

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showpost.php?p=2032707&postcount=63

[KingKnudthebloodthirsty]

HOw do sailors on fireships get out anyways to avoid the collision between their ship and the enemy. cuz if they dont, those guys will be reduced to ashes. i mean like do they get on lifeboats the minute before they hit the enemy? I tend to think of fireships as some sort of kamikazes. im not a 1700s naval expert

[Mailman653]

I don't think they get out at the last minute, if you watch Elizabeth:The Golden Age, you'll see use of some fireships, basically they steer the ship in the direction of the other ship and then bail out, ships don't turn on a dime so by the time the other ship starts to turn away, the fireship might be on top of them already or half way there.

[Sheogorath]

On the topic of Galleys, this might be interesting for you.

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showpost.php?p=2032707&postcount=63

Oh HO, so galleys ARE confirmed.
That's awesome. I feel much better now :P

[PBI]

My understanding is that ramming was pretty much completely impractical with sailing ships, but did make a resurgence with the emergence of ironclads; there was a brief period in which the ironclad armour was essential impervious to the existing naval guns, so navies fitted their ships with rams as it was thought to be the only for ironclads to sink each other.

As far as I know it didn't work very well, and the problem was soon solved by further improvements in naval guns, so I don't know whether they will even bother to include it.

On topic though, I certainly hope there will be plenty of pre-1700 naval mods, in fact I suspect it will be the commonest type of mod. A mod either being a port of Rome but with naval battles added, or else Classical Greece around the time of Salamis, seems like an obvious good place to start.

Incidentally, I don't know if galleys still rammed in the 1700s, but given that their guns generally pointed forwards rather than sideways, I assume so.