Reefing the topsails?

[Didz]

Pretty basic question, how do you change the speed of your ships?

With the 'Full Hud' switched on there is a way of altering the speed of 'A' ship by clicking on the +/- buttons to 'make' or 'reduce' sail. But when grouped or with the 'Minimal HUD' that option seems to dissappear or not function.

Is there any way of doing this with a Quick Key, or something, for the entire group?

Had a look through the so called manual but couldn't see anything listed.

[Slaists]

Pretty basic question, how do you change the speed of your ships?

With the 'Full Hud' switched on there is a way of altering the speed of 'A' ship by clicking on the +/- buttons to 'make' or 'reduce' sail. But when grouped or with the 'Minimal HUD' that option seems to dissappear or not function.

Is there any way of doing this with a Quick Key, or something, for the entire group?

Had a look through the so called manual but couldn't see anything listed.

This one bugs me too and I have a feeling its bugged actually. The speed reduction option disappears if ships are grouped.

[Toddyvegas]

You can reduce sail on a single ship basis but once grouped, that option isn't available for some reason.. It takes too much micro management so I avoid..

[Khorak]

It's not bugged. Ships automatically reduce sail in order to avoid collisions with other ships, and will not let you override their desire not to smash into other vessels. As such, when you have a line of vessels relatively close together, such as how the computer automatically deploys them at the start of a battle, ones in the middle can often start reducing their own speed in order to prevent possibly colliding with the one in front.

If you have just one ship in a group that cannot be given sail commands, usually because it thinks it's going to collide with something, then the command for the whole group becomes unavailable.

[Forward Observer]

According to the battle commands that are listed when one goes to the keyboard options in the game, the left and right bracket keys "[" & "]" are supposed to perform this function. Oddly, they work when using the full user interface, but when going to the minimal UI, they stop functioning, which makes them sort of pointless.

In fact this is also the case with land battles. The various key functions to change rank and file or rotate the facing of your army in the pre-battle set up only work with the full UI. When one goes to the minimal UI where you don't have on-screen buttons, all of the positioning keys cease to function.


Just another non-functioning feature that was over-looked before the game was released, but I wonder if the developers have been made aware of this by now in any bug report?

Cheers

[Forward Observer]

I just thought I would add that after today's patch some of the keyboard commands are now working when one is using the minimal battle user interface (HUD)

One can now get the bracket keys to control the increase or decrease of the sails when using the minimal U.I. Of course the ship will still over ride these command if a collision is imminent or it is facing into the wind using it's onboard diesel engines (ha, ha).

Also, when using the minimal U.I. in land battle, the bracket keys now function to increase rank and file--as do the ' and the / to control small incremental unit or whole army moves forwards or backwards.

However the unit or army pivot move keys do not function whether using either type of HUD. Actually, I am unclear as to what these keys should be. One of them is definitely the ; key while the other appears to that symbol used for denoting accents on words. This symbol is not normally included on any keys that come with most keyboards sold in the US. I don't know about Canada since they usually have to accommodate the French speaking populace. I believe one can program a key to type this symbol, but I never use it enough to bother with it.

I tried simply re-assigning these keyboard functions to other keys and the assignments were accepted, but they still did not function in the battle screen. At this point the only way to rotate an army or unit on its axis is with the arrow buttons that are included in the standard full battle U.I.

Of course one can still select, then right click and scroll the mouse to angle your army, but that way a bit of a hit or miss type of control requiring repetition through trial and error. It also could be that I may just be a tad too picky about unit placement before I go into a fight.


Cheers

[Didz]

Thanks FO, I was actually playing last night and noticed all the changes to the Naval grouping symbology, but 'Sods Law' dictated the only naval battles I fought had my ships placed to leeward and so I was closehauled all the way into action and the 'make' or 'shorten' sail functions wouldn't do anything anyway. If find it very counter-intuitive to have my ships reduce their sail area to the 'sticks and spars' at the very momemnt when a real sailor would be getting out his pocket handkerchief and hold ii that up in the hope of catching a bit more wind.