Quote Originally Posted by Colovion
hey there's an enemy ship..... turn towards it... slowly.........
LOL, Colovion, even though I think you're being a tad unfair here. Commanding a single ship in 3D might be a tedious affair, but commanding whole fleets could be much more interesting, particularly if it involved customized fleets and skills such as sailing, navigation, boarding and the firing of catapults, guns and Greek fire. It could be made faster by compressing the action in the same manner as battle resolution in STW and MTW (don't forget the "epic" battles being simulated in our 30-odd minute scenarios would in reality have taken a lot longer, possibly several days). Not unlike sieges in MTW, naval battles would have a slow start and a violent climax. Much would depend on the make-up of your fleets, which the player should be able to customize just like his siege train in the present MTW. There would be a gradual build-up of forces as fleets or squadrons manoeuver for positions to windward whilst evading islands, banks and reefs, commanders make decisions about whether to push their oarsmen to exhaustion, when to fire catapults, and whether to assign boarding parties to starboard or port side. The next stage would consist of ramming and boarding, followed by general mayhem in which flagships may go down causing morale to drop on one side and rise on the other. And not unlike sieges, some would love these naval encounters while others would autocalc. Hey, but what else is new?