NAVAL ACTION Catch-All

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Anyone who has me on their Bismarck screenshot gallery Steam friend list has no doubt become aware that I've been playing a lot of Early Access age of sail game Naval Action.

NAVAL ACTION IS AN EXCITING, REALISTIC, AND BEAUTIFULLY DETAILED NAVAL COMBAT GAME IMMERSING PLAYERS INTO THE EXPERIENCE OF THE MOST BEAUTIFUL PERIOD OF NAVAL HISTORY - WHEN SAILING SHIPS RULED THE SEAS.

They're shouting, so it must be true.

I first bought into the Naval Action Alpha in February of 2015, when the purchase method was to send some Russians some money over paypal and then wait a week for them to send you your key. Back then the game was just a series of team deathmatches, with new ships unlocking as you gained XP from fighting with the small ones.

The fights were pretty, and meaty, and smokey, but also challenging because you had to deal with the wind and crew instructions and shot types and sea state and the positioning of both friendly and enemy ships and a knowledge of your ship's capabilities. A lot of it happened at walking speed and favoured planning, because you don't want to frequently change your mind with wind power and guns that can take a minute to reload.

I had fun, but was most excited when the Devs confirmed that this battle system would be laid over an open-world map of the coastal Eastern US and Caribbean, with fighting and trading and crafting and exploring and factions made up of the age of sail's major naval powers.

That's where we are now, with the Early Access release on Steam - the game is now an Elite-only-wetter MMO, with no freemium BS and no microtransactions in PvE or PvP flavours, with a large open world that takes a long time to traverse and explore, (but probably pales compared to certain space games to which this is being compared, because it turns out, space is really big).

The first one is the whole map, zoomed out until I can fit it all on the screen. Each dot is a port you can visit, which has sensible material production and consumption needs, is held by a specific faction, (Spanish, French, English, Dutch, American, Swedish, Danish/Norwegian, Free, Neutral or Pirate), and in the pvp version of the game, each port can be captured by another side, which means you could, theoretically, find yourself locked out of your home.

The second is a zoom in of the starting area, around Port Royal in Jamaica. For an idea of scale, if you had a good wind with you the whole way, you could probably sail from Port Royal all the way around Jamaica and back to your start point in 25 minutes. Realistic time is longer, because everyone who plays the game has already realised the wind always blows from your destination. Until you get there, at which point it moves.

Those maps comes with absolutely no indication about where you are, as you're expected to navigate using your compass, timing and landmarks. People keep complaining about this "bug" on the help channels, which amuses all of us who obviously knew this all along and weren't equally confused when we first started. At all...

The economy is player driven, so one of the first things you're going to want to do is to get as far away from Jamaica as possible. Port Royal "produces" (imports from off-map in this case), 200 tons of Indian Tea a day, which is in high demand on the coast of South America. This total daily amount will be gone about three minutes after it appears each day, so everything the starting area produces is gone, and everything it needs sells at a super-low price thanks to the large numbers of player-made deliveries.

I have a couple different trade routes I run, one of which is a circle and the other is a "there-and-back" which takes 75 real minutes in either direction, with a good wind™. This is why I'm not posting a video, because 75 minutes of sailing isn't super compelling viewing.

But! Here is some real footage of me sailing on the open world map!

The music isn't overlayed, that's what I was actually listening to at the time. It turns out that youtube has a surprisingly large and high-quality amount of sea shanty playlists.

What I'm sailing there is a Lynx trader I captured from the French when I encountered it in the open world map. When you run into something of foreign ownership on the map you can click to attack it and then you have 15 seconds before the battle starts. This is important, because once those 15 seconds are up the bit of sea you're on will explode out to massive detail, with the ships in the position they're in at that point.

Given the serious advantage offered by wind position, those 15 seconds will be spent manoeuvering desperately to make sure you have good position when the fight starts. In actual combat you'll want to be slightly behind your target, while a fight against a trader has you try to get slightly upwind, so they can't run from you before you put chain shot through their sails to bring their speed down.

Actually capturing a ship can be done either by wiping out their crew, or through boarding the opponent. Boarding is like a mini-strategy game, where you spend "preparation" points, (switch the crew to "Boarding" before attempting to board to slowly earn preparation points over time), to do things like throw grenades, fire muskets, attack and brace. If you're successful you get the ship. If you're not, the enemy may disengage, or even turn the tide and capture your ship...

Here's a picture of me "buying" that Lynx off the French.

The French like grapes, right? I paid with grapes.

Aside from leveling your Captain in combat, to gain ranks and make more crew available, enabling you to sail bigger ships, you can also level up through crafting.

You can either craft the components that other people will use to build ships, or build the components and then build the ship yourself. Components and ships are built from a multitude of materials, from wood to iron to stone for ballast and you'll be traversing the world to find it and buy it. Or you could be lazy and sit in Port Royal and just place contracts for other people to come to you and sell the materials, then earn your money by selling the ship you eventually craft.

Materials have a genuine impact too. The second ship I crafted was a "Cutter" made with Live Oak for added hull strength and look at this thing shrug off the hits!

The only major downside currently to the Early Access nature of the game is that the in-port UI is both clunky and ugly, (the at-sea and combat UIs are mostly fine), and there's no tutorial or tooltips in game yet, which can make getting started difficult. Especially as the sheer weight of new Captains in and around the starting area makes trading a very slow and difficult endeavour there. However, user guides are being added on Steam and there are a number of solid videos on youtube now, showing everything from how to find your way around to how to effectively use the manual skipper option once you get into a ship with two masts.

The price is high(ish) at $40, and will be going UP on official release. But the devs have stated they want this to be pure buy to play and while I expect new ship DLC to be available for purchase in the future, these special ships are usually different, not better, and are routinely outclassed by a fully upgraded standard ship of the same class.

If you end up in the Caribbean, send a friend request to "Catpain Slackbladder" and we can sing songs about French generosity together.

How was I not aware of this? Definitely going to give this a try this weekend.

I spent a lot of last night talking in-game with Fogrob while he fought various Pirates, while I sailed west along the coast from my base in Colombia, visiting all the British and Neutral ports through Panama, Costa Rica and Nicaragua, before crossing east to Old Providence, which took most of the night.

Once you've visited a port you can click on it on the map to see what it produces and consumes. You can't see how much, or what the current prices are, but it can at least inform you of where a profitable route might be.

I personally crashed the market in Historical Documents, when I took 8,000 of them out of South America up to Port Royal. At the start I was paying 75 gold pieces and selling for over 200. Now the British in Jamaica are buying at about 130 and most places I've found are selling at above 150.

So then Compass Wood became the thing and I found a run that only takes 20 minutes that made me about 100,000 gold a run, but everyone else has now crashed that market, so even though I still have a pretty cheap source that apparently no one else has found yet, there's nowhere to sell it.

Finding a port that produces a high daily amount of something and then nervously clicking on the "Shop" button to find out that it has a ton of that stuff in stock is a great feeling, because it means no one else has found it yet, so there's hope of a trade run or two before someone else notices.

I understand one of the next big patches is going to be an economy change, so it'll be interesting to see what they do there.

Bismark and I are playing as the British on the PVE server, so you will probably want to stick with that for grouping up purposes.

How bad was that "Master and Commander" pirate you ran into, Foggy?

Cannon misfire

Hmm, windows only. I suppose it really is time for me to get the windows gaming machine back up.

Mr Bismarck wrote:

How bad was that "Master and Commander" pirate you ran into, Foggy?

The one in the Lynx I was able to take out, but the other one (in the bigger ship) took me out handily. I'll be back again to play tonight.

Moved the remainder of my gear off of Jamaica last night, down to [secret Bismarck base] in South America. Carried about 100,000 gold pieces worth of materials for the 75 minute trip and had some unfortunate wind direction along the way that meant I had to tack a lot.

I apparently moved to far west, but when I finally spotted the coast I thought "oh... that's that bit of coastline, I need to turn East" and I was right, which was satisfying.

Then set about crafting a Pickle with all the mats - the Pickle was originally called HMS Sting, until someone decided that was too silly and renamed it HMS Pickle...

She's a bit fat, but she's strong and I went out and wrecked a French Lynx in her, but the best thing about crafting the Pickle was that it dropped a Mercury blueprint, so I won't have to rely on the general population when it's time to get into the Mercury, I can just make it myself.

Ahhh! You have a woman's catch-all! I'll wager this catch-all has never been used as a rowing-boat! I'll wager it's never had sixteen shipwrecked mariners tossing in it!

I've been admiring your screenshots on Steam lately! So this is really the hardcore Age of Sail simulator I never thought would happen. Man, if only it wasn't CA$55, an MMO, time-consuming (though I appreciate that part—but can you log out mid-sail, then pick right back up the next night?), and probably capable of imploding my PC [edit: or not, looking at the requirements?].

Ugh, and here I was thinking the decision between Elite and Evochron was easy. I'll definitely be watching this.

Also, the developer is the same folks behind Ultimate General: Gettysburg, which I haven't played but have only heard good things about, so that's encouraging.

Mr Bismarck wrote:

That's where we are now, with the Early Access release on Steam - the game is now an Elite-only-wetter MMO, with no freemium BS and no microtransactions in PvE or PvP flavours, with a large open world that takes a long time to traverse and explore, (but probably pales compared to certain space games to which this is being compared, because it turns out, space is really big).

Following and wishlisted!

oh gosh, Ive been waiting for this one!

theres a very good chance I will climb aboard tonight!

Jacknine wrote:

oh gosh, Ive been waiting for this one!

theres a very good chance I will climb aboard tonight!

Send me a FR if you do. Admiral Fogus

As far as PC performance, it definitely needs some optimization. I'm running an i7 with an Nvidia 980ti and still have problems with full AA. That's with triple screens though. I doubt it would do it with just a single.

fogrob wrote:
Jacknine wrote:

oh gosh, Ive been waiting for this one!

theres a very good chance I will climb aboard tonight!

Send me a FR if you do. Admiral Fogus

As far as PC performance, it definitely needs some optimization. I'm running an i7 with an Nvidia 980ti and still have problems with full AA. That's with triple screens though. I doubt it would do it with just a single.

I joined last night so will send you a FR tonight, I started with GB on the PvP server, but will create another on the PvE server.

First impressions are good, I love the look and sound of the game, its seems pretty immersive which is excellent.

I need to do some reading today though as I didnt have much of a clue about what I was doing, especially in the battle I joined.

Really considering going to the PvP server. I assume everything is the same with the added feature of possible death around every corner?

Jacknine wrote:

I need to do some reading today though as I didnt have much of a clue about what I was doing, especially in the battle I joined.

Some hot tips, (for everyone), in no particular order...

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You get a free "Basic Cutter" from the game, with free 4pd medium cannons. If at any point you end up in any port without a ship, (more on this later), you can get one of these there, even if you have another one in another port. They're not worth any money and can't be broken up for parts.

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The gun decks on your ship have numbers on them. For the basic Cutter it says [8-10][8-8]. This means you can have class 8, 9, or 10 cannons or class 8 carronades.

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Class 8 cannons are 6lb mediums or 6lb long. Class 9 cannons are 4lb mediums or 4lb long. Class 10 cannons are 4lb "basics" which are free. Class 8 carronades are 12lbs.

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The "long" gun fires a further distance with more penetration than the standard gun, but requires longer to reload.

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The carronade is a smoothbore, short barrel gun. As a result its effective range is very short, but the shot is twice as heavy. These will make a real mess of the enemy, once you get very close. They also take longer to reload

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You buy cannons in "decks." If you put one of these decks into the back of a trading brig, it'll be two guns. If you then drag that same deck into a Privateer it magically turns into twelve cannons, (six on each side).

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The three types of shot are chain, (for putting holes in sails and slowing the enemy ship), "grape", (for putting holes in the enemy crew), and "ball" which is general purpose. The only type that will de-mast an enemy is ball, which requires you to be very accurate, which isn't easy.

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Even if you're intent on killing the enemy crew to take their ship, you'll still need to use ball shot first to lower their armour. Or the grapeshot will just bounce. Getting behind your target and shooting into the back is best, because then you're raking the whole length of the boat.

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You can enter ports from your nation, neutral ports and free towns. If you try to enter another nation's port or a pirate port, you will be told you can't go in. You won't currently be attacked by NPCs for trying.

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If you buy a new ship from a port where you do not have an outpost, your existing ship will be destroyed. If the ship you want is at a port where you don't have an outpost, sail there in a free basic cutter instead.

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Once every three hours you can use the "teleport to capital" button your screen to, err, teleport to the capital. It sends you, your ship and everything in your hold.

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Once you buy an outpost somewhere you can teleport there too - this operates on the same cooldown as the capital teleport, so you can't zoom back and forth. Be warned - this sort of teleport only teleports you, not your ship too! I found this out the entertaining way.

You can swim home from there, or get one of those free Cutters.

Additional hot tips

Repairs for the basic cutter are free, so never leave home without a full compliment.
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Post battle repairs are accomplished by hitting the three horizontal lines on the left side of your screen and clicking repair until nothing is red.
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Before boarding a ship, make sure to prepare your crew by hitting the default "9" button.
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Use single shots (space bar by default), followed by zooming in (shift by default) to range in your targets.
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"J" will ring a bell on your ship. It has the somewhat confusing effect of inspiring your teammates to not deter at all from their current heading and run right into you.

I watched a really fun video where a guy was in the part of the game where you do big ship battles. The game looks fun bit it seems there is a lot of the same type of lonely slow slog that makes me shy away from Elite and Star Citizen. Sorely tempted though.

It's definitely better with a group. I've been playing with a guy the last few nights, and it's a lot more enjoyable than just slogging along solo. After 4 days in, I've also learned how to shoot properly.

First PvP battle tonight. Things didn't go so great, but I made more in gold than doing missions!IMAGE(http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/607226305924468960/4AEF4BA29DF481ACFF4CEFDDC6957BEB94E0A7BF/)

I bought it. Hopefully it won't be a solo fest

Hop in the EU PvP server when you're ready, I'd be happy to fleet up with you!

I'm Aetius on the PvP EU server as well. I've been figuring out boarding, which is hard, but I've successfully captured a couple of ships. NPCs seem stronger on the PvP server.

Message from the French Ambassador requesting that I stop stealing their ships...

IMAGE(http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/351647207494185778/2BC91EC763A213908E0F138018ECB55CCCB28CE0/)

The game is definitely more fun as a group. We had a three-man team tonight and took down a Snow, then did a Small Battle which we lost (they had three Snows, we had none), but got 100+ XP and 3k gold for fighting.

I was part of that group. In that Small Battle we were in, we were operating as a group, all sticking to the same heading, and calling primary targets. It was awesome. I have to say, the game really shines in that aspect.

This for me definitely falls into the category of things I WISH I could get into. But, MMO...

Is there anything, even older stuff, that really falls into this category for single-player?

I think there's the old Sid Meier's Pirates! game, but I've never played it. I'm not sure which part of the MMO part you don't like, but it's just a pay once game and it includes PVE servers if PVP isn't your thing. If you have any questions, feel free to ask me on here or steam.

BTW guys, I now like the game so much, I've decided to start streaming when I hop on. I'll announce here in the thread when I start playing. You'll be able to find me on twitch here...
http://www.twitch.tv/fogrob

I tend to use adult language, so you may not want to watch with your kids.

The MMO part is the infinite time sink, while needing to find groups to get anything out of it, part.

It sounds cool enough. I just wish there was something with this flavor with a significant offline aspect. I would never accomplish anything here I'm afraid. ..like every other MM game I ever tried. I'm into the history and the mechanics - the grind not so much.

ChipRMonk wrote:

This for me definitely falls into the category of things I WISH I could get into. But, MMO...

Is there anything, even older stuff, that really falls into this category for single-player?

Get Akella's Pirates of the Caribbean game (via eBay or amazon) then apply the New Horizons mod. It's fantastic.

Sea Dogs if you don't feel like tracking down a copy of PotC, as it's available on GOG.

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