2026-09-27
The busiest day yet: the first engagement, the Frigate Duel, a shipyard with a page and drawings for every hull, and battles cut from fifty minutes to five.
Engagements
An engagement is a set battle: its own ships, a fixed wind and no hull to choose. The first is the Frigate Duel, two frigates starting 500 m apart. Engagements have a page of their own on the site, and the welcome page now invites new players straight into the duel. Sea Trials came the same day: any ship alone in open water with a steady breeze, launched from its shipyard card.
Battles in minutes
Morale recovered faster than the guns reloaded, so it refilled between broadsides and every ship fought on until nearly all its crew were dead. A frigate duel took 51 minutes. Morale now waits much longer to recover, and a ship strikes at about a fifth of its crew lost, so the duel takes about five minutes. A test now fails if the frigate duel drifts outside three to eight minutes.
Combat also got a hit box of its own: a simple shape for the hull, the gun stations and the rigging, separate from the drawn ship. The drawn ship can now be redesigned freely without changing a single hit.
The shipyard
The shipyard has a card for every hull, rendered from the sim's own model, and a page for each ship:
- its particulars, and a lines plan with sheer, half-breadth and body plans, drawn as a blueprint from the same hull form the 3D model is built from;
- the stern and the bow from the quarter, in ink and wash, traced from the model;
- a sail plan with all sail set, and a deck plan from overhead.
SHIPYARD joined the nav for everyone.
At the guns
Gun orders came down to one per side: Loading or Firing. Click a side's station, or press [ or ], to switch it. Manning a side still takes men from the sails, but battle sail now needs only half the sail crew, and furled sails need none. Hold Shift for a telescope: the view goes to your own deck, zoomed in, inside a round eyepiece, and the compass shows where it points.
Life aboard
- The crew stand on deck: two men at every weather-deck gun, a party at each mast, officers aft and a few men walking fore and aft. Topmen go up before the sails move and lay out along the yards while a sail sets or comes in.
- Furled square sails lie rolled and tied under their yards. Headsails furl along the bowsprit, the spanker brails up to its gaff, and every sail sets by degrees.
- Footropes, braces and sheets are drawn, and they go with a mast that's shot away.
- The third rate's decks follow period draughts of a 74: a long quarterdeck, an open waist, a wheel and binnacle, a capstan, a belfry and a boat on its skids.
- Wakes follow speed, so a ship losing way loses its wake.
The launch
A new hull, rowed rather than sailed: a white 9.8 m launch with twenty men at the oars, a coxswain at the tiller and an officer. W and S order the stroke, from backing water to full. When it lies stopped the crew toss their oars upright. The bigger ships now carry one on deck.
Flags and names
You now fly a blue ensign with a white crown, and the enemy became the Nefarious Plantation Cabal. The welcome page now welcomes members too, instead of sending them straight to their dossier.