2026-10-03
The player guide was written from the sim's own numbers, the welcome page opened on a clip of a frigate making sail, the great ships gained carved bows and sterns, and the open sea learned what to do with an abandoned cutter.
The player guide and the devlog
The player guide grew to nine pages, from Getting Started to Ways to Play, with Wind and Sail, Crew and Stations, Gunnery, Morale and Striking, Boats and Prizes, Squadron and Signals, and The Ships between them. Every number on it was worked out by running the game's own physics and gunnery, not estimated, and each page has stills drawn from the game. This devlog began the same day, with a post for every day since the first ship sailed and renders of the earliest builds.
The welcome page
The banner is now a clip from the game: a frigate lying furled for five seconds, then making sail as the camera swings round it, ending on a still of its last frame. "Welcome to Quarterdeck" fades in over the end, lower left on the water. The clip and every picture in the guide come from a new staging tool that renders scenes from the game itself, so they can be drawn again whenever the ships change.
The ships
- The 74 and the First Rate have carved ends, fitted to their hulls: a scroll head and gilt trailboards down the knee, and a carved taffrail over the stern. The First Rate's stern has a third tier of windows. The stern's sheer was lowered to meet the carving.
- The square-rigged ships have bobstays, bowsprit shrouds and a sagging net between them.
- The officer in the launch is a modelled man in uniform and bicorne.
The open sea
A cutter whose player leaves the sea is now a derelict: it strikes its sails and flies the white flag, and any boat may board it and take it as a prize. A player can keep any number of cutters, and the ones they keep but don't sail follow them in squadron. A player who comes back gets every cutter still derelict; with none left, they start again at the mole. A boarding is credited to the player in the boat. The wind on the open sea blows steadily from the north and never shifts.
Gunnery and sail
- Guns reload at rates taken from period accounts: a 12-pounder in about a minute and a half, a 32-pounder in about two minutes. Damage was retuned to keep the pace, so a frigate duel runs about six minutes over the same eight broadsides, and chain shot still brings a frigate's first mast down in about two minutes.
- Topsails alone give seven tenths of full sail's drive.
- A sixth signal, heave to: ships in squadron that answer it take in sail and lie where they are, their guns still firing as they bear.
Smaller things
- The world now reports, anonymously, how smoothly it runs on each player's computer, so changes to the drawing can be measured.
- The site dropped 152 images nothing used.
- The guide's comment flags were removed.