Ship Pack Details and Updates

[Oskar94]

Armada's Naval Supplies or some like this?

 

[craiggbrown]

The Easter egg basket!

 

[Armada]

The Easter Ship (Egg?) Pack!

The Easter egg basket!

Ah, I never even thought about Easter! Good idea, guys!
Hehe, the funny thing is, La Couronne has what looks like Easter eggs on the stern, and she's in the pack... :

Armada's Naval Supplies or some like this?

I like the idea, but I'd rather not have my name involved. After all, it's not entirely my work, you know.

Keep 'em coming, people.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

LOL @ La Couronne!

 

[craiggbrown]

Ya, 3 big easter eggs on the poop. I will never figure out what was the appeal of gigantic easter eggs with crowns on them for stern lamps. LoL!

 

[modernknight1]

How about

- Monte Hall's Hulls Giveaway

- The Fabulous Fun Floating Fleet pack

- Bilge rat's New and Improved Bountyeous Beautiful Boats Binge Easter Egg Basket pack

- Opus Architecturis Navalis Novus Horizonus Piratus pack

- Admiral Ahabs Magnificent Marina of new vessels

Incidentally the reason for the giant lanterns on great ships were that they were often fleet flagships. We can't appreciate how bad things were then with ships so large and lit up like Christmas trees these days and all kinds of electronic doo-hickies for navigation and position. In rough thick socked in weather fleets could get seperated rather easily and it was necessary for the flagship to act as a sort of beacon for the others to follow. As long as they could see them, the assumption was that they weren't lost and could follow their leader who was supposed to know where they were and where they were going. Not always true:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_II_d'Estr%C3%A9es

The pompous inexperienced blue blood Admiral Jean d'Estrees refused to listen to his navigators and other captains and wrecked his entire fleet en route to sack and seize Dutch Curacao on the reefs around St Ives islands in a light fog. The fleet consisted of some thirty ships to include 12 large French Man of War. Only a couple ships and a handful of men survived. (Writing a scary short story on this).

The bigger and brighter the lanterns, the better. Pett observed in his journal that he and several lady friends could actually enter the main central lantern located on the poop of the Sovereign of the Seas through a leaded glass door and sit comfortably around the lantern lights within the glass. Also with fire a constant threat and one of the greatest fears of seamen of all times, the central fire and fuel source had to be safely contained, sheltered from the weather, and have multiple means of being extinguished within the lantern if the situation required. There were actually even bigger lanterns than those on La Corrounne.

MK

 

[Armada]

- Opus Architecturis Navalis Novus Horizonus Piratus pack

I like that subtle reference there...

Thanks for clearing things about La Couronne's stern lanterns- that's very interesting, actually.
A bit unfortunate for d'Estrees, though.

 

[Oskar94]

What about this for the name: New Horizons: Naval Supplies Mod?

 

[Armada]

Or how about a bit of both: 'Easter Naval Supplies'...?
I guess that'd be closer to the mark; this pack doesn't just contain new ships, this time.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

I like it. And then use the stern of La Couronne as screenshot! And edit it a bit in Paint or do to make those things look MORE like Easter Eggs.

 

[Armada]

Now that would have made a great April Fool's joke!
"New re-texture for La Couronne, featuring Easter Eggs for lanterns!" :

Nevertheless, the idea of using her stern as a screenshot would be good.

 

[Armada]

Ahoy mates,

I've made a preliminary logo for the Easter Naval Supplies:

[attachment=6205NS_logo_1.jpg]

This was just a quick one I made earlier, so if anyone would like to try and make a better one, be my guest!
Here's the original shot of La Couronne's stern, as a starting point:

[attachment=6206:Couronne_stern.jpg]

In other news, I'm currently importing Craiggo's extensive detail and texture work, and after that the pack is nearly ready.

Although, I've had a last minute idea: what would you say to changing the ship naming system?
By that, I mean changing, for example, Bellona's name from "84-Gun Third Rate" to "Bellona Class Third Rate", or something along those lines.
This would be similar to the system in PotBS, I believe, and it would give more meaning to the ships, in my opinion.
Obviously, we'd need to choose names for all the fictional and custom ships, but for the historical ships it would be easy.
Does this sound like a good idea, or is it not worth it? It's important to note that it would be easy to do, though.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

Now that there are some pretty Easter Eggs.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

As you say, finding "something class" names for the non-realistic ships will be quite difficult.
We seem to be changing the ship type names rather a lot. First we change it to having less different type names, then we add more distinction again, etc.
Seems we're reinventing the wheel quite frequently. :wacko:

 

[Armada]

Yes, I see your point. Things are ever-changing these days.
After a bit of research, I found that this naming custom only really came into play in the early 1700's. Even then, it's mostly for navy ships.
That might make things a bit easier, if we narrow the changes down to naval vessels of the later periods, mostly.
Another option might be, where we really can't find a class name, to use the ship's type instead.
For example, HMS Victory didn't have a class name, so was referred to as a 'First Rate Ship of the Line'.
And before anyone asks, I'm not basing this purely on Royal Navy customs; other navies used class names too, including the French and US, most notably.
To that end, we could even give some ships nation-specific class names. All that requires is a little background research and a few extra entries in 'Common.ini'.

Maybe, at the very least, we could name some of our custom navy ships in this way- especially the historical ones.
To me, this would just give more meaning to some ship types. The "#-Gun X-Rate" names seemed a good idea at first, but it appears to have dissolved the distinction between some ships, notably the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Rates.
Maybe it is a step back towards the old system, but I think of it as a compromise between that and the current one.

Does all that back the concept up a bit? Or am I just digging myself a deeper hole? :?

 

[Hylie Pistof]

Methinks I would prefer the current system. Why? Because it gives more specific information about individual ships. For instance the current 40 and 44 gun 5th rates would be lumped together with no easy way to tell them apart. I prefer the 40 gun 5th rate. A system where each class is named after a specific ship would remove that distinction. Only experience would allow one to decide which ship to sink or which to capture.

Hmm. New thought. What would be the purpose of changing the naming system? The way the spyglass is in realistic mode it makes no difference what class the ship is. It's "I can take it." or "Dam that's a big ship."

 

[Armada]

Um... doesn't your second point cancel out your first, then? :?
I guess it's a question of where the class/type is the most useful. If, out at sea, it makes less difference, then what about the shipyards?
The current system includes the number of cannons for some navy ships, yet in the shipyard, one can see that in the ship's description.
Also, when sailing in Arcade mode, the spyglass tells you that value as well as the type name. (rather, the best one does )
So surely there's no need to be told the same value in two places at the same time.
It's also worth noting that only a few navy ships use this system; most other ships just have names including "heavy something" or "fast something" etc.
Therefore, effectively, only a few ships would be affected.

Plus, I never said ships would be lumped together; quite the opposite, I think.
Ideally, this system would group ships by their design, and not cannon quantity. This is usually not a problem, but some ships with equal cannons are of very different designs.
For all we know, the term "40-Gun 5th Rate" could refer to any ship of 40 guns, including frigates and small ships of the line.
Of course, it refers to the latter in-game, but what I'm saying is that named ship types would distinguish better between some of the navy ships.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

As far as I'm concerned, you'd be welcome to do anything that makes sense in the end.

 

[Armada]

Well I still need the approval of others before changing anything officially. :hmm
I could, however, have a go at making a draft of a new system, and give that to people to test in the meantime.

 

[Armada]

I've made a start anyway. Here's an example of such a name, for Le Superbe.
EDIT: CURSES! I forgot to upload the image, so now I can't upload it to this post. See next post.

I've started implementing some historical names for the custom ships, and I'll let you know when I have done enough to put up for testing.
The only slight hitch is that some of these names are a bit longer than before, as above, so perhaps the name needs moving below the image, at least in this interface?
I recall we did something like this for the Interface Screenshots, but I've forgotten how.

The only exceptions to the historical names so far are the Steam Frigates, which use their fictional 'Baltimore Steam Propulsion Lab' names.
Also, the only exception which doesn't use the word 'class' is FR_SteamFrigate, for which 'Jeanne d'Arc class Steam Frigate' was too long.

This leads me on to the nation-specific type names, which I've done so far for Victory, Constitution and the Steam Frigates, with more planned.
For example:

• Victory1 = Victory class 1st Rate (I know, contrary to what I said before, it turns out she does have a class- she was the only one in it!)
• US_Victory = Columbus class 1st Rate (these were historically cancelled from production, but would have been a close contemporary match.)
• FR_Victory = Terrible class 1st Rate (the closest contemporary match I've found so far.)

What d'you reckon? Do these names sound good? Is it a good idea to give some of the distinct repaints nation-specific names? :will