Gameplay

[Martes]

The fiery night (part 2)

British ships intercept the enemy


Never, ever underestimate the punch that a gun-brig packs. 32-pounder carronades at close range, at the right angle...


leave the French frigate drifting with only foremast standing


While the brig attempts to stop her counterpart, and seas build up


The frigate gets to the little boats that boldly follow their flagship


But speeds are everything. The French brig moves toward the prison ship, British takes position to rake the French frigate some more, and British frigate is forced to wear and come about, passing the little island from the other side.

​

 

[Martes]

The fiery night (part 3)

Bearing down from the island the British frigate makes an approach on French one's bow, but...


The little boats literally tow the flagship forward, so it can fire a couple of broadsides in the rig, confusing everything, and, worse of all, forcing the opponent to tack


On the other side the French brig reaches the prisoner ship, but armed xebecs pursue her off


The British brig returns to help her flagship and rakes the French frigate really terrible with grape and canister frightening the boats...


The French frigate fires it's last broadside and strikes.​

 

[Martes]

The fiery night (part 4 and last)

Suspecting that something is wrong with the boats as they relentlessly move towards prisoner ship, xebecs move to intercept


While the larger ships follow suit


When on the pass one of the boats ignites, and both xebecs catch fire in the confusion, being forced to fight for their lives


For the frigate it turns into a shooting race, and it's nothing easy to hit a small target at night, in rolling seas especially with immobile ship you have to protect


And they hold till the very last moment


When two finally sink and the one that ignited in the first place explodes.


And the brig chases the French on the rocks.

​

 

[Martes]

Another example of gameplay, this time I attempted to recreate a (relatively) complex coastal operation.
The British side includes three (!) ships of the line, two of them 80-gunners, and 5 frigates, of which two have submarines in tow.
On the French they have a port city, two forts (one above the city and one on outlying island), some merchant traffic and an anchored 74.
The idea was to see, how difficult it would be to breach these defenses with minimal losses and minimal confusion (spoiler: not easy). And, to make things even more complicated, for the action to take place at night, with shifting winds.

First group of British ships on closing the islands​

 

[Martes]

The French port


British frigates on patrol


The submarines


The line-of-battle ships detach to deal with the outer fort


While the submarine-carrying frigates make their way toward the port itself

​

 

[Martes]

While the frigate groups close the coast


The heavy firepower creeps to the fort. The buoys mark the fort's blind zone, as I usually do, and while I made all attempts to make the approach carefully...


The first signs of confusion manifested themselves at this point: one of the 80-gunners missed the firing position. A ship with lowered sails can very-very slowly turn to bear, but this effectively puts this ship out of the action for at least 10-15 minutes, and it's miracle it can't be fired upon, being still in the fort's blind zone.


The other two ships drop anchor and open on the fort.

​

 

[Martes]

Submarine carriers turn into the wind


And release their cargo


Bombardment of the fort continues until it's completely battered

The ships then close the coast as well, and the submarines make their long and manual way to their target:


Submarines near the French 74


One of them makes a pass under the ship...


And lays it's bombs on the way back to seaward.
​

At this point I had to make a pause, but hopefully this will be continued.

​

 

[Martes]

Charges laid


Boom!


And another pass...


Boom!
​

In hindsight, the explosives did much more damage to the submersible boats than to the target. But, of course, there was no way to know this, and the explosions did look spectacular.

 

[Martes]

As the boats begin to paddle their way to safety, the carrier frigates begin their turn towards recovery point.
​

The recovery operation is very difficult. First, the frigates cannot get too close to the shore, it's under their lee, and there is a fort and the French battleship's guns to consider. Second, the boats, well... They are not the fastest craft around, capable of barely 1 knot of speed and propelled by hand. And third, the wind may - or may not - rise.
The sea state during most of the operation was around 4, but I considered that if it strengthens to 6, both boats will be considered invariably lost, and around 8 it may begin to pose a direct danger to the carrier ships.
Thankfully, this did not happen.

Frigates complete their turn


The recovery point was set so that the boats will head towards the ruined outer fort


Frigates turn into the wind (you can see how close is the shore line - but this gets them closer to the boats)


And prepare for recovery



​

 

[Martes]

And begin to tow them out to safety.
​

What of the other ships?
In the uncertain weather conditions the ships of the line found a shelter under the lee of another island:

​

And two heavier frigates were lying to in the channel:

​

 

[Martes]

For a while I thought what can actually be done in the resulting situation.

The submarines proved insufficiently effective against an anchored ship of the line, attempts to increase charges and introduce prolonged times ended badly - the timers start to behave randomly and I had at least one premature explosion sinking the submarine craft.

A raid on the port is very difficult - while it is possible to get several ships around the bay into the port and even cut out the two indiamen, this does not solve the problem of the larger ship, and neither deals with the fort.

By the next day the wind has fallen to very slight breeze.
A reconnaissance was carried out in the morning...

​

 

[Martes]

Of course it should be noted that the whole thing is an improbable overkill, especially with the number of ships assembled. But even their number does not offer an easy solution, as the fort is very formidable opponent in a totally advantageous position. And they provide a showcase for the models on one hand and some logistic training in squadron management on the other.

Suddenly around the midday a movement was spotted in the port:

​

Two merchant ships seemed keen on attempt to get away along the coast using the favorable wind.
(this, actually, was caused by a small error when compiling the scenario, I forgot to check the "anchored" flag for them, and the AI thought it's better not to stay here any longer)

So all the frigates, along with one newly arrived (I made some cosmetic fixes to the Liffey) scramble to catch them:

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The wind is very light, so everything goes extremely slow, like snail races.

​

The French merchants pass the 74...

 

[Martes]

​

...and head out in the shallows along the coast.

​

I detach the smallest frigate with to intercept.

​

While 4 other wait in deeper water just in case.

​

The frigate closes the distance...

​

And opens fire on the merchant ships.

​

Their sails torn, rigging in ruins, they don't have much choice.

So now I have two little merchants (and their cargo, whatever it is, but it has to be valuable, otherwise why risk getting them out?).
What can be done with them, I wonder?..

 

[Martes]

Yes, what can be done with two small transport ships... And supplies from a ruined fort?

Until only a burning hulk remains.
​

Fireships are a difficult weapon. They require very specific wind conditions, and a lot of fine tuning before they actually hit the target, let alone do enough damage. But, with some experience (I can't even remember how many tests I ran before this) they do work, and dreadfully indeed.

 

[Martes]

The rest is relatively simple, if a long process.

Frigates move into initial positions


By noon the French ship sinks at moorings, and one of the 80-gunners squeezes itself into the gap between the fort's firing arcs and drops anchors and begins pounding the fort



In the meantime one by one the frigate begin to make their way into the port





Until it's all finished.
​

 

[Martes]

A post-battle scene:

A small corvette closing the squadron guarding surrendered ships


and approaching the flagship
​

There are two features in the game I like especially - the free floating camera and the "return" button after end battle screen, that allows to run or continue the scenario even when there are no enemy ships around.

 

[Glenn Cook]

Does PBs campaign editor work in the game? Ive tried. with no success. When i try to load a test campaign, the script fails to load the initial ships.

The games 3 campaigns don't seem to work well either? For me they usually fail by the 3rd mission.

Fortunately, The game's single scenarios and scenario editor work great. Have the data locations in the scenario file been sorted out?

 

[Martes]

I never tried to mess with campaigns, so I don't know.

Have the data locations in the scenario file been sorted out?

What do you mean by this?

 

[Glenn Cook]

I was thinking of how the scenario editor writes its data to the scenario file record. In most cases this requires hex editing the file.

 

[Martes]

I don't really understand.
The scenario editor can create new scenarios and edit old ones. Why would you need to hex-edit something that is editable through the interface?

Edit: Do you want to automate it by some external application?
Possibly, this is what you are looking for:
AlexKimov/seadogs-file-formats