Make Light Sloops more targetable in pvp...

[Edward Edgemenace]

Not only throughout history, but recently, too, terrorists and pirates use tiny ships to get the job done.

The modern navy does not have purchase requests for large ships. They are huge targets, slow to maneuver and very expensive. Rowboats, however, can have bombs of every imaginable size and type on board.

I have found aiming at light sloops with cannon to be IDENTICAL in pve and pvp. Broadsides targetting for no apparent reason was broken horrifically for the whole game, when SvS was released. Lower range, lower damage, slower shot velocity, broken animation (e.g. shots landing 8 boat lengths BEHIND a light galleon count as hits - but only in SvS) yet inexplicably, manual cannons were made more powerful.

In real life, ramming speed would deal a LOT more damage. Not like ten times more, but about a hundred times more damage than the game does. A small terrorist speed boat hitting the side of a USN battleship (Yemen? Oman?) a couple years ago did a historic amount of damage. But not because the attack was original, but instead, because the USN didn't/couldn't shoot it as it got too close. (Presumably, it was because of spies on the USN ship, allowing the speed boat to get so close.)

The same tiny boat vs. huge boat is mentioned in the Old Testament. It is not a new problem. Just a bit more exaggerated in real life, as opposed to this game where you actually can somehow hit them.

Now when my light sloop sinks, it usually is from someone cheating, after I've hit them a dozen or more times and they take no damage. They will turn and fire one or two thunderbolts and my ship is gone. As far as I know, my light sloop has never been hit by broadsides (in pve or pvp.)