GD Notes #7. Wind, Cannons and Boarding.

This is Joruba, head of BlackMark Studio.

Caribbean Legend: Age of Pirates is coming soon — next week, March 13th! A must-have, totally worth a purchase.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3549020/Caribbean_Legend_Age_of_Pirates/

In case you missed it: it's a remaster of City of Abandoned Ships. A standalone game developed by ReCon Team with a focus on open-world sandbox gameplay, featuring colony capture, letters of marque, and a female playable hero. BlackMark Studio acts as publisher, providing the engine and the best features from Caribbean Legend.

Sorry, Kirill, had to be said. The mic is yours. Break a leg.

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Hoist the topsails — set a course for the Bay of Creativity!

Kirill here.

These notes go with 1.8 Maritime Update. Today we’re polishing some of the oldest sea-faring systems: heading to the wind, boarding, and naval gunnery.

But first — a few answers.

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[h2]Q&A[/h2]

The previous GD Notes sparked a bunch of questions about Seasons and the systems around them.

Here are the ones that came up the most.

Q: The Season of Storm with increased storm damage sounds terrifying.

A: Storm frequency will indeed go up — but not by much — and storm damage is being completely reworked. Storms will stop ruthlessly sinking ships, and you’ll be able to fight in them as an interesting weather event, not a “die or die” scenario.
In the absolute worst case, with every debuff stacked, you’ll still end up with a storm effect slightly weaker than what you get right now.

Q: The size of the bonuses and penalties looks scary.

A: The goal is for Seasons to actually push you to change habits or take advantage of new opportunities. If we see a lot of complaints about a specific effect, we’ll adjust it.

Q: New events and changes to generation will make questing harder.

A: We want the effects to be noticeable, but not frustrating and not “chore-like”. Everything here is tunable, and we’ll adapt it based on player feedback during the open beta.

Q: Season of Storm and Season of Shade will turn the Caribbean into waiting out bad times.

A: The effects shown in the notes were just 2 variants per Season. In reality there are many more — they can be positive, negative, and sometimes unexpected.

At the moment, the total number of variations lets you live through roughly 3–4 in-game years without seeing a single repeat — and we can expand that further later.

Q: The icons at the end of the diary — are those new fast travels?

A: Yes — many of you guessed it. We’re continuing to improve convenience and decided to expand the list of places you can reach with fast travel.

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We already reworked sails, wind, and heading-to-the-wind behavior back in 1.5, and since then it’s been improved multiple times.

All this time we’ve been collecting feedback on how the system works (and especially when it doesn’t) — and we’ve finally landed on a real fix.

[h2]The technical side[/h2]

Ship speed at specific angles to the wind is probably the most complicated and confusing system in the game.

Besides the obvious parameters like wind strength and the actual angle, the calculations also involve physical properties of specific sails on the model, ship class, and results from formulas full of magic numbers.

The end result was a system that was hard to read and hard to trust — and we’ve been carefully patching it up ever since.

Now it’s time for a final technical push: get rid of the complexity, the bugs, and the numbers that behave “almost right”.

We simplified the formulas, cut some dependencies entirely, and now a ship in ideal conditions at max wind really does reach its listed top speed.

The heading curves themselves were also re-tuned manually for every ship, based on the new parameters.

[h2]The visual side[/h2]

Even if the system is finally correct under the hood, it doesn’t solve the second big problem: players don’t understand (and shouldn’t have to understand) how it works.

In-game, heading is shown as two weird numbers in the UI and two arrows on the minimap during naval combat.

None of that gives the full picture, and the minimap arrows are extra confusing — because they don’t show what players expect them to show.

Now, in naval combat, you’ll have a gradient ring around the minimap that rotates with the wind direction and highlights the optimal course with color.

It should make your ship’s strengths and weaknesses much easier to read.



This system works great:

• For quick orientation: want speed — point your bow at the green.
  
• For complex naval fights: when you have to tack and approach from a bad angle — the difference between yellow and orange sectors can easily cost you minutes of real time.
  

In the interface, we also offer an advanced view of speed vs heading angle — a “spider chart”. It lets you understand how a ship behaves at specific angles to the wind, and compare ships directly using overlays.



A spider chart isn’t the most obvious thing at first glance, but it’s a powerful tool for experienced players who want precise evaluation and comparison.

Technically it’s not a “spider” at all — it’s a polar chart (variable magnitude by angle). I call it a spider chart because it’s the closest mental model for people familiar with football sims and MOBA stat profiles.

You don’t need to know the math, so here are a few simple rules of thumb:

• Bigger overall shape = stronger ship within its type.
  
• Where the outline/fill is farther from the center, the ship is faster on that heading.
  
• When overlaying two ships: whoever is “outside” wins speed on that direction.
  
• If the shape is bigger at the top, the ship is strong with tailwind.
  
• If the shape is bigger at the bottom, the ship is stronger upwind.
  
• A smoother, rounder shape = less sensitive to wind. A sharper, pointier shape = higher chance to lose speed after a bad turn.
  

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Aimed broadside fire also appeared back in 1.5. Since then, we’ve been collecting opinions and feedback. Some people loved it, some didn’t — but certain requests kept repeating, and 1.8 addresses most of them.

[h2]Keeping the gun vector[/h2]

This was the single most common request.

Before:

When you press fire, each cannon “remembers” a point in space and shoots there. To hit precisely you had to account for relative velocities and shell travel time — and even then you’d never get a guarantee all shots would land, especially at long range.

Now:

When you press fire, each cannon remembers its pitch and yaw angle, and fires by that angle. That means if the ship turns or rolls, your aim shifts with the ship. It will make it easier to hit during chases and retreats — but long-range fire becomes less precise.



To compensate, we’re adding a mechanic that rewards players who don’t treat naval combat as “fire and forget”.

As long as you stay in aiming mode when firing, the cannons that are still loaded will continuously update their settings. In other words: if you keep your aim on the enemy ship throughout the whole salvo, you can land every shot.

[h2]Different firing order[/h2]

The updated gunnery system opens up more tactical depth for both player and AI, so we’re adding one more option: changing the firing order.

With the right gunnery skill, you’ll have three modes:

• Synchronized firing — as it works now.
  
• Bow to stern — if you’re chasing.
  
• Stern to bow — if you’re retreating.
  

This will create thousands of interesting situations and tactics — and enemies will feel more diverse.

[h2]Reload improvements[/h2]

We fixed an issue where selecting ammo that was already loaded forced gunners to dump everything out of the cannons and reload from scratch. Most of the time, an accidental click like that meant you ended up reloading a save.

We also added a new mechanic: with a certain skill from the gunner tree, switching a fully loaded broadside to different ammo won’t reset the reload to 0 — it will reset to 30%.
The AI can do this too, so expect a surprise volley.

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There’s a very old problem in the game: Vanguards can swing wildly between “useful” and “not even present”. In many situations they simply aren’t nearby, and the player ends up fighting alone.

Boarding suffered from the same thing: you smash through the enemy deck with overwhelming numbers, and one moment later you’re dueling the captain in proud solitude.

We decided to put an end to that. From now on, boarders join cabin fights:



Enemy captains now have officers too — so you’ll have to earn your numerical advantage.

A few facts about the mechanic:

• Mass cabin combat is available only on medium and large ships. Small cabins remain duels.
  
• Maximum fighters: 3v3. This is limited by cabin size.
  
• Vanguards join the fight from top to bottom as listed in the interface.
  
• If no Vanguards are assigned, their slots are filled by Alonso and a regular sailor.
  
• Some merchant captains may be missing one of their officers.
  

We hope this makes midgame cabin fights far more interesting.



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These are the last notes for patch 1.8: Maritime Update. The next news post will be tied to the release of Caribbean Legend: Age of Pirates — and we’ll be focusing on work.

The patch has a lot more in it, but you’ll see the rest in the full patch notes before the open beta.



What we do — we do for you :jollyr:

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What caught my eye personally...

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https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3678587967

A new mod by Shadow that deepens the stories and mechanics of the “Legend Captains” from the Ships Pack add-on series. Right now only two are ready — but it’s just a matter of time, and here’s why:

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https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3660562940

Another mod by the same author that’s been unfairly overlooked. Blood in the Water significantly expands the mechanics of punitive squadrons and threat. Highly recommend checking it out.

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https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3669024101

A really interesting mod by DIAM1ND that replaces tired gambling games with Zonk, inspired by the KCD series.

We fully support the initiative — great mod.

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https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3672368653

Another mod by the same author that offers an alternative progression system where the number of skill levels required to gain a skill point changes dynamically.

For those who want more than the game’s built-in dynamic leveling speed.

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https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3678675969

K1ndr3d keeps publishing mods that fix the game’s old sins. At this rate, you could assemble a full community patch out of their mods and integrate it into the vanilla version.