Potential Problems with Ships of the line

[lord_denton]

Now, as much as I'd like some sort of Ship of the line, here are some forseeable problems:

1) We would need a good quanity of them in to have traditional line of battle/melees.

2) One Ship of the line is out of place, and did not go up against the current ships in the game (Cutters/Sloops, Brigs, Frigates ).

3) They'd be slow, and have no use in traditional gold games ( being so expensive ).

Just like to address this.

[vladsimpaler]

If you want ships of the line, devote them to a different set. I agree that you'd need a good amount of them to even warrant them in the first place.

[admiralb]

to re-create any actual battles, yes you would need a lot of them...but that is not what the game is about. I'd love to see some over the top stuff myself, but I'm not entirely sure it can be done effectively in the current game.

vlad is right, you'd need a good amount of them, but in more ways than one...if we were to make a massively powerful ship for 1-3 factions and give nothing nearly as powerful to the others those nations will seem to be underpowered and leftout in a way. The game is called Pirates, and if we were to give England, Spain, and France some kind of over the top 7 or 8-masted behemoth and not to America or Pirate or any other nation we choose to have in the set we're clearly sending some kind of message there...is it even Pirates anymore? I've thought about it a while and have almost convinced myself that 5-masters based on historical ship-of-the-line would probably be the only way to make it seem fair to have them in the game. The best example is HMS Dreadnought...its ability puts it so far over the top in crazy, expensive ship land that using it immediately tells your opponent you are going to kill them. Any kind of ship-of-the-line should do the same thing, and 5-masters in general will do that. If we were to make some kind of historical ship-of-the-line, I'd like to see it be 5-masted, but with some outlandish ability or combination of abilities so that it makes the ship so expensive that using it takes up most of your fleet build in a standard game (like Dreadnought).

Ideally, picking one or two famous ships per nation and making them over the top 5-masters would seem more fair and balanced (I am not Fox News!). Of course most famous ships were only famous because of their commanders...which would almost have to be made as cards in the process and would probably give the ship a large amount of their power. Maybe make the commanders like Xeng He/Headhunter...can only use their abilities on said ship and therefore cheaper than they would be otherwise, but they still make their ship considerably more powerful in the process.