So it seems I'm having problems posting so will try this in 2 or 3 posts as discussions I've found here suggest.
PART1
OK so I only check in here every few months and saw this thread - and I must admit, I'm a little pissed. First off you can call me a "sperg" all you want, but people who post a topic like this without looking through the other topics below which are already there a few lines down on the list and ask the exact same questions... - people who can't be bothered to take just a tiny little bit of time to look and dig a little for the answers in already existing discussions.... - so just post their own repeat topic - are the worst kind of lazy and utterly stupid ADHD pogue-baits to ever grace the ether. For people here that do that, please just go outside right now and find the nearest tree you can - and apologize to it for the oxygen it produces that you waste on a daily basis.
2nd, as the creator of the original ERAS mod (which is now its own highly developed game with a new engine - (in which you will experience NO CRASHING OR BUGS) let me respond to the trashing and bashing I've received on this thread.
I'm not some sweet little wilting prairie flower that's gonna kiss anyone's ass or do whatever anyone wants. I am considered old to most of you (50) and came from a hard working generation. I am a retired US Army Lieutenant Colonel and I do this as a hobby. So pardon me if I offend any of you little snowflakes who can't handle truth or be bothered to look at or read anything more than one sentence long or take more than 10 seconds of their time to learn something. For you padowans who want to know more and really CARE about their gaming time and love history and authenticity - then maybe - just maybe you may want to hear what I have to say.
To that giant bag of massegil from Spain who thinks he's a writer, you have no idea who I am and what I have gone through to produce ERAS. Yeah I was pissed and did a little trash talking. I think you would have done much worse if you were in my shoes. Let me ask - would you be pissed if admins started deleting your posts which had no profanity or offensive content in them - even when you were part of that same staff team and had contributed there for years? Would you be pissed off if you were banned basically because you were seen as a competing effort and diverting people away from their main focus/effort - even though you had done nothing but help - spending years of your time and effort contributing there? Would you be pissed? Is that fair? That's why I started my own website and gaming team.
ERAS is not meant for people with 2 second attention spans who get flustered when they don't have the most basic simple technical skills/competence required to get the game to work on their system and cannot be bothered to ask for a little help. I am glad you aren't playing COAS. You need a simple "hulk smash" game that works right out of the box with no thought or tweaking required.
You call COAS a turd without having the patience to learn the simple techniques in it that allow you to succeed. I see this all of the time. As a beginning player you think that you should immediately have all the skills necessary to go out and sail ships and fight bad guys and because you have no skills at all yet and get owned at every turn, you give up and call the game a turd.
This game takes patience. You have to develop skills and work your way up to the bigger ships, better weapons and items and better fighting skills where after a while you own everything. The opponents continue to get tougher as you get tougher so its always a challenge. But good riddance. You were not made for this game.
Yes I have threatened to quit before. I have spent thousands of hours of my life putting this thing together to make it the best, most historically authentic, 17th century, Golden Age piracy and age of sail simulation in the world. I made this game for me - not for anyone else. So when no one provided feedback I did think about hanging it up and working on it just for me (and BTW I never got upset once from feedback - I have never deleted anything anyone ever wrote offering feedback and I have always thanked them - so that is a total BS bold faced lie that I get upset with people who offer constructive criticism - I LOVE IT! I thrive on it! Its what I wanted. That's WHY I threatened to quit - because I wasn't getting any feedback. But you couldn't actually be bothered to read through the actual threads and just jumped to ridiculous conclusions and assumptions. Right?)
Since that time a lot has changed and I have many other people now helping me, providing new content and actively offering advice and their opinions on things that they would like to see made better or have changes considered. If you go to Buccaneers Reef you will see these active conversations in the forum threads and you will not see me throwing any tantrums or disagreeing with people. You usually will see a lively discussion on historical accuracy and realism tempered against still having fun game-play mechanics.
Now let me say that this is the only version of the old mods still being worked on. As such it has turned into its own game and all of the bugs have long since been fixed. With the new MAELSTROM(TM) engine this thing will work in DX8 or DX9 and there are even 32 and 64 bit versions. It will play as long as you want to play with no crashing. We have ratcheted up ship battle numbers and convoys so that you can encounter many more ships than before. I might encounter a Spanish treasure fleet with 32 ships! No crashes will occur even if you are controlling 8 large battle ships yourself and masts are being blown off etc.
Another huge difference in game play in this instance is that we have dozens of different galleon models now and many that are Spanish only - so instead of seeing a few odd ships in old COAS or GOF, you will now see a bunch of historically authentic Spanish galleons and escort war galleons in this formation. Also it might be sailing in more than one row of ships instead of the single row the old STORM engine supported. See example photo of treasure fleet below.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/49225014@N05/42007886010/in/dateposted-public/
PART2
So now for people that think this game is overkill, we don't want you to play our game - please go play minecraft or something like that. We don't want you. If you are satisfied with the paltry basics that were originally offered good onya. However, let me ask you from a realism perspective - is that reasonable? Ask yourself, if you were to go outside and take a trip to the grocery store right now, would you expect to see only the same twenty cars over and over again and they would always be the same color? Would the people you see in the supermarket be the same 40 people over and over again with the same clothes all the time? Would the items on the shelves that you are shopping for be the same 20 items over and over again?
I think my point is taken. We have roughly a 150 characters that you can choose from starting out and 90 percent of them are actual researched real people (heroes and pirates) from history! The base game had 3 - enjoy yourself. We have over 600 items and 150 different weapons and weapons combinations. You never know what you are gonna find on corpses and in treasure chests.
ERAS has over 700 different ships you can encounter or take if you count all of the different skins on 216 different ship models. These ships have been meticulously researched. If you enter a Dutch or English harbor or encounter a French or Spanish patrol or merchant convoy - the ships you would expect to run into will look correct. They are nationally distinguishable and we have dozens of flags both merchant and naval that you will encounter on these ships. There are also several new locations and many more are being developed and some are ready now.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/49225014@N05/39082833775/in/dateposted-public/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/49225014@N05/28101583019/in/dateposted-public/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/49225014@N05/38858242125/in/dateposted-public/
PART3
https://www.flickr.com/photos/49225014@N05/25282440108/in/dateposted-public/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/49225014@N05/27369889119/in/dateposted-public/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/49225014@N05/23981270317/in/dateposted-public/
If you want to experience historical immersion which has been our primary impetus from the beginning and you value and enjoy that, then please come join us. However, some people prefer dog food over T-bone steak - and that's fine - enjoy - SQUIRREL!!!.
Last, to wrap this up this game will not be free for much longer. Our LLC and Trademarks are already pre-approved/ approved and we expect to get the final blessing from the US trademark and patent office in less than three weeks from now. The game will then go onto ITCH.IO where we already have a pre-built site ready to go and we will likely go on STEAM as well. If GOG wants to carry us we can talk to them as well. There may be no new questlines now (although there are new sub questlines available in ERAS right now that are not open in COAS) but there are new ones in development and we have a bunch of DLCs ready to go which will be bundles of four famous pirate battles from history in each DLC - and after the battle you can continue to play into the main game free play with that character and ship from the battle.
