Sid Meier's Pirates! (the remake of the remake) needed the numpad. My PC is unusable right now so I am using a cranky old laptop at the moment, and it has no numpad. Does Covert Action need a numpad? Since I'm here, does the old Pirates! Gold need a numpad?

I'll preface by saying that I only have this game wishlisted, at present.

Sid Meier's Pirates (2004) can be played with the mouse (clicking to move your ship and clicking on the onscreen 3x3 button grid for different actions). Pirates Gold (1994) can be played with either the numpad or, as above, clicking on the 3x3 grid. Further, Pirates Gold and this game (hell, any DosBox game) can be remapped in DosBox by pressing CTRL + F1. (http://www.dosbox.com/wiki/KeyMapper)

As an aside, I bought one of [url=http://www.amazon.com/MillionAccessories-Numeric-Keyboard-Notebook-Computer/dp/B007DVM39A/ref=cm_cr_pr_pb_t ]these[/url] for an old clunker laptop I had sitting around. In my experience, I have found it to be exceptional, for the price. Your mileage may vary, though.

Both the manual and the Covert Action Wiki mention that you move around with the arrow keys and jump with shift + arrow keys, but for me with the GOG version the arrow keys only let me jump. I need to use the numpad to walk around during the combat mini-game.

If you have a gamepad or joystick you can use it to walk around during the combat game and then a numpad is not needed to play the game.

I also had a laptop that didn't have a numpad. If you're savvy enough, you can rebind the dosbox keybindings, like I did. I think it's CTRL-F1? I bound QWE/ASD/ZXC, which you can kind of imagine the setup. I wouldn't mind explaining in detail, but it would be a somewhat large post.