4. I think the cheap compass doesn't show the minimap, but doesn't show a lot of other information either.
I think we could mod the slightly more expensive one to not show it either.
5. The best place to buy pirate design ships is from pirate shipyards, but they won't sell them to you unless you're a pirate.
And it's quite tricky to become a pirate. Other shipyards occasionally have them as well, though, and they can be encountered at sea.
You just have to be lucky though.
6. The "Sail To" menu doesn't show the bars in Realistic Game Mode anymore either, does it?
Then there's no way to measure it, no. Though realistically you would be hard-pressed to tell that from the other ship as well.
Apart from the holes and fallen masts that you get in the game as well.
We might recode things a bit so you can create your own Realistic Game Mode and are not stuck with "all or nothing" as we have no.
7. If you're aiming manually, I think aiming higher is better.
As long as the balls actually hit the sails and make holes in them. I think...
8. It's turn rate.
9. Most of the drifting stuff can give you something. Not much, but something.
Sometimes they give you nothing though and mines and floating logs can be dangerous.
10. Storms can indeed develop in DirectSail. They work the same as storms encountered at the worldmap though.
What Morgan Terror says sounds like the "Capsize" mod that I recently added to the game to liven up the storms a bit.
Although I didn't test that in DirectSail and only from worldmap, it should work in DirectSail as well.
If you keep using DirectSail, eventually you should run into storms.
Note that the occurrance of bad weather in DirectSail actually depends on the month in the game
and takes into account the real Caribbean dry and wet season to a certain extent.
11. Which islands? You mean Petit Tabac and Isla Mona? These are indeed tiny islands used for quest purposes only.
All the other ones should be on there.
12. The best one is coded as zoom = 7.0. I'm not sure if that means 7x zoom though.
In any case, we could increase the values if it's required for gameplay purposes.
13. Not from trade missions, no.
14. I think that's indeed a balancing bug.
Could you post that on the Bug Tracker please?
15. You can increase your luck also by talking with random characters in the towns and by completing quests.
As for sailing, you get sailing skill points for actually sailing, so playing in DirectSail should help.
16. Yes, they do.
17. If I recall, some do have cons. For example, staysails increase the sail repair costs. Logical, because there's more sails.
That is why, apart from Flush Deck, all upgrades can be removed again as well.
If you find that there's any issues with the balancing of the game or the playability of the Realistic Game Mode
or anything similar, be sure to let us know!