For all the realistic aspects we have added into the game you will find toggle switches for them, you must make the selection of the 4 options before loading your game because you have to change these settings via _mods_on_off, these settings i talk about are as follows.
RTBL, choose to fight with RTBL value's or with stock value's (this is for shot types)
Realistic spyglass by Ashley, choose to play with the standard settings for all spyglasses or have no spyglasses show any of the main stats ie, speed, amount of guns, calibure, ship hp, sail hp etc.
Realistic ship purchase, choose to play with the normal settings where every ship other than quest ships apart from the Arabella are unavilable to buy or play with the more realistic feature where only small ships are available to buy, means you must capture MOW's if you want to own one and all other large ships like Corvette's Frigates, trade ships like Pinnace's (sorry MK), Fleut's, Galleon's etc etc.
Realistic cannon loading times, choose the one you want, very fast reloading times or realistic loading times.
Like MK said we have been working for over a year now trying to fine tune it all, RTBL its self was much larger than it is now because originally RTBL effected the ships stats, shot types, cannons stats etc. Now RTBL only effects the shot types stats. Having realistic gameplay isn't for everyone, we knew that from day one and this is why RTBL's main effects was removed from CMV3.0 before its release but still people still said it took to long for ships to be sunk. In the end for CMV3.2 all shot types value's was set back to vanilla value's, then i was learned how to use switches and decided to try that with RTBL value's because to be honest i never liked and never will like the vanilla battles they was just plain boring. One broadside of grapes and the ship is yours where's the fun in that. Or a couple broadsides of knipple shots and the ship is demasted. 3 to 4 broadsides of bombs and the ship is sunk, i fully respect and understand that critical hits mean something but how many critical hits do you get with bombs almost every shot fired could be a critical hit.
We will never get the game to be fully realistic for the battles, but if we could the area i would work on is the cannon damage, example firing a broadside into the side of a enemy ship from distance would do less damage than up close but like fire the next biggest fear for a captain and his crew is a ship firing a broadside into the stern of his ship, not only would this be deverstating to any ship including MOW's but heavy looses would be taken. Look at HMS Victory as she broke the line and fired a broadside into the ships either side it was the ship on her left that was effected the most as those shots went through the stern killing many and injuring many more but also destroying many cannons too. That from a single broadside into the stern, but then you have to look at the dates. That was in 1800's when Nelson tried to use tactics like that. The game takes play in the 1600's and many ships we have ingame wasn't even thourght of and cannon shots did less damage than they did in the 1800's.
So in truth we was aiming for more realisric battles, but like i said you can set which you like the most RTBL or stock. RTBL's value's have been increased slightly over what was in CMV3.1.5 and bombs are more effective than they was since these value's was lowered to be well pointless shot types to carry. Since thats a shot type the AI use a lot of i increased the stats for the bombs. Basically the bombs will damage the ships hull but not as much as the round shots, they will also kill crew but not as much as the grapeshots, they will damage rigging but not as much as knipples. In short the bombs are usefull but will not do what the desired shot type for that situation was designed for. So you want to demast a ship you would use grapeshots not bombs but if you run out of knipple shots bombs are the next best thing.
When CMV3.2 is released you will see all this for yourself and you might become a fan of RTBL, but if not then thats ok. You don't have to use the RTBL value's like in CMV3.1.5 or any of the realistic features added to CMV3.2.
