about the camera - in "admiral" mode the camera pans W/E and N/S, tilts up/down, and elevates and descends. it does NOT rotate - it has a fixed N/S facing. in "commodore" you are shipside, so fully rotating, but limited elevation and no "zoom," well maybe a telescope view, i have not decided yet. in commodore, at real world scale, telescope would be essential for the hunt/chase phase. this will be determined when i start on the "campaign" play. the beta in june will be just the battle, in admiral, commodore (flagship), and captain modes.
weather - i hope so, but i want maximum ships on screen (right now i have 32, 16 per side, i would like to have 64, 32 per side) and this costs CPU. the visual effects of weather are also CPU intensive. what i definitely WILL have is of course, wind speed, gusts, and direction, and wave swell and direction. something along these lines, but "dressed" up for the period:
it will represent current conditions accurately, and a three day forecast of diminishing accuracy. again proper sail handling and gunnery in re current conditions will be essential.
global navigation - this is campaign level, and i have not given it full thought yet. if i stick with my variable time scale, down to real time, i suppose it could indeed be an accurate navigation sim, no reason not to. but do you want to take 3 real months to arrive at the battle
. waypoints are most likely, or a planning phase where you tick-out the whole voyage in advance, in a period accurate manner.
troop transport - this is certainly possible, and will depend on the campaign objectives. for the campaign narrative, i'm basically gonna lift stuff from aubrey/maturin and hornblower, which conveniently condenses history into adventurous escapades. i am all ears to hear any historical suggestions for the campaign system, and i intend in the long run to have a campaign and scenario editor for the modding community. i do not expect however, to make the ships moddable.
land actions - capturing ports, cut-out missions, and the like are definitely planned, but no "people" will be engaged. the smallest unit will likely be a barge or a longboat, used for capturing ports and prizes, and cut-outs. in the case of a port capture, just get your men ashore. you prolly want to soften it up with a heavy bombardment. in the case of a cut-out, get yer men to the prize and sail it out of port without being detected.
command interface - i'll post a screen with descriptions later today or tomorrow. stay tuned! i'll also zoom in on some points in the last screenshot and describe what is playing out in terms of tactics, eg. which ships in that image are doomed
by all means let me know which you think are doomed and why. it will only make my AI more devious.
bathymetry - yes. the minimap, which currently represents the whole blue gridded area, will represent the bathymetry for the area of conflict. it will purposely contain inaccuracies due to poor charts, shifting sands, etc... i am still undecided if the scenarios will occur in real-world places, or hand built for the purpose of game play. i'm leaning towards hand-crafted, but once i build the editor, no reason a modder cant pull in real world data. it's actually pretty easy. here's a not terribly pretty screenshot of the island of mozambique, viewed from what would be roughly commodore mode. high and low tides will apply around all land masses. this is actually a 3d view of a portion of the minimap in the previous screen, so i got that map-to-world stuff all working.
thanks for your interest and kind words!
best,
bix