Go into the game directory, and find a file named engine.ini. Edit it with notebook, changing the first value from

CORE_MODULE core

to

CORE_MODULE tools_launcher

Save and exit, and when you’ve done it, start the game, ‘Esc’ through the Bethesda and Akella banners, and you’ll be at the helm of the editor!

If you go to Ship Editor, Doc Austin tells us and I’ve experienced, you can find the ship ‘Principio’, and change it to whatever you want. The effect will be that your beginning ship will be changed to that. Do show a little honor and respect and refrain from giving yourself a MMOW. Actually, if you give yourself a ship above the class you can command at the beginning, your skills will reflect a negative value. Which leads us to the…

Character Editor. Page down and look for Nicholas Sharp. You can change a lot of things, like apparently the 3D model (temptations, temptations! I reckon it might be possible for you lasses to change the lead character to one of female models, like Carla, but you’d be limited from the Pirate and French Campaigns…unless yer playin’ someone with an alternate lifestyle). What would be fruitful is to change the skills levels. First Mate jojobeans tells us that if you set your sailing skill to 90 (the highest he recommends without the game "going buggy"), you can watch your ships fly (though this is rougher on the larger ships). It begins to have a negative effect at that high a rating, so I’d recommend down in the teens to be the excessive upper limit. Similar effects come from a boarding skill of 90. He recommends a high grappling skill, but you still have to get close. He says that reload rates are best set between 10 and 20.

I recommend the above if you want to a game with some of the more colorful ships, like my favorite, the Galleon. I’ll tell ye, sailing the Archipelago in one o’ them tubs is tough, both since it’s hard to find one to buy, and it’s murder having encounters with ships you can’t out-run or out fight. If you wonder about the values of ships in the game, this editor is for you, as long as you remember the original values.

One of the options of the game editor is… ‘game’. Hit it, and the game begins. Afterwards, when you check the Engine ini, it has gone back to it’s original CORE_MODULE core !