Santissima Trinidad stats

[Spino]

Deck four was full of French obusiers, weapons that were so useless they would have been better served to just mass the crew along the rail and have them drop trou and WHIZZ at the other ship. Basically, my gut would have been to make her a slightly slower-decay but MUCH poorer handling Meregildos.

To revisit, we did get an answer that the long and short tracks on the Mahonesas were deliberate, my guess is the long-track versions are meant to represent dimensionally near-identical 18-pdr frigates rather than allocate an extra sculpt on a "sideshow" line.

To elaborate, the overpower on Spanish ships is serious. The numbers on the Nepomucenos assume a 36#/24# or 36#/18# LD/UD load, but most of the time Spanish 74's only packed 24#'s on the LD and 18's or 12's on the UD. They should be no better than a Temeraire, and frankly I would say should most of the time be somewhere between a British 64 and a Bellona, probably closer to the former.

All fair points and I would agree, except Sails is a tabletop miniatures wargame ready to play right out-of-the box, something that makes it eminently more appealing to casual gamers. It is not a complex, traditional wargame that assumes its customers are period diehards who are willing to spend a lot of time assembling & painting miniatures for several hours before they even play the game! The game design makes a number of concessions in order to introduce a degree of 'balance' and games that can be completed in a reasonable time frame. The Standard rules are remarkably easy to learn & play, making the game very appealing to youngsters. The fact that SoG's system is based on the brilliant but simple Wings of Glory system is quite telling. WoG, while incredibly fun, is about as abstract an interpretation of aerial warfare you can get without invoking hexes & IGO-UGO turn based movement. Why did I state the obvious? Because I assume the designers deliberately sacrificed historical accuracy for 'fun', something historically accurate French & Spanish stat lines might infringe upon.

The stat lines in SoG already acknowledge the consistently superior seamanship of the RN via the comparatively better maneuver decks and veer ratings. It's a hard sell for me to bring French & Spanish firepower ratings down while leaving their maneuver & veer ratings as-is just because their armaments don't reflect reality. I'm not saying I'm completely satisfied with it, I simply accept it and, as others have stated, am willing to house rule the things I have problems with.

The biggest problem with nerfing French & Spanish ship stat lines is the potential harm it would do to sales. Why even go to the considerable expense of producing these pre-painted miniatures in the first place if more casual fans of the game know they won't be competitive or fun on the tabletop? It would make the marketing department's job quite challenging... "This is the famous Santisima Trinidad, the most heavily armed ship of her time with a whopping 140 guns! Except some of those guns were completely worthless and others were actually lower rated than what was listed in the official documents... and she handles like a pregnant sow, so there's a good chance she'll lose a one-on-one fight with a British 3rd rate. Now, who among you would like to pay $25 for such a ship? Wait, where are you going?"

My biggest complaint about the game is the lack of a variable crew skill & morale system that could be applied to each ship. The 'Sailors/Gunners Lack Training' optional rules leave me wanting. As with firepower ratings I would NOT want a slavishly faithful representation of reality for skill & morale, otherwise balance would be virtually impossible!