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Ten Ton Hammer: What happens when the Balance meter is totally drained?

Kevin: You can’t defend yourself when you’re out of Balance.  Nearly every attack will hit you.  This means that even weak enemies, in large enough groups, can overwhelm your defenses and bring you down.  That’s a critical element of boarding combat – you need your crew to support you, or you’ll be cut to pieces by the enemy crew.

Ten Ton Hammer: How do the different fighting styles affect the Balance meter? Will a two-handed weapon wielding pirate lose Balance faster than a graceful swashbuckler?

Kevin: We’ve got three combat styles: the Dirty Fighting school, that focuses on cutlasses and low blows; the Fencing school, that focuses on the rapier and precision; and the Florentine school, that focuses on two-weapon fighting and defense.  They all use balance to one degree or another, but the specifics are contained within the individual skills, so it’s possible for a character to specialize in big, powerful, unbalancing moves, or stick with smaller, weaker, and safer moves.

Combat effectiveness is based off the skills available to you.

Ten Ton Hammer: When a character progresses, will his combat ability also progress? Or will all his progression be based upon advancements he can buy on his ship?

Kevin: Your combat effectiveness in both ship and swashbuckling space is largely based on the skills you have available to you.  You gain those skills as you progress in level – but with an interesting twist.  The skills are organized into ‘chains’ that are five skills long – so in order to get the second skill in a chain, you must first know the first skill.  However, the top end of each chain is achievable at level 15.  That means that a relatively new character can have access to a ‘top-end’, powerful skill.  The experienced veteran doesn’t have more powerful skills than the new player – he just has more skills.

Ten Ton Hammer: How will ship theft work? Will players have the ability to board other pirate’s ships and confront them for mastery of ship and crew?

Kevin: Anyone can board another ship to defeat it, assuming they can successfully grapple the enemy ship, and assuming they can defeat its crew and captain in hand-to-hand combat.  However, only pirates are allowed to seize a ship and keep it for themselves.  That’s what makes them pirates, after all – stealing.  Members of the three nations will have to content themselves with looting the ship’s hold.  However, everyone has the ability to ‘claim’ a ship that’s been beaten in boarding combat.  Claiming a ship sends the ship back to the prize court, and has a chance of granting a special item as a reward.  These items, or ‘commendations’, can be exchanged for supplies, outfitting, goods, and even writs that allow construction of powerful endgame ships.

In addition, pirates have a special ability to scavenge a captured ship rather than keeping it for use.  Scavenging generates a variety of shipbuilding materials, provisions, and other valuable goods.  Once scavenged, the empty hulk is then sent to the bottom.

Ten Ton Hammer: How will the players be portrayed that work exclusively for a certain faction, such as the British or the French? Will these players and their ships be physically discernable from other players of different reputations? Will their avatars also change in appearance?

Kevin: Each nation is visually distinct in a few ways.  First of all, you’re given your national flag automatically – so a British player will fly the British flag, and a pirate will fly the Jolly Roger.  Naval officers also gain access to uniforms for their nation, each of which is visually distinct from the uniforms of the other nations.  In boarding combat, your crew’s appearance is determined by your nation and career, so a French naval officer can expect to see French soldiers on his side, and a pirate can expect a rough collection of sea dogs on his.

Ten Ton Hammer: What if a player with an opposing reputation nears a hostile port town? What sort of NPC response will there be?

Kevin: Ports tend to have nearby traffic that’s friendly to their controlling nation.  If you’re hated by the Spanish, you may find the waters around Spanish ports to be a bit dangerous.  Naval officers are particularly disliked by enemy nations – and of course everyone is suspicious of pirates.  Freetraders, however, are tolerated by all nations to one degree or another, and so can move a bit more freely around the world.

Characters land-based experiences are built into the mission content of the game.

However, once you’re actually in a port, you won’t be stabbed by the first NPC to wander along.  Ports are ‘safe’, and the limitation you have as a character who’s disliked by the local faction is that you don’t have access to basic services such as the economy.

Ten Ton Hammer: There are several screenshots of characters running across beaches or into jungles. Can characters travel onto land wherever there’s an island, or will they need to pull into a port? / How much of the modeled land is explorable?

Kevin: Land-based adventures are built as part of our mission content.  You don’t just wander ashore and start fighting; we want your land-based experiences to be interesting and exciting, with lots of story and specific encounter goals.  It’s really part of our philosophy of getting right to the excitement and adventure.  We don’t want you to have to sail for a half an hour across featureless ocean to find a ship battle, and we don’t want you to have to run for half an hour through empty jungle to find a swashbuckling battle.

Ten Ton Hammer: Thank you again for your time, and is there anything else that you’d like to tell gamers fervently anticipating your game?

Kevin: Look for our major announcement– (which you can view by clicking here... Ed.) – and make sure to sign up for the beta if you haven’t already.  We’ll be adding a ton more people in the very near future, and we’d love to have you aboard.