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I know you refer to the Lively as the basis, but the broadly similar Leda class has a bit more information available... and she is a 1091 tun BM ship, displacing only around 1496 ton. 

2000 is closer to the displacement of the much larger US superfrigates such as President/Constitution - 1576BM, 2200 tons.

Thanks for noticing this. I looked in the editor, and the mass of the ship is 1923 tons. 1800 tons of this is the hull (the guns are 90). It looks like this 1800 figure is one I wrote in by hand, rather than calculated, and I don't remember where I got it from.

I can see the relation displacement = about 1.5*burthen in a few places. I have one source, "The Command of the Ocean" by N A M Rodger, on the 18th century royal navy, that says "for a fully stored warship" the displacement is about twice the burthen. Do you know what the state of storage is for your figures?

This is something I am reluctant to mess with, as I am happy with the way the acceleration, stability etc. are tuned at the moment. But I will have to look at this stuff again if I ever get around to flooding and sinking.

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I assume it is at the load waterline. Sadly I don't have the table of lading, nor an accurate set of curves to integrate. It could be the ship fitted out, but with few stores. On a different point, ordnance seems to be relatively weak vs the structure of the hull (and guns on the engaged side or on the upper deck in general). I had to station within ~100yds to see hulling or a very few 9lb gun losses (and the majority on the unengaged side hit over the rail). While these are "only" 18 and 9lb long guns, the expected performance of the 32lb gun was 1200yds to penetrate the gun deck of a 74, 400 when fired double (with reduced charge). This level of performance should be seen from an 18lb (short pattern) long gun as used on the frigates at around 700yds (0 yds for double) The frigate is more lightly built, so there should be a small useful distance for double (with it's necessary reduced charge), but also an significant extension of the useful range of the single shot with distance charge (full 1/3rd weight proportion). (Similarly the 9lb single shot from the typical pattern of gun should give a useful penetration of the 74 at around 400 yds, but no useful penetration of double). Rigging seems to fall apart a little too quickly compared to damage to the hull systems (crew/guns/hulling) accruing. (A 12lb shot penetrating the side was considered a minimum to be useful in disabling guns, the lighter ordnance being taken as only useful for damaging wooden structures and rigging, or wounding crew. Rate of fires seem a touch high (I interpret the 3 rounds in 5 minutes to include the first loaded shot, and to not include restoring the ordnance to a loaded state at the conclusion - so ~2.5 minutes for the (complete) cycle for each of the first three shots - later shots are limited by heating, with no more than 20 shots permitted per hour if premature discharges (from heat of the bore), excessive recoil and bursting being a risk with higher rates. This makes coming into the wind less obviously a bad idea than with a 30-60 second reloading cycle, as you pass your head or stern across the direction to the opposing vessel.

I looked at the shot damage code (possibly for the first time since 2014). I'm tracking the kinetic energy of a shot. According to a comment in the code, an 18 pounder shot at 500m/s penetrates 2ft of oak, and I call it a hulling if the energy is more than that (with some randomness). For damage to crew and rigging etc. I just came up with some numbers that seemed reasonable, which shouldn't be hard to tune.

I set the rate of fire at the maximum plausible one. I agree it's a touch high. It would be good to model this better, and change it over time with crew strength and morale etc. Some of the code for this is there already but I'm afraid I'm unlikely to get around to fixing this up.

(And sorry, it looks like the 9 lbers are actually firing 18lber shot.)

Minor adjustment to the statement on rate of fire (gunnery manual suggested 5 minutes for the first three discharges as stated - my interpretation is loaded to unloaded). the first 20 rounds in the first hour, five minutes between shots after one hour at that rate of fire. This for naval pattern iron guns.