POOP DECK Playtest · published
## New
- **A new toon art style for the whole fleet** — every ship hull, sail, and patch of water, plus islands, ports, gun batteries, loot crates, wreckage, and combat effects (explosions, splinters, splashes, cannon smoke), have all been redrawn in a bold, hand-inked cel-shaded look with crisp outlines. It's the same Caribbean, with a punchier cartoon-pirate finish.
- **The Tactician's anchor ability now has a real anchor** — dropping "Spring the Cable" splashes a proper anchor and chain into the water on your turning side (both sides, if you're holding a dead-straight line), instead of the old placeholder effect. It hauls back up and stows once the ability is off cooldown.
- **A new ship: the Bomb Ketch.** The seventh hull in the roster, available from the Shipwright. Stout and slow to turn, it points closer to the wind than a galleon and runs strong before the wind — though a galleon still edges it dead-run — and carries four guns per side. It has no fractured hull-debris of its own — when it finally goes down, it sinks clean.
- **Mortars — the game's first area-of-effect weapon**, exclusive to the Bomb Ketch. Lob a mortar shell 20 to 90 meters and it arcs clear over terrain before landing in a wide blast. Watch your range: the blast can catch you too if you're close enough. Each of the two tubes has its own 10-second cooldown.
- **Mortar Mode.** Toggle it to bring up a dedicated aiming camera and reticle for lobbing mortars; fire with the broadside buttons while aiming (double-tap to send both tubes downrange back-to-back). Broadsides are disabled while Mortar Mode is active, so you're choosing one weapon or the other in the moment.
- **A blast-radius telegraph** now marks the water where an incoming mortar is about to land, visible to everyone nearby, and a cooldown dial appears at each mortar mount so you can see at a glance when it's ready to fire again.
- **Grog Mode now gets a proper announcement.** A big banner appears top-center when Grog Mode kicks in, with a live countdown telling you how long until you drink more rum, how long until Grog Mode ends, or — if you've overdone it — how long your hangover lasts.
## Changes & Balance
- **Sails fleet-wide got a major pass** — fuller, more dramatic billow, solid-looking canvas instead of thin cutouts, and new hand-drawn outlines to match the toon style.
- **Sloop's second jib is now a proper standalone sail** with a fuller cut, and its balloon jib bellies out more than before.
- **Brigantine and fourth-rate got sail proportion tweaks** — a taller, tapered gaff sail on the brigantine, and wider yards relative to the hull on the fourth-rate.
- **Stunsails (the small side sails) now scale to match their ship** — sized proportionally per hull across the brigantine, frigate, and fourth-rate, with visible booms and solid canvas.
- **Deathmatch AI fights harder** — frigates, brigantines, galleons, and fourth-rates now hold their ground and keep firing instead of retreating; only sloops and schooners still know when to cut and run.
- **The Helmsman captain is now a shoal specialist** — shallow-draft ships get a straight speed boost while crossing shallow water, and deep-draft ships that could never enter shoals before can now push through them (at half sail).
- **Deathmatch wind is dynamic** — matches now open with a fixed six-lane wind layout across the map, then the wind reshuffles into a fresh, tougher pattern about five minutes in.
- **Ships no longer shed debris chunks piece-by-piece while taking damage mid-fight** — wreckage still scatters dramatically the moment a ship goes down. This is temporary while a proper damage-visuals rework is underway.
- **Ship wakes are back, and now look right on every map.** The wake trail behind your ship — switched off for a stretch while it was reworked to match the new art style — is back and re-tuned so it looks the same whether you're sailing a small cove map or the full Caribbean.
- **Shallow water and shoal edges are crisper** and hug the coastline more precisely, consistently across every map.
- **Distant water no longer flickers near the horizon.**
- **Removed a distracting glint of sunlight off the water's surface** (temporary — a better-looking version is planned for a future update).
- **Gamepad controls: Dock and Grog have swapped places.** Dock is now D-Pad Left and Grog is the North face button, cutting down on accidental presses of either. All on-screen prompts and the How-To-Play panel reflect the new layout.
## Fixes
- **Fixed a stutter that could happen when several ships spawned near a busy port at once.**
- **Fixed a visual glitch in the sloop's gaff sail** that made it show a grid of squares instead of a clean sail.
- **Fixed a clash between sail damage tinting and the new toon sail shading.**