POOP DECK Playtest · published
## New
- **Four new playable captains** — Terror (ships that linger nearby spill cargo
overboard — and the plunder puts a price on the Terror's own head), Tactician (a
single-press brake-and-pivot maneuver — the ship brakes hard to a stop while turn
rate doubles for a few seconds, guns staying free to fire the whole time), Corsair
(blockades a port), and Buccaneer (can take the King's Pardon to shed their bounty).
- **Captain abilities are here** — trigger your active, track its cooldown from a HUD
readout that survives respawns and ship swaps, and see it laid out clearly in a new
bottom-left captain/first-mate bar with radial cooldown timers.
- **First mates now pull real weight** — each has their own passive perk plus a
separate active ability, with a dual HUD showing both captain and first mate.
- **New full-screen captain select** — separate rosters for Caribbean and
Deathmatch, with portrait icons for every captain, now shown bigger once picked.
- **Captain HUD now tells you why an ability didn't fire** — on cooldown, already
spent, or out of range; the Buccaneer's King's Pardon also plays its own success
toast and chime when it lands.
- **Privateer fleets replace random bounty hunters** — a deterministic ladder of
pursuers that retarget when one of them sinks and retire in turn.
- **Caribbean ship purchases are now permanent** — buy a hull once and it's yours;
repurchasing after a sinking is free.
- **The Salvager captain preserves ship upgrades through a sinking.**
- **Score screen redesign** — a My Ship widget showing hull, cargo, and upgrades;
captain icons with cooldown radials; inventory folded into the same overlay.
- **Fugitive's bonus "Full Canvas" sails now fly on every hull**, sloop through
fourth rate.
- **Chain shot now renders as two linked, spinning iron balls** instead of a single
projectile.
- **Ship wakes are proper V-shaped Kelvin wakes, scaled to each hull's size.**
- **The Fisherman captain reveals loot contents as overhead labels.**
- **Frigate got new visual dressing** — wood masts, deck crew, and a ship's wheel.
- **Galleon got deck crew and now rides half a meter higher in the water.**
- **Gamepad now uses native A/B for confirm/back**, with cleaned-up button mappings
throughout.
- **New music** — the Caribbean roaming rotation grows to six tracks, combat and
treasure-fleet chases now bring their own looping cues, and Deathmatch plays a
per-team theme instead of one fallback track. Track transitions crossfade smoothly
instead of cutting.
- **Ships now heel outward under a hard turn**, like a car body-rolling through a
corner, for a bit more weight and physicality at the helm.
- **Every ship on the water now shows a health bar** over its masthead — yours,
your crew's, and everyone else's.
- **Your own ship shows per-side cannon reload bars**, so you can see at a glance
when port and starboard are ready to fire again.
- **Wind compass and terror dwell badge got a visual polish pass** — crisper
outlines on the compass, a bigger, easier-to-read terror badge.
- **Selections in the lobby now clear properly when you leave a session**, so a new
lobby never starts pre-loaded with the last session's captain picks.
## Changes & Balance
- **Terror's cargo-spill range increased 30%** (10m → 13m), and now scales with hull
size — it measures the actual gap between hulls rather than center-to-center
distance, so big ships trigger it more easily than before.
- **Frigate handling nerfed** — turns are less snappy and more committed, so it no
longer out-pivots ships well above its weight class while staying clearly nimbler
than the Galleon.
- **NPC trader density now scales with player count** — a 4-player game sees roughly
13 traders on the water instead of a fixed 5.
- **Brigantine's bonus sails repositioned.**
- **Paired chaser cannon shots now spawn much closer together, near the
centerline** (aim direction unchanged).
## Fixes
- **Buccaneer's King's Pardon actually reaches the server now** — it was silently
failing before.
- **Corsair's blockade range is now consistent, with proper per-port cooldowns.**
- **Non-host players can reload and fire chasers again** — they used to get stuck
after each cannon's first two loaded shots.
- **Santiago de Cuba's dock now faces the shore correctly, with a better hitbox.**
- **Fixed a bug where certain cannon burst visual effects could get stuck and stop
recycling** after the ship carrying them sank.
Also: a wave of behind-the-scenes engine, tooling, testing, performance, and
documentation work that keeps development moving but has no direct effect on
gameplay.