I know this is going to get the purists off their seats but I was curious if others feel that the game is modeling this era correctly?

To me the rake tables are just off when it comes to rigging. You see if you turn the ship either way you will hit sails when you are raking the ship, however was that damage that great? I mean you punch a hole in the cloth, big deal.

To me the rake did more damage to the hull since your shot had a better chance of hitting the ship if your range was off. meaning the length of the ship was easily hit as opposed to having to be on target for a depth of what 20 feet you are hitting at a depth of 50+. Now I don't recall the specs of the sizes of ships nor am I going to go look them up.

But rakes, especially at longer range should do more hull and crew damage then rigging.

In other words, it may be true to form for the original game, but I think the original game got it wrong!

Yeah I know the beams would be more exposed, but considering they were dead eying the shot, the length of the target area, because of the variance in powder strength would be the bigger issue, and the spares of the sails would really be more exposed when side by side then raking because the spares would be raked so to speak when battle lines were beside each other.

So how would I change it? Maybe allow the target to be hull when it is being raked. Again the hull would take the major damage, the sails I think would hold up under the attacks much better then the surface of the hull as the shot drops in and kills crew and blows open the deck and perhaps damages the guns.

So I ask, is raking a ship modeled correctly?