Vessel panel
The Vessel panel on the sunshine widget has information about the ship a pirate is currently on. This panel is only displayed if that pirate is presently on a ship, and it shows:
- The speed meter, which shows how fast the ship is going.
- The damage meter, which shows how much damage the ship has taken.
- The bilge meter, which shows how much bilgewater the ship has.
- The cannon counter, which shows the number of guns currently loaded.
- The name of the crew that owns the ship (Or "<No crew>" if the ship belongs to a player without a crew).
- The crew's sea battle rating.
- The name of the ship
- The flag the ship is in (or "<Independent>" if it belongs to a crew without a flag).
- An icon showing that the ship is locked, if any.
- A list of the pirates aboard, as well as icons showing what duty station they are at (if any).
- The "Disembark" button, which allows a pirate to leave the ship if it is in port at an island.
Officers and above in the crew that owns the ship have access to additional features. These are:
- The "Sail" button, which gets the ship going to the charted course.
- The "Turn About" button, which reverses the ship on its course, with an attendant speed loss.
- The "Port/Deport" button, which allows an officer to put the ship into port or pull it out of port, respectively.
- The "Hiring Jobbers" tick box, which puts a jobbing notice on the notice board or takes it down.
- The "Auto-Target Ships" tick box, which enables or disables auto-targeting.
- The "Join Event" Button, which causes a ship to join a blockade.
- The "Arrange furniture" button, which allows a pirate to redecorate the ship.
- The ability to order pirates and swabbies about by clicking their name on the list of pirates and choosing a duty station from the resulting list.
- The "Attack" button, which is used to initiate the pursuit stage of sea battle
- The "Disengage" button, which replaces the "Attack" button during the pursuit stage of sea battle.
Royalty and above in a flag have access to a "Blockade" button, which allows them to declare a blockade on an island.
As with all sunshine panels, a pirate's total money (and doubloons, if applicable) is displayed at the bottom.
Historical notes
The "Sail" button once read "Set sail", and the process of locking ships was introduced with release 2004-10-21.
New icons and a new font for the status meters, as well as the addition of the guns loaded meter, came with release 2005-08-10.
At one point, the "Disengage" button appeared in pursuit, but performed no function. It was fixed with release 2005-09-01.
The Auto-Target checkbox appeared in release 2007-03-23, and was put on the same line as the sail button during release 2007-05-24.
The speed panel used to display speed as a percentage of a sloop's maximum speed. This was changed to display speed as a percentage of that ship's maximum speed in release 2008-10-14.