Gunnery
Gunnery is the duty puzzle responsible for loading a ship's guns. When a cannon is loaded in the puzzle, a cannon becomes available to the commanding officer to shoot in battle nav.
Contents
[hide]Basic Gameplay
The goal is to correctly load the four guns, as quickly as possible. The gunnery pieces are sent out in all four directions from the wooden barrel, in random order, until there are two of each on the board. When a piece is used, another of that type will be sent out the barrel. If the ship has no cannon balls, you will stop getting shot pieces and cannot load any guns. Pieces travel in a straight line until they strike an obstacle, at which point they turn right. If turning right is impossible, they turn left, and if neither is possible, they reverse direction.
The pieces must be loaded in correct order: powder, wad, shot. The fourth piece, the bucket, is used to clean out a gun after it has been fired, or if the wrong piece has been placed in a gun. This is accomplished by placing arrows to direct the flow of pieces. An arrow can be placed facing any of the four cardinal directions, and a piece travelling over the square containing the arrow changes to that direction. It is necessary to place an arrow in front of the gun barrel to finally move the piece into the gun. A player may have up to three arrows at a time on the board; after adding additional arrows, the oldest one will be removed.
Like most puzzles, the difficulty of the gunnery puzzle when you enter it is set relative to your past performance. Gunnery lacks the difficulty meter and progressively increasing difficulty the other duty puzzles have; doing things "right" will very slightly raise the difficulty, and doing things "wrong" will very slightly lower it. The higher the difficulty, the faster the pieces move.
Note: There is an old rumor that you can waste cannonballs if you booch the gunning puzzle or throw them overboard. This is not true, its impossible to "waste" cannonballs in the gunning puzzle.
When playing the gunnery puzzle in the navy, the guns will not be fired, so after loading the four guns, you should abandon the game, go back to the deck, and reenter the puzzle. When you reenter, the guns will be empty again.
Historical Notes
Until release 2004-07-09, gunning was most easily practiced on a training ship rather than a navy ship.
In Beta release 2003-11-22, the options to fill two or six cannons at once were removed, only allowing loading of four cannons at once.
In Beta release 2003-10-27, the gunnery puzzle's scoring was modified to ensure higher ratings meant faster guns.
The two piece limit per piece at one time was introduced with Beta release 2003-10-22.
Gunnery was connected to sea battle (firing guns means reloading them) with Alpha release 2002-11-08.
Influences
Gunnery is most similar to the game ChuChu Rocket, originally for the Dreamcast, which also has constantly moving pieces which you guide with a limited number of arrows. Important differences include collision between pieces and the requirement that the pieces enter the goal in a certain order.
