DraegDrwg

On paper this is very close to my ideal game. It sounds like it would benefit more from a free-form campaign than set missions. Something very much like "The Mauritius Command" in fact. Manage your limited number of ships and (squabbling) captains, bring troops from over here, take this island, put some guns on this island so you can control shipping here... That sounds more compelling to me than "look, Trafalgar!", but then I've always been more interested in the idea of detailed command of a single (or a few) ships than trying to have an RTS of these big fleet engagements where in reality every captain was more or less doing their own thing and making their own decisions.. As you guys say though, there is definitely not a huge amount of choice in this arena though! I was rather confused by referring to the O'Brian series as a towering achievement of American literature? O'Brian (or Russ as his original name was) was British, lived in Wales most of his life... got a CBE and everything? In fact, according to wikipedia he only visited the US three times in his entire life.