Naval Action on sale at 50% off till the 21st....
Naval Action Steam store

Ahoy

What I want is essentially "Klingon Academy" but set in the 18th century age of sail. That means a fully fleshed out single player campaign with cut scenes, great story and characters while keeping the realism and high fidelity features of the ships and associated technologies. When a game like that is made I'll gladly pay 60 bucks or more.

Ok Panzer,that would be great. I recently bought Sea of Thieves and now I want to play other pirate type games but none have taken my fancy, or I just haven't discovered them yet.

Epic battle...

Bought Naval Action back in beta/Early Access, but only really started playing it a couple of weeks ago. It has all the usual positives and negatives of an Open World MMO (probably closest thing in terms of game design would be a Tall Ships version of EvE), but the actual ship battles are immersive as all get out, and it is relatively easy to get a decent ship. If you do not want to PvP, the PvE server is just fine, though personally I quickly switched to the PvP server.

One of the things I like is that there is really not much advantage to "rank," other than the size of ship you can command effectively. A day one player in a 6th rate has few if any inherent disadvantages over an Admiral in a 6th rate (though the more experienced player will almost definitely win based on skill).

I recommend it.

I got Naval Action during the Christmas sail, and I like it a lot too. You are right the PVE server is boring as hell, but the issue with the PvP server is more experienced better equipped players killing newer players, which can get frustrating. Right now Russia owns multiple ports along the US coast and often jump in to a battle where you are fighting an AI ship.

So, the good news is, besides ship size/crew limits, technically every player in the game has access to all the best equipment, etc. Of course, the reality, more experienced players do have accumulations of rare resources that newer players will not be able to match quickly, if ever. On the other hand, with the DLC ships even newer players can get decent and relatively inexpensive ships to play with, that, if nothing else, they can afford to lose regularly while they learn.

The biggest issue (as a US player) I have seen is that the Russians, having both the dedicated Russian nationals as well as many of the best US players, always roll out in large groups often in 1st and 2nd Rates that the US players cannot easily match.

My hope, though, is that as the player base expand, this advantage will be diluted.

Beyond that, I have been having some success raiding Spanish and, especially, Russian traders in the Gulf of Mexico with my Endymion and Trincomalee