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Despite the disclaimer on the mod page regarding how little Caribbean Tales has been tested in the Maelstrom engine, as far as I can tell it works near perfectly, though I admit I have very little experience with the original game. The sole issue I've encountered is the non-functioning state of the "speak" feature while sailing next to other ships. You can select the option and select ships, but upon confirmation, nothing happens. As I said before, I have little experience with this game, so forgive me if I've merely missed an item required for the option, though I recall being able to communicate with ships since the beginning of the game.

Also forgive me if the functionality of Caribe Stories is a low priority (understandably so, as development of the Historical Eras mod appears to be the thing you enjoy most and the creation of your own game is likely more interesting than mere compatibility with older games) and this post is simply a nuisance.

Sorry for the wait, but I've got the logs now. Thanks for the help.

I noticed that the x64 version was significantly smoother than the others, though the FPS was still sub-par. The consistent thing I've noticed as someone who isn't very computer-savvy in the logs is a constantly repeating error message of "Can't find cache for sound !!!! RESOURCE\sounds\ship_bow"

Here are the logs and the save file: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1eMUChRkJoPmeoVFyF9IpEaVF6uTQRox4

EDIT: I've just realized that I only updated the executables and not ERAS itself. I'll get the logs for that as well.

Alright, I've made some saves and I'll experiment with the settings some more in the meanwhile. From what I've seen so far, the combination of waves and fighting multiple ships causes the frame drop, and occurs in all the mods/derivatives that I've tried so far (Lost Ships City, Caribe Stories, and Eras 2.) I'll make sure to save whenever I encounter the issue and I'll tell you if I can find any combination of settings that gets rid of the frame drop.

UPDATE: When near land, foliage quality drastically affects the framerate. Disabling foliage results in a big FPS boost. I don't know if this is something exclusive to Windows 10, though.

Considering the effects of foliage, it's probably a safe bet to say that the rendering of crewmen running around on ships is the cause of the frame drop when near several other ships. An option to disable them, if one does not already exist, would probably help. I'm not sure why this problem exists on Maelstrom and not the original Storm Engine version of COAS, since Maelstrom is more stable otherwise in my experience thus far. I watched a playthrough of Eras II and the uploader didn't seem to experience any frame drops, though I don't know what OS he was using.

Most of the time, the game runs very well. However, in specific circumstances, in certain mods, the framerate drops to unplayable levels inexplicably. In Caribe Stories, the framerate sometimes drops to slideshow levels when approaching other ships, and not under any other circumstances that I've run into. In Eras, the framerate halves during storms. These frame drops did not occur in the Storm Engine versions of City of Abandoned Ships and Caribbean Tales.

I'm using Windows 10 with no anti aliasing and vsync on.  I think the frame drops are definitely due to a software issue rather than a hardware, but please tell me if I can give any more information to aid in finding the cause of the problem, and if anybody else has had problems with this. Thanks in advance.