maturin

I can sail boring yachts in real life with twice the framerate.

I guess the nuance here is in ship vs sailing simulator. I've never seen the game referred to officially as a sim outside that preliminary marketing language. You also have to consider the game in the context of the market, which has never produced anything remotely realistic. Individual sail control is something we definitely don't have yet, though I hope that you, Babington, will join us in pushing for it. It is indeed correct to say that we merely point the game's ships. We are not the helmsman. Boiled down to basics, the sailing has one advanced control feature: yard control. By understanding how to use rig balance and backing forces to aid maneuvers, a player can gain a slight advantage in turn rate or a large advantage in stays. That is the main thing distinguishing the game from its predecessors in terms of control and player input. If the devs were to add individual sail control and wind strength/direction management techniques on top of that, I would be happy. It would already be an unprecedented achievement.

It's not a sailing simulator and won't be unless we get mods and private servers. There's no leeway, which in my mind is only really relevant to gameplay at low speeds and when hove-to. We have bad weather that affects gunnery, but there is not yet any effect on the sailing. Myself and a lot of other people will be very upset if this doesn't get added and everyone's carrying royals in a gale. Rig balance and yard control are the most simulator-like features that set the game apart from all others like it. However, the latter isn't as influential as it could be. The main and mizzen yards are controlled together, and to my dismay the devs show no intention of allowing us to set individual sails, even as a cosmetic feature.

I doubt any modeller is going to incorporate hogging into the mesh and create an entire class of identically inferior ships. Hogging is a symptom of age above all. I don't know that it causes serious issues in itself, so much as it indicates a weak old hull.

That would require sailing Up waterfalls. But the preorder exclusive HMS Mary Poppins has that special ability.

Hence the reason I am NOT calling for the increase in backing forces. This exchange has been about a related, but entirely separate, issue. Hence the reason for the miscommunication.

I think so too. Even when Post Captain reads like Jane Austen, it's much more interesting with sea battles interspersed.

We should be clear that Wind is talking about the shape of the smoke, not the amount of it. Hearts of Oak does it very well:

It means that they are set on the fore-aft axis. That is, parallel with the keel. Therefore they are the opposite of square sails (often pentagonal in shape), which are at right--or 'square' angles to the keel. I never read such a post. Feel free to link it.The sail-model test build showed how simple their system is. If they can't make such a simple change, then they have coded it poorly. If this was a feature request I would not be so insistent. But it's not. It is a bug. Then say something about it! Do you know whay my testing forum thread is worth without public pressure and repetition? Nothing. And I'm telling you that I know very well what the problem is. The devs showed us the numbers. In algebraic terms: When you disable your square sails, there is 10x newtons of water resistance making you deccelerate. But as you are trying to stop, your jibs and spanker are driving you forward by 8x joules. So you are out if control and decelerate by 2x instead of 10x. (Made up physics) Hundreds... or exactly two?Hyperbole aside, change is only accomplished through repetition and popularity. That's how every community works. Move the thread if you want; I think it's a little too specific for people that have no access to the actual game.

When you are tacking you never have all your yards squared before the wind, so the strain is less. One method of tacking in a gale, however, is to lower the yards just as the sail comes aback, and rehoist them once the sail will fill, thus sparing the masts

Not pointless at all, if done right. TS3-support, whispers and global chat should be in the game of course. But restricting local chat with strangers immediately adds an intetesting fog of war dynamic. No shouting "friendly!" from the horizon like.in DayZ.

Well I didn't. Individual sail control has nothing to do with fixing the always-on fore-and-aft sails, which poses an objective problem for ship handling. You're not comprehending the post. So when you want to stop your car, you hold down the brake and the accelerator at the same time?!It works, but it doesn't work well. No serious developer will let this aspect of the control scheme go unfixed. And it's an easy fix. Just add a single line of code disabling the driving power of fore-and-aft sail whenever a player puts a sail aback. Geez, why is it that whenever I suggest a realistic feature there are cries of "no Maturin, it will make the game too hard, think of the children!" But as soon as I suggest a tweak that would make the things easier and more intuitive, the game is good enough as is.

Carrying *slightly* too much sail will hamper your speed and make the ship difficult to control. That's only the first little consequence. Carrying all plain sail in a real storm (assuming the sails/masts don't carry away or cause you to capsize altogether) will make the gale bend you over its knee and tan your hide good. You won't be sailing much of anywhere, just be pinned down in the water at a crazy angle of heel. So speed penalty, sure. But at some point your topgallant masts should just snap in half. Ideally there would be a special storm sail configuration sail anyhow, where 100% is just fore course and topsails with most of the staysails and jibs doused.

You're not reading the posts you're responding to, Bungee.

Lower sails contribute to negative effect? In a storm you always want to take in t'gallants and your larger jibs/staysails. So in game terms, a somewhat realistic storm configuration would be topsails only (plus the omnipresent fore course, but we need individual sail-setting for that.

Not sure what you're responding to there, Bungee. AP514 is pointing at two problems that still exist in the sailing model (actually quoting one of my posts), The 1st problem is that you can swivel your yards to stop, but all your fore-and-aft sails will still be driving you forward. It's a ridiculous situation. Imagine if a racing game had a brake pedal but forced you to stay in drive while braking. The ship is fighting itself by trying to sail in two directions simultaneously. Problem 2 is that you can cheat while tacking, and people who use the correct method put themselves at a disadvantage.

Thankfully, we only need to worry about the weather at sea level. That removes a huge amount of complexity. Ships are also so slow that you don't need to simulate a dynamic weather system. So long as the local weather doesn't instantly change from light tropical breeze to hurricane with snow, everything will seem perfectly natural. But just about any kind of weather should be possible anywhere, at any time.

It really shouldn't take any CPU cycles, at least not for the client. The server can just decide to make wind vary based on probability, and propagate mobile squalls and storms over a simplified hex grid overlaying the map. It won't be a simulation of weather, but the player won't notice the difference because he doesn't know what the weather is like on the other side of the ocean. Loads of online games have weather. I don't know what's wrong with Dover's dev team. DCS has very detailed weather. Wind is just a number, and numbers can change. I'm sure that changing sea states seamlessly will be a technical challenge.

Or we could have actual weather.

Hmmn, I didn't your suggestion to only animate the topsail yards hoisting and lowering. That could be more doable, if most of the time the sails clew up, and only clew down for reefing. Also! The Lynx has a lovely sail hoisting animation for the gaff sails, with mast hoops and all.Problem is, the gaff is standing! It doesn't hoist. The loose-headed sail just rises magically from the boom to attach itself to the gaff, twenty feet up. If we convince the devs to model a hoisting yard here, maybe we can do it again.

I agree of course, but it's worth going over the main obstacles. Before you can even think of adding reefing (which I remember admin expressing resistance to), you have to retrofit every ship so that the yards actually hoist up and down. That also requires redoing the topping lifts as dynamic objects, not just 3D polys. Changes like this are probably far in the future, and simultaneously very difficult to roll out when the game is already released. So I scarcely dare to hope. However, once the devs makes 25% sail set topsails only (this had been promised), we push for a compromise. No reefing for now, but negative consequences for carrying too much sail in storms, occasional squalls, etc. Carrying three full topsails in a storm will look odd, but it's better than nothing.

Рад видеть Тринкомали. Но у нее пока такая же проблем, как есть у Конституции. Реи слишком высокы. Возникает проблем с clipping. http://imgur.com/Z6aVxcs

http://m.imgur.com/fw72TGV,mJK1VSd^ Combined explanation of heel/roll.

Whatever heel is tied to, the problem is this:If I turn my yards parallel to the wind, heel reduces only slowly. I have to lose 3-4 knots before I see a serious difference. But the change should start instantly, because gravity tries to keep the ship upright. If the wind force decreases, the ship will almost instantly start to straighten up. As for heel and wind angle, I have already posted a detailed diagram somewhere. But the short version is this: The game should swap the current closehauled and beam reach heel angles. If the ships were to heel on a beam reach the same way they do when closehauled (and vice versa), that would be a big improvement. It's hard to explain. Is that clear?

Rudder (or rather helm) position was historically measured in 'spokes' of the wheel.