maturin

Not to mention, the classic 74-gun ship as developed by the French had superior speed and sailing qualities irrespective of size. That sort of 3rd Rate would outsail an 50-gun ship even if they had the same length on the waterline. Maybe. A lot of 2nd Rates were awkward, overgunned things. But HMS Victory once reached 11 knots, and 4th Rates could be as short and stubby as 145 feet LoA, or comparable to HMS Surprise with tons of dead weight added on. I would expect nothing special, when it comes to speed. There's a reason this Rate all but died out. Edit: That length stat for Leopard may be suspect. Correct me if you find any different numbers.

It's a shame we can't display at least the stats with a console command. Watching the numbers really taught you the sailing and revealed a lot of imbalances. That sort of information would be a terrible drag on the gameplay ultimately, however. It would EVE-ify it.

There isn't actually a 4th rate in the game yet, though.

But the sails in this game spend plenty of time luffing. Whenever you turn your yards parallel to the wind, they should be shaking and flapping noisily. And when a square rigger pinches up close to the wind, the square sails will be shivering slightly. Jibs and staysails are also likely to flap somewhat when tacking or sailing downwind. If we could just get a one-size-fits-all animation for these specific instances, I would be overjoyed. You can't sail that close to the wind in the game, but ships have a lot of intertia and can fore-reach for quite a distance while decelerating. That's probably what you've seen. You would never move ballast except in port under very close supervision. Ships already heel on various courses of sail, but it needs to be tweaked.

Freudian slip

I will test the two tacking methods will up to speed, and report back, especially if there have been changes. There is no logical flaw, but it is very much against actual nautical practice. Sailors had a strict prohibition against putting the mainsail aback, so you would only attempt such a maneuver on battle sails. By analogy, the logically superior method of shuffling a deck of card is to throw them into the air so they shuffle randomly. But it's messy, impractical and awkward-looking.

So that video shows the proper timing for Mainsail Haul (swiveling the after yards). However, the game will currently penalize you for using this realistic method, because Ink has discovered a superior, unrealistic method. If you switch over your main and mizzen yards too early (even from a beam reach or 90-degree wind angle), you will actually get through the tack faster, because the upwind turn will be faster. In real life, you don't want to have any backing sails until the last minute, because you would bleed off all your speed and possibly not even reach the eye of the wind with any momentum left. Furthermore, an easy tack relies on ordering Mainsail Haul at a very precise moment. When the ship is just in the eye of the wind, one half of the maintopsail will be becalmed, and one half will be aback. This means that you don't have to really haul it around at all; it will fly to the other side on its own. If you miss this moment, bracing it around will be slow and exhausting work. Here is Ink's video where he tacks from only 2 knots. I remember that the devs' stated aims for the tacking system were that it should require speed and timing. The video proves that neither are required: Possible ideas for (mostly scripted) fixes: A heavy increase for the braking force of all sails being aback, so that the ship slows to a halt before even reaching the wind. Making the yard control speed depend on the wind angle (hauling on the braces is slower when fighting the wind) If your ship hits the eye of the wind with low speed, it artificially stop turning. Edit: And one more tip for tacking, enable manual skipper before you hit the eye of the wind, so your fore yards don't come over automatically. That is just a problem with the autoskipper.

All things being equal, longer ships have a faster top speed. If you shrank the Constitution down by 25%, it would be considerably slower.

Very little work has been done yet, as admin says. For organization's sake, I will post my Testing Forum ruminations on rig damage:

If I'm not mistaken, the pumps weren't actually under the waterline, and naval vessels would have at least two. Smaller vessels would even have them on the spar deck. And it's a fairly large construction, seeing as it has to span the whole vertical height of the ship. I like how it works at the moment, with the pumps disabled temporarily and then given basic repairs automatically. Of course, I can't stand the repair system in general, or see how raising a whole mast prevents me from fixing a pump hose.

Палнируется урон Бушприту и нижным парусам от солкновений?

The bold part is an unrealistic feature. It is justified by game balance, but not reality. You can drill six-inch holes in a wooden hull for days on end; it still isn't going to start leaking and falling apart under the waterline. Age of sail weaponry simply couldn't do this sort of structural damage to ships. Not until the introduction of explosive shells. As long as destroying planking causes flooding, the game still has a generic HP system. Leaks caused by low planking HP is analogous to bleeding damage in an RPG or FPS. Furthermore, if ships can easily sink without ever being hit under the waterline, sinking will continue to be the most common result of battle. You will not see your list of outcomes realized: The solution is simple to implement but difficult to balance: Hits above the waterline cannot cause flooding, but attack the crew and guns, destroying the ability of the ship to fight. Ships will eventually become helpless, ready to be boarded and captured. A captain may see his crew lose all will to load and fire the guns, but he can keep himself afloat and limp to safety. IMHO this is more interesting than just watching your ship sink and disconnecting from the battle. My earlier thoughts about flooding:

Taking command of a swift, weatherly sloop or schooner and playing cat-and-mouse with big frigates is going to be a blast. Darting in and out of coastal shallows to snap up under-manned merchant vessels, then escaping upwind at the first sign of trouble. I hope that merchant gameplay will also be engaging: feeling your way through hostile waterways, using false flags and careful navigation to avoid trouble and arrive at port safe. As for battles, a fast 74-gunner is where it's at. No pregnant elephant 3-deckers for me.

Если у корабля есть крен от парусов (прислоняется к подветренной стороне), угол не особо меняется.

Are you talking about flooding from waves and heel, or because the ship has started sinking and settling in the water? Because I don't believe that tall waves have any effect on the operation of the gun deck atm. They are mostly visual. But if heel or loss of buoyancy actually puts a deck underwater, the game considers that the ports close (animations TBA). The crew behind those ports would probably be busy holding them shut and making them more watertight, securing gun tackles, whatever. I think you are imagining that when the waterline has risen to be even with a gunport, that means that the ship has flooded up to that point. Of course, that is not the case. The ship will probably reach the point of no return while the level of internal flooding is still far below the actual waterline. So if you have a hull that's settling lower in the sea, the water than comes in through the ports will actually run down into the hold rather quickly. The ports could be permanently underwater (and closed), but the gundeck itself could merely be wet. So if you then pumped that water out, the ship could rise and return the gundeck to action quickly. Of course, I'm pretty sure that the degree to which ships settle in the water is exaggerated. By the time you've lost eight feet of freeboard you are probably already lost.

А если еще добавим бонус перезарядки для наветренной эскадры, преимущество будет большевато. Игроки уже все время пытаються держать наветренную позицию, и получилось что допольнительная дальность--не преимущество а штраф от того, что такой крен часто возникает сложности для близкого боя.

AFAIK the gunports already get closed, there's just no animation for it. So when a port is underwater, its opening is not added to the rate of flooding and the shot-holes are assumed to be the only leaks. What I can't figure out is whether the system in the OP is implemented yet or not. Ships still stink every time. It seems to me that you can pound Area C and remove all the red hitpoints. Then the ocean will just invisibly leap into those shot-holes that are fifteen feet in the air, and the ship sinks.

Ага, я имел в виду для наветренной эскадры, не наветренный борт.

Unfortunately this tactic isn't as valid as it should be, because we have no way of furling or luffing the powerful jibs and staysails.

I don't know how feasible that would actually be, for a large caliber gun. You need some pretty serious ironwork to hold the breachings, and the decorative wood back there might be too thin to take the strain. It wouldn't stop them in an emergency, but still.

Хорошая идея, но неужели нужно еще одно преимущество для наветренной эскадры?

I'm fine with DLC, but Subscriptions are just a poison pill for me, because it means I HAVE to play or else just waste money. If you have a month with a lot of travelling, or high workload, or interruption in regular internet service, you either pay full price for nothing in return, or have to cancel the game entirely. From cable TV on down, monthly subscriptions are a borderline abusive practice from a consumer's point of view. If I have a temporary situation where I can only play 5 hours a month, the cost should change to reflect that. A la carte.

On the other hand, it seems like a an extremely valuable development tool, like TacView in DCS. I'd think that the devs would want to have something like that (in a more utilitarian, less pretty form, of course) for themselves.

Известная практика. Древнегреческие ученые писали об этом качеством масла (чтобы успокоить воду во время хорошей погоды, смотреть глубже в море, видеть жемчуги). Американский ученый Бенджамин Франклин впервый раз исследовал эту идею, Британцы чуть позже. Сегодня она уже принята как факт. Но все таки я сомневаюсь, что это было обычная практика в периуде игри. Может быть, китоловцы и крупные рыбачные корабли иногда пробовали таким образом успокоить море в последных десилетнях 19-го века. Я сам читал об этом явлении в связи с маленькими современными шлюпами. То есть, и корабли и масло и волны по меньше. Не стоить включить в игре. Если хочешь выжить серьезный шторм, используешь парус как якорь. Это можно делать в игре, но только если мы будем провести время в борьбе с волнами и не воевать никого.

Not to mention that if you take the guns out of a ship, you're also not going to have the crew to shoot them, either. 900 men weigh plenty.