maturin

Could be better underwater hullform.

95% sure the spanker doesn't work against the maneuver in-game. It's just a little motor that keeps on chugging, with no effect on rotation. A full-detail sailing model would include control over the spanker and headsail sheets. However, this would make the control scheme a nightmare, requiring eighteen fingers on your left hand just to perform a turn to starboard in PvP. So yeah, maybe in a hypothetical SP sailing sim version of the game where everything is slowed down 3x.

The modern process of making aluminum was invented simultaneously by two Americans, so we get re-branding rights. (Along with the French, who probably spell it 'liuexmaignouex' or something.) This is reasonable.

It's easy, just divide US players' actual ping by 10 when the UI displays it. Then the US players won't notice any difference and the EU players will whine instead.

True, but remember that we fight exclusively under the most heroic circumstances possible. It's a videogame, so the epic is expected. e.g., the packet ship Dreadnought sailing backwards to the Azores with every square sail on the mizzen set. That was 1850-ish so maybe the rigs were getting a bit stronger, but still.

What are you talking about? In my game I can sail 12 kts on the slowest ship. 6 > 12 ??? Ships did sail backwards as a tactical maneuver. Constitution v. Cyane and Levant (British ship names IIRC). The packet ship dreadknought sailed 250 miles backwards in an emergency, and it wasn't going 2 kts the whole time. 6 kts is really fast, but none of these battles were fought at 14 kts either, so why doesn't that bother you? Everything is relative, and exaggerated or diminished to a varying extent, according to the needs of gameplay. And yes, there should be a good chance of breaking the rudder if we use A/D keys when sailing backwards at >3 kts.

To be clear, the rudder can be damaged by bad weather or collisions (with iron spheres or planetary spheres, whichever), just like any other component. But to actually be in danger of falling off, the head of the rudder needs to be destroyed inside the ship's stern itself, or the attendant fittings dislodged. The first use of the rudder chains would be to prevent the rudder from straining the pintles by turning too far. An emergency backstop. If the rudder actually broke at the head (inside the ship), then the chains could be rigged for steering by pulling on the rudder from outboard. And if everything before that failed, and the rudder was actually broken off (probably by grounding), then of course the chains might still be attached. On HMS Victory, the head of the rudder was used as a dinner table. I hadn't looked at that diagram too closely before. Interesting how you can see Constitution wearing round in 10 minutes to fire again, while Java is still stuck luffing up.

Storm instances went away because it requires the devs to maintain additional instances running on the server. They just see it an an inefficient use of resources.

You're just making s**t up. Show me one instance of a rudder just "floating away." Look at the picture. The rudder's head protrudes *into* the stern of the ship. The midshipmen lived right next to it and the large tiller. The chains are for back-up steering when the tiller or its tackles are broken. What's your point? The quick acceleration/deceleration is cartoonish and exaggerated, but it's only 5 knots in the best case scenario. The underwater shape of the stern is very fine, almost like a bow on some modern boats. They based it on the tail of a fish, gradually tapering to a point.

On the other hand, when trying to sail backwards at 90 degrees, you are relying on sails creating lift, not just drag. So in that situation the sail's shape would be terrible, with the mast and shrouds distorting it. But last I checked, it was not possible to sail fast on that course in-game anyhow. 8 kts backwards is pretty extreme. As a complete guess, I'd say that's only likely to happen in high winds when you will probably regret trying it. In a violent squall the stern windows could be smashed in, flooding the gundeck. The main consideration is that you can tear the rudder off when going astern at speed. If a ship knew it was going to make serious sternway, the rudder would be jammed amidships using wooden wedges.

So tell me what happens when the ship is sailing forwards at 8 knots, and is struck square on the counter by a 25-foot wave traveling at 30 kts, and the stern is lifted bodily into the air? If shipbuilders were total freaking morons, as you seem to imagine, then the rudder would 'float away' in the above situation. Or, maybe they weren't morons. No one in NA makes 7 kts backwards when tacking. More like 2kts. Tacking was difficult in heavy seas because the waves would tend to throw the bow off the wind at the most critical moment.

Then that would happen every time the ship sailed forwards, too. Duh... ITT everyone suddenly becomes concerned nautical experts because of features they don't like.

Oh definitely. Everyone starts hyperventilating because they think the storms will be constant. But we've had OW storms for years now. And the darn devs think that everyone hates storms because they tortured the Sea Trials folks with constant storms. It should be a rare treat.

Which makes it a good time to run blockades (like the French battlefleets IRL) or snatch traders outside the capital.

You could just do Unrated, Frigates and Lineships. The brigs and schooners will be very easy to distinguish.

Naturally, although ships could be carrying plenty of sail when overtaken by sudden squalls, even in a complete calm. Topgallants (the third highest square sail) could be carried in a fairly stiff breeze, perhaps 25 kts in some cases. So that accounts for the sailplan of Cerberus, or Trincomalee in-game. However, many of the in-game ships that are modeled with topgallants (that is, no royals) also carry a maintopgallant staysail, which is a light wind sail.

Right, no ship is going to capsize unless there are high winds or breaking seas. It would look out of of place were it to happen on a sunny day like the instances we have in-game. Of course, given that the ships are all running around at 13 knots, the wind would have to be quite a bit higher than it appears to be. 18th Century technology isn't going to let a ship sail at 13 kts in 15 kts of wind. 20-25 kts is nearer the mark.

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. And if 'the masts would break', how on earth do you imagine ships were ever careened? By definition, this involved tipping the ship over by pulling on the masts.

At the moment we don't have extreme heeling at all. And recoiling your guns uphill isn't so bad. You encourage entirely too much caution, Hethwill. We're here to fight heroically. Plenty of lineships ended battles with lower decks full of water, and two French 74s foundered that way at Qiberon.

No, it was done regularly. Look at London. Look at Philadelphia. Look at Sevilla. Where are these major port cities located? On rivers. The picture represents a kind of shiphandling that is a lost art. Because of course, we have had steam-powered tugboats and other engines, for over 150 years. An anchor was only used twice in that screenshot, on the bottom leg. Page 200 of Seamanship in the Age of Sail if you want to see the wind arrow and last third of the diagram, along with a written explanation. I do agree with you that it has been taken out of context, with only limited relevance to the game's sailing model.

Leewardly ships were constantly throwing off line formations. And most collisions involve leeway, since you generally don't steer right at another ship, if you can help it.

I don't recall a single compliment ever specifically paid to Constitution's handling. On the other hand, Bainbridge did try to bribe a fellow captain $5,000 to let him take President instead. The ship was undoubtedly well-handled in combat, but that's something quite different from design. Handiness was certainly not one of the design priorities. Well the digital version can set more than her topsails, so that's a little less pathetic. She's just been robbed in the speed department, for balance reasons (one wonders where that leaves Wasa...). Not really, her rig was fairly proportionate. Not sure what you mean there. Of course, the sail area calculations are misleading. Surprise had the good fortune to be modeled by the devs in a sail configuration fit for light winds. Trincomalee has a sailplan for a slightly stronger breeze. But of course both real ships could adopt both configurations at will, and swap between them in a few minutes. Which would have a huge impact on the game as currently coded. Smaller vessels will almost always have the higher sail area: displacement ratio, however. (And that's not what determines leeway.)

Was she like the Bellona-class frigates at all, where the 18-pdrs were designed for cruising and the 24s for battleline emergencies? I would rather see the armament cut down than the performance. Maybe 24/24 would be a nice compromise. The identical load times would popular with PvP-ers, and represent less of a drastic step down. In the end, some of these borderline cases might be better handled with a permanent hidden module that decreases damage, to simulate lighter national calibers.

That's the other thing: tons of leeway in storms.

The wind is coming from the left-hand side of the picture, and the half-fletched arrows represent tidal current. The ship is painstakingly working through an estuary, with wind not much stronger than the tide.