maturin

Renommee is not more powerful than the Cerberus by any means. They both mount 9-pdr guns, putting them at the same level in terms of firepower. Renommee has a pair of insignificant quarterdeck guns on top of that. You should be able to complete that mission without too much trouble. You may have been getting thrown off by the Renommee's sloping hull, which can deflect shot. I recommend going yardarm-to-yardarm and aiming low. Make sure your shot strikes at a perpendicular angle, to avoid ricochets. A Double Charge perk can also help here. If you still have trouble, invest in some 32-pdr carronades and wreck your opponent at close range.

Anyone done this yet? Heaviest ship I've got is an Agamemnon.

That's what I originally recommended. But it would require new animations. The staysails and jibs don't trim at all. Always close-hauled on port or starboard tack. It would also be nice if the innermost jib didn't furl, for aesthetic reasons.

Yeah, Depower is such a powerful button that it makes sense from a gameplay perspective to make it slower and require planning. Plus I really hate to see an AI schooner's jib wobbling up and down because the computer thinks they are heeling too much for a split second, then changes its mind. The AI has timing limitations for yard controls, so its Depower decisions should be slower as well. Also, I've been playing around with Agamemnon, LGV and Surprise. The first two are quite nice. Tentatively I can say that Agamemnon's sailing problems from the last patch are solved. Heaving-to is a challenge, but doable. Stationary tacking and ahistorical tacking methods are still possible, but no longer very effective. Some ships can't avoid sternway, which is fine. I feel like doing things the right way doesn't put me at a disadvantage now. Surprise is a jackrabbit on speed and cocaine with an outboard motor.

You'll not find much sympathy from the fair-minded. There are seven U.S. vessels in the game. The poor Spaniards have one ugly whale of a ship and not a single frigate, while the Dutch have nothing.

Then the result is this: I don't see any super-fast cannon balls or debris flying, so everything else should look plausible as well. Yards and sails can move fast IRL. Mainsail haul when tacking is supposed to be over in seconds.

Have to admit, there's a lot there that looks over-the-top. Bearing in mind that Surprise will be the most unnatural square rigger in the game, because she makes 12 knots at 75 degrees, the point at which a real ship would be luffing. And 10 kts at 60 degrees. (Surprise once set that huge impractical middle staysail for a photo shoot, and as a result she's the closehauled king in NA, haha.) With that much upwind momentum to play with, it's impossible to get normal tacking behavior. Maybe acceleration is excessive for frigates now too? One thing that has long been on my wish list is for acceleration to be almost zero, until a sail has actually finished setting. It looks really gamey to have a ship accelerating from canvas that isn't actually sheeted home yet. All in all, I think the first round of changes was designed to turn Agamemnon into a hotrod. And that left no room for moderation in the light warship classes. What will the brig be like?

By no means. Main/mizzen staysails of this shape were extremely inefficient and of doubtful utility at 45°. In reality, square riggers were incapable of making useful progress to windward without the help of square sails. Even if some properly-proportioned brigs could make a few knots, it would all be eaten up by leeway from the underpowered hull. So in real life the ship wouldn't be going much of anywhere at even 60°. 45° would be the very edge of the dead zone for a schooner or xebec, and 60° would be much faster. So the sailing model is still generous. This is the first NA game. Bohemia Interactive made three full games in the series before they even let you adjust the sights on a rifle. Based on that track record, we're doing great.

/rolleyes The US proved itself a threat to "lone frigates of the largest naval power of the time." You think no one had ever taken a British frigate before? And did the British also "mutilate" a 64 when Indefatigable became one of the most decorated frigates in the navy, and the only frigate to destroy a ship of the line? British naval power receded? You have no idea what you're talking about, do you? The British didn't refrain from going to war with the United States because they were scared of our navy... And the USN was downright anemic for much of the 19th Century, while Britain was running a global empire...

Aww, I was only reading this thread in case someone would start to rant about the subject.

I think he's referencing what's usually called 'slot effect' in English.

Smoothbore cannon are a lot more precise than people think. If you can point the gun correctly, they are more than capable of landing consistent hits on cart-sized targets at several hundred yards. The difficulty is entirely in the movement of the ship (and thus the timing of the fuse) and the possible lack of decent sights.

Huh, not sure I follow. This is just a diagram from Surprise Sim, but it shows that when your yards are braced up to 60 degrees, they are parallel to the wind at 45 degrees (the best any traditional sailing vessel can do). So the square sails would be shivering and providing no thrust, but they could easily be laid parallel to the wind. Does La Grace have trouble bracing her yards to 60 degrees? That would be a common problem with 18th Century rigging, requiring careful manipulation of the truss and lifts of the lower yards. But yeah, maybe light brigs like La Grace, with proportionately large gaff mainsail and well-cut staysails, actually could make headway under fore/aft canvas alone. At that tonnage, the square sails are quite small and low-aspect, compared to the lofty rig of a full-rigged ship with poorly-shaped quadrilateral staysails. I wonder what your speed and leeway was like though.

And had you kept shooting, most of the rounds would have hit the target. Smoothbore cannon were tolerably precise, with cannoneers expected to have a reasonable chance of a first-round hit on a target like that. On land, anyway. The whole problem for naval gunnery was the unstable platform and the lack of sights and ranging. But if you reduce the accuracy to the point that dismasting gets much harder, the game will be unplayable. So long as you can expect to get all your shots somewhere within the general silhouette of your target's rigging, masts will come down. That's how it always used to be with fleets of SoLs shooting at each other.

Yes that's true. And the sailplans could stand to be improved.

That's the rat LGV on battle sails? WTH happened to her maintopsail??? Anyhow, if you allow custom sail configurations you have to turn the sailing model into a full sim, otherwise you get unrealistic benefits that disturb the existing realism/gameplay balance. I'd sure like to be able to do it for pretty screenshots, though.

Side force = turning power of yards, right? We're not considering leeway or drifting sideways at all? Because a none of these factors are going to make an SoL turn faster than a frigate. These factors are all relative. They work in proportion. The SoL has a lot more sail area, but it has a lower sail area:weight ratio and a lower sail area:depth ratio. The SoL may have a longer 'lever' in terms of hull length, but any advantage will be easily reversed by the much higher drag through the water it experiences. So a short hull is still better for turning. Now, if we're talking about leeway, slipping sideways through the water, then the height of the deck is important, as is the draft.

A single shot of any caliber would not destroy a lower mast IRL. They were three feet thick or more.

Hard to know what the precise effects will. It will changes how the ship behaves with manual sails. Probably not mych difference when you want to turn fast.

Yeah, this is the most important effect of leeway (side force): drifting sideways downwind when maneuvering at low speed. Much easier to reach a goal just leeward of you. Is that how it will be implemented? Sideways drifting at low speeds? Because leeway will be very very small for a weatherly ship that is sailing along at 6 knots with all sails full. It's when the sails start luffing that you sag to leeward. Although many ships just make a lot of leeway because of their hull design.

All those maneuvers involve anchors or a strong tide.

Realistically I'd expect a ship without a mizzen to sail that fine, but maybe not upwind. Likewise, with just a foremast you could sail downwind.

Actually it won't make any difference, or even increase downwind turning. Depending on how it's implemented.

Strictly speaking the mainmast is abaft of the center of rotation. So it creates rotational force to windward. But it isn't very far aft. So the force is not necessarily very great. It would solve very many problems if the fore and mizzen masts provided roughly similar rotational force. At least close enough so that the rudder could balance them out. Bonus points if the amount of rotational force varies among different ships. Of course, then we run into problems if people lose their mizzen masts and fly out of control. I haven't had much time to think about other drawbacks.