maturin

This is 'clewing up,' actually. And it's what I imagine what all the ships currently do when you press 'S'. That's why it happens so fast, there are no men on the yards, and the yards stay hoisted. Now if only the animations and sail models would reflect this, we would be golden. Like the small frigate in this video. Scandalizing a square sail generally means casting off the lifts so that the yard rests on the cap. But you stay sheeted home so that you have a baggy, billowing sail that isn't very efficient. Edit: Although I wouldn't be surprised if there were a variety of contradictory usages of the word. I've just remembered at least one.

Are the Germans allowed to make anything but anti-war films, when it comes to that particular conflict?

Good point, leeway would be nice to see in the open world. In the prototype, you often have to point your bow into the empty horizon and follow a compass bearing to the nearest land. Ten degrees of leeway would complicate that somewhat. Of course, it's still uncertain as to whether ships in the open world will have the same complex sailing model as they do in battles. Let's hope.

In practice any vessel sailing near the coast is on a lee shore quite regularly, and any tolerably well-found and well-handled ship should be able to make progress to windward, leeway or not. Given that, a lee shore is only really dangerous in two general situations: When there is a headland or line of shoals protruding into the sea so that a vessel can become embayed; In rough seas that force the ship to lie-to, or otherwise slow it down to the point where it loses ground to leeway. At the moment there's no leeway in the game, and we're unlikely to get it, although currents and tides would be very nice and are worth agitating for. Modeling leeway is just a little out of scope, as things stand. Or rather, there's no point adding leeway when other aspects of windward performance are so far from reality. Currently, square riggers sail according to the true, and not apparent, wind. This gives them a 10-15 degree advantage over a real ship. In addition, the game's square sails can remain full and drawing when braced a point or so sharper than a real one. So add another few degrees. Finally, the game's overpowered fore-and-aft sails can propel a square rigger to windward even when all the square sails are flat aback. So in actuality they can make progress to windward like a schooner. And the game's actual schooners can sail quite fast when a mere 15(!) degrees off the wind. So in this case asking after the last 5-12 degrees lost to leeway is pointless. Just for reference, no real square rigger can ever hope to sail closer than about 65 degrees to the wind, before taking leeway into account. A weatherly vessel might sail fast enough to make leeway negligible, however. A schooner or cutter would be very lucky to get 45 degrees from the wind. Keeping in mind that the game should remain playable, I would like to see the square riggers unable to beat to windward when their square sails are no longer full. In theory, they have thousands of square feet of staysails and jibs, but in practice the thrust they provide would be overcome by leeway all but entirely. Let our digital ships have an advantage over real ones, but a moderate one. At the end of the day, we can probably do without apparent wind, leeway and precise angles of incidence for wind on sails. However, leeway could and should be a very real concern in the storm instances. Which is to say, ships should find it much harder to make windward progress in heavy seas, in proportion to their size. the Snow, for example, should be extremely cautious when sailing upwind in those conditions. If we captains ever have to worry about a lee shore, it will be in a storm.

Can't find it anywhere. It's driving me crazy.

On the other hand it breaks the game by robbing lighter ships of an advantage they deserve realistically. It also ruins many matches by allowing ships to kite from max range and never be caught. Think about that when you resort to the perniciously false dichotomy of realism vs playability.

It's just such a big target for the HP it has.

Different viewpoint? You mean a bizarre, irrational hostility, of the sort often affected by people on the internet who want to puff themselves up as brash individualists for holding unpopular, inflammatory opinions? Perhaps you would like Surprise replaced with a frigate named HMS Under-Bridge. You would be perfect in command. The "movie tribute ship" was built as HMS Rose, a faithful replica of the eponymous Royal Navy frigate that served in War of American Independence. Upon being purchased for the film she underwent a refit to give her a more modern rig (such as a larger mizzen mast), plus paint, decorations, stern/quarter galleries and quarterdeck bulwarks appropriate for a Napoleonic vessel. And she remained arguably the most excellent large sailing warship replica afloat, alongside the likes of Gotheborg, Standart, and now L'Hermione. Because after all, Patrick O'Brian wrote some of the most well-researched historical fiction in print. As I stated, the in-game ship has the hull of the historical frigate L'Unite/Surprise, making her far more authentic than, say, the brig, which is based on no particular vessel. Should the brig also be excised from the game with prejudice? Or is that not worth it because we can't get any fanboys riled up by suggesting it?

No, it's a replica of the 1794 French corvette L'Unite, with the sailplan, upper works and decorations of the ship from the movie.

The problem is that the newby playstyle of mashing W and S keys to control speed is currently superior to the advanced way of playing, which is using yard controls. Tweak the sailing model and rebalance the speeds, and this won't be the case.

It got more complex, so that it was resoundingly un-fun and incomprehensible to the people who wouldn't or couldn't devote themselves to this spastic interruption to their sailing game.

That's more of a definite 'no' than a maybe. Playing on foot is like developing a whole other game. And think how terrible PotBS' avcom and quests were.

+5000 I love it when other people arrive independently at my major wishlist items. The way I see it is: Sail transitions have to be faster than in reality for gameplay purposes. However, the ability to easily go to and from 0% is a major irritant and balance problem. This particular transition should be punished by dramatically longer transition times. With the caveat that making sail at the very start of a match should be fast. Ie, the 0%-25% transition goes fast only the first time you press the button.

There is a law of the universe, known to the wise. Nowhere just human speech turn to meaningless air faster, than when discussing the engine an already in-development game should use.

Rifle bullets slow are overtaken by the sound of their own muzzle blast starting at some point past 1000 meters. Cannon balls are much slower, so the boom will arrive before the ball starting at a shorter distance. The "woosh" sound passing the ball is just the sound of the ball itself as it pushes air aside. I'm not sure what this would sound like in real life or if it is always audible. Once a bullet has slowed down to subsonic speeds you can get quite pronounced noises because the conical projectile will wobble in flight, or even start tumbling end over end. A cannon ball is of course always tumbling, but it's a sphere, so this won't make the same amount of racket.

You're right about the Charleston "patrol boats" (who patrols an inner harbor lol). The CGI has become totally worthless in this season. Like there's no one left on the staff who has even sailed a yacht. They just have the one nerd who they send emails to when they have questions about disabling a ship's rigging.

If you're referring to the supersonic crack, that would be effectively simultaneous to the flyby, at least to human ears.

There are already quite prominent wooshing sounds from balls flying past.

Yeah, there are British sources that roundly condemn the practice of unthoughtful double-shotting, because of the penetration problems it can cause. I think it would be more interesting if accuracy and penetration were the limiting factor with double shot, making it a rather unreliable choice of load. This would balance the high reward rather better, in my view.

Because that requires more development time than simply limiting armament in vessel config. There's no clear threshold with guns that leads to instant catastrophe when you cross it. You would have to implement randomized gun dismountings and structural damage over time, the latter of which wouldn't matter except in the open world anyhow. And carrying excessively heavy guns is going to affect the vessel performance characteristics that are most difficult to tinker with on the fly: pitch, roll and heel.

Dang, are they gonna hurry up and release videos?

And a game shouldn't have a gradual progression of vessels, with light, medium and heavy frigates?

Precisely. There are some possibilities. Carronades and chase guns mounted on swiveling carriages were sometimes able to elevate and blast the enemy's fighting tops. And several months ago I argued that we should be able to give our marines and sharpshooters priority targets for short periods of time in close action: Suppress Upper Deck Gunners>reload penalty for exposed gun decks Suppress Officers>interruption of officer skill bonuses Suppress Sailhandlers>yard rotation and sail changes are slower Suppress sharpshooters>guards against falling victim to the above penalties People didn't like it because they had a kneejerk reaction to the passing resemblance to PotBS skills, even though these are reality-based and logical. They forget that blackpowder warfare isn't a twitch FPS.

The Great Lakes are no joke, especially shallow Erie and Lake Superior, which was justly said to 'ape the oceans.' I live on the North Atlantic, but Superior seems so comparably... violent. It never seems to really calm down. The weather changes with incredible speed, even compared to Northern New England. And then the shallower Great Lakes are adept at producing very steep, confused seas that are very dangerous in proportion to their size. So far as I know the Baltic doesn't have the same reputation. But it should be said that most lakes warships would not be particularly seaworthy for bluewater sailing. This isn't because they were built to face fairer conditions, but because they needed such shallow draft, resulting in low freeboard as well. Basically, they were pushing their luck on safety while trying to maximize firepower in an isolated arms race. The current brig Niagara will be undergoing a major refit to increase freeboard considerably, even at the expense of her clipper looks. Otherwise she's always at danger of being caught in a squall and getting knocked down.

That is indeed the desired result. Small vessel stern campers should be pushed out to 100 yards or so, where they are far less safe and accurate. AFAIK the poop wasn't a place where marines would be stationed heavily, but they would certainly relocate as necessary to face a specific threat. The ideal would be movable hit boxes for them on the poop and in the stern galleries as well. A muzzle in every window. Right, but plunging fire on the open deck of a cutter would be devastating, whereas an equally-sized SoL has many barricades and hammocks to hide its men behind. Same goes for a frigate in close with an SoL. Also, I think we should be able to give basic orders, with priority targets. I made a thread about this once. Prater, if you're not aware, grape only does damage when you get the whole round through a gunport or stern window. That's why most shots do 0 damage, and some are very lethal. Currently this models canister shot rather well, if only hits to the exposed upper deck were also effective. Proper grapeshot would penetrate the sides of very light vessels, and the stern of anything, regardless of damage levels. It would also have longer range. For the record, I've never seen much indication that damaging a broadside makes an opponent more vulnerable to grape. I would say go for it, so the balancing can begin. You could even get away with just putting disembodied muzzle flashes and puffs of smoke emanating periodically from the fighting tops.