maturin

Very true, I sometimes get the wind direction mixed up as well.

The laser-like accuracy of cannon in the vertical dimension is a nod to playability and skill-based gameplay. Realistic dispersion would get frustrating fast. However, I don't see why we can't get some statistical portion of shots that deviate. Say, at 500m 30% of shots fall short or go long. At 800m, it's 50%. And so on and so forth. This will paradoxically make near misses less frustrating, as you will score a few good hits. Most importantly, long-range kiting becomes less viable.

What should the wind arc look like? POTBS style? Different orientation?

Cheer up, there was never any real difference for tacking a frigate at top speed. Momentum will carry you through there no matter what your yards do. (Fun fact: Swinging all yards at once was actually practiced by very experienced crews as a means of showing off, but it was not practical.) But at slow speeds, manual yard control is vital and makes an enormous difference. You know that. What's more, the ability to control your yards enables you to fight and tack at the same time, but changing the direction and speed of rotation to track targets.

Manual tacking is already superior because luffing the fore stack lets you come to faster, hauling the main around a point early is more effective, and keeping the fore stack aback makes you pay off faster.

Well for starters, I don't care about the untrained eye. My trained eye bleeds whenever I watch autoskipper tack. Also, as I said, as a player gets more experienced, he should start learning about how the yard control works. Autoskipper is a set of training wheels. It should be correct so it can teach. If it's not correct it will mislead. If it's meant to simulate the helm than it doesn't a pretty poor job. I imagine it to be the combined efforts of the helmsmen and the men at sheets and braces. I can put it all very simply. At 0.5 knots a rudder does almost nothing and yet by pressing A/D the ship turns. So how can A and D be simulating the action of a rudder? No, instead I've just told the master that we will fall off three points, and the forecastlemen have flatted in the jibs while the afterguard have let out the spanker. And the whole idea of being a helmsman falls flat for me when I am playing a storm battle and scudding before big Atlantic rollers. And a wave strikes the ship under the counter but our course stays true with no effort on my part. Because I'm standing next to the four helmsmen while they do battle with the wheel. I remember. But making the autoskipper look and act all wrong is a pretty piss-poor way of providing an advantage. That's like saying buying two bikes, and slashing the tires on one of them to create an 'advantage.' Instead, just buy a faster bike!

Yeah, I would rather have relatively fast rotating at slow speeds, but no rotation without sail set. Imho the game should do everything possible to punish people who put away all their sails. This is such cowardly, lubberly behavior. Worst of all is when people do it to 'dodge' chainshot. In reality a ship with no sails is going to roll too heavily to be a decent gun platform. Anyways, here is a frigate-sized ship tacking, as promised.

You know someone on Hermione? Would you mind telling him that the ship's media strategy is incredibly frustrating? There are far too few photos or videos that any remotely knowledgeable person would be interested in. We want to see her in stays! In different sea states, clewing up, etc. But all there is on youtube is narrow angle snippets set to music, or 50x speed videos of sailing in a straight line. Actually, I just found this video: Those crazy bastards are striking all her masts and spars! At sea! With no crane! This is the height of seamanship, some of the most incredibly nautical practice extant on the globe today! And for christ's sake, it's set to house music and played on fast forward, even though the raw video has to exist somewhere. Please keelhaul your project's communications manager.

Thing is, Darby, rotating a stopped ship is entirely possibly by using the sails. If you are hove-to, you can shiver the mizzen and main, back the fore, strike the spanker and flat in the headsails. As a result your ship will spin on its heel and fall off downwind. It would be entirely realistic to even increase that current minimum rotation speed, so long as some sail is set. To represent the turning effect of specially-trimmed sails. That might make tacking too easy again, however.

Especially since when you are tacking, and moving at 0.5 knots, the rudder is irrelevant. All rotation comes from the sails.

That's a separate issue, though. When your bow is pointed into the wind, the square yards are decelerating you no matter what their position. So the only way to gain speed is to gain time by rotating faster. The fore yards need to stay backed until the tack is completed, regardless of any misguided 'goals' the autoskipper might have.I hope it's clear that this isn't just a realism issue. Right now the autoskipper itself is engaging in sealclubbing because it teaches new players incorrect, inferior methods! They should watch the autoskipper and learn, not watch and be misinformed. Instead they see other players doing mysterious things and are alienated by it. Who, Ryan? He would tell you that both Lady Washington and Niagara are lightly-built, sweet-sailing vessels with inherent maneuverability. The latter is also an extreme clipper type with loads of power in its high rig.It would be very incorrect to make the heavy frigates or even Surprise tack much easier at this point. Surprise can already tack in seconds with almost no speed. At speed she careens around like a racehorse. Later on I will post a video of a frigate-sized whaler tacking. Some people will curse me for saying so, but I argued against reverse rudder from the start. It's an interesting detail for people who imagine theirselves as the helmsman, but sort of a false realism given that nothing else about the helm is simulated. I wouldn't mind it being optional. Which brings me to my main point. If you want to improve tacking, don't make it faster or easier, just reduce the consequences for failure. A ship that fails to come about and falls back on the old tack is disappointed, but still in the fight. But a ship stuck in irons is helpless. The latter happens too often and easily in the game. In reality it would be easy for them to turn to leeward and not get stuck. The overall problem is that tacking is so difficult to balance that it might need special vessel performance properties. For example, when your sails are aback and you are pointed higher than 20 degrees, you could implement a leeward turning buff and a windward turning debuff.

The point is that you pump in shifts and the labor is pretty much limitless. Shot-holes sinking a ship with a willing crew is pretty much unheard-of.

If I were developing the game, I would never force the player to strike. But eventually I would have the gunners flee below decks, and have all the officers catch some grapeshot. Defiance has its practical limits.

Most definitely!

I submit that watching your opponent sink has absolutely no value if it happens every. single. time. Especially when I never once aimed at the waterline. Where's the fun in uniformity and preductable outcomes?

That would be an interesting fact to have. Anyone interested in bringing up the draughts of a frigate and a 74 to compare the ratio of rudder area to (two dimensional) overall hull area? If the rudder to wetted area ratio is equivalent, then I imagine that the major factors are length on the waterline, displacement and draft. But probably I should ask the naval architect in my immediate family about this.

The problem here is that it would look and feel crazed and unnatural for Bellona to turn like Surprise. So if the devs decided to even out the turning ability, Suprise would have to turn as slow as Bellona. And that would make Surprise no fun.

I think it certainly bears looking into, mathematically if need be. I harbor similar suspicions to admin. After all, a ship of the line is not significantly longer than a frigate. This is at slow speeds, though. Sails can act like bow or stern thrusters.As Ryan said, when you are moving slowly you can turn tighter, but never faster.

If someone tried to grief me that way, I would just chainshot his sails. Problem solved.

From what I can see, most of those ships still have lower masts. A jury rig replaces a lower mast, and everything else can be repaired.Which brings up that realism/gameplay compromise I always agitate for. Weak upper masts with a large pool of dedicated, time-intensice repairs, and non-repairable very strong lower masts. To my mind, the end result in the same: If you use all your repairs and get dismasted in the current build, you are boned. So just make lower masts so strong that losing them is as equally rare, as the above situation. There are all sorts of historical justifications for making lower masts almost indestructible at long range, and for requiring multiple types of shot to destroy them. Because seeing the enemy's mast topple is THE MOST rewarding experience in the game so far, and it gives drama and texture to the end of a large fleet battle. So let's find some way to do it without fatally straining credulity or ruining the victim's fun.

This seems completely workable.Give the player a clearly-defined threshold at which to surrender, or keep fighting for 30 seconds, until reaching the point of no return. Sort of like bankruptcy protection for buoyancy. When you surrender you can devote all manpower to saving the ship. But if you have lots of active leaks, a damaged pump, a fire or heavy losses, maybe you will sink anyway. I know I would never choose to sink. I don't like sinking, and the game is taking away my choice and control by forcing it. Thoughts?

Might we get an animation for closed ports, though? Or not really an anination, just a change in the model.

Currently no one tries to dismast and board in an even fight. Why not tweak the damage model to facilitate this?The hit boxes could be rearranged. Hits to the gundecks cause gun, crew and mast loss only. Hits between gundeck and waterline cause flooding. And if we have to dismast to capture, that makes the pirate's life pretty frustrating. All your pretty prizes will come already crippled.

Quite so. The problem with the damage model is not the lack of realism; it is the absence of prizes.

A historical ship's chronometer would be struck down in the hold as a fragile and incredibly valuable piece of technology. A simple inaccurate pocket watch, however, would be very useful. If I want to put distance between myself and an enemy, I will estimate that his next broadside comes in 60 seconds, and present my stern for the next 50 seconds. That way I can get in a good position and just barely avoid getting raked.