June progress report

[admin]

Hey everyone. 

 

Here is our progress report and what has been already done. 

 

1. We are using only five models currently to test the game play and finalize the ship development pipeline and systems. Limited number of models in the beginning is absolutely required to prepare a so called ship factory to produce ships in numbers later. 

   

Ships are

•     Schooner
•     Gun Brig
•     Navy Cutter
•     38 Gun Frigate
•     74

2. We have developed and currently testing shooting. The following parameters influence firing.

• enemy speed
• enemy distance
• pitching 
• deck height
• cannon length and type
• and charge size

3. We have already done and currently improving or reworking.

• water render and fog tech
• ship buoyancy and heel
• animated sails
• animated flags, ensigns, banners (changeable)
• animated crew research (works fine just need to make models)
• detailed decks
• server technology
• certain database technologies

4. Important priorities for June: Sailing and damage model

 

[con20or]

Excellent! Nice selection of ships to start

 

Very interested in hearing about the sailing model - any advance on the standard Age of Sail, Pirates sail controls would be cool. Do you think will you have a high degree of heel affect the lower gundeck (i.e ports can't be opened?). AOS2 had that, meant a smaller ship could take on a bigger one in rough seas.

[admin]

Excellent! Nice selection of ships to start

 

Very interested in hearing about the sailing model - any advance on the standard Age of Sail, Pirates sail controls would be cool. Do you think will you have a high degree of heel affect the lower gundeck (i.e ports can't be opened?). AOS2 had that, meant a smaller ship could take on a bigger one in rough seas.

 

heel affecting the fire is already implemented we are not sure if it is going to be in the game, alpha testing will answer this question.

[Alatriste]

 

 AOS2 had that, meant a smaller ship could take on a bigger one in rough seas.

 

Which is why AOS2 was a complete joke when it comes to gunnery. There's a reason why in reality smaller ships never engaged bigger, heavier ones - especially in rough seas. Same reason why ocean liners are always huge.

[con20or]

Just one example

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_of_13_January_1797

 

"He correctly assumed, however, that the ocean was too rough to allow Lacrosse to open his lower gunports without the risk that heavy waves would enter them and cause the Droits de l'Homme to founder"

 

Also - google the Mary Rose for dangers of lower gunports being open in rough weather. Sure there is plenty more - AOS2 didn't make this up.

[Alatriste]

Just one example

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_of_13_January_1797

 

"He correctly assumed, however, that the ocean was too rough to allow Lacrosse to open his lower gunports without the risk that heavy waves would enter them and cause the Droits de l'Homme to founder"

 

Also - google the Mary Rose for dangers of lower gunports being open in rough weather. Sure there is plenty more - AOS2 didn't make th

You do realize there were two ships against one and not one on one as in your original scenario? And they weren't even that much smaller than the french - 76 guns in total against 74. With that ratio I like their chances at any weather. In fact, I think they would do better at calm weather - lower gun decks firing or not.

Think of a ship as a gun platform. Stability is critical if you actually want to hit anything and not just make some noise. If you engage a bigger ship one on one, you're not only fighting the enemy, you're fighting physics and statistical probability as well. So good luck with that. Oh, and in rough seas the bigger ship will almost definately be the faster one as well. But with the numbers on your side it's a different ballgame.The real reason the britts were able to beat that 74-gunner is because they outmanoeuvred her. Still needed more than 15 hours to do so and lost half of their fleet. Like I said - calm weather might suit them better.

 

 

AOS2 didn't make this up.

I never said they did

[con20or]

Number of ships doesnt matter to me, 1v1, 1v2, 10v10 - i just would like to see heel closing lower gunports.

 

Only in heavy weather could the windward gage become a disadvantage, because the lower gun ports on the leeward side of a ship would be awash, preventing her from opening her lower-deck ports to use the guns – or risking being swamped if she did. So, in strong winds, a ship attacking from windward would not be able to bring her heavy lower-deck guns into action, while the enemy ship to leeward would have no such problem as the guns on her windward side would be raised by the heel. For this reason, Admiral Rodney ordered his ships to attack the Spanish from leeward in the stormy weather at the Battle of Cape St. Vincent in 1780.

[JaM]

The whole situation was possible because of one thing - French came with advanced Frigate design - their Frigates had two decks, but only upper deck carried guns, which meant guns were high enough to not be impacted by waves in rough seas.. These Frigates were big enough to carry 12-18pdr guns  which mean they could get into even gun combat with double decker ship of the line in such situations, as they also carried 12-18pdr guns on upper deck (32-26pdr on lower deck.) Anyway Frigate would still be at dissadvantage in direct fight, due to hull thickness. SHip of the line had hull about twice as thick as 36-44gun Frigates.. Only Razee Frigates (razeed from SHips of the line) or American heavy Frigates would have chance against Ship of the Line in such conditions..

 

Anyway back to French Frigate design - it allowed them to engage any standard convoy escort (usually old double deckers with 50-60guns) with clear advantage. These small 4-rate ships usually had 18-24pdr guns on lower deck and 9-12pdr on upper deck, so if they were unable to use their lower guns, they would be completly outgunned by French Frigate with 18pdr guns on its main deck.

 

 

Anyway i have few questions and suggestions too. As devs mentioned ships in the game will be from 16.century up to Napoleonic wars. Is there a chance to have realistic technology progression in naval design incorporated? There was a big shift from Galleons to Ships of the Line in 17.century, move from smaller 50-60gun ships to universal 74gun doubledecker in 18.century, Frigate continuous development until emergence of American SuperFrigates etc..

 

Next question is, how do you plan to represent fleet actions in game? Some other "Age of Sail" games take each ship as independent entity, where battle result depends on defeating all ships in battle, which is far from historical reality of naval warfare in those times. Large naval battles were quite undecesive up until Admiral Rodney, Hood and later Ushakov and Nelson completely reformed obsolete Linear naval tactics..

[adambomb]

Real good selection of ships,, keep up the good work.

[Garetx]

you have maded more in 1 month then fls in the whole live xD

[Cherry Ice Cream]

you have maded more in 1 month then fls in the whole live xD

 

(Almost ready) Good game? =P

[Digby]

2. We have developed and currently testing shooting. The following parameters influence firing.

• enemy speed
• enemy distance
• pitching 
• deck height
• cannon length and type
• and charge size

Could I suggest that ship heel and roll rate be two of the factors? With a ship on a tack she is going to have her deck tilted (heeling) most likely on a fairly fixed set. The roll would be due to the waves passing under the hull. A ship on the leeward tack is going to have her bearing broadside pointing more upwards while a ship with the weather gauge is going to have her bearing broadside pointed a little downwards. I would suggest these are important considerations at least to maximum range (there's one school of thought that suggests the Revolutionary and Napoleonic French ships more often disabled British rigging since the French almost always had the lee position and their guns thus pointed more upwards, while RN guns on the lee side of a ship with the wind would tend to hit a target lower down. THis would obviously be true of any pair of ships broadside or nearly so to the wind.

 

Roll: Firing on the upward or downward roll (with some skill) would also let a gun captain hit a target higher up or lower down as he chose.

 

Also - crew quality/training!

 

Target actual speed is almost completely irrelevant unless two quite fast ships are on passing courses, so its really relative speed not actual speed that's important.

[admin]

 

 

Target actual speed is almost completely irrelevant unless two quite fast ships are on passing courses, so its really relative speed not actual speed that's important.

 

can you elaborate more on this?

[Digby]

If two ships are sailing an almost parallel course at very similar speeds and firing broadsides at each other relative speed of the taregt is almost nil, since the two are going in the same direction. You can experience this effect in a car on a highway or motorway when another can going the same way overtakes you at a very slightly higher speed. Relatively their speed difference is small, say 100km/h vs 120 km/h. If you wanted to lower your window and shoot a gun out at the other driver, he would be a relatively easy target.

 

Now consider two ships (say frigates or sloops) each doing about 10 to 12 knots but passing on opposite tacks. Relative speed is now about 20-24 knots and so hitting that target is going to be that much harder. Imagine our motorway driver again, equally sociopathic and trying to shoot drivers in the cars passing in the other lanes going the opposite way. Almost impossible to hit.

 

Its the same in air combat which the RoF and IL-2 guys will understand. Getting on another plane's tail made the easiest shot as relative motion was low. Deflection shots as a plane passed across your nose were the hardest.

 

The tricky bit is writing game code that can asses the rate of change of attitude of a target (how its broadside or stern/bow is being presented to the firing ship and how quickly that aspect is changing) and the rate of change of range (how quickly or slowly the firer and target are moving towards each other or away). In WWI and WWII these were hugely important factors because ships steamed at 20 to 30 knots and gunnery ranges could be 10 to 20 km or more with a flight time of the shell of about 30 seconds to a minute, so a ship had to have a predictor-computer into which the gunnery officers input data on their own ships course and speed and the observed course and speed of the enemy, plus his bearing, so that the guns would fire at the space on the sea where it was hoped the enemy ship would be when the shells arrived there.

 

In the age of sail it was a lot less complex because ranges were so short (rarely as far as 1000m, often half this or less) the targets moved so slowly and they were relatively very big targets. A shore battery in a fort firing at a moving ship has as much trouble hitting it as it passes at 10 knots as the ship does of hitting the fort. Although the fort is stationary, the ship is moving so the relative speed of the fort is still 10 knots (actually it's minus 10 but the effect for gunnery is the same).

 

As I said if two ships are slowly closing the range towards each other or slowly opening it, it hardly matters, but if one decides to wear about and go the other way, you get a sudden change in the relative speeds of the two ships. However given the slow speeds and short ranges its not a very significant factor of age of sail gunnery. The sea state (pitch, roll and yaw of the hull) and heel of the ship are I think much bigger factors, as would be the traing levels and morale of the crew.