Sailing physics

[Hugh Latham]

Getting frustrated at the dysfunctional state of backwinding. I can be dead stopped and raise sail backwinded and start forward. Backwinding only seems to work when the ship is nearly dead into the wind. It would be great if we also had greater manual control so we could control sails on individual masts, ie only raise sail on one mast.

[CaptVonGunn]

You kind of get that with the sail states.. Dead slow, battle, slow, half . full... Not exact but close

[Barberouge]

Did you think about de-powering the staysails ? Usually it's possible to sail backwards down to approximately 80° or so to the wind (depending on the vessel).

[Hugh Latham]

I'm a sailor in real life so sail handling is second nature to me. Yes, I de-power and it used to work before. Something seems to have changed in the sail "physics". I put that in quotes, because the devs mentioned long ago that they didn't intend to make a sailing simulator and the sail physics are artificial. Still, one should not sail ahead from a dead stop when the ship is headed at any angle into the wind with the sails aback.

[Hugh Latham]

51 minutes ago, CaptVonGunn said:

You kind of get that with the sail states.. Dead slow, battle, slow, half . full... Not exact but close

I was beam on the wind and wanted to rotate toward a wreck so I set dead slow and backed the foresail while luffing the main and mizzen (depowered). I sailed in a slow arc further and further from my target.

[Barberouge]

The spanker gives some forward thrust and usually the topsails only aren't enough to counter it around 90°.

[seanjo]

He he....spanker....

[Batman]

Compromises have to be made. If in a port battle you CPU had to calculate the movement of severeal hundred or even thousand sails for each sail individually, it would just surrender.

I have heard that back in Sea trials we had a period where every single sail could be controlled manually, but it was just to complicated. No idea if that is true.

Edited June 22, 2017 by Batman

[AlteSocken]

7 minutes ago, Batman said:

we had a period where every single sail could be controlled manually

To have this would make a dream come true.

(never been sailing a square-rigger in rl - so I'd love the expirence in game)

Edited June 22, 2017 by AlteSocken

[CaptVonGunn]

16 hours ago, Hugh Latham said:

I was beam on the wind and wanted to rotate toward a wreck so I set dead slow and backed the foresail while luffing the main and mizzen (depowered). I sailed in a slow arc further and further from my target.

Yeah it gets weird... While not realistic what I end up doing is full sail into the wind. When I stop back sail and opposite rudder. I know it should let us back sail much further from dead on but(shrug)

[maturin]

2 hours ago, CaptVonGunn said:

 I know it should let us back sail much further from dead on but(shrug)

Press T and you get closer to how real sails work.

[CaptVonGunn]

Huh I hit T it is letting the sir out of the sails... Not back sailing. Or should be.. That is kind of what depowering means

[maturin]

53 minutes ago, CaptVonGunn said:

Huh I hit T it is letting the sir out of the sails... Not back sailing. Or should be.. That is kind of what depowering means

The reason you can't sail backwards well is because the power and upwind abilities of the jibs and staysails are very exaggerated. Pressing T douses those sails only, allowing the squares to behave more realistically.

T does nothing at all to the square sails.