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Navigation at sea


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so here is an ideA that I have been thinking about for a short while now.

My idea is that while at sea you have a hotkey/ability that orders a navigational officer to use his sextant to get your position. It isn't instant, the time it takes to perform depends on weather/officer skill level. It also isn't 100% accurate. It can be off a little again depending on the same factors.

When complete it gives you a longitude and latitude which you can use with your map to figure out approximately where you are and what bearing you should take to get where you want.

What are your guys thoughts?

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I like this idea B)

 

A little offtopic, I have a question about the sun in OW, does it always set and rise in the east? or does it do as it should rise in the east and set in the west? did they have compass in Age of sail, if not, the sun could be used for navigating too:p

Edited by kaboki
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In coastal waters like the caribbean celestrial navigation is not so much needed. A sextant was expensive high tech back in 18. century and most masters still only navigated terrestrially (or using a simple Quadrant). Loosing sight of land was avoided. So before implementing anything like that, we should make terrestrial navigation work very well. We need charts with distinct landmarks, a pelorus and map tools like dividers and rulers. We must be able to take bearing and draw freely on the chart. Only when this works perfectly we should start thinking about the next step of celestrial navigation.

 

To make this possible, a sky like in Arma2 had to be implemented. It should rotate and change with time and your position on the earth. The open source astronomy software Stellarium does a good job at simulating, but I don't know how difficult it would be to programm. Basicly they could use Skymate for the calculation of star positions and the Nautical Almanac. When his is done we can use all aspects of celestrial navigation without any problem... except clouds.

 

 

I like this idea B)

 

A little offtopic, I have a question about the sun in OW, does it always set and rise in the east? or does it do as it should rise in the east and set in the west? did they have compass in Age of sail, if not, the sun could be used for navigating too:p

 

As a Norwegian you should know the sun almost never rises in the east and sets in the west. Using the sun as compass is a nice trick for short distances ashore but never for long journeys on the ocean. At sea, if your bearing is off by only a few degrees, you will miss your target by many miles.

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As a Norwegian you should know the sun almost never rises in the east and sets in the west. Using the sun as compass is a nice trick for short distances ashore but never for long journeys on the ocean. At sea, if your bearing is off by only a few degrees, you will miss your target by many miles.

 

Maybe the sun doesn't exactly rise in the east, and sets in the west, but not far away from that, atleast what I can see out of the window and using a compass, It's quite accurate, but but not exatly very precise though, i'll give you that. Today when I played I noticed ingame that the sun does what it's supposed to do:p. So I have gotten my answer. And offcourse it is just an indication and not a precise thing, but I just wondered if they had compasses in Age of sail and if not shouldn't the game reflect that in some way? I merely suggested using the sun and time of day for an indicator of what direction your sailing, the OP suggestion about the sixtant and a nav officer(doing the work for us) is more what I had in mind.

 

I also like to add, Im in no way any expert in navigation in age of sail, nor do I know howto use a sextant in real life, only thing I know about it is that it's somthing they used for navigation in age of sail. :P Not really sure I want to even learn howto use it B).

 

To even go further, if we had a working sixtant and all the tools needed to calculate our position and are in deep concentration trying to navigate, that damn ship who we saw far away in the distance would already have reached us and pulled us into an instance before we even had time to do shit because of the time compression and the fast pace in the OW........ heck I almost don't have time to roll a smoke before I get into an instance by some angry Sweede haha, everytime I need to take a piss, I have to log out:p

 

And here I go again,,,, :lol:

Edited by kaboki
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