Ryan21

That sounds perfect to me, custom hotkeys would be great, with a standard config of course!

If you look at my thread about heavy weather management there are a couple of solid pieces of data that may solve this issue as well, a diagram of in what order sail is shortened as the wind increases from seamanship in the age of sail. If these steps were implemented you could simply hit a shorten sail button and individual sail management would become unnecesary

I have learned to take most nautical fiction with a grain of salt, but in the case we are discussing reduced sail was very common unless the wind was so light that maneuverability would be hampered, it varied by situation of course there was no standard suit of sails used for action, but in moderate wind topsails, one or two jibs, and the Spanker was pretty common. Topgallants and royals add manpower to maneuvers because with each mast the topgallants and royals have 2 braces that need hauling or easing during maneuvers. Patrick o Brian's books are the closest to reality I have read but now and then there are flaws, this topic is very complex

It is absolutely mandatory in real life, in the game you could probably get away with not doing it, because few people will notice it's wrong, and hey its a game. How can I explain this.. The courses have three lines attached to each clew, or bottom corner of the sail. One is the clewline for hauling it back up to the quarters of the yard, one is the sheet, and one is the tack. When running downwind with the yards squared you set the courses "betwixt the sheets" so the sheets both get hauled aft until the right sail trim is achieved. When you are on a port or starboard "tack" the windward clew of the courses must be tacked down, there is a small spar called a boomkin, 2 of them, one for each side of the ship that sticks out at about a 40 degree angle from the bow. These will have a block at the end that the tack line reeves through and then leads inboard and aft over the caprail to a cleat. So when you are on a "tack" the weather clew of the course gets hauled forward and down to this boomkin and she leeward sheet gets hauled aft, for the courses this creates the proper sail shape for being braced up, because they are not sheeted to a yard below them this is how they are controlled. You always "tack down" or board your weather tack before hauling the leeward sheet, and visa versa when rising tacks and sheets or taking in the sail entirely the tack always goes first. Its a safety and control measure, if your in any kind of decent wind and you let the leeward sheet go, you have a lot of sail violently flogging at or above your head level, hauling the windward clew first while easing the tack controls the sail much more effectively. So as for easing them around while you tack, depending on the sail size, and some of this were huge on big ships, the sail could get hung up on the caprails and various other things above deck height, when rising tacks and sheets you dont completely take the sail in, you essentially just get it up out of the way, so dont haul the bunts or leeches, just the clews, and only bring them 3/4's of the way up. You really dont lose any appreciable speed in doing this, as the ship has tons of inertia at this point, and you cant brace without doing it so it is standard operating procedure, when the courses are set that is, if you choose not to set them then you dont have to worry about it. In fact alot of ship actions were fought with reduced sail set to simplify and speed up maneuvers, also with the foresail set you cannot see past the quarterdeck so you have to rely on lookouts, which in a battle would not be the quickest method so alot of the time I am sure they would simply have taken the courses in or reefed them to have a proper line of sight. As for the game, It doesnt really seem like something that anyone but someone like me would notice, and it wouldnt bug me that much if it wasn't in there. Those two black spars lashed onto the head rails with a block at the end of the starboard one, those are the boomkins for the course, and the mainsail would have seperate tack positions as well. http://www.flickr.com/photos/116121315@N07/12257121073/

Is there a fire at will option in this game, where the guns will fire as the target bears, automatically?

Ive never played POTBS. That sounds alright, Im sure i'll get used to it. Basically the same thing I have to do as a watch officer, tell people which heading to steer and moniter the heading and the helmsman.

Really?? No helm control? That kind of defeats the purpose of realism doesnt it? What is it supposed to be like, empire style where you just lay out a track?

How about an excellent song written after the time period about the time period There were times on Lady while loosing sail aloft for a battle sail, that we would all start belting this out, the passengers loved it. And so did we

I havn't seen a dedicated thread on this topic yet so here goes, I think this is an important topic that deserves some thought. From what I have seen the graphics for sea states and the ocean in this game look absolutely phenomenal, couldn't have imagined them better in a game. That being said, I believe the game should offer a realistic view of sail carried in various conditions, I dont think this would be diffcult as you would simply have to shorten sail with whatever sail management system there is, there should be a wind indicator in knots, and maybe it should warn you if you are pushing the rig too far by turning progressively yellow and red, from green. The consequences being blowing out a sail or two and not being able to immediately reset them. Perhaps after taking in the topgallants there could be a topsail reefing option where the animation is just that the yards slide down to the lower position and the sail shrinks with the yard. To give a tangible explanation to this I have scanned a couple pages of Seamanship in the age of sail pertaining to this topic. The one is two different naval opinions matched to the beaufort wind scale as to what sail should be carried in each wind condition on a fully rigged ship. And the other is a pictorial description of the order of shortening and further reefing sail. There is some really solid data in this section of the book that I think may help the game a great deal. https://scontent-b-sea.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn2/t1/1507864_10153808644890123_1415099792_n.jpg https://fbcdn-sphotos-c-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-prn1/t31/q71/s720x720/1966306_10153808644930123_941173984_o.jpg please let me know if these links work.

I have a suggestion on a bit of ship customization. Certain ships should be able to upgrade their topgallantmast sections. Often in the winter lofty royal poles would be taken down and replaced with shorter "stump" topgallantmasts. If you could alter the length of the topgallantmast, and say purchase a lofty topgallantmast with a long royal mast, and have the ability to set royals and perhaps skysail's as a deck set add on, your light weather speeds and handling could be much increased, but the point at which you damage the rig or say just blow out your royal or skysail, would be much lower. Alternately if you equipped your ship with stump topgallant masts and only carried topgallants, your heavy weather keeping could be much better. If there was a way that the bottom corners of the sail graphic could simply detach from the yard below them and flap around simulating a blown out sail, that would be really excellent. It would teach people to use caution in higher winds. Also much more sail can be carried when running downwind in heavy weather than when close hauled. Close hauled in a gale the sideways strain on your mast sections is enormous. Ive read merchant shipping accounts of gales in the north atlantic where close hauled they were only able to show two close reefed topsails. And then one night later in the journey, a gale rose from astern, and they had the fore topsail set with only a single reef, and reefed topmast studdingsails on either side of the topsail, they had the reefed fore course set as well, they tried a lower stunsl' and it carried away instantly. The two men at the wheel could barely control her, but she was running something like 16 knots, this is an large 1830's hide trading vessel. Eventually the topmast studdingsails carried away, but they held for some time and the mate was jumping for joy and acting crazed and euphoric hahaha, as would I be.

I like your idea's Johny, I would really enjoy the game with the options like that.

Oh, sorry, I will try to condense my posts. A little embarrassing but I haven't been on any forum in a long time, and spend most of last year not near computers, for the life of me I can't find the delete post button?

Maybe during tacks, the fore and mainsail could simply be clewed up automatically. and then they would reset after the completed tack?

My main focus is that the real important part that I think would benefit the game most is the correct yard bracing, because without that you cannot tack a square rigger. So if it's possible to have both that and simplistic hot keyed head sail and spanker control that would be very cool. But if that was a bit much, retaining the most important parts of tacking should be priority.

Take a close look at the timing for yard bracing in the tacking video I posted. You can hear on deck, Helms a lee. Mainsail haul, and let go and haul. watch the flag on the top of the main for wind indication.

Lady will tack doing 2.5 to 3 knots with a really competant person calling sail. The faster your going the faster she tacks. a good speed is about 6 or 7 knots, she will tack well under a minute. you change the angle of the sails by bracing the yards. The Q and E and Z and C setup could simply be yard control. When she is directly head to weather swing the main yards over by holding down say E or Q depending on tack, and then as the ship starts to fall off on the new tack, when the main squares stop backing and start filling, hold down z or c until the fore yards are swung around, and then have a couple hotkeys or buttons set up to set the spanker. In reality you have to clew up the foresail and mainsail before you tack also, but I didn't mention it because so many other factors were on the table, when the tacks of the main and foresail are hauled down the yards cannot be braced above them without clewing up those sails about 3/4 of the way, it's called rising tacks and sheets. If you were slow on your mainyard bracing maybe the yards could brace slower and the whole tack would be a bit handicapped like in real life, if you hit it at the right time the yards swing merrily around. maybe there could be a wind gauge that will give you an indication of when exactly to execute these moves.

Also we are close hauled, had we been broad reaching we would have been going a couple knots faster.

As a little side note here. I just uploaded a very short video of one of our most exciting battle sails, unfortunately had to shut the camera off before the real action started so I could haul lines. But this gives you an idea on a heavier wind day how fast these ships would close. It's blowing about 30 knots, the sea state is low because its inside san francisco bay. Both ships were making about 7-8 knots with only topsails and foretopmast staysail set. So multiply 8 knots by two and you'll find that the closing rate of the ships is 16 knots, which means things happen very quickly, and maneuvers have to be executed perfectly. Most of our battle sails dont happen this fast but this gives you an idea, 400 combined tons of ship rushing towards eachother with lit slowmatch ready to go.

I just take what I do very seriously that's all. I realize a lot of this will be impossible to code into a game, I have no knowledge of how video games are made.

Yeah it depends alot on weather, if shes broad reaching in medium to light wind the spanker will be set sheeted right out to one side, its a powerful sail and gives excellent drive when balanced right, but certainly in heavier winds it creates more and more weather helm so it's often just taken in. Reefing it is a bit of a process and is best done before the weather hits. The foretopmast staysail on the other hand is almost always set, in light or heavy weather, some ships had the ability to reef it into a tiny triangle just enough to keep steerage on in really heavy stuff.

Thus when a vessel is said to be sailing "on a bowline" it means the vessel is as close to the wind as she will lie.

Good questions. Box hauling can happen faster than a ware it all depends on the wind and what exactly the captain wants to do. You are basically backing up using the fore braces to steer, so it can be varied. Lady used to have bowlines but if the crew doesn't know what they are doing you can tear the sails if you forget to cast off the bowlines before tacking. Lady has a small crew and stations are not assigned, so it's an extra complication. On a small brig like lady the advantage you would get out of them isn't worth the risk of new crew members or an under manned crew forgetting to cast them off. So lady doesn't run them anymore. If you had a sweet handling fast frigate that you wanted to get every inch of windward performance out of its a good idea. Also warships had the man power to assign set sailing stations for every line. Bowlines are typically three or four small lines attached to the leaches or outboard sides of a square sail, the three merge into one and the line leads forward, so when a vessel is close hauled the weather side bowlines are hauled tight, pulling the leech of the sail forward and artificially preventing the sail from luffing a little bit higher into the wind than normal, gaining a small amount of extra pointing ability for the vessel. I have some pics of hms surprises bowlines on my flikr account I'll link when I get home from my marine course.

As I said in my first post I realize that the game will have limitations, I'm looking forward to it in any case. My suggestions are just that, would be cool to see some of them implemented but the game already looks way better than existing ones:)

Put it this way, if you were sailing along with the foretopsail full, and you forcibly backed you headsail do you really think the ship is going to shoot up into the wind with the force of that backed headsail? Nuh-Uh. Theres no point in my arguing this further.