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Testing Studding Sails and Extra Staysails


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It was done on some bastard rigging ships that had both styles of rigging.  The pickle is a good example but also some sloops and Xebecs.   They would drop the square sails when sailing close hauled to the wind.   This is to keep the wind from pushing against the sails thus slowing it down.  

Ships we don't have; that's why I specified Pickle with its fore course.

 

A button press would be inappropriate for square riggers. Pickle could use contextual automatic adjustment of sails.

 

(Same goes for the main course and staysails when sailing near 180 for long periods.)

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you have not replied mate :)

can you elaborate in more detail?

which are good and which are not ? and why 

Are you asking me which are good/bad, or which are realistic/unrealistic?

 

Because sometimes realistic upgrades are just hard to balance. 

 

 

For example, Extra Staysails and Extra Studdingsails should have no drawback, because the extra sails can be taken down when not useful.

Stiffness shouldn't make masts stronger. In fact, a stiff ship has a quicker roll that can stress the masts.

Copper plating shouldn't increase speed (OK, maybe by a tiny bit), just prevent speed reductions from weed growth.

Fireship Fitting on a fully-crewed and armed warship is pure insanity.

 

Prepared Perk doesn't make sense because ships always had guns loaded in wartime.

Pirate Perk is magic.

Mortar Officer will kill himself trying to load two balls in one tube.

 

Other modules have effects that are plausible, but the names aren't. Having a Lightweight rope won't let you move a heavy yard faster, for example.

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you have not replied mate :)

can you elaborate in more detail?

which are good and which are not ? and why 

 

 

Are you asking me which are good/bad, or which are realistic/unrealistic?

 

Because sometimes realistic upgrades are just hard to balance. 

 

 

For example, Extra Staysails and Extra Studdingsails should have no drawback, because the extra sails can be taken down when not useful.

Stiffness shouldn't make masts stronger. In fact, a stiff ship has a quicker roll that can stress the masts.

Copper plating shouldn't increase speed, just prevent speed reductions from weed growth.

Fireship Fitting on a fully-crewed and armed warship is pure insanity.

 

Prepared Perk doesn't make sense because ships always had guns loaded in wartime.

Pirate Perk is magic.

Mortar Officer will kill himself trying to load two balls in one tube.

 

Other modules have effects that are plausible, but the names aren't. Having a Lightweight rope won't let you move a heavy yard faster, for example.

 

How about defender perk?  Cant board someone because of a magical blockade?  What, does a force-field automatically appear when you have the defender perk that makes my crews rope and hooks just bounce off?  Why not just give defenders being boarded a 50% morale boost?

 

Upgrades like grog and rum rations should have to be refillable.  You make the module and is good for 3-4 battles then needs to be refilled with... you know... RUM and Grog!

 

Carpenter Teams, Powder Monkeys, Marines, Boarding parties are part of the crew, so why do they not need to be replaced after combat?  Crew losses are crew losses and they should be need to be replaced by hireing new crew .  The module should just give you the option to higher them for the ship just like crew.

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How about defender perk?  Cant board someone because of a magical blockade?  What, does a force-field automatically appear when you have the defender perk that makes my crews rope and hooks just bounce off?  Why not just give defenders being boarded a 50% morale boost?

It's harder to question perks that relate to human behavior and not equipment. Apparently some crews are just extremely good at repelling boarders.

 

 

 

Carpenter Teams, Powder Monkeys, Marines, Boarding parties are part of the crew,

What these modules really mean is 'really l33t powder monkeys/carpenters, etc.'

 

Of course every ship will have powder monkeys even without this module installed. They just don't run as fast.

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If it were up to me, no speed upgrade would apply to all points of sail. Or if so, none of them would stack.

 

Speed trim should make you choose a 30-degree range for the bonus.

Fir construction should only provide a downwind bonus.

 

 

Anyways, Studdingsail mods will never work right without variable wind speed, just like Copper Plating will never work right without some sort of vessel deterioration over time.*

 

 

 

*For instance, a small speed hit with each dura lost, counteracted by Copper Plating.

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Anyways, Studdingsail mods will never work right without variable wind speed, just like Copper Plating will never work right without some sort of vessel deterioration over time.*

 

*For instance, a small speed hit with each dura lost, counteracted by Copper Plating.

 

Copper plating explanation is very simple

 

Ships could not maintain max speed constantly and what we use is an average max possible speed (distance covered over time over time to do this trip)

Copper plating was working over time.. so if you take the ship maximum average speed over 12 months without copper plating and compare it with average for 12 months with copper plating 

the ship with copper plating will be faster on average. 

Fair and historical.

We need to keep upgrades in check, or else:

 

we have not yet taken time to rebalance them and their bonuses. but we will

(Including incorrect % of staysails/jibs power from total power) 

 

guaranteed to be done by october.

we are not doing it now to not ruin the tournament in the middle. 

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I agree that some perks/upgrades have magical abilities, but I try to justify it somewhat in the fact that no two ships were built exactly the same, and perks do at least offer some variation because you never know what your enemy's ship will handle like. I understand that it would be asking a lot of the developers, but I would like to see more variation put into shipbuilding that would affect the characteristics of ships, rather than the current system of upgrades and perks.

 

What becomes very noticeable is when perks stack with other similar perks and upgrades and create magical super-ships that perform in ways that simply defy the realm of possibility. It's then you realize that you aren't just fighting a captain who reloads a little faster than you and must have well-trained gun crews (sounds realistic enough, right?), to realizing that you are fighting some sort of level-capped mage from World of Warcraft.

 

Take for instance the mortar brig mentioned before.

 

The difference in performance between someone who is sailing a mortar brig with no perk/no upgrades and someone who has: Gold mortar handbooks, mortar officer, light ship master, powder monkeys, improved magazine access. You can't even compare the two. The first is just a basic run-of-the-mill mortar brig which will struggle to destroy a single tower in 30 minutes. The other one with stacked upgrades and perks can destroy all towers in 30 minutes (true, he is useless in anything other than fighting towers in port battles, but, still, magical). The only way the prevent players from doing this is to make perks and upgrades' impacts more subtle, but then people decide that they aren't worth the effort to obtain. As maturin stated, it is very difficult to find balancing when you are trying to maintain some realism.

Edited by ajffighter86
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  • 2 weeks later...

I agree with maturin, those upgrades are probably meant for the quality of the men assigned a certain task.

 

I've read somewhere (in one of Robert Gardiners books, I believe), that the British untertook sea trials with two new frigates around 1780 to compare a standard hull to a coppered one and that the copper gave the frigate a slight speed advantage, probably due to the much smoother surface of the thin copper plates.

 

And actually I've noticed that frigate speeds are a little too conservative in the game. The French frigate Révolutionnaire, of the Seine class by P.-A. Forfait, was reported to, at one time, have run 126 miles in about 9,5 hours, which amounts to a speed of 13,5 knots (!). The Hermione replica's captain reported in one of the video-logs on youtube (in French) that he was very surprised of how fast she was and that she ran 13 knots on several occasions on her voyage over the Atlantic last year. 

So maybe the top speed of the frigates should be upped a bit in the future. 

And the ridiculously high speed of the Rattlesnake lowered quite a bit. A sailing ship's speed was a function of her length to width ratio and that wasn't that huge on the little privateer, so in reality, she would probably have been a little slower than the average frigate...

 

Oh and speaking of reality, why do we have to pay for a crew member in advance, but then never again? It would make much more sense to have to pay continuously, maybe every in-game month or so. By that you wouldn't have to pay for dead crew members, either...

Since I have to pay for my crew, I'm broke most of the time...  :wacko: 

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And actually I've noticed that frigate speeds are a little too conservative in the game. The French frigate Révolutionnaire, of the Seine class by P.-A. Forfait, was reported to, at one time, have run 126 miles in about 9,5 hours, which amounts to a speed of 13,5 knots (!).

Yes, but Revolutionnaire was exceptional.

 

The base speeds of the frigates in the game are very conservative. But then unfortunately we have an array of snowballing mods and perks that result in severely inflated performance. 2% and 5% modifiers everywhere, throwing everything off.

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