Trying a shooting system without stabilized guns

[Inkompetent]

To begin with I want to present the preface to this idea, and it's pretty simple, actually: Accurate gunnery at sail-plans with a lot of sail are way too accurate, and it does to a great degree defeat the purpose of at all having the "Battle" speed mode (sail-plan).

My idea for how to fix this would be relatively simple to introduce, and I think it would be very interesting to try this for a few months on the live servers:

• Remove the "gyro-stabilization" on the follow-up shots after the first one. Currently it doesn't matter how much the ship rolls after the first shot leaves the barrel. ALL other shots will head the exact same direction. Instead guns should be affected by the roll, so that firing while rolling heavily will scatter shots all over the place. This means that firing aimed shots at the hull or other specific sections with a ship that rolls more than just a little will become pretty much impossible beyond point blank range.
  The result of this would be that players either need to accept that shots fly all over the place (which might not be much of an issue of you toss a crapload of iron on the enemy's masts at range), or they will need to drop to battle sails or otherwise depower and turn their sails so as to lose a lot of wind in the sails and thus acceleration and speed.
   
• The more tricky part of this implementation would be that gunners shouldn't fire exactly ALL over the place, because they wouldn't be that dumb. Instead there should be some kind of maximum vertical limit (above and below the point of aim) at which the guns fire.
  Consideration must however be taken for how to combine this with the "walking" fire of the front/back fire modes, because to get the maximum rate of fire (and as many shots on target as possible) it might be necessary that guns fire out of order. On the other hand this could be exactly what the "Random" fire mode will be better at, so that people will need to make a concious choice of if they want walking fire, or if they want maximum rate of fire but in no particular order.

I think that this could have a very interesting effect on gameplay, and to some degree promote other attributes in ships and other modules (for example having as little deceleration as possible from water resistance could become pretty important), and it would also promote ships that sail well with "slower" sail-plans, like for example how the Essex can sail really fast at beam reach with Battle sails.

[CaptVonGunn]

All to same spot? Guess we play a different game. AI shoots that way mine never do

[Tenet]

3 minutes ago, CaptVonGunn said:

All to same spot? Guess we play a different game. AI shoots that way mine never do

This is much more noticeable once you sail ships with more guns. Trust me, OP is right, currently once the first shot in a broadside volley is fired, the rest behave as if the ship remained on the same phase of the roll. Only turning affects the following shots. You have to fire a broadside to see it, individual shots obviously don't share that behavior. 

I can't decide whether the suggestion will improve the game or make it too complex. 

Edited June 28, 2017 by Tenet

[CaptVonGunn]

I sail 5th through 3rds now only because I can't stand the big ones..  

[Ole Pinelle]

I like the idea. I guess the long cannons would disappear fast from frigates, since you have to get close to the enemy anyway to really hit him. In SOL battles with stable plattforms this might be different.

[Sir Lancelot Holland]

Those who have watched programmes like Black Sails or Hornblower would have noticed the ships under reduced sail, the lower courses clewed up at battle sails if you wish to call it such in battle.

There are reasons for this, firstly it reduces the risk of fire, at the ranges battles were fought at, often musket range or less burning embers from cannons could start fires both on deck and in the lower courses.

Secondly a slower moving ship is more stable, less heel and roll, the rate at which you get pitch and yaw is also slower offering better accuracy, in part this led to the Royal navy's doctrine of putting a greater weight of shot into the air in the shortest possible time than the enemy, a practice that 100 years  later would see the death of British battlecruisers at Jutland and the Denmark Strait. 

The firing of Broadsides also would upset trim, pushing the ship sideways and adding to the natural roll pitch and yaw on the ocean, where as firing as the cannons bore onto the target, walking down the gun decks would obtain more hits and reduce upswing.   

Stabilisation of guns and prediction of where shells had to go to hit the target really only began to come into play with the introduction of steam, turreted guns and greater ranges of engagement, something that those who also play with the steel behemoths of 20th century are fully aware, even then it was very much hit and miss!

[Inkompetent]

9 hours ago, Tenet said:

I can't decide whether the suggestion will improve the game or make it too complex. 

Nor can I, really. That's exactly why I'd love to run a live server test for a few months to see how it actually plays out. It is a quite drastic change after all.

[Hethwill]

Engine looking at cannons/carronades in individual divisions ( X guns per lieutenant ) instead of a unified battery, to calculate the dispersions, moment of fire, heel during the discharge of a rolling broadside, etc  should promote a more proper period cannonade effect ( especially with the rolling )

and maybe allow less guns per ship if needed.

Need to testbed this.

Please.

[Tenet]

5 hours ago, The Red Duke said:

Engine looking at cannons/carronades in individual divisions ( X guns per lieutenant ) instead of a unified battery, to calculate the dispersions, moment of fire, heel during the discharge of a rolling broadside, etc  should promote a more proper period cannonade effect ( especially with the rolling )

and maybe allow less guns per ship if needed.

Need to testbed this.

Please.

I would want that except I think they won't be able to load that all to the server and you want the least amount of client side calculation as possible.