"Speed-built" SOLs - Wood Type limitations

[mikawa]

The possibility of getting caught in a frigate by a first rate is just ridiculous. Not fair. Not historical accurate. Just ridiculous.

[Marquês do Bonfim]

59 minutes ago, mikawa said:

The possibility of getting caught in a frigate by a first rate is just ridiculous. Not fair. Not historical accurate. Just ridiculous.

That's funny, hehe.

But yeah, a frigate shouldn't be easy prey for SOLs, they should be ten times faster or have the upper hand speed in some cases. A fir/fir Bellona right now with top speed upgrades can and will catch anything without any difficulty. And even being a fir/fir ship, it has way too much HP/Thickness to be out of your league if you're sailing a frigate whatsoever, so not only the SOL will have the speed to catch you, you won't and wouldn't be able to take it down without sinking first.

[William Death]

Just now, Portuguese Privateer said:

That's funny, hehe.

But yeah, a frigate shouldn't be easy prey for SOLs, they should be ten times faster or have the upper hand speed in some cases. A fir/fir Bellona right now with top speed upgrades can and will catch anything without any difficulty. And even being a fir/fir ship, it has way too much HP/Thickness to be out of your league if you're sailing a frigate whatsoever, so not only the SOL will have the speed to catch you, you won't and wouldn't be able to take it down without sinking first.

You're partially right...a Bellona, well-outfitted, is very fast. Source: I have a couple that do well over 14kn easily and they're not perfect speedbuilds. 

But you might be ignoring the fact that any frigate of reasonable build (so no super-tanky WO/WO + Spanish Rig monstrosities) can ditch it upwind. Source: have ditched speedbuilt Bellonas upwind. I even ditched a pretty fast Bellona the other day in a 10.5kn Surprise with 80% sails. I went close hauled and tacked a couple times. Every time I tacked I gained massive distance because I could tack without losing speed and he was reversing every time. The only Bellonas that can tack without reversing are the ones without Elite Spanish Rig Refit. Use this to your advantage.

 

It did become harder to do this when the sailing profiles were made "realistic" or whatever happened about a year ago when Devs were changing the sailing profiles and sail forces to make ships behave differently. Hopefully one day we'll go back to the better-for-gameplay sailing profiles that made all frigates useful. Right now, so many ships are redundant because there is effectively little/no difference in sailing profiles between them.
Because, aside from BR, why sail a "Frigate" when a Trincomalee or Endymion does everything better? In the old sailing model, Frigate did a little better upwind and turned much better. So it had a use. Why take Surprise for deepwater PvP when Endymion is flat out better? Surprise used to have a significantly better upwind profile, so it had a use.

So I agree, speedfit SOLs are a problem when frigates have issues running away from them. But as I posted before, limiting woodtype is not the solution. Neither is fiddling with base speeds (and creating more broken ships in the process). The solution lies in fixing the root of the issue: sailing profiles must be diversified back to the way they used to be, even if that means some ships do unrealistically well upwind or downwind compared to historical logs.

 

On a final note, I wouldn't say that SOLs (especially 3rd rates) couldn't catch frigates IRL. In fact, if I remember correctly there were instances of slow British frigates being caught by the fast French 74s. Not to mention the Spanish third rate Montañés class that were known for their speed. They had perhaps a lighter armament than some other ships, but still enough to destroy any frigate they caught. Even Victory was known as an excellent sailor and quite fast under the right conditions.

But for game balance purposes, I agree that speedfit SOLs shouldn't always catch frigates. Only the ones that run away at your best point of sail. We're close to having that, if we diversify sailing profiles again for the good of the game.

[Malachi]

12 minutes ago, William Death said:

In fact, if I remember correctly there were instances of slow British frigates being caught by the fast French 74s.

And instances of 'slow' british ships of the line catching 'fast' french frigates, although this usually happened in bad weather situations. A relatively small ship has distinctive speed disadvantage vs. a larger one in heavy seas.

Edited April 1, 2019 by Malachi

[William Death]

1 minute ago, Malachi said:

And instances of 'slow' british ships of the line catching 'fast' french frigates, although this usually happened in bad weather situations. A relatively small ship has distinctive speed disadvantage vs. a larger one in heavy seas.

You'll get no argument from me, I've long been aboard with the crowd shipping for diverse sea states and variable wind strength. But that is A LOT of work for the development team, I'm sure. (Although the old storm maps look super fun and should come back).

Imagine: you're sailing in a storm, trying to catch a fleeing frigate in your 74. You can't use your lower decks due to the heavy seas, but thats OK, the 18pd deck is enough if you can ever manage to catch the frigate. Her skipper is daring (or scared of a court martial) and has set every sail. He is pulling away from you, but then his foretopmast carries away. You've got him now, keep the slow match lit and the powder dry.

Or, you're in a frigate in light airs, full sails set and ghosting along. A few daring 6th rates set out to chase you. Can you outrun them? You've got more sails, and royals set higher up, but their ships are much lighter and quicker to respond to the puffs of wind.

THAT, is immersion. 

[Sailor]

1 hour ago, mikawa said:

The possibility of getting caught in a frigate by a first rate is just ridiculous. Not fair. Not historical accurate. Just ridiculous.

 

Hull speed is the main determinant for ship speed. Longer hull = faster speed. Longest possible hull at the age of sail 65-70m (due to tree sizes). 
You can read about it here
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hull_speed

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Froude_number

Any slowest first  rate is faster than any frigate at heavy weather (bigger waves) with the exception of long ships like constitution which should be very fast.
Lots of first rates were faster than average badly built frigates. Historically accurate and not ridiculous at all. Most 74s were very fast.

Cutter on the other hand is faster than any ship in light wind. When frigate can not get any movement in light wind, cutter can sail 6 knots (its max hull speed). 

[Dibbler (Retired)]

"In the 17th century, a frigate was any warship built for speed and maneuverability, the description often used being "frigate-built". These could be warships carrying their principal batteries of carriage-mounted guns on a single deck or on two decks (with further smaller carriage-mounted guns usually carried on the forecastle and quarterdeck of the vessel). The term was generally used for ships too small to stand in the line of battle, although early line-of-battle ships were frequently referred to as frigates when they were built for speed.

In the 18th century, frigates were usually as long as a ship of the line and were square-rigged on all three masts (full-rigged), but were faster and with lighter armament, used for patrolling and escort. In the definition adopted by the British Admiralty, they were rated ships of at least 28 guns, carrying their principal armaments upon a single continuous deck – the upper deck – while ships of the line possessed two or more continuous decks bearing batteries of guns."

 

  Sorry but i don't buy that ships of the line did out pace frigates,  thats why they were built as scouting vessels and to patrol profitable shipping lanes to the US coast and india's.   However i was surprised to read 50% of British navy were SOL builds so perhaps i'm mistaken to some degree.

The Hull speed   figure mentioned is for a displaced object in calm waters, and doesn't take into account planing,  heel (increases volume under water), weight, sail area (propulsion), or finally general proportions and shape of the hull . Froude number is a better indicator and more inline with modern fluid dynamics, but been a while since studied FD would have to get old university books out.    For example british ships were in general (there were exceptions i believe) constructed  with a U shaped hull that gave more hold volume but were slower than French equivalents  that had a V shaped hulls in general that aided in reducing resistance but if memory serves me correctly were more prone to heel

 Of course wind/sea conditions on the day could allow a SOL to catch a frigate but in general this couldn't be the case, otherwise frigates would never have been commissioned.

 As for game balance to have SOLS able to outpace 5th's i think is bad  whatever the reality,  SOLS have firepower frigates should have speed and maneuverability in my humble opinion. Unless of course each battle gave different wind strengths which would mean light winds favoured light ships/frigates and left SOLS slow and hard to maneuver,  heavy favoured more  heavy SOLS.

 

Edited April 2, 2019 by Dibbler

[van der Clam]

On 2/11/2019 at 3:43 AM, Tom Farseer said:

To be honest, I find the idea of limiting wood types for lineships interesting. The problem I see with it though, is that it is a forceful limitation. It would be better if we could find ways to motivate players to choose the correct woods whithout putting in a hard limit. My alternate suggestion would be to simply reduce SoL speed to a more appropriate level.

Bear with me for a little example:
Currently a Live Oak/ White Oak Ocean with Bridgetown Frame Refit has a top speed of 8.75 knots. It's base top speed without Wood and upgrade bonuses is at 9.76. going Fir/Fir with Art of Shiphandling, and a Naval Clock would get us to 11.8. All these values are taken from Felix Victor's map here and are without repairs.

So we get:

• Live White Tank: 89% relative speed (8.75/9.76)
• Base speed obviously at 100% (9.76/9.76)
• Fir/Fir speedy: 121% relative speed (11.8/9.76)

I we shaved of about 1.5 knots of the base speed, that should leave us with

• 8.26 base speed 
• (8.26*0,89=) 7.35 knots for the tank
• (8.26*1.21= ) 9.99 knots for the fir ship.

The same exemplary builds for a bellona would be:

• Tank:  10.2 -> 89%
• Base:  11.4 -> 100%
• Fir:      13.8 -> 121%

Again -1.5 knots on base speed:

• Tank:    8.8 -> 89%
• Base:    9.9 -> 100%
• Fir:      11.9-> 121%

Those are still decent values in my opinion. The ships still sail fast enough to not make a PB 45 minutes of sailing towards each other and they would give lighter classes that speed buff.

One could even only reduce the speed penalty to -1 knot. The effect would still kick in I think.

 

Also while doing that one might take a look at speed differences of ships of the same class (#MakeWasaUsefullAgain )

@Tom Farseer Now use your base numbers and add all the speed mods. I'm certain this numbers are still not low enough.

I'd suggest making it easy on devs and just put a speed cap on SoLs.