Seasonal Update: Treacherous Waters - Preliminary information

[Destraex]

I also seem to remember reading that part of the problem for Frigates in Gale force winds is that they must shorten sail a lot more than SOLs or risk losing their masts.

P.S. It makes me happy when you mention NA2

[Snoopy]

Napkin math for hull speed:

• USStates class/Constitution 17.7 knots
• Leda class/Trincomalee 16.4 knots (generous for the Trinc because i didnt find a good waterline number)

This means that barring big differences in drag on the hull (which we don't know) etc the Trinc has to overcome more than a knot of hull speed difference just to get even with the larger ship. If you put enough sails on the Connie (and have enough wind) it will run down a Trinc in RL.

The same principle applies to Battle Cruisers: the only reason why their hulls are so long (longer than battleships) is to extract more straight line speed out of their available propulsion system's hp.

[van Veen]

3 minutes ago, admin said:

You are correct. And that book is not only that book confirms. 

In the strong wind only a heavy ship can withstand pressure and wave
+ do not forget the hull speed. The longer the hull the longer the speed.

AOS reality is the following

• Very light wind
  • Cutter sails 7 knots
  • Frigate sails 4 knots 
  • Heavy ship of the line barely moves. 1-2 knots or maybe slower due to friction, some builds cannot even start moving and slightly drift.
• Very strong wind almost gale
  • Cutter - cannot sail at all - have to take down all sails = 0 knots (large waves make it even more dangerous
  • Frigate - depends on build but can move on courses (couple of sails) - 8 knots
  • Heavy ship of the line - 12 knots (hull speed)

We do not know if we are going to reach this reality in NA but will definitely reach it in NA2

You said you practiced sailing recently, right? If you had done that at gale force you'd know that speed 0 is not realistic for any kind of ship. 

But I get what you are saying. A small vessel has more trouble staying its course. 

[admin]

1 minute ago, Snoopy said:

Napkin math for hull speed:

• USStates class/Constitution 17.7 knots
• Leda class/Trincomalee 16.4 knots (generous for the Trinc because i didnt find a good waterline number)

This means that barring big differences in drag on the hull (which we don't know) etc the Trinc has to overcome more than a knot of hull speed difference just to get even with the larger ship. If you put enough sails on the Connie (and have enough wind) it will run down a Trinc in RL.

The same principle applies to Battle Cruisers: the only reason why their hulls are so long (longer than battleships) is to extract more straight line speed out of their available propulsion system's hp.

we are going to solve this too.. wind strength and barometer will connect all pieces together. Strong winds - heavy ships are kings, light winds cutters are kings. Which will also bring variety to OW as people will pick ships according to weather conditions (Not only guns)

[Destraex]

1 minute ago, van Veen said:

You said you practiced sailing recently, right? If you had done that at gale force you'd know that speed 0 is not realistic for any kind of ship. 

But I get what you are saying. A small vessel has more trouble staying its course. 

He sail "almost gale" most likely meaning the upper limits of what it is practical to sail in?

[Koltes]

4 minutes ago, Snoopy said:

What the micro wind conditions were for each ship is hard to say, they were probably roughly the same or rather evened out over the long periods these chases often lasted.
If you have a longer hull you will go faster so its not insane to imagine a large ship catching a smaller one when the wind is strong enough.  Hull state is a factor ofc, but adds another layer of fast/slow so I'm assuming both clean.

You are right there but again you are mixing up apples and oranges.
If larger ship had better hull profile that allows him to catch smaller ships then this would be the case with or without air pressure difference.
But if the ship is heavy and sluggish and under normal conditions cannot even closely outrun the faster ship then no magical force should be making it doing so. Again speed difference from the edge of low/high pressure zone is not high enough to turn slow ship into a fast ship. It would only give slight speed increase. This is due to both vessels being in the same location. Of course if some vessel is inside the storm and the other is outside of it then they would have different winds applied, but the distance between those ships would be by far beyond visible.

[Fluffy Fishy]

1 hour ago, koltes said:

1 hour ago, Snoopy said:

In RL this could potentially be a thing, there are instances of heavier, stronger ships catching smaller vessels with the right wind conditions (74 gunner running down a Frigate).
Perhaps the new wind buff is only a very crude representation of this, hull speed will favor the longer (larger) vessel and with enough wind it might just catch up.

Sorry man, I think your are making this up lol.
Yes it COULD be possible that heavier ships catching up with faster frigates, but ONLY due to being on better wind or other factors like if Frigate spent much time on voyage and have not done the careening to remove biofouling organisms growth on the hull, or had damaged sails or a drunk captain lol.
But definitely not because the heavy Line Ship somehow had different wind approaching the Frigate from parallel reality. That is a fantasy

Hull speed is fairly meaningless when it comes to the age of sail, there are far more important factors when it comes to determining speed from historical wooden ships. Historic sailing is so dependable on other factors like rigging type, stiffness, trimming/load and general hull form much more than modern vessels. Frigates aren't by any means faster than ships of the line, nor are larger ships of the line by default slower than smaller ships of the line. Taking just the easily accountable examples of HMS Victory, Bellona and Agamemnon, Victory sailed 11kn, Bellona 12kn and Agamemnon 9.5kn in their best wind conditions historically. Other examples from history that are easily accessible are the 24 gun HMS Seahorse who could only manage 11kns, HMS Lowestoffe at 32 guns who could do 10kn, Unite 36 guns at 13kn and HMS Badger 12 guns who could only perform a top speed of 9kn. Typical 74s tended to be around the 11-12kn mark although some are considerably faster, similarly some examples of 80 gunners could produce some really high speeds in comparison to frigates and post ships.

Despite top speed being a a thing its more realistic to look at actual viable speeds which is represented in game fairly well with the sailing graphs where certain ships would perform better than others in certain directions due to the way their hull form and rigging made them behave. The most important part of this however is that certain sailing conditions favored some rigging types and sized ships much more than others, it all becomes very complicated though. In calm seas with low winds its not uncommon for a larger ship to catch winds much better than a smaller ship due to having much higher sails, while in heavier winds with calm seas sailing conditions typically favoured smaller ships. This all becomes much more complicated when you throw in things like stiffness and rougher waters where factors like how weatherly a ship was come into play much more, stiffer ships will sail much better in rougher waters, again potentially favouring larger ships, but again trimming, ballast and where the gunports sit compared with roll and heel become much more important than ship size.

There are plenty of examples of large ships historically out sailing smaller ships. The nonsense of frigates being default faster than ships of the line is also a myth mostly propagated by bad history from all sorts of media. Even within the game we have fairly obvious examples from discussions on the forums like Montanes who could sail 14kn and Endymion who could sail 14.5kn vastly outrunning smaller ships.

Edited October 24, 2019 by Fluffy Fishy

[Destraex]

2 minutes ago, koltes said:

You are right there but again you are mixing up apples and oranges.
If larger ship had better hull profile that allows him to catch smaller ships then this would be the case with or without air pressure difference.
But if the ship is heavy and sluggish and under normal conditions cannot even closely outrun the faster ship then no magical force should be making it doing so. Again speed difference from the edge of low/high pressure zone is not high enough to turn slow ship into a fast ship. It would only give slight speed increase. This is due to both vessels being in the same location. Of course if some vessel is inside the storm and the other is outside of it then they would have different winds applied, but the distance between those ships would be by far beyond visible.

Koltes are you saying you would prefer instead of gusts that the open world have different wind speeds and weather that moved around the whole map? This could also then have speed modifiers for small or large ships applied for different wind strengths.

[Koltes]

58 minutes ago, Destraex said:

Koltes the example I remember was one of a 74 catching a frigate.

"A spectacular proof of their value came in september 1806 when Sir Samuel Hood in the Centaur led the Rocheford squadron, which included three other large 74s, in the pursuit and capture of four 40 gun frigates; in heavy weather even frigates could be over-hauled by Large Class 74s."

From: Warships of the napoleonic era, design, development and deployment by robert gardiner.

Yes and if you read historical ship building the Ships of the Line of Napoleonic era had lots of rework done to the hull design and allowed to speed them up dramatically. It doesnt say how old those frigates were or other factors. But you are right - generally in bad weather heavier ships were better keeping a course than the lighter ones.

But as I explained below - we are talking about ships responding to ONE condition, while in the game right now we artificially creating TWO different conditions that causes other separate issues.

 

50 minutes ago, admin said:

You are correct. And that book is not only one that confirms it. Ask any course instructor teaching yacht sailing or giving skipper license.

In the strong wind only a heavy ship can withstand pressure and wave

Yes, but that is not the issue. You are talking about two vessels in one location dealing differently with the SAME wind force. I have no problem with that whatsoever.
I think the issue is that today we have two vessels at the same time and place dealing with two SEPARATE and Independent wind conditions. One that HAS the wind gasp and the other that DONT while being in the same place and time.

Also this argument does not apply to the identical vessels. Then WHY one should be faster than the other being in the same place and time being affected by the same weather (air and wave) conditions? Both dealing with same conditions in the same way.

If there is a wind force in place in the area that makes heavy vassel faster than lighter vessel I have no problem with that, because its a variable constant that a captain of the lighter vessel should be aware of and have a chance to avoid or else get caught due to his inexperience. If you can do that with the game this will be amazing! In general I totally support that in stormy area heavier vessels will be faster and more stable on their course than the lighter ones. In fact MUCH faster, because lighter ships (even frigate class) would have to reduce sails exposure to a minimum or even take them down altogether and prey not to get washed ashore. Heavier ships also may get in trouble but in general less affected

 

36 minutes ago, Destraex said:

Koltes are you saying you would prefer instead of gusts that the open world have different wind speeds and weather that moved around the whole map? This could also then have speed modifiers for small or large ships applied for different wind strengths.

Yes, I think to achieve faster sail between long distances we can have just speed increase far away from  the land. Its a VERY rare occasion when you can see anyone that far away in the ocean anyway. 99% of PVP happens near land when speed can get back to normal.

Wind Gasp could just be replaced with an area on the map that gives such boost, but still needs to be activated manually.
The duration of the boost should not be TIMER restricted, but rather area restricted. If you leave the area - you lose the boost
The strength of the boost should again be area dependent. Further inside the wind channel you get more boost, while closer to the edge of it - lower boost. This all will sort itself out beautifully. I think everyone will be happy with that

And THEN those different wind boost areas could be turned into different types. Just low/high pressure where only speed boost is applied. Some areas could be stormy and thats where heavier vessels will will coefficient modifier to give them upper hand in a storm and then constant trade winds and calm waters areas where lighter vessels will have upper hand instead.

This will make sailing in OW require knowledge of different weather conditions. Again those weather conditions does NOT have to be dynamic. They can just be patches on the OW and change after each downtime. 

Edited October 25, 2019 by koltes

[Snoopy]

3 minutes ago, koltes said:

[..]Yes, but that is not the issue. You are talking about two vessels in one location dealing differently with the SAME wind force. I have no problem with that whatsoever.
I think the issue is that today we have two vessels at the same time and place dealing with two SEPARATE and Independent wind conditions. One that HAS the wind gasp and the other that DONT while being in the same place and time.[..]

Ok this is completely true, the current system is perhaps a 'wrong' representation for game purposes when only one ships has a magical buff. I'd rather keep this for now because a fully realistic version would still include the same practical outcome of 'your ship slow, my ship fast' in some cases.

[Koltes]

42 minutes ago, Fluffy Fishy said:

There are plenty of examples of large ships historically out sailing smaller ships. The nonsense of frigates being default faster than ships of the line is also a myth mostly propagated by bad history from all sorts of media. Even within the game we have fairly obvious examples from discussions on the forums like Montanes who could sail 14kn and Endymion who could sail 14.5kn vastly outrunning smaller ships.

You are totally right about the historical aspect. Perhaps I used term wrongly. Let me rephrase it. 9.5kn Agamemnon should not be able to catch 12kn Belona when same wind conditions applied to both ships, which they are providing both are at the same place and time.
Same applies that 12kn Belona should not be able to catch 10kn fore-to-aft rigger that is going tight reach.
Current game mechanic allows both to happen

[William Death]

1 hour ago, koltes said:

Sorry man, I think your are making this up lol.
Yes it COULD be possible that heavier ships catching up with faster frigates, but ONLY due to being on better wind or other factors like if Frigate spent much time on voyage and have not done the careening to remove biofouling organisms growth on the hull, or had damaged sails or a drunk captain lol.
But definitely not because the heavy Line Ship somehow had different wind approaching the Frigate from parallel reality. That is a fantasy

Or, you could have a poorly trimmed (or even poorly designed) frigate, that is quite slow. And a well-trimmed and well designed 3rd rate that is extremely fast.  There are plenty of accounts of lineships going faster than frigates. 

Fouling, captain skills, all that plays a part. But we can't ignore design differences. Others already made some good points.

But larger ships don't necessarily use "different wind" (ignoring even that they catch the 'better' wind higher up in the atmosphere). They just have more sails and can catch more of the wind. And they have larger, heavier hulls, that will stand up to more of the wind too. 

 

What is fantasy, is attempting to assign a purpose to what would, essentially, be useless ships. Imagine you're the Royal Navy, and you're in a perfect universe where you aren't worried about costs to build, maintain, or man ships (sounds like Naval Action). Ignoring ability to poke around shallow waters, why would you want to send a 12 knot, 12lb frigate on a cruise, when you could send a 12kn 3rd rate with 3x the firepower and more crew too? 
There aren't too many reasons left that come to mind. Even fewer that apply to Naval Action.

 

"Diversity" IRL was created by cost and advancements in ship design. So in real life, some old designs (and smaller ships) could be found sailing next to state of the art designs (and more powerful ships). NA has tried to mimic that in game by artificially buffing or nerfing ships to create a balance. But that's become harder to do as mod stacking + wood stacking yields higher and higher percentages that we can modify our ships with. You end up with some ridiculous numbers at times.

I will once again call for a massive reduction in all modifiers. Take us back to +/-  5-10% modifiers (TOTAL stacking of all modifiers for that class).
And a return to the older (less realistic, but better for balance) sailing profiles. Then we can have a purpose to take that frigate instead of the SOL. Because it'll be faster upwind and more agile too.


If you were referring to wind boosts in OW...well that's been hashed out thoroughly already. If you're not AFK, you should have no problem maneuvering around, getting a counter tag, and negating any possibility for "SOL warp speeded into my tag circle and pulled me. He had prepared and sank me before I raised my sails! *insert favorite expletive here*"

[Koltes]

3 minutes ago, William Death said:

Or, you could have a poorly trimmed (or even poorly designed) frigate, that is quite slow. And a well-trimmed and well designed 3rd rate that is extremely fast.  There are plenty of accounts of lineships going faster than frigates. 

Fouling, captain skills, all that plays a part. But we can't ignore design differences. Others already made some good points.

But larger ships don't necessarily use "different wind" (ignoring even that they catch the 'better' wind higher up in the atmosphere). They just have more sails and can catch more of the wind. And they have larger, heavier hulls, that will stand up to more of the wind too. 

 

What is fantasy, is attempting to assign a purpose to what would, essentially, be useless ships. Imagine you're the Royal Navy, and you're in a perfect universe where you aren't worried about costs to build, maintain, or man ships (sounds like Naval Action). Ignoring ability to poke around shallow waters, why would you want to send a 12 knot, 12lb frigate on a cruise, when you could send a 12kn 3rd rate with 3x the firepower and more crew too? 
There aren't too many reasons left that come to mind. Even fewer that apply to Naval Action.

 

"Diversity" IRL was created by cost and advancements in ship design. So in real life, some old designs (and smaller ships) could be found sailing next to state of the art designs (and more powerful ships). NA has tried to mimic that in game by artificially buffing or nerfing ships to create a balance. But that's become harder to do as mod stacking + wood stacking yields higher and higher percentages that we can modify our ships with. You end up with some ridiculous numbers at times.

I will once again call for a massive reduction in all modifiers. Take us back to +/-  5-10% modifiers (TOTAL stacking of all modifiers for that class).
And a return to the older (less realistic, but better for balance) sailing profiles. Then we can have a purpose to take that frigate instead of the SOL. Because it'll be faster upwind and more agile too.


If you were referring to wind boosts in OW...well that's been hashed out thoroughly already. If you're not AFK, you should have no problem maneuvering around, getting a counter tag, and negating any possibility for "SOL warp speeded into my tag circle and pulled me. He had prepared and sank me before I raised my sails! *insert favorite expletive here*"

I just reread your post 3 times and still struggle to understand your point of view on the shortcomings of the CURRENT speed boost mechanic. I mean you jump to totally different subject discussed like purpose of ships etc. What does this have to do with wind gasps discussed. But to answer your question why, its simple. Why do we use trucks that carry 500kg as opposed to those that can carry 10 tonns? Different purpose. Some ships could enter smaller harbours, some were cheaper to run - smaller ships made more sense to protect smaller traders as they carried less crew. They were simply more affordable too. Not all companies could afford it. Smaller ships were used for smaller tasks. Dont even know why we are talking about this to be honest.

If you actually talking about the game mechanics discussed then I think somehow you have missed my entire point.
I dont argue about the ship sizes as I stated above. Just used bad analogy, but corrected myself already, so excuse me if I wont answer yours since its the same and you can find it above your post.

All im hearing is you want to put a thick red line across half of the recent implementations and go back into the past. Make everything basic and vanila.
Ok thanks for your opinion, but it feels more like a grunt. If you are not happy, why address it to me lol? What do you want ME to do about it 🤣
Complain to admin lol

[Malcolm3]

6 hours ago, admin said:

We already said it is totally realistic, just a bit exaggerated (because ow speed even basic ones exceed 100 and ow travel is abstract - everyone know it).
Its a known fact that two identical boats can have different wind speeds in the same area, especially on the borders between high/low pressure zones. In fact a ship can have 0 wind at all and another ship 1 mile away can give 2 knots.  Only in tradewinds the wind pressure is somewhat uniform and even then there are lower and higher pressure zones.

We plan to remove speed indicators some once we add the skill knot log (if this happens - not guaranteed). Removing indicators will bring peace of mind. 
In addition to that we will add barometer that will help predict wind change and wind strengh (changing speeds between classes in real time)
Current wind gusts will lock this all together. 

+ We no longer tolerate time wasting for hours. 

Adding to what @koltes said (and I fully agree with him about speeds and wind) - The main problem here is that you introduce things (wind gusts) suitable for quite realistic battle instance to much more unrealistic OW sailing.

Also, if you want more realism, then can we have at last some more realistic ways to wage a war (doing RVR), such as proper system for war against enemy trade (I've suggested one BTW).

P.S. There are other ways (besides faster speeds) to resolve problem with wasting time during long sailing, such as shrinking the map, or adding some features, you can encounter during sailing over long distances (best approach)

[William Death]

2 hours ago, koltes said:

What does this have to do with wind gasps discussed. But to answer your question why, its simple. Why do we use trucks that carry 500kg as opposed to those that can carry 10 tonns? Different purpose. Some ships could enter smaller harbours, some were cheaper to run - smaller ships made more sense to protect smaller traders as they carried less crew. They were simply more affordable too. Not all companies could afford it. Smaller ships were used for smaller tasks. Dont even know why we are talking about this to be honest.

You're right: why they built different sized ships has nothing to do with wind gusts. But you said you didn't think big ships could be faster than smaller ships. You called it "fantasy." I pointed out (as did others), that large ships could be faster than smaller ships. I went on to point out that what is fantasy is pretending that all ships are useful. The exact points you just made are all points I addressed in my post above. Ignoring shallows for a moment, and remembering that cost has no bearing in Naval Action, there is no reason to sail a smaller ship, when a bigger one can do the job better. Put simply, you called one thing fantasy, I called something else fantasy.

So, no, its not a direct reply to anything specific in your post. I was just pointing out a generalization that most people seem to have (and that I inferred you believed as well) that "every ship must have a purpose" For example, that line of thought states that "If ship X has advantage A, then ship Y must have advantage B." We had that for a long time in Naval Action. That still works for many ships in NA. But there are some that it doesn't work for...

We had some changes and what we have now in Naval Action is that "Ship X has advantages A and B, making ship Y useless." I don't like that. I'm just stating it the way it is. Then I suggest ways to fix it.

2 hours ago, koltes said:

If you actually talking about the game mechanics discussed then I think somehow you have missed my entire point.
I dont argue about the ship sizes as I stated above. Just used bad analogy, but corrected myself already, so excuse me if I wont answer yours since its the same and you can find it above your post.

Yes, I see your previous replies. Saw them when I posted. I still posted my reply though, because I wanted to analyze it from a different angle. Everyone mentioned the mechanics of why certain ships could do better with certain wind, but it wasn't brought up why you might want to have a 12kn frigate, which is in every way mechanically and functionally inferior to one of those fast third rates (except in shallow draught), in your fleet. I mentioned the cost reasons that influenced these decisions in real life. Then I mentioned why that is a non-factor in NA. And again, I suggested ways to fix it (by diversifying sailing profiles again, the way they used to be).

2 hours ago, koltes said:

All im hearing is you want to put a thick red line across half of the recent implementations and go back into the past. Make everything basic and vanila.

MANY things about this game were better in previous iterations. Some are better now. Thats my opinion. Thats also the opinion of the majority of players I speak to. You call it "basic and vanilla" I call it cutting out the magical bonuses and bringing us back to a skill-based game where it doesn't matter if you don't have meta gear, you can make up the small differences with skill. Its kind of hard to make up a 25%+ gear advantage unless you only fight unskilled players. So we do the grind and conform to the meta gear game, and we can have some fun. But declining game population tells me that maybe not everyone is happy to do that.

2 hours ago, koltes said:

If you are not happy, why address it to me lol? What do you want ME to do about it 🤣
Complain to admin lol

The first part of my response is a reply to your post. The rest where I discuss mechanics are not in reply to you specifically. Consider that just general feedback regarding the current state of the game. All of which was arrived at from considering why a lineship might sometimes outrun a frigate, or vice-versa. 

I've expressed my displeasure with various aspects of patches multiple times, and to any party that wants to read it. I think at this point admin knows that I want to see the combat model rolled back to 2017-2018 model; a DLC for the old UI; a rollback to the old, small bonus mods and no port bonuses; and a rollback to 1/1 repair system. I don't expect any of that to happen, but I like to mention it in every feedback thread that relates to it .

[Conte D. Catellani]

The future implementation about the wind are interesting but not sure for the new players. Il I have to move some hemp to Islet to Mortimer Town I have to wait the better conditions for my T Lynx. How much time I have to wait ? Aren't in this way moving the wasting time in travel in a wind wait at the Port? And if I don't pay attention I will be killed by enemies players that always live there outside. 

An other question about reality :Why tides are not into consideration in the game? 

[Ponk]

8 hours ago, admin said:

we are going to solve this too.. wind strength and barometer will connect all pieces together. Strong winds - heavy ships are kings, light winds cutters are kings. Which will also bring variety to OW as people will pick ships according to weather conditions (Not only guns)

Windfinder.com API's FTW!

Devide entire map into wind sectorss with real life wind data! 

[van Veen]

8 hours ago, Destraex said:

He sail "almost gale" most likely meaning the upper limits of what it is practical to sail in?

Just pointing out that 0 (zero) is simply impossible on a floating vessel in strong winds (well even in light winds, you'll never have 0 speed actually). Not that I'd like to experience gale force winds on a boat in real life or expect anyone to must have this experience.  

@devs: Please do not implement all this as a stupid speed boost. Add different sailing profiles for different wind speeds for each boat, e.g. like this:

[van Veen]

9 minutes ago, Ponk said:

Windfinder.com API's FTW!

Devide entire map into wind sectorss with real life wind data! 

While I like the idea, I do not think it is practical in terms of gameplay.

Wind conditions are very stable due to the trade wind. In real life, sailing ships would sail from the Canary Islands to the Caribbean, then follow the South American coast line, passing western tip of Cuba and sailing back to Europe through the Florida channel, leaving Bermudas and Azores far on the starboard side. No ship would travel from Panama to Trinidad on direct course. You'd go back to Europe and visit Trinidad on your next journey. 

[huliotkd]

9 hours ago, admin said:

We do not know if we are going to reach this reality in NA but will definitely reach it in NA2.

so is it official? expected time for NA2? @admin

 

9 hours ago, admin said:

We start from wind gusts - captain who look at the signals and map and change course to get a better wind will be rewarded. Captains who just want to sail straight will become easier targets.

very good, but bring back also Storm Battles when and where a player sail through the rain in OW and tag someone. it can be a strong wind and high seas battle or only strong wind or simply no wind and just heavy fog. it will be good if we will se in the future some kinds of forecast news around ports that can become outdated realtively soon after they pop up in the news section. that can produce some exploration mission to understand where seasonal winds are moving.

obviously, we need also wind shadow in battle istance.

9 hours ago, admin said:

heavy ships are kings, light winds cutters are kings. Which will also bring variety to OW as people will pick ships according to weather conditions (Not only guns)

yeah, this is what happens in real life but how manage it in a game? in NA there is no limit on the number of 3rd rates crafted by player so it can be an ''all in 3rd rates'' killing every smaller ships without any chance for smaller ship to escape or fight, assuming players are inside an area with good wind for 3rd rates. if you want realism you have to consider also that any square rigged ship moves until 90° from wind, it they close the wind a little they simply stop sailing. so a tac to the wind will take more or less than 15 min.

really hard to imagine this kind of realism in a game. if you want to maintain the actual situation but with new wind power you have to put a limit to numbers of lineship players can have(they can craft how many they want but can have only 1 or 2 in their docks) or give a chance for 5th rate to escape always faster closing the wind (60° to 45°) than a 3rd rate in good wind.

9 hours ago, koltes said:

Wind Gasp could just be replaced with an area on the map that gives such boost, but still needs to be activated manually.

they should be automatic once you sail inside the area. it's your skill telling you where you will gain more wind boost

[znôrt]

10 hours ago, admin said:

You are correct. And that book is not only one that confirms it. Ask any course instructor teaching yacht sailing or giving skipper license.

In the strong wind only a heavy ship can withstand pressure and wave
+ do not forget the hull speed. The longer the hull the higher the speed.

AOS reality is the following

• Very light wind
  • Cutter sails 7 knots
  • Frigate sails 4 knots 
  • Heavy ship of the line barely moves. 1-2 knots or maybe slower due to friction, some builds cannot even start moving and slightly drift.
• Very strong wind almost gale
  • Cutter - cannot sail at all - have to take down all sails = 0 knots large waves make it even more dangerous. Sometimes in sustained gales taking down masts is necessary to just survive. 
  • Frigate - depends on build but can move on courses (couple of sails) - 8 knots 
    • If the hull is shorter it will mostly fight 
  • Heavy ship of the line, can keep almost all sails (except for top gallants) - 12 knots (hull speed)

We start from wind gusts - captain who look at the signals and map and change course to get a better wind will be rewarded. Captains who just want to sail straight will become easier targets.

what i don't get is what all this has to do with placing speed booster pickups on the sea. is this a placeholder mechanic? if you want to implement realistic wind then that's damn good news, go for it, but why waste time on this? other than prompting players to not sail in straight lines (?) what does it contribute to the goal?

note i'm just talking about realism. if you want speed boosters in the game for gameplay sake then by all means do it, it can even be fun, but the whole talk about realistic wind in connection to this is just bizarre.

[Fluffy Fishy]

15 hours ago, admin said:

You are correct. And that book is not only one that confirms it. Ask any course instructor teaching yacht sailing or giving skipper license.

In the strong wind only a heavy ship can withstand pressure and wave
+ do not forget the hull speed. The longer the hull the higher the speed.

AOS reality is the following

• Very light wind
  • Cutter sails 7 knots
  • Frigate sails 4 knots 
  • Heavy ship of the line barely moves. 1-2 knots or maybe slower due to friction, some builds cannot even start moving and slightly drift.
• Very strong wind almost gale
  • Cutter - cannot sail at all - have to take down all sails = 0 knots large waves make it even more dangerous. Sometimes in sustained gales taking down masts is necessary to just survive. 
  • Frigate - depends on build but can move on courses (couple of sails) - 8 knots 
    • If the hull is shorter it will mostly fight 
  • Heavy ship of the line, can keep almost all sails (except for top gallants) - 12 knots (hull speed)

Sorry but this is entirely wrong and mistakes the comparison between modern ships and historic ships. The typical weighted keel of a modern yacht or ship behave in very different ways to the wooden keel and ballasting of a ship during the age of sail. Sails and rigging also behave differently enough to historic ships too. I went into some details why in my previous post here (https://forum.game-labs.net/topic/32055-seasonal-update-treacherous-waters-preliminary-information/?do=findComment&comment=680682)

Smaller ships won't perform better in light winds at all, typically conditions of light winds actually favour larger ships due to their much higher rigging catching more winds much more than their weight and friction holds them back but there are more mechanics at play than a simple scale. Heavier ships may or may not benefit from gales too mainly depending on where their gun ports are and how stiff the ship is. Even completely within ship classes the difference between sailing characteristics are very dramatic.

Take these examples:

28 guns	HMS Albermarle	HMS Boreas
Topgallant Gale	16kn	7kn
Topsail Gale	16kn	6kn
Before the wind	8-11kn	-

74 guns	Vanguard	Elephant
Topgallant Gale	7kn	8-9kn
Topsail Gale	8kn	8kn
Before the wind	11.5kn	11kn

First Rates	San Josef (114)	Victory (100)
Topgallant Gale	7-8kn	7-8kn
Topsail Gale	5-6kn	6-8kn
Before the wind	11kn	11kn

Others	Bristol (50)	Badger (12)	Medusa (32)	St George (98)
Topgallant Gale	9kn	9kn	8-10kn	10kn
Topsail Gale	7kn	7kn	8-9kn	10kn
Before the wind	9.5kn	9kn	12-13kn	10.5kn

You can clearly see there's no real relationship between size and sailing characteristics because there are far more important factors than size at play when looking at what conditions a ship is capable of sailing certain speeds at. It also shows that realistically we should stay a long way away from hullspeed as a thought for working out actual speeds of ships because its innacurate and unhelpful at best.

When you look at applying this to the game you are probably better off flipping it over, leaving larger ships actually becoming more troubled by heavier weather especially the inability to use their main gundecks while smaller ships have a more constant speed but don't get their armament so affected by bad weather. This would also leave frigates in their place quite nicely as they tend to be much more weatherly than ships of the line due to their higher positioned main decks beyond the waterline. This is especially so when you look at the conditions of the game itself.

Edited October 25, 2019 by Fluffy Fishy

[Tortue Agile]

15 hours ago, admin said:

We do not know if we are going to reach this reality in NA but will definitely reach it in NA2.

Since you are mentioning NA2 .The question is will enough players stay after NA to try NA2?

We are 4 months in after the official release of the game (I remember you telling us that during testing it was OK to have low count of players but we have past that time now...) Retention of players is important for this game and certainly for the eventual NA2. We have to be realist... It's kind of a niche game (and certainly the best of its kind) compared to many others. 

But it's distressing to think that the population is still going down even after this patch. Usually patches see an increase of players.
https://steamcharts.com/app/311310#3m

I really hope there is a plan... maybe have content update 3: Welcome to the Caribbean - Seasonal update coming out just before one of those big sale (for the DLC such as paints) before the end of the year.

Also I just realized something while looking through old posts:

https://forum.game-labs.net/topic/28456-exciting-times-ahead-pre-release-wipes-information/?do=findComment&comment=623967

"Yellow developer keys - the only type of keys steam allows to give if Steam store is not open. These keys can have hidden unreleased content attached.

• These keys were sold through PayPal and had the yacht. Once the store in Jan 2016 opened they were no longer available.
• Valve disbanded the practice of allowing developers to give such keys last year, limited their number by 1000;  valve also removed their review potential; if owners of these keys leave a review - such reviews do not affect overall in review score. "

I'm mostly commenting on the part I highlighted in red. It's kind of ironic while a lot of old players left positive and negative reviews to know that they had no effect on the review score.

Edited October 25, 2019 by Tortue Agile

[Malcolm3]

48 minutes ago, Fluffy Fishy said:

Take these examples:

What are the sources of that information?

[Fluffy Fishy]

12 minutes ago, Malcolm3 said:

What are the sources of that information?

Some collections from general understanding of historic sailing from books like "Seamanship in the age of sail" and various publications by people like Brian Lavery and Robert Gardiner. The reports for the knots themselves come from The Admiralty reports from the back of "Nelson's Ships - A History of the vessels in which he served" by Peter Goodwin. There's a useful selection of reports and tables at the back and just makes for easy reference for this kind of thing, its a great book if you are interested in some examples of history of specific ships. The ISBN is: 0811710076

Edited October 25, 2019 by Fluffy Fishy