Trim all sails properly - Will we be able to manually adjust?

[Destraex]

I think one thing which would really sort the wheat from the chaff is being able to trim sails properly.

In other worlds being able to lift each sail just a little from full to trim them to perfect positions and get the most out of every angle. Of course next time you change angle all the sails must be adjusted again if they are not right.

 

Last night I was reading the novel Surprise by patrick o'brian and the main tasks of the crew was to fire well and obviously trim the sails well in every position adding or taking down sail efficiently and accurately. Captain Aubrey always taking in a little sheet here or letting out a little. Deciding whether to put extra sail on or even when to use a drag sail... whatever that is.

 

They were constantly tweaking sail and trimming it while the wind changed around them.

 

Would be nice to have this extra layer of complexity as it would make a difference between the finite things we can do now to almost infinite complexity for those that want to experiment.

 

The whole problem though may be that the engine and wind mechanics may be too simple to handle it?

[Galileus]

Complexity is bad. Depth is good.

 

I see nothing but complexity and no depth in that.

[Destraex]

The depth comes from not having every ship trimmed to perfect speed on auto-sail.

The depth comes from not every battle having all players sail perfectly as they do now.

combine this with crew efficiency and being able to choose how men are deployed throughout the ship before leaving port... I.e what your crew has most skill at. And you have a little longevity.

[Galileus]

The depth comes from not having every ship trimmed to perfect speed on auto-sail.

The depth comes from not every battle having all players sail perfectly as they do now.

 

That's skill diversity.

 

You cannot say "Tetris is a very deep game, because people play it at different levels of skill!".

[Frizzell]

I agree with you Destraex, perhaps a choice of control modes would work  as in flight sim Normal and Complex engine management.

 

Re drag sail, iirc it was used as a drogue towed behind to fool the enemy into thinking the Surprise was slower than she was, though it's been 10 years since I read the series, I've started again at the beginning!

[Tom Pullings]

As a sailor, let me say that what you are suggesting would leave you no time to actually battle. I think the auto skipper is intended to model the constant adjustment of sails to the conditions. I know that it only just adjusts the angle of the yards, but within the limits of the game, that is probably the best you are going to get. To try what you are suggesting in an actual battle would likely leave you mostly in worse shape than just using auto skipper, and perhaps often in irons as part of your trim winds up being very wrong for the conditions because you are still busy adjusting other sails.

There are a couple of nice sailing simulators out there. I have a couple and like Sail Simulator 5 the best. It's a modern simulator with mostly Bermuda rigs, but it will allow you to learn how to fiddle with the strings, as they say, adjusting out haul and Cunningham, for instance, to further shape your sail.

[Munro]

The Captain should be directly controlling the minutiae of the sail configuration as much as he should be personally loading and firing all the guns and cooking all the meals.

[Destraex]

I am not asking you to climb the mast yourself Munro, just that you bring ballowed to do more harm han the default trims. It was the captains job to order the trim.

[Tom Pullings]

Yes, but in the game, you don't get to order the trim.  You have to manipulate it yourself on manual.  So, if you add more trim controls, that's more controls you have to individually manipulate rather than "order," leaving you precious little time to aim or fire or just manipulate the ship in the first place.  Rudder and yards with perhaps the added ability to furl the fore and aft sails seems plenty to deal with.  

[DeRuyter]

I would agree with both sides here. I think you can have more control without getting overly complex. Think about the situation though. When Aubrey is personally trimming sails for optimum sped on Surprise it is not in the middle of a close action, rather maybe it is during a chase. (Recall the movie as well). When I sailed on a tall ship the captain would sometimes come along, look at the trim of a sail or the yards and order changes, but of course that is not in combat!

 

Now the Captain would be issuing orders for maneuvers during battle, which is what they have in part with the current manual controls. I'd like to see more manual control, like with the jibs and spanker.

 

Now on to the other issue with sail trim - everyone flying full sails during battle and in storm conditions........

[Munro]

It wasn't always the Captain's job to order the trim. In the movie based on O'Brien's books they added a Sailing Master to the Surprise. Aubrey in the books was exceptional for his seamanship; the usual practice was for the Captain to have military knowledge and make the top level decisions while responsibility for the practicalities of sailing and navigation was delegated to the Master. And it's a very good justification for abstracting the sail management.

 

If sail control needs any more detail, a couple of hotkeys to toggle use of fore-and-aft and square rigging at most. Stuff that isn't really a decision but an obvious course of action like limiting the amount of canvas that goes up in a storm should be automated if it isn't omitted completely.

[Robert Danforth]

Yeah, it would really be better handled with crew/officer skills, something you could focus on or hire, and it would be reflected in a bonus to sailing abilities (speed, turns, &c.). As much as I would love a full-on sailing simulator, that kind of thing would be annoying as hell in a multiplayer game like this.

[Destraex]

I am generally against mmo style features in place of game mechanics. Also remember that for the most part you are not just playing the captain but a lot of the other officers as well. I do agree that a simple mechanic to so this would be good.

[maturin]

 

Aubrey in the books was exceptional for his seamanship; the usual practice was for the Captain to have military knowledge and make the top level decisions while responsibility for the practicalities of sailing and navigation was delegated to the Master.

Well that's not entirely accurate. Delegation to the master was a question of practicality, not necessity. A captain who couldn't execute every maneuver without a sailing master's help was a failure. Becoming a naval captain was like getting a PHD in seamanship.

 

And the master is only one man. He can't be on deck all the time. The ship is often in the hands of the lieutenants, and every captain was one a lieutenant. What's more, there are many sailhanding decisions that are too important for the master to make on his own decision in normal situations.

 

That said, I'm not exactly sure what sort of advanced sailtrimming features are being called for here. Anything more detailed than what we have would require drastically more detailed animations and UI for features that are ultimately of rather minor importance. We don't really need to fiddle around with topsail sheets and topping lifts on a day-to-day basis.

 

Far better to refine the features that we have increase the degree of accuracy by adding reefing, yards that hoist up and down, and individual sail control as an optional vanity feature.

[Destraex]

The sort of thing I am asking for is being able to say B for battle sails and then press plus and minus to go B + 1% or B - 1%. Yes the animations would have to show the small changes. If it's not possible it's not possible. But I had to ask because I fear that the game may devolve into same-ness in a short period of time if we do not have a learning curve that is more than at hand currently.

[Tom Pullings]

That doesn't seem to be what you were asking for to begin with. You seemed to want the ability to adjust individual sails in several ways.

This new suggestion might be possible. It means asjusting the amount of canvas in finer increments. I don't think such an ability would be very useful. The game already gives you five canvas configurations (full, half, battle, slow, and dead slow). You could add finer increments to simulate reef points, but such fiddly settings would be trying to simulate something the game can't really support, I think.

First, a captain would order reefing on particular sails to respond to wind and storm conditions and to adjust ship trim to the water (bringing her by the head for instance if she is newly laden in a way that puts her stern down). Neither of these are modeled. I don't think we have varying winds in the game, and I don't think ships change their trim except when taking on water, and at that point in the game, adjusting your trim by fiddling with the sails is your last priority.

Second, ships have inertia, the bigger the ship, the more inertia. Sails are not throttles. Making fine adjustments wouldn't really make much difference and certainly not immediately. So you would be chasing a moving needle trying to change your ship performance through fine adjustments of canvas amount. You can do something much more effective and immediate at present by simply manually controlling the positions of the yards relative to the wind. In real sailing, this is always the first and primary adjustment. Shape of the sail is second, and can't really be modeled in the game, I don't think. Amount of canvas is last, and happens in discrete increments, not fine scale. You take down a jib or put in a reef. You don't change the amount of canvas by 1%.

TL:DR: the game already allows you to make fine adjustments of the sail relative to the wind that is much more immediately effective than any new (and unrealistic) system of increasing or reducing the amount of canvas in finer increments. That method is to manually adjust the angle of the yards to the wind. You can do this in practically infinitely fine increments, and you can do it individually for fore and aft sails. Learning to truly manage yard position for best performance on all points of sail and for each maneuver is quite a learning curve already. Practice will bring good results quickly, however.

[Robert Danforth]

The sort of thing I am asking for is being able to say B for battle sails and then press plus and minus to go B + 1% or B - 1%. Yes the animations would have to show the small changes. If it's not possible it's not possible. But I had to ask because I fear that the game may devolve into same-ness in a short period of time if we do not have a learning curve that is more than at hand currently.

 

This (or something like it) I would like. Some way to set sails at intervals other than the automatic W-S or B settings.

[Prater]

The depth comes from not every battle having all players sail perfectly as they do now.

 

 

Something that allows us to experiment more and isn't complex is awesome.

 

However, most people don't sail perfectly.  I would say that probably no one sails perfectly.  There is more to using the yards than most people expect and it is beyond turning and tacking.  I don't know if any of this is realistic, but there is a ton of stuff you can do with the yards.  Even on the small ships with controlling the boom there is a lot you can do (well, a few things at least, considering you only have one yard to control).

 

There are a ton of people in superfrigates and up that can't tack or even use the yards for turning, let alone using them to their maximum advantage.