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Feature Request Bring Arcade ship stats into consistency

I'm not suggesting anything. Please stop putting words in my mouth. I was brainstorming the idea and bringing it to its natural conclusion.

I did not start this thread. I was surprised that ships are so radically different in the same class. I apologized for my confusion. I then joined this thread and pointed out how other games do it. I think that would be an alternative if we were looking for one. Since we are not
I'm not worried about it. :)

I'll try to clarify next time I think out loud. :)

I personally might work on a mod myself but I don't want this messed with. :)
 
@Redbeard , noone is trying to put words in your mouth, just when a thread goes on for a long time with long posts, sometimes clarification is needed where everyone stands, and sometimes slight misunderstandings can occur. :)

Your thoughts were all put very well, and contributed to the discussion a great deal.

You might comment on whether there is anything that would bother you with this specific clarification by
@Pieter Boelen , as the issue isn't as simple as whether arcade mode needs changing (it clearly doesn't need it), but whether there is any reason to keep two seperate stat tables rather than implement it together:

(bear in mind this wouldn't represent much of a change in how arcade works, just implementing the same system more consistently, as the multiples would be based on how arcade mode works right now)

Quoting Pieter:

To further clarify on the original suggestion, the idea is that a ship with a higher turn rate than another in Realistic also has a higher turn rate than that other ship in Arcade.
In other words: If you know what ships are "good" in one of the two modes, the same applies to the other one.

This is different from the current situation, where the stats of the ships basically have no correlation between the two modes. So a ship could be terrible in Realistic, but completely awesome in Arcade.
That is somewhat weird, but should only really be bothersome for players who use both modes and would like to be able to reuse their experience on ship handling between them.

If we do it as @Levis and I suggest, then this does have the added advantage of cleaning up ships_init.c quite substantially by getting rid of all those realism mode if-statements.
We might even be able to go as far as to have the Arcade modifiers outside ships_init.c altogether,
which would hopefully mean you can switch realism modes in mid-game and the ship handling would immediately update without requiring a Reinitialization.
Click to expand...
 
No worries, @Redbeard. That is actually why I suggested you make a separate thread if you really want it.
Nothing wrong with some brainstorming and such. We just sometimes lose track of what is a "random thought" and was is a "serious proposal". :facepalm

I think your idea is as simple as going into PROGRAM\Ships\ships.c and aborting the 'SetRandomStatsToShip' and/or 'arSetRandomStatsToShip' functions.
 
Ok, just wanted to be sure. :)

I AM however curious about this.
which would hopefully mean you can switch realism modes in mid-game and the ship handling would immediately update without requiring a Reinitialization.
Click to expand...

I actually tried this during the original issue to see what was going on. I simply changed modes mid-game. The handling felt very different when turning. I simply opened the options and changed modes. I vaguely remember someone talking about one of New Horizon's features being .... uh... 'counter-rudder' or resistance to when you turn. The momentum continually carrying you in the direction until you apply more counter rudder. Is this what I was experiencing? Turning felt ALOT slower when I went into options mid-sail and changed to realism from arcade. Or was it simply a placebo effect?
 
When switching realism modes right now, the handling DOES change because of the TurnRate and SpeedRate modifiers changing.
But the actual ships_init.c values remain, so you end up in Arcade Game Mode with Realistic ships_init.c entries, which makes no sense.
Ship handing is really ridiculous in that situation. To solve that, you have to Reinit and then re-give your ship to yourself.

The main reason for this happening is that the inertia values aren't updated to match and the TurnRate is far too high to compensate for that high inertia.
On Realistic, that combination works fine. On Arcade, it goes rather mental. :cheeky
 
I don't know if I am wrong here but.. shouldn't a Kreyser frigate outrun a Heavy Pinnace? Because my Pinnace can easily catch up any frigate, which bothers me, since frigates are build for speed, right?

Also.. I think the Galleons are a bit too slow.. they are slower as a Bellona class or Centurion, and according to some sites in the internet Galleons weren't exactly slow:shrug

I play on arcade, maybe its balanced better in realism mode, but for me some ships are way behind their potential
 
Pillat said:
I don't know if I am wrong here but.. shouldn't a Kreyser frigate outrun a Heavy Pinnace? Because my Pinnace can easily catch up any frigate, which bothers me, since frigates are build for speed, right?
Click to expand...
In "Ships_init.c", the basic speed for a Kreyser, alias "Frigate1", is 13.0 (both "Realistic" and otherwise). The speed for a Heavy Pinnace , alias "SP_Pinnace50", is 9.0 ("Realistic") or 12.6 (not "Realistic"). If you are playing in "Arcade" mode then it only needs for your ship to get a national speed bonus and the frigate to not get it, or for the usual randomisation of stats to favour you more than the frigate, and you may very well outrun it. (Does your Heavy Pinnace have any upgrades to improve its speed, e.g. copper cladding, long masts or cotton sails?)
Also.. I think the Galleons are a bit too slow.. they are slower as a Bellona class or Centurion, and according to some sites in the internet Galleons weren't exactly slow:shrug
Click to expand...
If you want a fast galleon, get a Fast Galleon. ;) Or, for preference, Fast War Galleon, probably my favourite type of ship in any period up to "Golden Age". But if regular galleons are made faster then either the Fast Galleon needs to be made even faster, giving it a performance equivalent to a modern racing yacht; or it's going to become redundant.
 
Yes my Pinnace is full improved, but nevertheless.. a Kreyser tried to chase me when I had around 9 knots and she close to 6.. thats just wrong IMO

Yes I know, but those large war, royal etc. galleons barely make 8 to 9 knots which makes them probably one of the slowest ships in arcade.. and I dont think that it fits, since they are only a bit larger and heavier than a heavy Pinnace and only get around half of the speed.
 
@Pillat: I am merging this post with the earlier Feature Request since they are basically about the same thing.
You may want to read the posts above and if you want to take some action to improve it, I won't hold you back. ;)
 
Pillat said:
Yes my Pinnace is full improved, but nevertheless.. a Kreyser tried to chase me when I had around 9 knots and she close to 6.. thats just wrong IMO

Yes I know, but those large war, royal etc. galleons barely make 8 to 9 knots which makes them probably one of the slowest ships in arcade.. and I dont think that it fits, since they are only a bit larger and heavier than a heavy Pinnace and only get around half of the speed.
Click to expand...
In reality, the 16th century galleons probably had less efficient hull design and less efficient sails than 17th-18th century pinnaces. There's a reason galleons went out of fashion! Also, you have just pointed out that your pinnace is remarkably fast, outrunning a frigate. That it can also outrun an obsolete galleon is not much of a surprise. ;)
 
Yeah I have no problems with my Pinnace faster than any Galleon for sure. But.. in arcade pretty much everything is faster than a war galleon. They are such beautiful ships, but are so useless :/
 
Change it. Arcade settings are simply not particularly well-thought-out. :shrug
 
Well I have (sadly) no idea about a real sailing ship at all so everything I change will base on internet, and you know.. internet can say a lot. I will just change it for me for now and if anyone who actually knows something about this suggests how certain ships should behave, I can change it accordingly and upload it for sure ;)
 
But what should the values be for the arcade ships?
Much like how it is in base game or like realism but just sped up?

In my mind the we could try to figure out the formula by comparing realism values vs base game values and see if there is a sweet spot that falls in between. But I have no experience doing things like that so it's just my idea how we could go about figuring it out.

If it's clear which version is preferred I would like to attempt to edit the values to bring consistency to them.

However I'm just left wondering which ships actually still have their original Arcade stats? Since if I compare the values from this site: PotC - Ship Data Extraction Tool it seems like even the standard ones no longer have the same stats.
 
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Thats the problem. Lets take my latest POTC NH Arcade campaign. I got stuck with a Heavy Lugger with a whopping 10.0 forward speed. Early game I can't run away from things like my previous starter ship in the July version. Suddenly I'm dealing with alot more enemies chasing me down and killing me as I try to get to my destination. French ships are considerably more dangerous when you cannot outrun them lol.

But other people may enjoy the realism of those random stats. Its a completely different experience for me now, because last time I had enough speed to outrun most ships. My starter lugger had like.... 13 or 15 forward. Bringing them into consistany messes with the realism, and those who prefer a more realistic experience. I come from games like Sid Meier's where the differences among the same class are negligable. If you made say, all luggers have between 10-12 forward speed, it changes the balance among the classes and makes it more uh.. 'gamey'.

Basically its alot of work for a small minority of players. I'm not sure I would do it now that I have more experience with the game.
 
I meant more consistency with how ships behave between Arcade and Realism for example from what I see at the site I posted above:
CursedCaravel has a turn rate 0f 65 on Realism
CursedDutchman has a turn rate of 90 on Realism.

On arcade however the stats suddenly look alot more alike:
CursedCaravel has a turn rate of 40
CursedDutchman has a turn rate of 36.

Don't know how turn rate works? Higher value turns better or lower values?
 
Higher Values turn better. However, there is a multiplicator in InternalSettings.h for this. Dutchman is a bad example, since her turn rate is really really bad. I would go with a Pinnace, since their values are reasonable
 
I'll look into that, however why is it that a realism settings the ship steer better than on arcade settings?
 
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