getting spanked

[Armada]

Oh great. Are you telling me that lateens are also wrong?
That's a real pain in the arse. I thought all the spankers were bad enough.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

Well, they are hard to visualize, but the way I'm seeing them is that stock they go from neutral in a tailwind to working backwards in a headwind, while reversed they are somewhat useful everywhere. This is how the look to me in game anyway. The spankers were just plain wrong, but the lateens are confusing. That middle pic I posted shows them at their worst. Maybe Morgan Terror or Modern Knight would know more.

 

[Armada]

They are more confusing than spankers, that's for sure. :wacko:
I think their performance sometimes depends on which side of the ship the lower tip of the lateen sail is rigged to, which makes things even more annoying.
And they can vary greatly from ship to ship, because of the angle at which they're modelled. Some are straight and others are at around 45 degrees to the X-axis, as far as I know.
You'll have to experiment with several different ships, old and new, to get a true feel for the lateen's performance, I'd say.