WIP Now included in latest patch: Trade Winds, AI armor, weapons variety, captain rebalancing, etc

[Pieter Boelen]

Real wind does have randomization.

 

[Tingyun]

@Pieter Boelen I understand, the default setting will certainly involve some good random chance. I think @Skyworm 's test was with the latest setting to 2, in which case his results sound like what we are going for, even if he himself might prefer to configure it differently to almost always be west.

We won't know until he comes back to answer the 5 questions, but I think what he might like are some changes to general wind change mechanics from the base mod, specifically, something to make wind changes less frequent with open sea mod enabled and something to make sudden wind changes not occur during combat.

I can see the argument for both of those, given that currently wind changes are the same frequency on normal direct sail vs combat vs open sea, while in the first of those 3 an hour is supposed to represent a full day. Basically meaning the wind changes 24 times more frequently in combat or open sea mod than it does in normal direct sail...

Not sure about any of that though, and if we did decide to do it maybe I would roll it into that long-term plan for a continuous random chance of wind changes rather than doing it on the hour, and have the time scale affect the chance. I would also create a full thread for feedback on those issue (but obviously don't want to do that now, given the other things on our plate)

On the plus side, Skyworm seems to like the new mechanic, he just wishes it were more extreme with smaller changes for the most part (and that will be easily user configured in the final version)

 

[Pieter Boelen]

while in the first of those 3 an hour is supposed to represent a full day

The only reason for that is to get the worldmap sailing times somewhat in line with the DirectSail ones.

 

[Tingyun]

@Pieter Boelen so in your sailing experience, the wind changes from hour to hour, rather than day to day?

In which case the inaccuracy would not be too many wind changes on open sea mode, but rather in the once a day wind changes being too infrequent? And of course we wouldn't want to change that, for gameplay purposes and because the day thing is just a hack.

That would make sense, and users can still configure it themselves if they want more consistently west blowing wind in the settings, I just want to confirm I am understanding correctly.

 

[Tingyun]

@Pieter Boelen by the way, with the day per hour system, are sailing times mostly accurate to the real world? If not, how off are they? I am just curious, obviously not messing with any such systems, just want to know for my personal roleplaying purposes and general knowledge of the world.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Sailing times aren't all that accurate anyway. It is better with the Open Sea Mod ON though because that was specifically created to get the best reasonable travel times possible.

Wind in the Caribbean is generally quite consistent, though of course it can definitely change several degrees back and forth within a few hours.
The biggest changes are when there are low pressure systems though and especially as you go in and out of the lee of the islands.

 

[Skyworm]

Cheers Gents, here we go

@Skyworm we could easily adjust to those settings, if you want the wind to always blow towards the west. Search for rWindA = frand(2) in that weather generation file, and change 2 to whatever you like. Try 1 or 0.5 and the wind will always point west with only small variations. But then there won't be much variety and almost no winds blowing east, so we probably won't go that extreme for the main mod default, but we will leave it configurable and restored to internal settings so you can easily achieve the effect you like.

Will do tomorrow.

1) from your latest description, it seems like it is mostly behaving in the way I have in mind. Is that with the latest file where I reduced the magnitude from 3 to 2? If so I will start using that as the new standard test version, because it sounds like you still occasionally got the other directions.

Yes, that was with your latest file.

2) are you an open sea player? If so, that might be part of the difference. In non open sea, wind changes every hour, but an hour of direct sail ALSO is a full DAY. Every time the hour shifts, the day goes up by 1, so the wind changes are not hourly but rather daily. That is sort of why they are so extreme, they are simulating a full day changing every hour, but that is only right if not playig with ironman, where open sea mod treats time differently.

Yes I am, and somtimes I think I am the only one here. Actually, I'm playing PotC in Iron Man mode which means I am a pure open sailor.
At least I try, it is for the wind that I don't really stick to it. Simply said, the hich frequency of wind changes is the one and only thing that really spoils the open sea experience.

3) we could make it so that if open sea mod is enabled, then the wind changes only once a day, NOT hourly. That would be realistic, and might solve your concerns. What do you think?

Once a day ... may even be too extreme. I think I could go with once any 6 hours.

4) further, you mention planning combat. We could probably make it so that the wind does not change at all during combat, to reflect the tightened timescale combat takes place under and avoid sudden tactical shifts. Would that improve things?

No changes would not be good, as Pieter says, real wind has a random factor, too. But if we go for once per 6 hours that would be perfectly fine with me. I am not opposed to wind changes at all, I just *hate* the frequency. If this only occurs in iron man open seas, I begin to understand why no one else complains about it.

5) did you have any trouble entering ports with the new wind? There was some concern about narrow port entrances that face directly east/west. Obviously, one wouldn't attempt a difficult port entry when the hour is about to shift, but that would have been just as true in the base mod.

I often have problems to get in and out of ports, and yes, that's because of the wind. If the wind is not favourable, one needs to tack against it, but tacking is completely use- and senseless, when the wind changes at such a high frequency, that it changes again just after you adjusted the course of the ship. It can be very frustrating.

Please let me state that I really appreciate that after years of modding this game, finally you adress this matter! It is ot necessary to design the game after my needs. I would be fine with having a switch in some file, where I can set frequency and angle of change.

Great thanks mate!

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Oh, by the way, I recommend considering an hour in DirectSail as just an hour.
The +1 day thing is to balance travel times, but there was never an intention to have the weather changes represent a full day as well.

 

[Skyworm]

Cheers Pieter!

Sailing times aren't all that accurate anyway. It is better with the Open Sea Mod ON though because that was specifically created to get the best reasonable travel times possible.

To give you non direct sailors an impression:
My latest voyage from Martinique to Puerto Rico took 7 days of game time, and about 2 hours of real time. 7 days means 168 hours, means about 100 changes of wind that forced me to change course of my ship.

Wind in the Caribbean is generally quite consistent, though of course it can definitely change several degrees back and forth within a few hours.
The biggest changes are when there are low pressure systems though and especially as you go in and out of the lee of the islands.

About several degrees per hour I would not even complain. In game, it changes about 30-180° within the hour, and that is what I hate. You can set a course with the wind in your back, and some seconds later, it blows straight into your face, bringing your ship to a complete halt, even make it sail backwards, before you can adjust to the new situation. Then you sail 10 seconds straight, and then in compressed time the hour is over and it will blow into your face again. And again. And again. And that is what is no fun.

Will try Tingyuns switches tomorrow!

 

[Pieter Boelen]

I thought we already reduced the maximum wind change quite a while back.
Used to be 1 radian, which is of course a fair bit too much.
Can't remember what we changed it to though. Was it half?

 

[Tingyun]

@Skyworm Yes, think you will enjoy it with that number at .5 or 1.0. Actually .5 would be the "original" value, except that means something very different with the new system, and with it back to .5 you will notice very little deviation from it blowing westwards.

As for ports, I'd suggest for now you not try to do a difficulty manuver close to when the clock strikes an exact hour. It is good to hear that there are no particular issues created by this change for ports, just the normal random wind issue. I will be looking at how wind changes, and maybe making it adjustable by the player, in the longer-term.

In the meantime, I hope this west blowing wind mod configured to your settings will help you get most of what you want.


@Pieter Boelen I actually haven't tried to achieve any kind of new balance on angle changes, I just borrowed the original one, then tried to adjust it to account for what the new base angle changes mean. In other words, in the current mod, it does frand(0.5) to find the angle change. I made that (now, with @Skyworm 's help testing and adjusting) 2.0. It sounds like I quadrupled the max change, but it doesn't work out quite that way, because running it through (((fWindA-PI)^3)/(PI)^2 + PI); is going to reduce the magnitude of most changes to be much less than originally, ie a 20 degree angle change from the original game would become maybe a 5 degree angle change if it occurs close to blowing westward. Meanwhile, we need to have the potential for the westward trend to sometimes be overcome by an unpredictable eastern wind.

So basically, by moving 0.5 to 2.0 here, I am not trying to make wind changes themselves change, but rather trying to replicate similar resulting changes in the westward directions once most winds run through the conversion, while allowing for the possibility of occasional sudden (but low chance) winds blowing east to beat the trend. Because we are constantly imposing that western tendency condensing differences, we need more difference to begin with to achieve a similar effect.

I think with @Skyworm 's help we are close to having it calibrated correctly, based on his test voyage results! Though now he will be playing his own more extreme version of the west blowing wind that is almost entirely west, so I'll have to rely on myself for final refinement for the default setting. But I think his help got us very close, and maybe we already have the right balance now.

 

[Tingyun]

Here's the latest version of the file for anyone who wants it--Aside from the earlier softening of angle changes, I also changed the wind direction to aim slightly to the S (so between W and SW, closer to W)

This matches Caribbean trade winds better than the previous perfectly West direction. I mostly went with the simplified exactly west before for simplicity during testing and initial adjustments, to simplify feedback, but now I want to progress towards the final version for finetuning adjustments.

 

[Skyworm]

Cheers Gentlemen,

now testing, as suggested with .5
Wind seems to more stable with that, but there are still changes about 90° and more any few hours. A direction change of 90° or more is *not* a rare exception, it happens frequently.

I think, to improve gameplay, the best course would be to just reduce the frequency oft wind changes from once per hour to 3 or 4 times per day.

 

[Tingyun]

@Skyworm That shouldn't be possible. .5 is around 1/6th of PI, that is it is a little less than 30 degrees, before you account for the condensing of wind changes around the western tendency, and the continual forcing of it back. And that is rolling the maximum wind change. It would be possible for larger angle changes to the east, but you shouldn't get there almost ever because it would be forced back west too strongly. Basically, you should be seeing very small changes. I tested with similar angle change settings way back when originally making it, and it never left the western direction.

Try the file I attached here (and try reverting the changes you made to wind in internal settings to default, I don't think the ones you mentioned should have affected angle, but let's be sure), let me know if the problem persists, and if so I'll track down what is going on, because it would be something very weird. Note this centers it around slightly towards SW, as is accurate (somewhere between S and W) for Caribbean winds. This is closer to the final version, just adjusted for your preference for very consistent winds.

NOONE else use this file please, unless you want almost entirely west blowing winds.

EDIT: Actually, here is an even stronger version. Don't worry about frand being set to 1 (that isn't the only part of the equation), trust me, use this one, don't change the settings, and you will see very consistent winds, almost never changing from west, except if there is a rare initial eastern wind to overcome.

Again, NOT recomended for most people.

 

[Tingyun]

@imado552 @Eskhol @*Swordar* @Darby McGraw @Skyworm @Cerdock

New version uploading now.

Doubled running speed for both male and female standard animations. Now, less time spent slowly meandering around town.

Prior running speed was about twice of walking speed. I don't know about you, but I can sprint ALOT faster than twice my walking speed. 4x seems reasonable, and will save tons of player time.

Also, swapped out one of the female greeting sounds for english. Got tired of my english female officers who look like they are 25 years old greeting me in a voice that sounds like an 80 year old grandmother. Now they sort of "hmph", not perfect but much better in my opinion, at least they sound like their age.

Tweaked weather a bit, now it points slightly south, so somewhere between W and SW. Realistic for the Caribbean.

EDIT updated below

 

[Skyworm]

Cheers,

just tested it. Travelled from La Grenade to Bonaire with a steady wind blowing from the east. Most changes of direction were very small. There were larger changes, too, but only rare and in most cases, only for a short time.

For me this felt really good. Next thing is trying how it feels when I sail back to La Grenade against this steady wind

 

[Tingyun]

Updated once again. Now double running speed expanded to all models, and "Sword drawn" running speed brought into consistent relationship (6.0 to 6.6 m/s)

Edit: removing stray files, check first post for main version

 

[Tingyun]

@Skyworm Glad to hear it worked out. I look forward to hearing how the more extreme version works out in that eastern journey. It will be good feedback, because if you can handle that extreme version, then the main mod version shouldn't give anyone a problem. (for the record, I increased the exponents in the base formula, so that one is a special alternate version. Keep it around and use that one continously if you like always west winds, the main mod version will be a different formula)

 

[imado552]

Yes I am, and somtimes I think I am the only one here. Actually, I'm playing PotC in Iron Man mode which means I am a pure open sailor.
At least I try, it is for the wind that I don't really stick to it. Simply said, the hich frequency of wind changes is the one and only thing that really spoils the open sea experience.

hello me mate !! glad found someone who enjoys ironman mod the same as me !!!
and @Tingyun these stuff are super good ecp the wind one !!! damn life at sea will be better !!!
i was in a hell of a month !!! and still in that hell exempte that i found some windows to breath from XD
i'll make sure to try all of these stuff and give feedback !!! and do i need to redownload the wip latest installer or only these files are good thanks
move your ars lads!!!!we are sailing alot today !!!

 

[Tingyun]

@imado552
download the latest WIP patch that levis made for September, install that first, then install my TY exp + main mod fixes archive, ovewriting files in the game directory with those. You have to install the main mod patch FIRST.

Let me know how you like the new doubled running speed on land.