Pinks, Hull Speeds and other nautical notions

[Luke159]

Okay consider that sorted then - I'm sure I'll enjoy what you've done with RTBL, now if you can wait for me to get CoAS, of course. Thanks for the reply

LOL, thanks and hopefully COAS will have a much improved battle espects with you on board too. :will

 

[bumpkin]

Wait, Not appreciated? What!! That is just bilge water. I eagerly await changes. I only recently got a copy of COAS. I downloaded the combined mod but have yet to install it. I am still trying to figure out the stock version before jumping into the fray. This whole business about rats devouring my cargo can be a bit of a pain and I miss playing as a female. I am male, but it is much more enjoyable to watch a female caboose for hours on end. I have a rough time trying to explain that to my young daughters.

After playing POTC and watching it grow all these years, including some of the build 14 stuff, COAS seems a bit non-full featured.


Sorry I do not get here very often any more.

Please keep up the good work. It is indeed very much appreciated. It is a bit disconcerting to have a 20 gun brig spin about like my 19 foot real sailboat.

Greg.

 

[carmenara]

It is a bit disconcerting to have a 20 gun brig spin about like my 19 foot real sailboat.

Oh dear I'm getting shanghaied into the COAS pirate clan!

Well you can be the official consultant playtesting advisory committee thing for 'my' boats in Build Beta then. ALL 220 of them :3

But it's not -that- realistic as to involve full mathematical calculation, more of a gameplay compromise due to limited scale and to help the lousy AI, so a 20 gun brig can be "persuaded" with lots of force to spin about and possibly never recover without somewhat serious motivation to maintain an even keel again. It's better than spinning about... immediately!

You can also then tell me whether inertia would benefit COAS (since I don't have it I can merely speculate the effects of RTBL). To me it does as I refuse to believe that if I wanted the helm to execute a 90 degree turn I have to mash down the A key for 5 minutes IRL. Right, you still do for the big ones but a beached whale handles like a beached whale no matter how much chrome is applied...

 

[bumpkin]

Not sure what RTBL means. I have seen the phrase used in several posts.

With regard to inertia. That is a tough one. I think the application does extremely well for a game. I do not think it was ever meant to be a true simulator. There are a few things out of wack. I agree the ships do tend to act like speed boats the way they heel in the turns. But to fix the problem you really need to do some physics. In most games speed is function of sail area, which is true, however the games do not seem to take into effect that driving power is from the sail then transmitted through the mast(s) and rigging to the hull. I agree it should not take 5 minutes to tack the ship. But in most cases the the will likely loose all headway and likely pick up a little stern-way before it can fall off onto the opposite tack. Turning into the wind actually reduces the side pressure on the rig so the ship stands up right before the wind catches it and lays it over on the new tack.

Also square rigger could only point to about 60 degrees of the wind, mostly because the yards could not be braced round far enough. The back stays (ratlin's) get in the way.

While were on the subject of sailing. Sails only flap when they are stalled. I know this is a graphics issue, but it is really funny to see the sails flapping about when on a beam reach of running down wind. Another issue is the sheeting of the gaff. Ever noticed when sailing close to the wind it is sheeted well to windward. How is this possible? I suppose they could have a rigged the sheet to windward side but it would never be possible sheet the boom farther to windward then the windward rail.

If you are really interested in sailing ship mechanics pick a copy of the "HMS Surpise" simulator. It is free ware. It is not real fancy to look at but it uses real physics to give you an idea of how sailing ships work. Most of the ships had a very undersized rudder, so balancing the power of the sails was much more inportant with the large ships. It is still important on smaller boats because any rudder input reduces your speed. I snagged a copy of it years ago. If need be I could post the executable and the source, though I believe it is available on the internet.

gotta fly gotta flee.

A feature I would really love to see is shifting the load. Typically you want the ship to down at the stern, because the pressure of the sails will push the head down, reducing your speed. Keeping her head level or up makes her a much better sailor. Case in point the Continental Frigate Hancock. I have read several different accounts of her being taken by the British. Each on talks about the poor trim causing her to not sail at her best.

 

[carmenara]

This ain't a simulation but adding some guise of inertia has made realistic mode sailing many times easier. I'm using WBT, now integrated into Build Beta as a test platform for that. If anything it does allow you to tack properly without the game instantly applying the brakes for you. And does make it feel like the ships do have undersized rudders (I thought slow handling was proper, from appearance)

You're making a lot of great points there and all of them can be made integral to future developments; we will likely not be able to program actual simulation mechanics but arbitrary values can be placed into the game configuration files for a decent, "70 percent" solution.

 

[Luke159]

Not sure what RTBL means. I have seen the phrase used in several posts.

Ah RTBL means Real Time Battle Ligfht.

I like your points and it would be nice to see some of them been applied to COAS, how that will be done is something else but there are alot of clever people here who know what they are doing so maybe they will have better idea's of how to apply them.

 

[carmenara]

With the new awareness on trimming sailing ships I'm arranging for some fixes to be made on Build 14's ships which look funny underway because they were modeled on a flat surface (sitting on the keel) and not in sailing trim. This is apparently easy to fix as the model can be imported to Maya and exported back to GM with little fuss.

 

[bumpkin]

Looks like I will be reinstalling POTC again soon.

With regard to sail trim in COAS it appears that the driver is always 90 degrees to the the rest of the yards. Not a big deal It has been then forever. I thought one of the POTC mods someone had tried to adjust angle of the driver. It does not affect game play.

One thing that would really float my boat would be to adjust the amount of sail in more increments than battle(course's stowed) or full. It would be really cool to set the top'sls, t'gallents, courses then royals and have the sail area being flown affect the speed. It would also be cool to be able to reef the top'sls, t'gallents, jibs and driver. But it would be a major task if even do-able. Depending on the size of the sail some of the sails have up to 3 reef bands while others have only one.

Well so much for day dreaming. Sorry about not checking back sooner. Keep up the good work.

Greg.

 

[Officerpuppy]

@ Rum Runner

I don't really know how to edit ship stats to fix the "Pink" speed issue, but I have renamed the "Pink" to "Cutter" in the COAS CM V3 files. Thank you for pointing this out.