Sailing

[epi_cure_us]

Disclaimer: I'm not a modder nor much of a sailor. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/whistling.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="" border="0" alt="whistling.gif" />

The other day I put my light frigate head-to-wind as an experiment and I was rather surprised and disappointed to find that she would make 16 knots directly into a 38 knot wind, hardly realistic. This led me to switch off arcade mode for the first time.

Things are a little more realistic now in that she won't make any headway at all if she's within about 7 points. See <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Points_of_sail" target="_blank">Points of Sail</a> description and <a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8e/Compass_Card.png" target="_blank">Points of the compass</a>for background.


However, a quick experiment would seem to show that there's no difference between a square rig and a fore and aft rig in terms of how close to the wind a ship will lie, nor how well she'll run before it. Also there doesn't seem to be much accuracy in the way sails/booms/spars move according to the wind direction and the three sail positions don't really allow for any proper sailing. Please correct me if you think I've missed something on any of this as I've only messed around for a few minutes.

Would you like to play a game with a more realistic sailing model? How would you feel about having to trim your sails a lot, mess around with staysails to lie close, cope with leeway, get smashed on a lee shore, run with close-reefed topsails in a storm lest all carries away or you broach to and go down like a stone with all hands, etc.? Personally I'd love to spend hours in real time just trying to navigate a tricky stretch of water, re-rig my barky to handle more canvas, tell my quartermaster to re-stow the hold as she's by the stern, etc. and I'd cheerfully do away with the sea map altogether (so long as I could keep 10x and 30x time!). Of course you'd need some decent charts, chronometers and observations or you might never see land again!

I appreciate that this isn't the sort of game PotC set out to be in that it's meant to be all about a pirate's life rather than an accurate sailing sim so I'm not really criticising it from that perspective, just hankering after something a bit different.

So do you like things just as they are or would you have something different? What could tweaked in this area by modding PotC?

<img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/dunno.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="" border="0" alt="dunno.gif" />

 

[Pieter Boelen]

I'm afraid this isn't very possible. And if it is, it requires some serious changes in the code and there is, I think, nobody left here who would take up such a daunting task. If you want a good sailing simulator, I can recommend <a href="http://www.avsim.com/vs" target="_blank">Virtual Sailor</a>. It's not very expensive, keeps getting updated and there are a lot of additional downloads for it, including ships and scenery's.

 

[epi_cure_us]

Oh aye, I didn't imagine much would be possible in PotC on this, just musing about the possiblity of tweaks really. e.g. As there's a no go zone already it should be relatively straightforward to modulate it's size by the rig type and/or turn ratio and the helm could be sharpened up for a fore-aft rig on a run. The stuff about sail settings, etc. would be way too much I'm sure.

Thanks for the link, I'll take a look. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="" border="0" alt="smile.gif" />

 

[Toddydude]

this is what im looking for in a game really. to bad its almost impossible in PotC.


potential i think for a completely different game.

 

[Mad_Jack]

Are you sure you were making headway, or actually <b>losing</b> ground at 16 knots? My experience in the game is that if you're in irons, your vessel will fall back directly back with respect to the wind direction. Not exactly realistic, as you'd find your bow being shoved one direction or the other. But at least you're not travelling forward. It would be nice if the vessel's speed indicator changed colour, or in some way indicated negative progress.