Solved Spyglass Aiming

[Mafeking Smalls]

Ahoy all,

My brother has got into Build 14.1, which has made me go back to it, after some time away doing that old 'educashun'...

It's brilliant as ever, but I'm now getting frustrated with the spyglass and wondered if there was something the knowledgeable folks here could do about it.

I like firing manually, and so use the spyglass. I can't remember if it worked like this in the base game, but having the spyglass target vanish at the edge of the guns' traverse is annoying. It seems to blink out of existence easily, and it involves a lot of tiny mouse movements to keep at the greatest elevation. Couldn't the colour change (go grey outside the guns' traverse for example) or some other method so that manual shooting becomes a little less about pixel hunting for the point where the targeting reticule appears?

Keep up the good work!

 

[ANSEL]

I like firing manually, and so use the spyglass.

You dont use the spyglass when you are firing manually. Walk to the cannons , at the side where the enemy ship are
and you will see the crosshairs appears, its yellow and turns to red when the aim are right. If you aim on a friendly
ship it turns to green. When you are ready to fire, hit"v" on the keyboard and:

 

[Mafeking Smalls]

Sorry, that's what I meant! Not actually IN the spyglass view, but the targeting system. It's that yellow/red crosshair that I'm talking about. When I first played the base game many years ago (I haven't played it in a long time since I've found New Horizons) I don't remember the crosshair vanishing in the frustrating way that it has presently.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

I'm pretty sure that behaviour is exactly the same as it always was.
Not sure if it can be changed at all; good chance it is a game engine thing.
Won't be able to check it out for a while either; have a busy week, I'm afraid.

 

[Grey Roger]

The guns can only elevate a limited amount. The crosshairs disappear when you try to aim higher than the guns can point.

The crosshair would certainly have vanished in the stock game if you tried to aim outside the guns' arc. All that's changed is that guns now have more realistic, i.e. narrower, arcs. Look at them - they're not in turrets like modern ships' guns, they have very limited traverse and elevation. In reality, the cannon would be at maximum elevation by default and you'd lower the barrel by pushing a wedge in between the breech and the mount - the further you pushed the wedge, the lower the barrel would point. So, in the stock game, you'd have had to aim a lot further off centre before the crosshair disappeared.

You may be able to get the original game cannon arcs back by editing "PROGRAM\InternalSettings.h". Find this line:

#define USE_REAL_CANNONS       1       // BOOL - 0: Stock PotC: guns fire in a high arc, wide left-right traversing

Change the 1 to 0.

 

[Mafeking Smalls]

Thanks chaps. To clarify, I don't want the original cannon arcs, but wondered if anyone else found something funny with the crosshair behaviour. I enjoy the 'handspike 'n' wedge' of the period, being a devotee of the literature, so thanks Build team!

The cross hair however feels like it vanishes occasionally within the arc, then one has to move the cursor well within the arc to get it back, then move back out to wherever the desired aiming point was. In other words, I feel too much of a battle is given over to fractional mouse movements as the crosshair flashes in and out of existence, sometimes in places where I'm sure it's within the arcs, or was the previous salvo.

Perhaps I'm mis-remembering from the stock game, and it just felt different because of the wider arcs, meaning you were less likely to be firing at the edges of them. I most recently played Build a lot last year, so can't remember if I also found the crosshair behaviour frustrating then.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

I can definitely understand how this would be annoying, but I don't know if anything can be done about it.
This has definitely remained unchanged from the original game; as @Grey Roger suggests, it probably seems different only due to the more narrow arcs.

There is no quick fix available, that much I know for certain. If it is possible to change this, it would require some proper investigating.
At the moment I myself have already a fair few things to be done and won't be able to do much of anything for at least another week.

Relevant code is probably somewhere in PROGRAM\BATTLE_INTERFACE and/or PROGRAM\SEA_AI .
You could look into those files yourself and see if you can find anything that appears vaguely related. That would be a start at least.

 

[Grey Roger]

Another factor is the ship rolling. If you've just been hit by a wave from the side, your guns are going to be pointing either higher or lower than they would be when the ship is level (depending on which side the wave hit). If you have a decent compass, you can see the ranges of your fire arcs changing. So a point which was in range a moment ago isn't in range now.

 

[CapnSunk]

Another factor is the ship rolling. If you've just been hit by a wave from the side, your guns are going to be pointing either higher or lower than they would be when the ship is level (depending on which side the wave hit). If you have a decent compass, you can see the ranges of your fire arcs changing. So a point which was in range a moment ago isn't in range now.

Old post but I was searching for the same issue but I found in the same file mentioned, InternalSettings.h, a place to turn off Realistic_Waves which made the jumpiness of the crosshairs less frustrating. I think it's a combination of realistic cannons with realistic waves that makes getting a red crosshair so hard at times if you're not used to it already.

Also what do you mean by a decent compass? Been so long since I played I don't remember, with an upgraded compass I can see firing arcs overlayed in the world? Or I actually use the compass?

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Also what do you mean by a decent compass? Been so long since I played I don't remember, with an upgraded compass I can see firing arcs overlayed in the world? Or I actually use the compass?

You can see it on the Mini-Map inside the HUD compass.

 

[CapnSunk]

Oh the mini map compass, I drew a blank read that the first time. I turned waves back on after testing and I think my problem is just trying to manually shoot the majority of time and need to use the auto fire the majority of time instead.