Let's talk boats: an advocation for realistic sail plans

PavlovDead

@Sengarden I'll admit those are some interesting ideas, but I'm worried that most players would find that sort of detail more fiddly than engaging. They seem more like the sort of gameplay ideas that would be included in a nautical-first type of game, rather than a primarily land-based game with a secondary sailing element.

Valheim-type sailing would probably be acceptable to most people, but I actually have heard people complain about or run up against the dead zone when trying to sail into the wind in that game. There's just something about the a saying, "No, you cannot sail in this exact direction right now," that aggravates some people, regardless of how nonsensical sailing directly into the wind is.

If the game does include shifting wind direction, I would probably recommend letting people still sail directly against the wind at like, quarter speed. A speed debuff is probably a lot more acceptable to people than a full inability.

Sengarden

PavlovDead wrote: »

@Sengarden I'll admit those are some interesting ideas, but I'm worried that most players would find that sort of detail more fiddly than engaging. They seem more like the sort of gameplay ideas that would be included in a nautical-first type of game, rather than a primarily land-based game with a secondary sailing element.

Valheim-type sailing would probably be acceptable to most people, but I actually have heard people complain about or run up against the dead zone when trying to sail into the wind in that game. There's just something about the a saying, "No, you cannot sail in this exact direction right now," that aggravates some people, regardless of how nonsensical sailing directly into the wind is.

If the game does include shifting wind direction, I would probably recommend letting people still sail directly against the wind at like, quarter speed. A speed debuff is probably a lot more acceptable to people than a full inability.

For sure. And like I said, my only suggestions are that there should be more than one person actively engaged with channeling a part of the ship to make it work at full efficiency, not that the person operating the sails needs to actually do anything. The only other things I’d want are wind interactions and realistic turn radii.

I agree with you on not actually creating dead zones for players, that’s no fun in a fantasy world. Speed debuffs are good enough. Having them in place will encourage the seeking of other trade destinations and create opportunities for risk v reward when considering who to trade with vs how long it usually takes to get there.

Gruaulf_Oakenkeel

I will awaken this thread as it was a search of mine to see if this topic has been talked about. I would love to see realistic sailing physics in a game like then, with that the types of ships each culture makes performing differently than others. Having to tack up wind and plan your moves to get to a destination is something vastly missing from gaming outside of dedicate sailing sims. some of you say deadzones, going into irons is a dead zone, but 30-40 degrees off the wind and your headed in that direction quite easily. understanding this could mean life or death to a trader or warship in a game like this and would be fantastic to bring skills from the real world into such a game. may the weather be on your beam, to the sea we go!

Doakland

Sir, this is a Wendys.




Joking aside, loved reading this. Thank you for sharing.

PavlovDead

I recently stumbled on a very good source for information about Chinese vessels, which can be difficult to find good reference for, so I'm going to post a few here. These are from The Junks and Sampans of the Yangtze and A Classification of the Principal Chinese Sea-going Junks (South of the Yangtze), both by G.R.G Worcester, the PDFs of which can be found here (they're old enough to be public domain): https://indigenousboats.blogspot.com/p/boats-of-china-and-southeast-asia.html

Given that the books can be pretty dense, I'm going to show some of the stand-out pieces. These are from a type of seagoing Chinese vessel designed to haul lumber around the coasts:







Also I want to make a correction of my criticism of the chinese inspired Wind's Veil in the OP. There I made the note that having two small sails offset from the center-line of the vessel wasn't realistic. Here though is a diagram of a trading vessel from around Shanghai:




I've highlighted in red the positions of the masts. Notice that two of them are offset heavily to the port side. These were apparently used for steering in some circumstances. The rearmost mast is also slightly offset, but this is just to keep from interfering with the rudder assembly. Regardless, this is real-world president for sails to be offset to extreme sides of a vessel in chinese-inspired ships specifically.

To finish off, here is a large warship equipped with cannons, a smaller warship with swivel guns and painted shields on the sides, and an even smaller police boat:

akabear

I love to see dry docks with creation of ships taking time with a visual progression including a visual accumulation of the materials and even workers!

Also, if the largest of ships had to be re-ported and taken up in dry dock and repaired much in the same way!

Fantmx

This is a great well thought out post. That said I think the historical accuracy we will get can be found in Archeage.