not sure how you got those results. I did a test just to ensure that celestial and dead-reckoning are working properly and they are:
N1 is located bottom right in the screenshot. That was my initial fix at game start. I headed up north and stopped at the lighthouse. I asked the navigator for a dead-reckoning fix and he plotted N2 (which was just about exactly where I was). The max error that can be incurred using dead-reckoning is +- 500m in longitude and +- 500m in lattitude. The error is cumulative - meaning the next time you ask for a dead-reckoning fix and the last one was a dead-reckoning fix then the error will be compounded. Now there is a caveat to the dead-reckoning error: if the time between dead-reckoning fixes is >= 24 hours then the full error will be applied else a percentage of the error will be applied (and I just found a bug - I need to be basing the dead-reckoning time off of last celestial fix and not last fix
). After getting the dead-reckoning fix I asked the navigator for a celestial fix. He plotted N3 (NW of my position). Now the default max error for celestial fixes is +- 8000m (set in options file) in longitude and lattitude. I took several other celestial fixes and you can see the results from them.
Now my question is is the default max celestial navigation error too much? Should it be reduced down to say +- 4000m or even lower?
Is the max dead-reckoning error too low?