Realistic ship maneuverability, please.

karamazovnew · 11-01-09, 07:37 AM

I might've missed this in other posts so I want to make sure that the devs see this.

Ships in both SH3 and SH4 handle like X-wing fighters. Ships that stop and turn on a dime need to go... SH5 should allow realistic movement at least at higher difficulty settings. First of all, the engines require a LOT of coarsing into action. It can take full minutes to reverse engines from the Full Ahead setting. It takes miles of open sea to come to a full stop. If real ships behaved like the ones in the game, then we wouldn't have incidents like this one .
Also, on a pretty decent modern ship, moving the rudder from port to starboard takes around 30 seconds. But for the ship to start turning it takes much longer. The inertia is imense. Just take a look at this very modern warship . A zigzaging ship moves almost in a straight line

. You might think that this might make the game easier because ships wouldn't be able to avoid torpedoes, but the same (and other) rules would apply to your boat too, making it much less responsive and turning the game into an even slower and calculated affair. It might hurt MP games so a "Need For Speed" setting might be required far gamey-gamers

.

And there is one factor that really needs to be implemented in the game: WIND

. This would have a huge impact on the game. Ships would slide into the wind to maintain their over-the-ground course, thus giving "false" AOB's. Each ship would behave differently because of the different "sail" surface. Also, ships tend to stabilze into/out of the wind, making it harder or easier for them to turn into the wind, depending on the position of the superstructure. A skilled Kaleun would take advantage of this by forcing the escorts to loose precious seconds while the sub can catch speed at Flank setting while remaining in the noise cone. And I might be wrong about this part, but seeing swarms of DD's circling like vultures in close proximity with eachother just doesn't look right.

Also, the roll of the ships had a very nice amplitude, even in calm waters, but it was about twice as fast as ships normally encounter.
Then there's the problem of wounded ships turning away from their sinking side, forcing the ship to list further. Actually, this has been discussed before and adressed in mods: why do ships sink in the first place? Because there is a certain ammount of weight (water) that they can take in before their total weight becomes greater than the buoyancy. It would be nice if the health bar of the ships would show this and not armor and hp or whatever

. And no captain would be crazy enough to wait until the water hits the deck before he gives the order to abandon ship. Meaning that some ships should count as "sunk" if the rate of the water intake would be far greater than the crew would be able to correct. A crew would be crazy not to abandon a big ship even at 50% "hp"

if there's a big enough gash in the hull.

11-01-09, 07:37 AM	#1
karamazovnew The Old Man Join Date: Mar 2009 Location: Bucharest, Romania Posts: 1,403 Downloads: 151 Uploads: 0	Realistic ship maneuverability, please. I might've missed this in other posts so I want to make sure that the devs see this. Ships in both SH3 and SH4 handle like X-wing fighters. Ships that stop and turn on a dime need to go... SH5 should allow realistic movement at least at higher difficulty settings. First of all, the engines require a LOT of coarsing into action. It can take full minutes to reverse engines from the Full Ahead setting. It takes miles of open sea to come to a full stop. If real ships behaved like the ones in the game, then we wouldn't have incidents like this one . Also, on a pretty decent modern ship, moving the rudder from port to starboard takes around 30 seconds. But for the ship to start turning it takes much longer. The inertia is imense. Just take a look at this very modern warship . A zigzaging ship moves almost in a straight line . You might think that this might make the game easier because ships wouldn't be able to avoid torpedoes, but the same (and other) rules would apply to your boat too, making it much less responsive and turning the game into an even slower and calculated affair. It might hurt MP games so a "Need For Speed" setting might be required far gamey-gamers . And there is one factor that really needs to be implemented in the game: WIND . This would have a huge impact on the game. Ships would slide into the wind to maintain their over-the-ground course, thus giving "false" AOB's. Each ship would behave differently because of the different "sail" surface. Also, ships tend to stabilze into/out of the wind, making it harder or easier for them to turn into the wind, depending on the position of the superstructure. A skilled Kaleun would take advantage of this by forcing the escorts to loose precious seconds while the sub can catch speed at Flank setting while remaining in the noise cone. And I might be wrong about this part, but seeing swarms of DD's circling like vultures in close proximity with eachother just doesn't look right. Also, the roll of the ships had a very nice amplitude, even in calm waters, but it was about twice as fast as ships normally encounter. Then there's the problem of wounded ships turning away from their sinking side, forcing the ship to list further. Actually, this has been discussed before and adressed in mods: why do ships sink in the first place? Because there is a certain ammount of weight (water) that they can take in before their total weight becomes greater than the buoyancy. It would be nice if the health bar of the ships would show this and not armor and hp or whatever . And no captain would be crazy enough to wait until the water hits the deck before he gives the order to abandon ship. Meaning that some ships should count as "sunk" if the rate of the water intake would be far greater than the crew would be able to correct. A crew would be crazy not to abandon a big ship even at 50% "hp" if there's a big enough gash in the hull.