WHY God - is there no decent Sailing Ship war game?!?!

[bix]

im pushing 50 too, so im no stranger to cardboard unit counters and CRT with a dice roll. i'm using physics to guide the missile, after that it's a dice roll.

[con20or]

Pressgangs? Send your cutters/longboats to villages to increase manpower.

[troopie]

I've been away for a bit and haven't read this thread in ages. I can only say thanks bix for pursuing this!

I'll follow your progess keenly, previously I could not imagine something like this being made so good on ya.

If, with my limited knowlege, I can be of any use to you in your beta testing count me in. I don't have any programing experince other than modding but I have a very good eye for details, inconsistencies and fualts in games. I seem to have an atypical gameplay style that pretty much guarantees I'll run into every bug that's out there; i.e. pushing the limits of what can be done rather than following the intended plot.

Have you heard of/played 'Steam and Iron: the great war at sea'? It's a fantastic indie WWI naval sim based on a globe that is playable in admiral/rear admiral/captain mode and features brilliant fleet command simulation that would be similar to your sim.

Fleet orders (obviously, also by flag in that era) and ship class/nationality are frequently misidentifyed and recreated brilliantly resulting in life-like confusion in the battle line.

It's a very simple game that would be left for dead by your offering but may give some real answers to some of your questions. E.g. vessels detatch from a squadron if they loose sight of their flagship, can't keep up or they are forced to maneuver to avoid enemy action. the player is also asked if he wants to detatch a vessel to pick up survivours.

In a nutshell it's a brilliant representation of the fog of war affected in the age before radio.

A link to the subsim thread that also incudes a link to the game's host site:
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/show...ght=steam+iron

It's a single player game against the AI and I really hope you can offer something like that as I'm very anti-online!

Anyway I hope you don't get too bogged down in details and people's wishes as what you've shown so far looks very tantalising. Thanks again.

[bix]

welcome aboard.

definitely off-line play vs. AI will remain the primary mode, and i'll check out the WWI sim!

two player head-2-head LAN should work in june for those who do like it.

the first offering will be be fairly humble, just the guts of the game - good sail physics and nav interface, good AI, reasonably satisfying gunnery command and result. that is all i'm focused on at this time. the post-beta release will not contain much more. i want the game playable in a casual manner, eg. automode, but be equally satisfying to the likes of us.

my long term plan, once i have the thing on the shelf, is to launch a modest kickstarter and a steam greenlight with a player-base already in place, perhaps even a little 99 cent revenue stream. THEN build it out to include accurate ship models, campaigns, an in-game monetization scheme that no body has issues with (i'm pretty sure i have that worked out nicely in the big GDD), etc... all the cool stuff we are talking about now.

pressgangs - yes. player reputation + prize money = rate of return

fear not, y'all are founders, so y'all get free stuff.

best,
bix

[tater]

A possible way for adding a sort of multiplayer option to a game where you'd like to have time compression, etc (like this one), would be to have scenarios where players can submit their initial squadron arrangements and standing orders. The AI would use this as a starting point and might try to fight under these orders.

Generally speaking, I think smaller unit actions are more interesting with detailed sailing for the simple reason that fleet actions tended to quickly become pairs of wrecks battering each other, and possibly touching.

WRT doctrine, the French are typically described as seeking to cede the weather so that their heeled over ships could throw iron farther (adding the heel angle to their elevations). They are also known for attacking the rigging, vs the RN typically aiming for the hull. In the case of the French, there is a good reason, and that is that they are typically trying to simply get away... get out of port so they could achieve a goal other than as a "fleet in being" bottled up by the superior RN. In that sense, they needn't win the fight, just slow the enemy long enough to make good their escape to the open ocean. (sort of analogous to the u-boat situation, where merely getting to sea was hazardous).

I think that ultimately, shoaling waters, lee shores, and even coastal fortifications are very desirable in a game vs AI since they tend to create novel situations. Terrain is good. The SH analogy would be the shallower coastal waters... good hunting, perhaps, but scary when you can't dive to safety.

I imagine the AI will be the hardest thing you have to account for.

[raymond6751]

Bix, something you mentioned gave me an idea. You said because of the flat terrain/sea you couldn't do mastheads or sails visible on the horizon.

How about just the alert announcement " Sail Ho, masts sighted off the port bow!" Nothing visible but a clue as to bearing. Later, in your old age, you can create little sprites to use as visible masts/sails.

What is a steam greenlight?

[Rhodes]

Só mesmo dum Portuga para realizar isto! Bem-vindo!
Great work!

[bix]

@ray...

re horizon, a wealth of useful info can come in through signal flags - it solves tons of mundane 3d visibility problems. in captain mode, "sightings" can be particularly useful in an rpg situation, where you need to trust your man at the topgallant post.

that jack may see "the enemy" but more often he saw a flag hoisted by the sloop who actually *did* see the enemy. give me a sloop of war any day!

what i want to avoid is the sort of 2d dialogue where you have a toon-like character tell you there are frogs 3 points off the larboard beam. mostly because you can't say "frogs," it might insult someone.

if the system *has* this level of communication, which without a doubt i desire to see, i want to present it in an unusual way. you can prolly say "frog" in semaphore and no one will notice. equally true, you can hoist "roast beef." and what better than actual language subtleties to hide your intentions from your enemy, who possess the same telescope as you?

that is why i keep leaning towards signal flags.

though not empirically proven, i think most casual players don't want a character telling them what to do. they want to click around and see some results. bully for them, welcome aboard. folks like us prolly DO want to decipher a complex set of flags to fully understand the situation. or i should say "try to fully understand" based on our mastery of the signals, and the mastery of the signaler.

i think a character dialog ultimately satisfies nobody, can be a nuisance for the player, and becomes a deep problem for the art team who have to pump out all the messages, in multiple languages.

a signal flag system is very communicative, and is a logical problem. a problem computers are uniquely qualified to solve.

it is kind of the same thing, but the message comes in through code, which opens huge juicy cans of worms in re game play. did they hoist the flags proper? did you read the flags proper? mmmm, good stuff.

steam greenlight - a program somewhat similar to kickstarter, but you don't actually pony up any real money. you just say "yeah i would love to play this game!!" i'll make sure you get the link

steam is a PC based game distribution framework that indies and AAA's all use to push playables to the public. you must know steam right? if you don't, no shame, it's like not owning a mobile phone. btw, i don't own a mobile phone.

best,
b

[bix]

alma de portuga, alma de navegante! (the soul of a portuguese is the soul of a navigator).

best,
j. b. k. de sa

[bix]

i've been working a lot today with initial placement and i think i am going with this schematic:



the blue box is the area of interest, the blue gridded area in previous screenshots. you have initially signaled your order of battle, the formation of your line prior to arriving at the "area of interest."

to begin, nobody has the gauge. opponent comes from due north, i come from due south, the wind is due east.

now of course in a campaign mode, no telling where the wind is when my fleet arrives, but for the sake of this tactical schematic, all ships are equal, the situation begins balanced, i only have a vague idea of the soundings from my chart (the minimap). from this poor data i determine my initial order of battle.

then my fleet sails for a bit, arrives, and the situation obtains more so, or less so, as i could read from my charts and the signals sent back from van sloops.

again, this is the tactical scenario, having nothing to do with our plans for campaign play.

btw having a bit of time with the wind at stern helps the physics "spin up" to a nicely tuned integration rate. never mind. trust me it is good to start the whole thing off with all ships having a bit of momentum.

@tater - what you say re frog vs. roast beef tactics is the same as my understanding, particularly in re getting past the blockade. however i do question the advantage of heel elevation for shot trajectory. yes you can throw it farther, but the steeper the exit angle, the less accuracy, a (not so) simple mathematical fact (not to mention more time in the air, more the wind is gonna push yer ball around). the gunner's mate is sacrificing accuracy for range, imho, a bad trade.

you also lose projectile force the closer the ball comes to vertical. it comes back to earth only at the rate of gravitational acceleration and obtains a terminal velocity (talk to galileo) - powder is expended only to deliver the ball to the target, and it loses the additional force it could have obtained from the powder charge. yes it may seem a hyperbolic exemplar, literally, but 10 tons of metal at a steep angle becomes 8 tons quickly, where 6 tons shot flat, close range, plus explosive velocity achieves 8 tons final force no question. just ask nelson.

so my 6 ton broadside can beat a 10 ton broadside if i have the pluck to get in close. fortunately, the frog shot his wad and my boys have no less than three minutes to cheer before they get riddled with french grape.

oh boy, now we are gonna want to skip shot off the water, right? hehe, version 2.

best,
bix

[tater]

I wasn't thinking of foam over the rails, just a few degree heel

I have a decent library, BTW, so if you want I can take a look at Harland for anythign you might need, for example (Seamanship in the age of sail), among other titles.

[bix]

ha! sorry, the intricacies of the math are totally fascinating to me.

[troopie]

I'm gonna love this, I'm a bit over SH atm [ahem] and the promise of these new challenges to grapple is enticing. Kudos bix.

Flags v NPC dialog; all the way. For me the best aspect of 'Steam and Iron' is it's directness, simplicity and well, austerity; it really comes down to the player's judgement and interpretations. Too much eye candy would only serve to detract from the decision making in the heat of battle.

Do you have fluctuating weather/wind strength?

[raymond6751]

Discussion on heeling & fire: All points accepted from comments. But bix, you have to fire when your guns rise and you have multiple gun decks. Your shot tonnage will be maxed if all guns fire.

Signal flags: Good, but keep it simple. I dought the real navies would spell out many words but keep to single flags for "ship sighted", "enemy" "friendly" and so on. You want signals read correctly and would not blur the message with excess. Your officers are watching through telescopes from moving decks. The signals are in motion.

[tater]

Signals were not always seen, and not always read correctly. If you are the commodore or admiral (or senior captain), and you signal you might, or might not get what you ask for.