WHY God - is there no decent Sailing Ship war game?!?! - Page 6

bix · 05-05-13, 10:10 AM

fire on the rise - (in terms of playing *this* game, you should prolly always fire on the rise, except when heavily heeled. then perhaps on the half-rise. a few tiny degrees too high and my shot calcs are gonna loft yer balls way over yer target. also remember for for the foreseeable future, there will be but one gun deck

flags - the gui will show the last orders given to the currently selected ship on one row. below it, any flags she sent to you. her flags are purely status reports.

i will keep it simple, definitely very simple at first. there will be lost signals, and purposeful misinterpretations on the part of the reader. lost and misread works both ways, to her and from her.

lost% = weather + combat distraction + crew competency + random

misread% = lost% + rank of similarity (the ones that kinda look alike) + random

each flag will have a rank of its uniqueness relative to the other flags. funny that all games have a form of "debug" log, and i thought for that level of info, i could replace the usual cryptic output with another form of cryptic output! and show it to the player.

anyone have a favorite code?

variable wind, weather, and current - yes to all. visual representation in beta TBD.

b

tater · 05-05-13, 10:50 AM

Firing on the roll (up or down roll) depended on the desired result. With the gun elevation set to hit the target at whatever range, firing on the up roll (we're talking about average seas here, not a gale) would tend to adjust aim for the rigging, while firing on the down roll would adjust for the hull ("between wind and water" would hit the hull in places that were alternately wet and dry with the roll of the sea or heeling of target).

It also depends on the era. When you use a flintlock to fire, there is a shorter delay than with linstocks. Firing on one roll or another given a long delay from the flash in the pan to firing could result in a clean miss. Touching off the gun at the peak of the up-roll could result on firing on the down roll, in fact, due to the delay. Firing on the rise could throw the ball clear over the enemy. Regardless, it was entirely situational, not a general rule of thumb.

So there was no generic desire to always fire on the up-roll, IMHO. The range is set (or you might even be at point-blank), then you use the roll to fine tune where the shot might hit based on the elevation set, and the lag from touch off to firing.

tater · 05-05-13, 01:58 PM

Ship control ideas.

The biggest issue for an intuitive control for a player vs the real skipper is likely beating windward by putting her about to another tack (in modern language tacking or wearing ship (or more esoteric evolutions like boxhauling)). Wearing is straightforward as it always succeeds.

Tacking is non-trivial as it depends on the wind (and if the wind veers during the process), the crew, the sea, if the hull is foul... everything.

Many older ships would frequently lose headway tacking, for example. They'd still pay off, but only after making some sternway. The critical bit to continue headway is momentum.

I think that for a game, a marker on the speed indicator to show if you had the momentum to make stays would be a good start. It can be a range, since unless you just cast a log to check speed you'd be basing it on your intuition (after years of sailing, likely pretty good). So you put her about, pay off on the new tack, then build up speed again. At the point you reach the right speed, you can safely tack again if you wish. If you try at lower speed, you can miss stays, make sternway, or go into irons.

The next thing to research might be how long it takes to get the crew aloft prepared to make this evolution. Just to nail down the soonest one could tack after having just done so. Also, how the physics determines the ship's speed after paying off (because she has to make enough headway to have the momentum to make stays again).

In a combat situation, the trick will be crew levels. How many are required aloft to smartly tack ship, and how does this affect gunnery. The decision to send men aloft could slow gunnery, for example, or you might risk missing stays, or decide to wear ship to fight more guns effectively.

bix · 05-06-13, 05:40 AM

@tater, great points all. in fact with my gunnery, it really does depend on the target, so don't fire your bar shot at the hull. depending on the shot type, the AI calculates to hit hull, deck, or sail.

i had not considered delay in command to moment of explosion in re flint or linstock.

crew management will eventually come in to play, but for now, if say, you have 50% muster, they are evenly distributed to all current tasks, ie. i adjust speed/time to complete all currently active commands by that percent. 50% crew = 2x time / task.

i'm guessing that "kill all the sailors" will be an overly effective tactic in the beta, so i will tweak that time penalty based on your feedback.

i'm guessing that play will commence first with initial orders in admiral mode, then you folks will prolly want to follow and manage a single ship in the line, periodically adjusting orders to the fleet. because of this, i've doubled my efforts on the sailing qualities of the ship in manual mode. the casual player will likely stick to admiral/auto.

i'm working on 3 values of reefing per square sail, and more sails to set/furl. i might even have a spanker.

all maneuvers in manual control are possible, NOT by commands such as "tack," or "wear," or "boxhaul," (jah forbid you have to do THAT). you simply (or not) command a new heading to the helm and manually manipulate your sails accordingly. if you make your stays you make them. most if not all the factors tater mentions come in to play. for the sake of game play, it is a bit more forgiving than reality.

things are really starting to take shape on my end, and i don't think i will have any trouble to make my june 1st stays!

bix

troopie · 05-06-13, 06:23 AM

@tater. With my limited sailing experience I understand that with the lack of a a hydrodynamic keel the old square rigged ships were not particularly capable of sailing upwind and as such I imagine tacking twice would be virtualy impossible?

tater · 05-06-13, 10:15 AM

The could typically sail maybe as close as 6 points to the wind. There are some language differences, too. Tacking (then) didn't imply any progress, just the operation of putting the ship about. So they sail on the port tack, then tack the ship, then sail on the starboard tack, then tack the ship, etc. It's my impression they might talk of beating windward, but they'd not say "we tacked for 200 miles," sailing language has changed (listen to someone say "boat-swain" instead of "bos'un"

.

The limiting factor as I understand it is a combination of limits on setting the yards vs the standing rigging as well as the keel. You can't set sails very close to fore and aft as the shrouds, backstays, etc get in the way of the yards, and since they tended to make leeway, yeah, get too close to the wind and you stop making progress. Really they want to sail close-hauled, then put her about to close-hauled on the opposite tack. But given leeway, etc, their best point of sail for this might be even farther from the wind than they were capable of (they might be slightly farther off the wind but faster, say).

It's pretty complicated. to model, frankly.

tater · 05-06-13, 12:39 PM

That's why I like a sort of "momentum" indicator for stays. Not really just speed, but taking into account hull fouling, etc. Then the player knows if he can head to windward or not. The sailing model is everything, IMHO. So many games simplify the sailing to the point the "sailing" looks like motoring. I am NOT suggesting that the player have to reef every sail himself, I'd rather be captain or admiral and have the crew do their jobs, but I want the OUTCOMES to be realistic. As a skipper I should be able to tell my sailing master to put us alongside the target at pistol shot on the starboard tack, and have that happen (unless the wind veers or something happens to make that impossible).

I think in terms of damage, crew is much of it. You need so many men to effectively do any task on such a ship. Many aloft to work the sails, many below to work the guns. They'd usually have more below in battle since they'd set "fighting sail" and not really mess with that as much since they needed so many hands to work the guns effectively. Clearly dismounting guns affects combat value, as does shooting away rigging, etc.

ROF as a function of crew is also more complicated that just saying that if the gun needs 8 crew, losing 1 guy drops it by 12.5%. There are minimum crew required to do some tasks at all. I have no idea how few men could run out an 18 lber, for example. If it takes 2, then 1 guy alone cannot work the gun at any ROF. I just ordered a book on naval gunnery that might help with this, it arrives later in the week (one Harland recommends in Seamanship in the age of sail).

Obviously guys can move from a neighboring gun, so it's not cut and dried, but then the undamaged nearby gun might also fire at a lower ROF.

raymond6751 · 05-06-13, 03:16 PM

Crew quality should also come into play in both maneuvering and gunnery. Experience and morale. As casualties mount morale and quality would decline. Perhaps officer quality could modify that.

Delay on orders could/should also be longer with lower quality/lower experienced crews or those shot up in a fight.

I remember reading about (forgot the book) about a smart captain in difficult wind conditions dropping a boat to haul (tow) the ship around for a fast tack. He took the enemy by surprise. Not that I want that in the game, but it illustrates my suggestion for towing with ship boats. Wind can die out, becalming a ship.

Next point, surrender and captures. We should be able to man the captured ship with own crew and perhaps convince some of the enemy crew to join us. We should also be able to choose which ship to keep in a damage situation, switching to the captured ship entirely.

Signal flag systems: http://www.omniglot.com/writing/imsf.htm also
http://www.maineharbors.com/flag.htm

The above shows current flag meanings. I don't know if they have survived from sail days.

Ideas are for future use, not in the June release, of course.

bix · 05-06-13, 03:22 PM

here is a horribly small image of the points of sail from fawkner's. i have ALL the diagrams from said tome in extremely high resolution, on another machine. they are gorgeous. i also have the obscure url that hosts the whole book.

regardless size, it suffices to illustrate the point. the wind in this little picture is coming from the lower left. the radial lines show the points of sail that a typical square rigged ship of our favorite era was capable of obtaining. some could better, but not most.

wow, pure misery. boy howdy that is why you want the weather gauge! maybe also why nobody has made a real ship sim before
(casual = auto + auto).

best,
jbkds

raymond6751 · 05-06-13, 03:29 PM

Just my opinion but there were eight compass points used in the old days; being N NW W SW S SE E NE. For my, it would be enough to select the course thus and let the game engine adjust the speed accordingly.

The player should not get so detailed as to degrees. Indicating a change of course would automatically initiate the sail change, tacking, and so on. A captain in battle would have previously trained his officers to do that. He would concentrate on the fight.

Of course, the crew quality and experience would extend the time it would take to make such maneuvers.

tater · 05-06-13, 03:37 PM

They used a 32 point compass during the heyday of the age of sail (11.25 degrees per point of sail).

N, NbyE, NNE, NEbyN, NE, NEbyE, ENE, etc.

A larger version of the above image:

tater · 05-06-13, 03:45 PM

Regarding the point of possible sail being "pure misery," I'd say that it has been pure laziness on the part of other games to simplify this to allow sailing to windward. It is trivial to have the ship make tacks, or wear ship to move to windward. This is in effect the "terrain" of a sailing warfare game. Exactly what makes it interesting.

Idiotic games like Empire:Total War, or POTBS turn sailing battles into ships circling each other, sometimes making rapid progress, sometimes barely moving. Every game that has simplified this would be just as easy to play, but would be far more interesting with the extra tactical choice of wear/tack/whatever. Choices are what makes it interesting, otherwise they could simple roll a single die to determine the outcome based on relative strength, etc

bix · 05-06-13, 03:49 PM

i round the points to 10 degs, close enough, and give you a few extra points. btw for gunnery, gravity is also 10.0, not 9.8blah - like you could tell the difference. i do this because 9.8 actually feels too "soft."

at this time, i suppose in manual mode, you are not the captain, you are the master. oddly, a mix between auto and manual is a rather tricky thing. it's a mater of taste - gets into personal preference in re "how much auto." and you get pissed-off when the auto crew doesn't do its job, as you see it should be done. hmmm - mutiny... oh no! lets not go there just yet, spithead still stings

bix

tater · 05-06-13, 03:57 PM

I'll just leave this here:

http://home.wxs.nl/~pdavis/

bix · 05-06-13, 04:04 PM

i was thinking of misery in terms of the poor "real world" crew who were trying to to chase down a fat spanish prize. it equates though to players as well, if they expect madmax on the open sea (woops, i think that is waterworld).

thanks for the big picture tater! i have not yet fully ported the old machine.

tater's analogy to terrain is spot-on. i think the only "acceptance" problem (in every aos sim i've played) is that you just can't friggin' SEE it as terrain.

now, lets just say that the swell and drift on the ocean surface was directly equivalent to wind direction and speed (even thought in reality it is not equal), would this help? you could indeed see it.

best,
b

05-05-13, 10:50 AM	#77
tater Navy Seal Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: New Mexico, USA Posts: 9,023 Downloads: 8 Uploads: 2	Firing on the roll (up or down roll) depended on the desired result. With the gun elevation set to hit the target at whatever range, firing on the up roll (we're talking about average seas here, not a gale) would tend to adjust aim for the rigging, while firing on the down roll would adjust for the hull ("between wind and water" would hit the hull in places that were alternately wet and dry with the roll of the sea or heeling of target). It also depends on the era. When you use a flintlock to fire, there is a shorter delay than with linstocks. Firing on one roll or another given a long delay from the flash in the pan to firing could result in a clean miss. Touching off the gun at the peak of the up-roll could result on firing on the down roll, in fact, due to the delay. Firing on the rise could throw the ball clear over the enemy. Regardless, it was entirely situational, not a general rule of thumb. So there was no generic desire to always fire on the up-roll, IMHO. The range is set (or you might even be at point-blank), then you use the roll to fine tune where the shot might hit based on the elevation set, and the lag from touch off to firing. __________________ "Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one." — Thomas Paine Last edited by tater; 05-05-13 at 01:41 PM.

05-05-13, 01:58 PM	#78
tater Navy Seal Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: New Mexico, USA Posts: 9,023 Downloads: 8 Uploads: 2	Ship control ideas. The biggest issue for an intuitive control for a player vs the real skipper is likely beating windward by putting her about to another tack (in modern language tacking or wearing ship (or more esoteric evolutions like boxhauling)). Wearing is straightforward as it always succeeds. Tacking is non-trivial as it depends on the wind (and if the wind veers during the process), the crew, the sea, if the hull is foul... everything. Many older ships would frequently lose headway tacking, for example. They'd still pay off, but only after making some sternway. The critical bit to continue headway is momentum. I think that for a game, a marker on the speed indicator to show if you had the momentum to make stays would be a good start. It can be a range, since unless you just cast a log to check speed you'd be basing it on your intuition (after years of sailing, likely pretty good). So you put her about, pay off on the new tack, then build up speed again. At the point you reach the right speed, you can safely tack again if you wish. If you try at lower speed, you can miss stays, make sternway, or go into irons. The next thing to research might be how long it takes to get the crew aloft prepared to make this evolution. Just to nail down the soonest one could tack after having just done so. Also, how the physics determines the ship's speed after paying off (because she has to make enough headway to have the momentum to make stays again). In a combat situation, the trick will be crew levels. How many are required aloft to smartly tack ship, and how does this affect gunnery. The decision to send men aloft could slow gunnery, for example, or you might risk missing stays, or decide to wear ship to fight more guns effectively. __________________ "Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one." — Thomas Paine

05-06-13, 05:40 AM	#79
bix A-ganger Join Date: Apr 2013 Location: Lisbon, Portugal Posts: 76 Downloads: 0 Uploads: 0	great points @tater, great points all. in fact with my gunnery, it really does depend on the target, so don't fire your bar shot at the hull. depending on the shot type, the AI calculates to hit hull, deck, or sail. i had not considered delay in command to moment of explosion in re flint or linstock. crew management will eventually come in to play, but for now, if say, you have 50% muster, they are evenly distributed to all current tasks, ie. i adjust speed/time to complete all currently active commands by that percent. 50% crew = 2x time / task. i'm guessing that "kill all the sailors" will be an overly effective tactic in the beta, so i will tweak that time penalty based on your feedback. i'm guessing that play will commence first with initial orders in admiral mode, then you folks will prolly want to follow and manage a single ship in the line, periodically adjusting orders to the fleet. because of this, i've doubled my efforts on the sailing qualities of the ship in manual mode. the casual player will likely stick to admiral/auto. i'm working on 3 values of reefing per square sail, and more sails to set/furl. i might even have a spanker. all maneuvers in manual control are possible, NOT by commands such as "tack," or "wear," or "boxhaul," (jah forbid you have to do THAT). you simply (or not) command a new heading to the helm and manually manipulate your sails accordingly. if you make your stays you make them. most if not all the factors tater mentions come in to play. for the sake of game play, it is a bit more forgiving than reality. things are really starting to take shape on my end, and i don't think i will have any trouble to make my june 1st stays! bix

05-06-13, 06:23 AM	#80
troopie Captain Join Date: Oct 2010 Location: Oz Posts: 507 Downloads: 33 Uploads: 0	@tater. With my limited sailing experience I understand that with the lack of a a hydrodynamic keel the old square rigged ships were not particularly capable of sailing upwind and as such I imagine tacking twice would be virtualy impossible? __________________ Serial pest

05-06-13, 10:15 AM	#81
tater Navy Seal Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: New Mexico, USA Posts: 9,023 Downloads: 8 Uploads: 2	The could typically sail maybe as close as 6 points to the wind. There are some language differences, too. Tacking (then) didn't imply any progress, just the operation of putting the ship about. So they sail on the port tack, then tack the ship, then sail on the starboard tack, then tack the ship, etc. It's my impression they might talk of beating windward, but they'd not say "we tacked for 200 miles," sailing language has changed (listen to someone say "boat-swain" instead of "bos'un" . The limiting factor as I understand it is a combination of limits on setting the yards vs the standing rigging as well as the keel. You can't set sails very close to fore and aft as the shrouds, backstays, etc get in the way of the yards, and since they tended to make leeway, yeah, get too close to the wind and you stop making progress. Really they want to sail close-hauled, then put her about to close-hauled on the opposite tack. But given leeway, etc, their best point of sail for this might be even farther from the wind than they were capable of (they might be slightly farther off the wind but faster, say). It's pretty complicated. to model, frankly. __________________ "Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one." — Thomas Paine

05-05-13, 10:10 AM	#76
bix A-ganger Join Date: Apr 2013 Location: Lisbon, Portugal Posts: 76 Downloads: 0 Uploads: 0	fire on the rise - (in terms of playing this game, you should prolly always fire on the rise, except when heavily heeled. then perhaps on the half-rise. a few tiny degrees too high and my shot calcs are gonna loft yer balls way over yer target. also remember for for the foreseeable future, there will be but one gun deck flags - the gui will show the last orders given to the currently selected ship on one row. below it, any flags she sent to you. her flags are purely status reports. i will keep it simple, definitely very simple at first. there will be lost signals, and purposeful misinterpretations on the part of the reader. lost and misread works both ways, to her and from her. lost% = weather + combat distraction + crew competency + random misread% = lost% + rank of similarity (the ones that kinda look alike) + random each flag will have a rank of its uniqueness relative to the other flags. funny that all games have a form of "debug" log, and i thought for that level of info, i could replace the usual cryptic output with another form of cryptic output! and show it to the player. anyone have a favorite code? variable wind, weather, and current - yes to all. visual representation in beta TBD. b

05-06-13, 12:39 PM	#82
tater Navy Seal Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: New Mexico, USA Posts: 9,023 Downloads: 8 Uploads: 2	That's why I like a sort of "momentum" indicator for stays. Not really just speed, but taking into account hull fouling, etc. Then the player knows if he can head to windward or not. The sailing model is everything, IMHO. So many games simplify the sailing to the point the "sailing" looks like motoring. I am NOT suggesting that the player have to reef every sail himself, I'd rather be captain or admiral and have the crew do their jobs, but I want the OUTCOMES to be realistic. As a skipper I should be able to tell my sailing master to put us alongside the target at pistol shot on the starboard tack, and have that happen (unless the wind veers or something happens to make that impossible). I think in terms of damage, crew is much of it. You need so many men to effectively do any task on such a ship. Many aloft to work the sails, many below to work the guns. They'd usually have more below in battle since they'd set "fighting sail" and not really mess with that as much since they needed so many hands to work the guns effectively. Clearly dismounting guns affects combat value, as does shooting away rigging, etc. ROF as a function of crew is also more complicated that just saying that if the gun needs 8 crew, losing 1 guy drops it by 12.5%. There are minimum crew required to do some tasks at all. I have no idea how few men could run out an 18 lber, for example. If it takes 2, then 1 guy alone cannot work the gun at any ROF. I just ordered a book on naval gunnery that might help with this, it arrives later in the week (one Harland recommends in Seamanship in the age of sail). Obviously guys can move from a neighboring gun, so it's not cut and dried, but then the undamaged nearby gun might also fire at a lower ROF. __________________ "Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one." — Thomas Paine Last edited by tater; 05-06-13 at 12:50 PM.

05-06-13, 03:16 PM	#83
raymond6751 Admirable Mike Join Date: Mar 2004 Location: Canada Posts: 1,335 Downloads: 421 Uploads: 0	My two cents worth Crew quality should also come into play in both maneuvering and gunnery. Experience and morale. As casualties mount morale and quality would decline. Perhaps officer quality could modify that. Delay on orders could/should also be longer with lower quality/lower experienced crews or those shot up in a fight. I remember reading about (forgot the book) about a smart captain in difficult wind conditions dropping a boat to haul (tow) the ship around for a fast tack. He took the enemy by surprise. Not that I want that in the game, but it illustrates my suggestion for towing with ship boats. Wind can die out, becalming a ship. Next point, surrender and captures. We should be able to man the captured ship with own crew and perhaps convince some of the enemy crew to join us. We should also be able to choose which ship to keep in a damage situation, switching to the captured ship entirely. Signal flag systems: http://www.omniglot.com/writing/imsf.htm also http://www.maineharbors.com/flag.htm The above shows current flag meanings. I don't know if they have survived from sail days. Ideas are for future use, not in the June release, of course. __________________ Game Designer: Close The Atlantic - World War Three https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/...orld-war-three

05-06-13, 03:22 PM	#84
bix A-ganger Join Date: Apr 2013 Location: Lisbon, Portugal Posts: 76 Downloads: 0 Uploads: 0	beating into the wind here is a horribly small image of the points of sail from fawkner's. i have ALL the diagrams from said tome in extremely high resolution, on another machine. they are gorgeous. i also have the obscure url that hosts the whole book. regardless size, it suffices to illustrate the point. the wind in this little picture is coming from the lower left. the radial lines show the points of sail that a typical square rigged ship of our favorite era was capable of obtaining. some could better, but not most. wow, pure misery. boy howdy that is why you want the weather gauge! maybe also why nobody has made a real ship sim before (casual = auto + auto). best, jbkds

05-06-13, 03:29 PM	#85
raymond6751 Admirable Mike Join Date: Mar 2004 Location: Canada Posts: 1,335 Downloads: 421 Uploads: 0	Sailing points Just my opinion but there were eight compass points used in the old days; being N NW W SW S SE E NE. For my, it would be enough to select the course thus and let the game engine adjust the speed accordingly. The player should not get so detailed as to degrees. Indicating a change of course would automatically initiate the sail change, tacking, and so on. A captain in battle would have previously trained his officers to do that. He would concentrate on the fight. Of course, the crew quality and experience would extend the time it would take to make such maneuvers. __________________ Game Designer: Close The Atlantic - World War Three https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/...orld-war-three

05-06-13, 03:37 PM	#86
tater Navy Seal Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: New Mexico, USA Posts: 9,023 Downloads: 8 Uploads: 2	They used a 32 point compass during the heyday of the age of sail (11.25 degrees per point of sail). N, NbyE, NNE, NEbyN, NE, NEbyE, ENE, etc. A larger version of the above image: __________________ "Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one." — Thomas Paine

05-06-13, 03:45 PM	#87
tater Navy Seal Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: New Mexico, USA Posts: 9,023 Downloads: 8 Uploads: 2	Regarding the point of possible sail being "pure misery," I'd say that it has been pure laziness on the part of other games to simplify this to allow sailing to windward. It is trivial to have the ship make tacks, or wear ship to move to windward. This is in effect the "terrain" of a sailing warfare game. Exactly what makes it interesting. Idiotic games like Empire:Total War, or POTBS turn sailing battles into ships circling each other, sometimes making rapid progress, sometimes barely moving. Every game that has simplified this would be just as easy to play, but would be far more interesting with the extra tactical choice of wear/tack/whatever. Choices are what makes it interesting, otherwise they could simple roll a single die to determine the outcome based on relative strength, etc __________________ "Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one." — Thomas Paine

05-06-13, 03:49 PM	#88
bix A-ganger Join Date: Apr 2013 Location: Lisbon, Portugal Posts: 76 Downloads: 0 Uploads: 0	points post june i round the points to 10 degs, close enough, and give you a few extra points. btw for gunnery, gravity is also 10.0, not 9.8blah - like you could tell the difference. i do this because 9.8 actually feels too "soft." at this time, i suppose in manual mode, you are not the captain, you are the master. oddly, a mix between auto and manual is a rather tricky thing. it's a mater of taste - gets into personal preference in re "how much auto." and you get pissed-off when the auto crew doesn't do its job, as you see it should be done. hmmm - mutiny... oh no! lets not go there just yet, spithead still stings bix

05-06-13, 03:57 PM	#89
tater Navy Seal Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: New Mexico, USA Posts: 9,023 Downloads: 8 Uploads: 2	I'll just leave this here: http://home.wxs.nl/~pdavis/ __________________ "Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one." — Thomas Paine

05-06-13, 04:04 PM	#90
bix A-ganger Join Date: Apr 2013 Location: Lisbon, Portugal Posts: 76 Downloads: 0 Uploads: 0	pure misery i was thinking of misery in terms of the poor "real world" crew who were trying to to chase down a fat spanish prize. it equates though to players as well, if they expect madmax on the open sea (woops, i think that is waterworld). thanks for the big picture tater! i have not yet fully ported the old machine. tater's analogy to terrain is spot-on. i think the only "acceptance" problem (in every aos sim i've played) is that you just can't friggin' SEE it as terrain. now, lets just say that the swell and drift on the ocean surface was directly equivalent to wind direction and speed (even thought in reality it is not equal), would this help? you could indeed see it. best, b