WHY God - is there no decent Sailing Ship war game?!?! - Page 8

tater · 05-08-13, 02:14 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bix

that's the spirit!

quick update on the problem - when i set an initial situation where all things are NOT equal, it all plays out acceptably.

when i set an initial situation where (in theory) all things ARE equal, i get unexpected results (one side never makes their stays) .

b

So this is prat of decision making wrt to where the enemy is? Interesting.

richitis · 05-08-13, 04:35 PM

Ahoy submariners, and Bix in particular. I'm a lurker here from years ago (SH2 days), and just came across this thread in one of my periodic trawls of the internet for anyone making an Age of Sail game. Like the look of what you are doing, Bix, and look forward to the demo. I've also seen the Pirates Ahoy project, which looks interesting.

A few years back I got bored waiting for an AoS game to come along and decided to write my own too - I got a long way with it then had to shelve it for a bit due to real life, but there's an info page about it still up here:
http://www.richitis.co.uk/HeartOfOak/index.html
I see Pirates Ahoy have pinched my title, that's a shame! "Should be complete in 2010" I thought then - well maybe not, but I'm dusting this off and this time I hope I really will finish it in the not too distant future. Anyway, be interested to hear what people think. It seems there are a lot of AoS games around after all, just not from the big publishers (and none of them, so far, finished...)

tater · 05-08-13, 05:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by richitis

Ahoy submariners, and Bix in particular. I'm a lurker here from years ago (SH2 days), and just came across this thread in one of my periodic trawls of the internet for anyone making an Age of Sail game. Like the look of what you are doing, Bix, and look forward to the demo. I've also seen the Pirates Ahoy project, which looks interesting.

A few years back I got bored waiting for an AoS game to come along and decided to write my own too - I got a long way with it then had to shelve it for a bit due to real life, but there's an info page about it still up here:
http://www.richitis.co.uk/HeartOfOak/index.html
I see Pirates Ahoy have pinched my title, that's a shame! "Should be complete in 2010" I thought then - well maybe not, but I'm dusting this off and this time I hope I really will finish it in the not too distant future. Anyway, be interested to hear what people think. It seems there are a lot of AoS games around after all, just not from the big publishers (and none of them, so far, finished...)

Wow! That looks impressive. I'm fine with the idea of limited controls, but within that paradigm, did you have accurate sailing, particularly to windward?

Gilead Abyss · 05-08-13, 09:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bix

unexpected problem. should be solved tomorrow. sorry - but you waited this long....

Bix, each page of this thread raises hopes and excitement a bit more! Fellow posters, particularly tater and raymond, have very well covered all the helpful comments on gameplay and authenticity, not to mention the core purpose of a game modelling combat under sail. So in addition to an enthusiastic "seconded" of the last three pages of posts, I will gladly offer my feedback, impressions, and suggestions to anything you put together.

Good luck with your current challenge - nothing but a speed bump (rogue wave?) and I'm sure you'll clear it. Sounds like a case of broken symmetry...

con20or · 05-09-13, 03:10 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bix

@raymond6751 - must have been con20or who was hot for vids

Yarr, twar me...arrr.

bix · 05-09-13, 03:49 AM

i'm determined that your first glimpse of the sailing in action be very satisfying, i still have a nasty glitch that i just can't allow - hang in there...

raymond6751 · 05-09-13, 04:58 AM

Richitis, another very impressive bit of work. I encourage you to continue.

Just when I thought games for PC folk were settling in beside the eight tracks and dinosaurs, along come these gems.

bix, I've been waiting all my young 62 years for what you are doing. A bit longer is quite all right.

troopie · 05-09-13, 06:37 AM

Great to see so much activity on this thread! Thx for the work on the demo bix, take your time mate!

@tater,

Quote:

Originally Posted by tater

I may be a bit caught up in modern sailing physics, but I was using 'tack' in the same sense as yourself and I understand that making headway upwind would've been somewhat arduous! What I was getting at was your apt refferance to momentum, I'm thinking that their 'close hauled' was so far from the actual wind direction and their speed so low, that a single tack must have resulted in an incredible loss of momentum, and so it would've been a fair old while before they could tack again without stalling?

Anyway, sounds like you really know your stuff!

Re: drift and swell; would be great to have them seperate.

Excuse me bangin' on about 'Steam and Iron' again, but, it really is an excellent example of a true naval 'sim', that is, making fleet decisions in the fog of war without automation and without unrealistic micro-management, i.e. everything SH is not!

I really recomend you guys check it out, they have also have a free demo which is the same as the paid version but with fewer scenarios and has time limits on scenarios but still plenty enough to get a feel of it.

tater · 05-09-13, 09:53 AM

Gotcha. From my reading it was really common for ships to even make sternway on tacks.

There are some youtube vids of square-riggers in action, and one of the Star of India (tied up in San Diego when not sailing) tacking in practically calm air where the action of unbalanced sails is clearly doing the work (not a momentum thing at all, just mismatched thrust when they back the foresails, lol).

The real question is what it looked like for warships---they'd have far more men to work the ship, so I presume they could be snappier about the evolution. It also depends a lot of wind speed. If the ship is making below X knots, there seems little way to avoid a tack that looks like a pivot in place. I suppose my momentum observations are more applicable to a moderate breeze, which is what I guess most of us think about (foam at the rails, etc)

. A reality of having to douse the sails to just make headway in light airs is also to be considered...

<EDIT> interesting thought that bears saying "out loud" to make it clear. Momentum is mv (as we all know). The mass is equal in importance to the velocity, so larger warships carry more momentum for a given speed, and are therefor easier to tack without losing headway. Somewhat counter-intuitive since we think of smaller ships as being more handy. In a fresh breeze, the handling qualities of the smaller ship can win out, but in calmer air, the larger ships have the advantage (once they get moving, anyway).

tater · 05-09-13, 10:07 AM

Another thing to investigate is how a warship being "rigged for action" behaves vs one under normal sail. Chaining the yards, furled mainsail, etc, must have some effect.

tater · 05-09-13, 10:34 AM

Some references online:

general accounts of ship handling:
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/40958...-h/40958-h.htm

http://www.shf.org.au/JCFullBy/FB%20May%202010.pdf

http://www.hnsa.org/doc/luce/index.htm

This one is more specific to warships working windward (read the whole thing, it's awesome)...
http://www.cnrs-scrn.org/northern_ma...13_4_29-39.pdf

Quote:

The best choice for making good progress when sailing
into the wind was, without question, fore and aft rig. Squarerigged
ships are particularly restricted in their ability to sail close
to the wind by the physical characteristics of their rig. The
mariner's compass is divided into thirty-two points: each
representing an angle of 11 1/4° ,3 and a square sail, attached to
its yard, can fill with the wind at the very best no closer than an
angle of six points to the wind (Fig. I ), the traverse of the yard
being limited in front by the forestay and abaft by the lee shrouds
(Fig. 2). Thus, with a northerly wind, the best course that could be
sailed by a sailing warship was ENE, or WNW.

More from Sam Willis:
http://www.cnrs-scrn.org/northern_ma...14_3_57-68.pdf

tater · 05-09-13, 11:14 AM

This diagram, comparing square-rigged vs modern sailing tacks is overly optimistic for the square-rigger. It shows the ENE/WNW close-hauled tacks vs a north wind. That's basically in an ideal world, not the real world. Throw in leeway, veer the wind here and there, add a current (though the current might be to windward!), add sea state, and you start seeing the real world.

Given an average of maybe a point of leeway, beating directly windward could be nearly impossible. Throw in even a small current, and the "no go" region can be the whole windward direction. You sail elsewhere, and wait for a fair wind. This is why the language is a little different. In modern terms, with modern sailboats, tacking implies making windward progress. In the age of sail, tacking was merely changing tacks (wind off the port to wind off the starboard, or vice versa). In no way would making actual progress to windward be implied by tacking, since with leeway, currents, etc, you might make no, or vanishingly small, windward progress.

The wind really is the terrain, hence the general desire to have the weather as it was the only way to have any initiative, or real choice to engage.

raymond6751 · 05-09-13, 12:18 PM

Tis best we take in the tops'ls, brace the yardarm, and set a reef in the mains'l tater.

We are blowing so much wind at bix's sails that he may go over. Let her take the wind and set herself a bit.

Bix, stay the course, lad. We be waitin fer yer next entry in the log.

richitis · 05-09-13, 01:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tater

Wow! That looks impressive. I'm fine with the idea of limited controls, but within that paradigm, did you have accurate sailing, particularly to windward?

Yes I use the 32 point compass (as in diagram in this thread) and a square rigged ship can sail no closer to the wind than 6 points (fore and aft rig a little closer). Tacking is realistic up to a point, but for example currently ships won't miss stays - though their speed may reduce to 0, and they may in fact start to make sternway, they will come around eventually (though slowly). I found this was necessary to help the AI, othewise it tended to miss stays too often and get in a tangle, especially when trying to tack in succession. I may make this configurable however.

Anyway I'll press on...

tater · 05-09-13, 04:41 PM

It'd ideally be easy for lubbers to tack in any such game via a "tack" command.

Hit the button, and the ship comes about as soon as she is able. She'll come off the wind a point or two, speed up, then come about, falling off close-hauled on the opposite tack to build up again, then come back to close-hauled. That makes skippering a choice when to give the order, but nothing more complicated to think about (crews can have a skill level which makes it a faster, and less likely to fail operation).

If for some reason the ship will clearly not make stays if the command is executed ASAP, the sailing master can either say why that won't work, or she might have to bear off the wind for longer to get some momentum.

The more I think about it, the better this is. Games have usually drawn a line on the water in some cases (the abysmal sailing in ETW leaps to mind), or otherwise let you drag the course where you may, then perhaps penalize you via slow movement. In general, however, while there is a chance of failure, it's frankly less fluid than that. This is not a binary operation, but one where there are finite common outcomes. You make stays, and pay out past close-hauled, then come up towards close-hauled if you are serious about making your tiny windward progress, otherwise close-hauled is NOT your best point of sailing, and you pick a tack closer to where you want to go, and back off the wind enough to make better way. Alternately, you miss stays. At this point the game could give you an alarm of sorts (the real skipper would be able to tell instantly when it was clearly gonna fail). You'd then have to pick one of a few options that exist depending on how you miss stays. Again, finite choices. You'll make sternway, then head on old tack, or the same for the new, or box haul her. Or just sit there hove to

.

It's interesting, really, it's a sort of "chose your own adventure" kind of multiple choice for what in sims is generally considered the most difficult aspect of sailing---so difficult every game just lets people sail windward due to "magic" (PotBS, ETW, for example). What we really need is just a "wear ship" and "tack ship" command.

05-09-13, 03:49 AM	#111
bix A-ganger Join Date: Apr 2013 Location: Lisbon, Portugal Posts: 76 Downloads: 0 Uploads: 0	update i'm determined that your first glimpse of the sailing in action be very satisfying, i still have a nasty glitch that i just can't allow - hang in there...

05-09-13, 04:58 AM	#112
raymond6751 Admirable Mike Join Date: Mar 2004 Location: Canada Posts: 1,315 Downloads: 421 Uploads: 0	Another gem Richitis, another very impressive bit of work. I encourage you to continue. Just when I thought games for PC folk were settling in beside the eight tracks and dinosaurs, along come these gems. bix, I've been waiting all my young 62 years for what you are doing. A bit longer is quite all right. __________________ My stuff: https://www.authorsden.com/mikeraymond

05-09-13, 09:53 AM	#114
tater Navy Seal Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: New Mexico, USA Posts: 9,023 Downloads: 8 Uploads: 2	Gotcha. From my reading it was really common for ships to even make sternway on tacks. There are some youtube vids of square-riggers in action, and one of the Star of India (tied up in San Diego when not sailing) tacking in practically calm air where the action of unbalanced sails is clearly doing the work (not a momentum thing at all, just mismatched thrust when they back the foresails, lol). The real question is what it looked like for warships---they'd have far more men to work the ship, so I presume they could be snappier about the evolution. It also depends a lot of wind speed. If the ship is making below X knots, there seems little way to avoid a tack that looks like a pivot in place. I suppose my momentum observations are more applicable to a moderate breeze, which is what I guess most of us think about (foam at the rails, etc) . A reality of having to douse the sails to just make headway in light airs is also to be considered... <EDIT> interesting thought that bears saying "out loud" to make it clear. Momentum is mv (as we all know). The mass is equal in importance to the velocity, so larger warships carry more momentum for a given speed, and are therefor easier to tack without losing headway. Somewhat counter-intuitive since we think of smaller ships as being more handy. In a fresh breeze, the handling qualities of the smaller ship can win out, but in calmer air, the larger ships have the advantage (once they get moving, anyway). __________________ "Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one." — Thomas Paine Last edited by tater; 05-09-13 at 10:10 AM.

05-09-13, 10:07 AM	#115
tater Navy Seal Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: New Mexico, USA Posts: 9,023 Downloads: 8 Uploads: 2	Another thing to investigate is how a warship being "rigged for action" behaves vs one under normal sail. Chaining the yards, furled mainsail, etc, must have some effect. __________________ "Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one." — Thomas Paine

05-09-13, 11:14 AM	#117
tater Navy Seal Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: New Mexico, USA Posts: 9,023 Downloads: 8 Uploads: 2	This diagram, comparing square-rigged vs modern sailing tacks is overly optimistic for the square-rigger. It shows the ENE/WNW close-hauled tacks vs a north wind. That's basically in an ideal world, not the real world. Throw in leeway, veer the wind here and there, add a current (though the current might be to windward!), add sea state, and you start seeing the real world. Given an average of maybe a point of leeway, beating directly windward could be nearly impossible. Throw in even a small current, and the "no go" region can be the whole windward direction. You sail elsewhere, and wait for a fair wind. This is why the language is a little different. In modern terms, with modern sailboats, tacking implies making windward progress. In the age of sail, tacking was merely changing tacks (wind off the port to wind off the starboard, or vice versa). In no way would making actual progress to windward be implied by tacking, since with leeway, currents, etc, you might make no, or vanishingly small, windward progress. The wind really is the terrain, hence the general desire to have the weather as it was the only way to have any initiative, or real choice to engage. __________________ "Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one." — Thomas Paine Last edited by tater; 05-09-13 at 11:25 AM.

05-08-13, 04:35 PM	#107
richitis Nub Join Date: May 2013 Posts: 2 Downloads: 0 Uploads: 0	Ahoy submariners, and Bix in particular. I'm a lurker here from years ago (SH2 days), and just came across this thread in one of my periodic trawls of the internet for anyone making an Age of Sail game. Like the look of what you are doing, Bix, and look forward to the demo. I've also seen the Pirates Ahoy project, which looks interesting. A few years back I got bored waiting for an AoS game to come along and decided to write my own too - I got a long way with it then had to shelve it for a bit due to real life, but there's an info page about it still up here: http://www.richitis.co.uk/HeartOfOak/index.html I see Pirates Ahoy have pinched my title, that's a shame! "Should be complete in 2010" I thought then - well maybe not, but I'm dusting this off and this time I hope I really will finish it in the not too distant future. Anyway, be interested to hear what people think. It seems there are a lot of AoS games around after all, just not from the big publishers (and none of them, so far, finished...)

05-09-13, 12:18 PM	#118
raymond6751 Admirable Mike Join Date: Mar 2004 Location: Canada Posts: 1,315 Downloads: 421 Uploads: 0	It's all good, Tater Tis best we take in the tops'ls, brace the yardarm, and set a reef in the mains'l tater. We are blowing so much wind at bix's sails that he may go over. Let her take the wind and set herself a bit. Bix, stay the course, lad. We be waitin fer yer next entry in the log. __________________ My stuff: https://www.authorsden.com/mikeraymond

05-09-13, 04:41 PM	#120
tater Navy Seal Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: New Mexico, USA Posts: 9,023 Downloads: 8 Uploads: 2	It'd ideally be easy for lubbers to tack in any such game via a "tack" command. Hit the button, and the ship comes about as soon as she is able. She'll come off the wind a point or two, speed up, then come about, falling off close-hauled on the opposite tack to build up again, then come back to close-hauled. That makes skippering a choice when to give the order, but nothing more complicated to think about (crews can have a skill level which makes it a faster, and less likely to fail operation). If for some reason the ship will clearly not make stays if the command is executed ASAP, the sailing master can either say why that won't work, or she might have to bear off the wind for longer to get some momentum. The more I think about it, the better this is. Games have usually drawn a line on the water in some cases (the abysmal sailing in ETW leaps to mind), or otherwise let you drag the course where you may, then perhaps penalize you via slow movement. In general, however, while there is a chance of failure, it's frankly less fluid than that. This is not a binary operation, but one where there are finite common outcomes. You make stays, and pay out past close-hauled, then come up towards close-hauled if you are serious about making your tiny windward progress, otherwise close-hauled is NOT your best point of sailing, and you pick a tack closer to where you want to go, and back off the wind enough to make better way. Alternately, you miss stays. At this point the game could give you an alarm of sorts (the real skipper would be able to tell instantly when it was clearly gonna fail). You'd then have to pick one of a few options that exist depending on how you miss stays. Again, finite choices. You'll make sternway, then head on old tack, or the same for the new, or box haul her. Or just sit there hove to . It's interesting, really, it's a sort of "chose your own adventure" kind of multiple choice for what in sims is generally considered the most difficult aspect of sailing---so difficult every game just lets people sail windward due to "magic" (PotBS, ETW, for example). What we really need is just a "wear ship" and "tack ship" command. __________________ "Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one." — Thomas Paine Last edited by tater; 05-09-13 at 06:22 PM.