Hello everyone!
I want to show off an idea I had about how the sailing mechanics of the game could be improved by making them more realistic and intuitive, while also not turning the game into a sailing sim.
The way it works is this: Essentially I have 3 components to determine a ship's speed:
Base speed:
similar to last time
Sail alignment bonus:
The better the sail is angled in respect to the wind, the more speed you will gain. This is determined by a cosine function. The best angle for the sail would be such that the normal axis of the sail is pointed directly in between the ship's axis and the wind's axis. So for instance, when the wind is coming from 90° to the right, the optimal sail angle would be 45°. Not only is this closer to reality, but it also means that partial head wind gains more significance gameplaywise, because there is an optimal angle for every wind direction, not just ones coming from behind. I hope you get what I'm saying.
Wind direction bonus:
The more a ship is aligned with its preferred wind direction, the more speed it will gain. This is also determined by a cosine function. The sloop as an optimal angle of 180°, the galleon has 0° and the brigantine technically has two, 90° and -90°
I've made it so that the three ship types vary from one another in all aspects, but base speed. This makes the ships perfectly balanced, because if you integrate the top speed of each ship type over 360° wind angle, you get the same values for all of them.
Let's have a look. The plot on the right shows the achievable top speed as a function of the sail angle, the left plot shows the wind direction as indicated by the orange arrow/line as well as another way of showing the top speed. Draw a line from the origin at the angle of the sail and intersect the ship's curve, the distance from this intersection to the origin is the top speed.
Galleon: red
Brig: blue
Sloop: green
The galleon has a speed advantage of 0.5 m/s, the sloop and brig are equally fast.
This is the wind angle at which the galleon and the brig perform equally well, with the sloop being 0.25 m/s slower.
The optimal wind direction for the brig, in which it has a 0.25 m/s advantage.
Here, the galleon is 0.25 m/s slower, while the sloop and the brig share the number one spot.
In direct head wind the sloop outperforms the other ships by 0.5 m/s.
Here's a GIF of the whole spectrum.
Note that the optimal sail angle as well as the general shape of the speed function is the same for all ships, while the performance can still vary quite significantly. Also note that the performance on the sloop varies the least, while the brig and the galleon can vary much more. This means that in order to achieve better results on bigger ship types, the crew on a galleon has to work harder than the crew of a brig. Slooping is made easier in comparison and so this system also serves an important balancing issue. I also set it up so that the travel/wind direction is never the definitive factor, as a well managed ship will always be quicker than a poorly managed one.
Now you might be thinking: "Why does the brig only get a 0.25 m/s advantage? That's not fair!" but remember that the seas have essentially twice as much cross wind as they have head or tail wind, since you can have it coming from the left or the right side.
I want to also mention that there is not a single situation, in which you are unable to sail. Even if you take the worst ship for headwind and put the sails in the worst orientation possible, you will still be able to go at a whopping 0.75 m/s. Obviously these values can be adjusted quite easily, this is after all just a concept.
I hope you enjoy this idea, let me know what you think!
Greetings from Germany!!
