A youtuber by the name of kiwhen released a video a few days ago with probably the most accurate ship speed stats that we will ever get unless Rare releases the stats themselves.
Spoilers: The brig is the fastest ship.
Some of the interactions a really interesting and cool while some of them are probably bugs that should be fixed. Either way I think this video shows pretty clearly that ship balance is not very balanced.
@betsill said in Ship speed in Sea of Thieves:
Spoilers: The brig is the fastest ship.
Haha shocker! Yeah this is interesting - will have to wait to watch until I get home from work, but this looks fantastic, thanks for posting!
Like @vorondil1, I'll have to wait until I get home to watch. I like to think that I know most of it already, but even with my vast experience, even I still have a few lingering questions regarding certain aspects of ship speed that I would like to have answered. If the video doesn't answer them, perhaps I'll pose them here on the forums myself.
@galactic-geek something I never even considered was that larger sails would matter more. It makes sense, but in a game like SoT I never thought about it and just assumed they were all the same. It's both cool and sad at the same time. It's cool because it's a really nice touch, but it's sad because how in the world is anyone supposed to know this if Rare doesn't tell anyone? Rare's lack of communication and explanations is a pretty big problem for the game IMO.
@trenix90 I would say the smallest ship should be the fastest, since it's the most screwed when caught.
We've had all three ships in the game for more than 6 months and I don't remember ever seeing a patch saying that the speed of any ship was tweaked in any way, so either Rare is fine with how ships move currently or they don't know the mechanics they designed. It surprises me that the sail mechanic of angleing it into dead wind makes it so the ship moves faster than angleing it sideways, I always had a feeling that it was true and not a placebo effect of bandwagoning on a rumor, but the most curious part is that Rare apparently didn't know that this was a mechanic that they designed into the game, in a Q&A when they were asked about how the galleon could outspeed a sloop if they angled the sails a certain way Joe Neate and Mike C. didn't comment on this mechanic but acted rather surprised that the sloop wasn't the fastest against the wind saying that they would look into it to ensure that the sloop is always fastest into the wind, that was months ago.
@urihamrayne Another really bad problem is that when heading slightly off of the wind the sloop is faster with the sails straight than at an angle. This kind of inconsistency is ridiculous, but probably stems from the absurd fact that flattening your sails in the wind makes you go faster.
@schwammlgott If a galleon makes use of the sail bug they can sail faster into the wind that a sloop. That is busted AF. The sloop loses in pretty much every way when it comes to speed despite being drastically under-powered compared to the other ships in combat.
Watching through the video now (still not finished it as of this posting) and am happy to see that the very 1st thing the video addresses relates to the question I had mentioned earlier. :D
EDIT: Finished the video, and my goodness, there's a lot more detail to the speed and directions with the ships than I ever thought! Kudos to the video guy and to Rare!
@betsill said in Ship speed in Sea of Thieves:
@galactic-geek something I never even considered was that larger sails would matter more. It makes sense, but in a game like SoT I never thought about it and just assumed they were all the same. It's both cool and sad at the same time. It's cool because it's a really nice touch, but it's sad because how in the world is anyone supposed to know this if Rare doesn't tell anyone? Rare's lack of communication and explanations is a pretty big problem for the game IMO.
I think that's part of charm of Sea of Thieves. You have to actually learn the techniques. People like to say that skeletons are the 'only' land mobs but realistically there are 5 or 6 variations on them (bandana, gold, phantom, grass, island idle, and chest-triggered), not to mention powder keg ones, and each specialization takes a different strategy to some degree.
Some of this learning will inevitably come from outside the game itself, like watching this video. This is a valuable learning tool and it should give more learned captains the upper hand against the less experienced.
It's much like Minecraft really. It's a make-your-own-fun type of game with zero handholding. And I love that about it.
@schwammlgott That means that the average player can't escape a crew that knows the exploit. Also, when it is faster, it's only faster by a wopping 5m/s against the brig and 12 m/s against the galeon that doesn't use the exploit. Compare that to the the full wind sailing of the galleon which is 32 M/s faster than the sloop. Almost 3 times faster than the sloops advantage into the wind. The sloop barely wins again in a cross wind against the galleon, but loses everything else. The brig is obviously overpowered in this regard as it is essentially just the best of both worlds with almost no downside.
@betsill a crew that doesn't know this is f$#%ed, yes...
And it's not a big difference when going against the wind, but it's enough to escape
The only thing that should be changed here is the brig when going with sidewind
Also I think Rare should leave this in the game AND make some kind of tutorial in-game so everyone knows it, I wouldn't mind using this video
@darrkbeard There is no charm in bugs/broken mechanics. No one will assume that putting your sails strait against the wind is faster than angling the sails. This is even more ridiculous when sailing into the crosswind as the same bug applies, but ONLY to the sloop. Before this video all of this was pretty much just rumors. Unless you had other crews help you test, there is no way to determine what's really going on and even then it's very sketchy testing due to all the other factors(such as waves that apparently slow you down when going up them). The ship speeds in SoT is a big problem
Sometimes they follow IRL logic(like angling with the wind), but sometimes they don't. That screws players because there isn't consistent logic that players can apply. The intuitive rules of the game actually work AGAINST the player. You think "well obviously putting your sails flat would be the worst way to sail into the wind because this game takes wind into account very similar to IRL", but you would be wrong! and that's very bad game design.
Sea of Thieves sail speeds and secrets revealed