Sailing and sailing into the wind

  • i was doing some interesting tests last night on sail speed particularly sailing into the wind.

    now on an old square rigger your area of "no sail" is pretty wide as you couldn't realistically angle the sails further
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    but we can angle are sails pretty well and for gameplay purposes etc.

    so more akin to the modern "sloop"
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    which still leaves an area of no go for sailing

    anyway onto my point, so i though if i sailed close hauled in the sloop i would indeed get to my destination quicker, but alas no and interestingly there appears to be a "bug" perhaps in the sailing technique.

    so the test.

    The map is divided into squares, i would set the sails well before the start of the square and time the ship to get from one side to the other (pretty basic)

    Test one - Sails angled to the wind and sailing directly into the wind

    Time to cross 1:10 (70s)

    Sail flat as a pancake noob fashion

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    Time to cross 1:01 (61S)

    Ok so this is faster?

    And finally sailing close hauled about 30° to the wind and tacking half way across
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    Time to cross 1:20 (80s)

    hmm disappointing i would have thought sailing close hauled it would have been quicker as its not only realistic its more involved on the crew and requires more skill to plot routes

    and just for completeness

    Sails set on a broad reach (fastest point of sail) and a square takes ~40s
    down wind and anypoint where the sail billows out is pretty much the same.

    TL:DR

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    dont try to "sail" your boat - stick your sails flat against the wind when going upwind for a minor speed advantage (which it the real world would make your sail backwards)

    i didnt know this so apologies if its a known "bug" or SoT trait of the game

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  • @kenneth-mcgrew Curses, you have leaked the secret.
    :) No, it is a well known bug. But nicely figured out.

  • @kenneth-mcgrew

    Cool little article... for Science!!!

  • Hard to believe that this still hasn't been fixed. :/

  • @loweuk sagte in Sailing and sailing into the wind:

    Hard to believe that this still hasn't been fixed. :/

    I'm not sure if they will fix it...would be better they leave it like that now

  • @kenneth-mcgrew Awesome work and dedication! Thanks for sharing on the forums.

  • @Kenneth-Mcgrew Very well done sir! Thank you!

  • @kenneth-mcgrew Bookmarking this so that I can link it every time someone asks how a brig catches up to them :)

  • @kenneth-mcgrew Great bit of research there. Thank you so much for sharing. The "set sails to stupid" bug is well known, but I think it's helpful to see the results of your testing so clearly presented. It's really disappointing that this is still a "thing." It would be wonderful to do away with the "sails to stupid" bug once and for all and make us actually sail our ships. It'd also be nice if the wind was variable in strength, rather than "always on" as it is.

  • @loweuk said in Sailing and sailing into the wind:

    Hard to believe that this still hasn't been fixed. :/

    I know right? It's never addressed much either or even in the known bugs list. I think I might have heard once the devs saying "oh really? thanks for the info" upon hearing the existence of this issue from a guest streamer, not much since.

    What's the point in having ships slower or faster against the wind if it doesn't matter in the end?

  • Wow, didn't know that. My friend last time mention about that, but for me that was just a stupid idea. :) Will try run some aggressive players soon.

  • For Science

  • @kenneth-mcgrew

    A nicely researched bit of information there!

  • Fascinating! Thanks for the conclusion: sailing into the wind with sails actually gives you a speed-boost in SoT!

  • @kenneth-mcgrew
    Here's a link to a video someone else made about this well known bug... Or are we calling it a "feature" now???

    @RevanJStone
    This is what we were talking about the other day.

  • Still no answer, no consideration ? It's amazing to leave such an anomaly without correction !

  • @alzgur3 You revived an old thread - not a good idea. That said, I believe this was by design for balance reasons.

  • I honestly think this is intended given that in a sloop sailing straigt against the wind is your only/best option of escape on open water and if it were like it's "supposed" to be then galleons would be able to catch up and sloops had no chance of getting away if the galleon was serious about the chase. This is very admirable work you did but it still is only a game and balancing it to make it enjoyable is probably more of a concern to the devs than realism. Still good job on the numbers though

  • @konkydonk We can balance the game without making it ridiculous, it is not the speed of the boats that is involved according to the wind, but the direction of the sails that has precisely none. That the speeds remain the same according to the direction of the wind is not a problem, but that the sails are things to do for each boat is one! Moreover, who will naturally set sail in front of the vent to go faster without knowing this problem? person! So it's neither intuitive nor realistic. It's ridiculously simple.

  • @alzgur3 you are necroing a months old post, this is against the forum rules. If you still find this to be an issue just open a new thread about it.

  • As the most recent post in this thread was 3 months old and it was revived today, it will now be locked.

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