Can the sails be moved upward or something?

@agent-samuraii
I remember hearing this was done on purpose to encourage teamwork. Even on a real ship back then they had someone who was the eyes for the captain on the front of the ship.

Goin solo is tedious work. Try not to be glued to the wheel mate. I have been solo too lately, and those barrels only got me once. Sometimes i swear those birds dont render until its too late!!!

Its just funny everyone understands the wheel should be on the front of the boat but the rudder was not working somehow 🤨 ever since 1600 we are stuck with this sails problem and they never figured out how to fix it so they came up with steamengines and stopped using sails so you expect them to put the wheel to the front but it was no longer nescessary.. yeah ask titanic 😖

@agent-samuraii yeah this was implemented so you could work as a team that’s why it isn’t hard to see on a sloop because of the solo sloop community

@agent-samuraii but I’ve seen people complain about this a lot

@agent-samuraii

I could just be dense but I don’t think sails on a ship were so low that it blocked a pirate’s line of sight.

it has always been like that in this game.

The sails have caused several problems for me (it’s worse when the banners pop up for completed voyages or when approaching islands and such). One of them being not seeing barrels in front of me because i can’t see the seagulls or my attention is briefly diverted elsewhere and prevents me from seeing them before the waves cause the ship to dip or rise enough that the sails block the seagulls from my line of sight.

You are not supposed to be glued to the helm at all times when sailing. xD

Release the helm, take a trip down the stairs, and use your spyglass to check for the seagulls. :P

The wheel wont move by itself unless you are in a storm, so you can set the wheel to turn slightly to one side, to compensate for the offset caused by the waves, causing it to sail in a straight line, without requiring anybody to be at the helm... Allowing you to be, wherever the hell you want until you have to change course and re-adjust the helm again.

It depends on the direction of the waves, and the speed of your ship/how much wind your sails are catching, but there's always a way to balance the helm to make the ship sail straight.

TL;DR: Let go of the steering wheel and go look at where you are sailing.

@agent-samuraii then why do you have a problem with this? I don't even notice how low the sail is and I pretty much exclusively do solo slooping.

@agent-samuraii Tbvh @JofJJay has a point, if you aint glued to the helm, there's no reason why it would be a problem for you. :o

@agent-samuraii said in Can the sails be moved upward or something?:

@sweltering-nick

There is such a thing as the waves blocking your field of vision on the water.

Don’t see the seagulls right away? Welp.

And it’s IMPOSSIBLE to see them at night.

What do you mean? In a few seconds you'll be ontop of the wave, and be able to see everything... If you still cant see anything, jump onto the high points of your sloop... the tarp, or the tip of the plank-thingy in front of the ship.

Seriously, what are these arguments of yours about non-issues? ._.

It's not impossible to see them at night, but i guess you don't have perfect eye-sight? How do you expect Rare to fix that?

@agent-samuraii What I do is I literally just run around the ship and avoid barrels when I see them. I mean do you really even need to be up by the helm very much at all as long as you adjust the sails. Its not the games fault that you cannot get around the sail. Hey if you want to go faster but don't want to deal with the sail don't raise the sail just adjust it so that it is to the side always. Not that that is an efficient thing to do but if the sail is really such a problem that will work.

@agent-samuraii

The ship steering away has always been in the game. Its actually pretty accurate. The way the waves move and the way the ship is pushed, its direction shifts from time to time.

This is what I do.

Right as I have sails angled and I am driving in a direction I check the compass next to the wheel. I watch how fast it begins to shift either direction.

Depending on the area and how wild the waves are, going over a wave can turn your ship about 10 degrees in one direction. If the sails are angled to the sides and you have full billow, then the direction shift is even worse over the waves.

So watch the compass. Check to see how bad its veering off course. Then turn the wheel to compensate and just leave the wheel like that. Everytime it bounces and turns the wheel will slightly turn the ship into the other direction before the next wave hits. It keeps going like that. Now granted you'll have to go back to the wheel again to correct your course, but this will buy you A LOT more time to be off it.

Calmer waters with the sails point straight ahead is usually the only REAL time you can leave your wheel dead center and it not veer off course every 10 seconds.

EDIT Not gonna lie though, those barrels spawning the water almost killed me 3 times. Caused my prey to get away one of those times.

The issue with those barrels is they spawn within a radius of the ship and often then not directly in line of your course.

I remember a long time ago barrels used to be part of the world like sunken ships. They were far away and you would have sail towards them. NOW they spawn close to your boat, sometimes you can even WATCH them spawn in because of how close they are when they do spawn.

I had clear waters, went downstairs to get supplies, ran to wheel to check my heading, got off wheel and barrels right in front of me that werent there before. No time to change course, ran to my anchor, dropped it, and jumped off the boat. Within 2 seconds I hear BOOM BOOM.

I go back to the ship, repair, but by this point the ship I was chasing was long gone.

I like the barrels because I've lead players by the nose into them and laughed when they sank, but the spawn mechanics need changing so that its not so close directly in front of you.