Lightning Round!

@blooddoll22 said in Lightning Round!:

Yea, we've heard it before... I'll say it again... though I'm convinced Rare cherry picks it's topics of interest, and only pays attention to outlets OTHER than these forums for 'community feedback'... that's it's own conspiracy theory.

And that said, I post yet again on a topic that has been annoying me lately.

Storms...

I enjoy them, they aren't hard to deal with, they create interesting PvP situations, can ruin a good day if your not thoughtful though....

I really don't hope much will ever change regarding storms except ONE factor which I think is overblown and ridiculous.

The lightning strikes. I mean ok... its funny... ooohh a lightning bolt hit me i took some minor damage wow that spooked me! Sure, I get it... but 4-5 times in the same storm? Overplayed....overplayed... it actually does the opposite of making it cool, it makes it predictable and boring... but even that I can sort of ignore because it's just my body, and I haven't cared about my body since the first time I picked my character and realized I was stuck with him despite my wanting to make a change.

What 'grinds my gears' on the other hand is more obnoxious by far...

lightning striking my barrels in the crows nest... ok... sure you might say.. no biggie put them in your hold during bad weather itll save them...

but it wont I specifically put two barrels I was saving for the inevitable Galleon hunting down my sloop into my hold.

Lightning strikes the ship...and they still blow up, only this time they pop me and put a ton of holes in my ship.

I didn't sink... I recovered from the damage.

But this means that there is literally nowhere on a sloop to store barrels during a storm. If you go into a storm or near one in a sloop with barrels you WILL lose them MUCH more likely than not.

To me... that's an issue. Obviously I guess I'll just have to avoid storms while in a sloop, wise course of action anyhow, but I don't feel I should HAVE to avoid them to maintain my assets... SHOULD would be a better thing.

My request is simple... no, no need to eliminate lightning strikes, they are fair play.... even if they blow up things below deck... but might we REDUCE the commonality? Make it a rare event (punny ha-ha) the chances of total loss of barrels on a sloop should be low and reasonable... not total and expected.

Same with strikes on my person... let's make them more damaging...louder still than they are... and SURPRISING in occurrence.. not so common my name might as well be Sparky!

If you have metal out (guns, treasure, swords) you increase how often you get hit.
If also you CAN hide gpb below deck. Just not next to the walls.

@rattlyfob in this case... I had them right next to, and stacked upon each other, the wooden planks between the stairs and the barrels. Midline with the ship... not near a wall at all. I was holding the wheel when the lightning struck.

That places them as far from hull walls as possible on a sloop.

Again, I don't mind the function of lightning strikes.. I don't even mind that there might be a sweet spot you have to put them in. But let's face it... as it stands, if you have gun powder in the crows nest and you are in a storm... it's going to blow.

Meaning below deck is the only option on a sloop... but that doesn't help either... (let's ignore the factor of how badly that could hurt you if a cannon whips through your hull)

Having the mechanics as they are isn't my issue... it's the value of the variable controlling how often it may occur, which IMO is too high.

@blooddoll22 said in Lightning Round!:

@rattlyfob in this case... I had them right next to, and stacked upon each other, the wooden planks between the stairs and the barrels. Midline with the ship... not near a wall at all. I was holding the wheel when the lightning struck.

That places them as far from hull walls as possible on a sloop.

Again, I don't mind the function of lightning strikes.. I don't even mind that there might be a sweet spot you have to put them in. But let's face it... as it stands, if you have gun powder in the crows nest and you are in a storm... it's going to blow.

Meaning below deck is the only option on a sloop... but that doesn't help either... (let's ignore the factor of how badly that could hurt you if a cannon whips through your hull)

Having the mechanics as they are isn't my issue... it's the value of the variable controlling how often it may occur, which IMO is too high.

There is a (only 1 to my knowledge) position safe from lightning and cannon balls.
Again though i recommend you try hiding metal and see how bad the lightning is... its not as bad as you make it seem. IMHO

@rattlyfob The hitting of self is really not my primary concern, though it may seem as such.

I challenge anyone to grab a few gun powder barrels and sail a sloop into a storm. Below deck, likely not quite as bad... but crows nest? methinks too often.

@blooddoll22 said in Lightning Round!:

@rattlyfob The hitting of self is really not my primary concern, though it may seem as such.

I challenge anyone to grab a few gun powder barrels and sail a sloop into a storm. Below deck, likely not quite as bad... but crows nest? methinks too often.

Hitting around yourself*
Idk man just try to keep your sword, gun, and trinkets hidden for an entire storm and see if there is a difference. Iv noticed one but it could be placebo/confirmation bias.

Edit: Realistically speaking though, lightning would strike a ship more frequently than the water and a crows nest being a higher point would attract more strikes... itd be interesting to test this next to cannon towers to see if the ship is struck less...

@admiral-rrrsole said in Lightning Round!:

@rattlyfob said

Edit: Realistically speaking though, lightning would strike a ship more frequently than the water and a crows nest being a higher point would attract more strikes... itd be interesting to test this next to cannon towers to see if the ship is struck less...

Sorry mate, I beg to differ. As we all know lightning is a source of electricity.
The ship is made of wood which does not conduct electricity. When standing anywhere on the vessel, even on the cannons, you are not completing an electrical circuit because the cannons, although metal, are not earthed.
Lightning could possibly enter your head or upper body, travel through you then arc from your feet to the water but that is not case in this game. Especially when it kills you whilst standing at the helm above at least two floors of wooden structures.

Men and women work on high voltage power-lines without being electrocuted because they are insulated from any ground / earth. At most they wear rubber gloves, rubber boots and stand on a metal ladder mounted to a metal truck which sits on rubber tyres. This allows them to handle either wire whilst the electricity grid is still turned on.
Even birds sit on high voltage power-lines and are completely safe until touching a second wire at the same time which then completes the circuit and kills the bird.

The water does conduct electricity making the circuit complete by acting as a ground / earth and is therefore a more likely target for lightning.
However it's a different story with modern day ships made of steel. They are naturally conductive and sit taller than the water (extending that earth polarity) becoming the ideal target at sea.

---

Perhaps a little off topic but lightning storms are more common over land than oceans or seas.... except in SoT. Just saying.

Taken from "lightning" Wikipedia
About 70% of lightning occurs over land in the tropics where atmospheric convection is the greatest. This occurs from both the mixture of warmer and colder air masses, as well as differences in moisture concentrations, and it generally happens at the boundaries between them. The flow of warm ocean currents past drier land masses, such as the Gulf Stream, partially explains the elevated frequency of lightning in the Southeast United States. Because the influence of small or absent land masses in the vast stretches of the world's oceans limits the differences between these variants in the atmosphere, lightning is notably less frequent there than over larger landforms. The North and South Poles are limited in their coverage of thunderstorms and therefore result in areas with the least amount of lightning.

While wood generally does not conduct electricity, wet wood does and if the voltage is high enough wood can be made to conduct the current anyways. (Look up trees being struck by lightning)

Lightning by nature strikes things higher above the ground because they offer shorter paths for the electricity to travel than simply moving through the air. If you want to see a cool video look up lightning sprites. It shows a slow motion video of lightning findimg the shortest path and how exactly that works.

Despite that there is metal in the crows nest that would act like as a conduit for the lightning strike. ;)

Edit: preliminary research leads me to believe that based on several 19th century books published regaurding lightning strikes on ships that they were in fact a larger problem for wooden ships than they were and are for metal ships. Further more, on the SoT we arent exactly in the open ocean and its more what I would call an archipelago.

@admiral-rrrsole said in Lightning Round!:

@rattlyfob No need for videos, I've seen lightning strike several trees close to home here in tropical Queensland, Australia.
Perhaps they were "iron bark" trees? lol
But for the amount of strikes we endure, the trees would make less than one percent which could fall into the coincidence category of simply being in the lightning's path. In fact that could be further proven by the fact that it isn't the top of the trees that are most commonly hit but rather within the first ten feet from the ground. That's only one third of the tree's height.

The metal in the crows nest isn't earthed.
With the wooden ship simply being wet, is kind of like saying that if you poke out your tongue during an electrical storm that's the only place lightning will hit you, if it hits you at all. :p

"Absolutely. Tall ships did get struck by lightning quite often, but just because a ship is struck by lightning doesn't mean it will be completely destroyed. In 1852, British inventor Sir William Snow Harris published the first systematic study of lightning strikes on wooden ships. He collected data from from 1793 to 1839. The damage typically consisted of "shivering" or splintering of the mainmast: Long shards of wood flew in every direction, sometimes wounding a sailor or knocking him off the deck. Sails and rigging might catch fire, requiring officers and crew to smother the flames with the aid of the rain and wind. None of the ships in Harris' sample was recorded as being obliterated, and the vast majority were repaired by their crews and continued sailing."

@admiral-rrrsole said in Lightning Round!:

@rattlyfob A simple case of being in he wrong place at the wrong time. :o)

lightning strike book link

There are something like 250 independant cases in this book for you to look at that says otherwise...

Edit: while what you have been saying is based on what you have been taught I am sure, it does not cover the complete story.