Ship Speeds & Balance

[Bullet Force 151]

This is something that needs to be addressed. Currently in the game the fastest ships are the Schooner and the Galleon. The schooner sort of makes sense but the Galleon certainly does not. As a result of this unbalanced speed system you have a large Galleon that is very fast while a small ship like Sloop that is really slow. This basically means that Sloops serve no viable purpose in PVP since you have no endurance and it doesn't even have any speed. 

If you ask em the ship speed should be tier based. Galleon being the slowest, sloop the fastest. This would help ensure that there is a variety in PVP and would allow for differing and varied strategies when it came to naval combat and fleet mix up.

[George Catcher 367]

I a past I spent alot of time in a Corsairs game. There were about 30 ships types there. And all separated by 6 classes from small 6th (Tartanes and Launches) to a very top 1st class (Warships, Linen Ships).

And as far as I remember - the fastest ships were in 3rd class. Those were Corvettes ships and they was able to catch much lighter boats. I wish we have 30 types of boats here and Corvette (my fav) will be here too.

Edited February 18, 2019 by George Catcher

[Puppies4ever 856]

For the last weeks i only sailed my galleon and yesterday i tried a schooner from a company member. Big handling sail and smaller speed sail. Amazing speed overall. 

[Shintai 117]

The speed of the current 4 boats should be Schooner->Sloop->Brigantine->Galleon. A Brigantine is faster than a Schooner btw.  As it is now the speed is Galleon->Brigantine->Schooner->Sloop.

And for those that may not know, speed/weight ratio is linear on ships. 

Edited February 18, 2019 by Shintai

[trqfreak350 38]

4 minutes ago, Shintai said:

The speed of the current 4 boats should be Schooner->Sloop->Brigantine->Galleon. A Brigantine is faster than a Schooner btw.  As it is now the speed is Galleon->Brigantine->Schooner->Sloop.

And for those that may not know, speed/weight ratio is linear on ships. 

Galleon and schooner right now are nearly tied, BLUF gaming did the maths, and testing pretty well, large speed, and small speed make the schooner incredibly fast. witth the brig closely following them.

[Shintai 117]

We have run the ships side by side in maximum speed configurations.

One of the balancing issues is the speed sails. Ability to put sails beyond class on Schooner and Sloop. And at the same time speed sails simply offering way too much.

They tried upping weight sails 40% last patch, without understanding the speed meta at all.

If they had stuck to a sail force mechanic and fixed speed boosts it would solve it. Instead of bigger sails=higher speed buff.

So in short, a 4 small mast Schooner(4.0) should be faster than a 2 medium mast(3.4) or 1 medium+2 small mast(3.7) Schooner (The 1 large+1 small (3.7) mast setup shouldn´t exist). Then you also have a penalty in terms of crew used. 4 for maximum speed, 2 for slowest.

Edited February 18, 2019 by Shintai

[Thor Ragnarock 99]

The total sail surface area of a large sail is more than that of 4 small sails and is still slightly more than a medium sail. Ergo more surface in the wind leads to more force pushing the ship I don't think the sail units should equate to the sails total stats.

Smaller ships ought to be faster than bigger ships in most situations (unless overloaded), they are definitely better at maneuvering which again makes sense. I still prefer the Brig over the Galleon, it turns much faster and is far more enjoyable to sail and doesn't eat through resources nearly as bad as the Galleon. I still do enjoy the Galleon though. The weight sails and maneuvering sails are so outclassed by the speed sails for the one stat people want (not to be sailing a lot longer) that it's hard to justify using the others. Sure more weight is nice but I only have so much time a day to get the ship from A to B and I don't want to spend way more time at sea if I don't have to. Maneuvering can be really useful for the few times your destination is... directly into the wind. Otherwise tacking back and forth works although it easily doubles the travel time. As the bird flies vs a lot of 45 degree turns back and forth. 

I agree they really should expand on the variety. They could have different hull types, shallow, wide, deep, narrow, etc etc all with pluses and bonuses to drag, where they are able to operate, turn speed, weight etc. The only way to bring the speed sail down is to make it worthless or make hulls which balance it out while using weight or maneuvering sails instead. Or other ways which make the speed sail not always the best option... Long term I think they will get there with customizing  and adding a lot more variety for ship types/builds.

[Shintai 117]

I get the visual part the bigger sails got more surface, but then the values for smaller sails are wrong in terms of sail force.

[Pizik 43]

7 minutes ago, Shintai said:

So in short, a 4 small mast Schooner(4.0) should be faster than a 2 medium mast(3.4) or 1 medium+2 small mast(3.7) Schooner. (The 1 large+1 small (3.7) mast setup shouldn´t exist)

Looking at the sail area one would expect that 1 large + 1 small would be most effective as in total they have a much larger surface area (Small sail being the same size as the top sail on the large sail I believe). That is ignoring mast / rigging / sail weight. 

I suspect this is how the game has been designed.

I assume the game also tries to represent the fact that putting 3 large sails on a schooner would make it capsize every time you turned the ship so they prohibit that with the points system for sail placement.

Regarding 2 medium sails, it certainly looks better. A company member and I did a test run with me in my baby, A Schooner Matata (1 large, 1 small) and him in his 2x Medium schooner. It was an easy win for me but I wish I could just go with 2x Medium.

[Shintai 117]

11 minutes ago, Pizik said:

Looking at the sail area one would expect that 1 large + 1 small would be most effective as in total they have a much larger surface area (Small sail being the same size as the top sail on the large sail I believe). That is ignoring mast / rigging / sail weight. 

I suspect this is how the game has been designed.

I assume the game also tries to represent the fact that putting 3 large sails on a schooner would make it capsize every time you turned the ship so they prohibit that with the points system for sail placement.

Regarding 2 medium sails, it certainly looks better. A company member and I did a test run with me in my baby, A Schooner Matata (1 large, 1 small) and him in his 2x Medium schooner. It was an easy win for me but I wish I could just go with 2x Medium.

The issue has nothing to do with the visual representation. If you used any other sails than speed sails you would get a rather different view on it. The issue is simply the buff are different on the speed sails like any other sail, but represent actual speed.

If you take the Schooner example. Excuse me for using old values since I didn't check the new +40% values, but potatoes potatoes.

4xsmall gives 1800 extra(4.0). 2 medium gives 1500 extra(3.4). 1 medium and 2 small gives 1650 extra(3.7). 1 large and 1 small gives 1550 extra(3.7). I actually think the 4xsmall one got a slightly higher speed. But it gets greasy quickly since weight determines speed.

The example with weight sails actually works balancing wise more or less. Sail force seem to matter on speed. And guaranteed we see more weight and crew usage gives a reward.

I didn't check the game files, but maybe I should. However my guess is something along the line that speed sails gives some kind of 10, 20 and 30% boost and this is why it goes all wrong. Speed sails should just give a fixed boost across the sail types.

So in the case with the Schooner. 2 mediums gives in this example 3.4x1.2=4.08 "speed". While a large+small gives 2.7*1.3+1*1.1=4.61 "speed".

I know the numbers are a bit different than 10, 20 and 30 since 2 medium is faster than 4 small. But you get the idea and why a differential speed buff on speed sails messes it all up.

Edited February 18, 2019 by Shintai

[Kummba 164]

23 hours ago, Shintai said:

The speed of the current 4 boats should be Schooner->Sloop->Brigantine->Galleon. A Brigantine is faster than a Schooner btw.  As it is now the speed is Galleon->Brigantine->Schooner->Sloop.

And for those that may not know, speed/weight ratio is linear on ships. 

Currently it is:

It is 6xLSS Galleon = 1LSS 1SSS Scooner (1)

3xLSS Brigantine (0.9)

1MSS Sloop (0.6)

Weightslowdown is (1- CurrentWeight/MaxWeight)^0.5

See https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCknNImlE3V0RAULak_ifllw/videos

Sails are

LSS (1)

LHS (0.75)

LWS (0.6)

 

For which ship should be how fast because RL and history.

There is no leeway or other limiting factors in the game, in RL the ships speed would heavyly altered with the windspeed/direction/ seaconditions. Also at rough see the galleon would be the fastest against the wind (light green sails), because i would not be stoped by the waves that much.

At light wind the Scooner/ Brig should be faster.

I like how they set up the ships, each has its own usecase. That means sloop is only for early game/throwaway.

 

Happy sailing

 

Edited February 19, 2019 by Kummba

[StewPot 5]

On 2/18/2019 at 8:36 AM, Thor Ragnarock said:

The total sail surface area of a large sail is more than that of 4 small sails and is still slightly more than a medium sail. Ergo more surface in the wind leads to more force pushing the ship I don't think the sail units should equate to the sails total stats.

Smaller ships ought to be faster than bigger ships in most situations (unless overloaded), they are definitely better at maneuvering which again makes sense. I still prefer the Brig over the Galleon, it turns much faster and is far more enjoyable to sail and doesn't eat through resources nearly as bad as the Galleon. I still do enjoy the Galleon though. The weight sails and maneuvering sails are so outclassed by the speed sails for the one stat people want (not to be sailing a lot longer) that it's hard to justify using the others. Sure more weight is nice but I only have so much time a day to get the ship from A to B and I don't want to spend way more time at sea if I don't have to. Maneuvering can be really useful for the few times your destination is... directly into the wind. Otherwise tacking back and forth works although it easily doubles the travel time. As the bird flies vs a lot of 45 degree turns back and forth. 

I agree they really should expand on the variety. They could have different hull types, shallow, wide, deep, narrow, etc etc all with pluses and bonuses to drag, where they are able to operate, turn speed, weight etc. The only way to bring the speed sail down is to make it worthless or make hulls which balance it out while using weight or maneuvering sails instead. Or other ways which make the speed sail not always the best option... Long term I think they will get there with customizing  and adding a lot more variety for ship types/builds.

In any kind of realism, the physics would break the small boat in half if all the force was applied to a single mast.