Quote Originally Posted by Celtic_Punk View Post
About tacking, why not make a setting that removes the ability to sail upwind? that way everyone wins?

Im looking forward to this, but unrealistic sailing would be a huge gamebreaking experience for me, given my naval background.
An optional setting to go either way would be ideal, but maybe not practical. Something like that would probably require two different sets of AI routines, and would definitely require two different rounds of testing and debugging by the in-house testing group (since CA doesn't use outside alpha and beta testers, AFAIK). From what I've seen of game design over the years, it's the second factor that often limits the number of options offered to players.

User modding is sometimes a way around that. It worked pretty well to beef up the realism of the game and the performance of the AI in the recent Silent Hunter III/IV sub games. But if the AI doesn't have any pre-existing routines for dealing with "forbidden" sailing angles, it won't work. It would just be a player exploit.