Quote Originally Posted by Slaists View Post
As for the naval changes: sigh... I wished they fixed two things only:

  1. Ships SHOULD NOT be able to sail against the wind. But that 'thing' they're stubbornly leaving in the game for the sake of 'playability' and speed of battle resolution.
  2. Ships shouldn't be able to turn as fast as they can in the game. I've seen it suggested in some naval topic posts that one should always make sure to "swing the ship to the other side" so both sides have a go at the enemy (single target). One can do it in the battle, but that's nonsense in real life tactics terms.
The second problem is a consequence of the first one. If they had modeled sailing more accurately, then ships would turn fairly quickly with the wind astern, and much more slowly when moving the bow across the direction of the wind. A ship with major battle damage to the sails wouldn't be able to get up enough headway to turn across the wind at all, but could still turn with wind astern. The "weather gage" advantage of starting upwind from the enemy would then be tactically meaningful, as it was historically. You wouldn't be able to do these silly turning-in-place tricks to maximize broadsides.

There's another, deeper structural problem that hasn't been mentioned much (I don't think). It's the way the naval battles start out just like the land battles, with the player fleet and enemy fleet heading directly towards each other from opposites sides of the battle space.

In a real sailing environment that would seldom happen. The fleets would be sailing for wind advantage on similar or adjacent tacks (square riggers especially). With the current design, there isn't an opportunity for a traditional "grand battle" to develop with parallel lines pounding away at each other for extended periods, or taking opportunities to break up the battle line (i.e. Trafalgar). The way the battles start out with fleets approaching head-on, is more like the way a fighter plane dogfight develops. It's an initial head-on pass, then maneuver for position, devolving into a chaotic furball.

I don't know how the modders can fix that one, since it looks like a hard-coded aspect of the game design. In a better (IMO) design, there would be sighting of the enemy fleet at longer range, and you'd have time to draw your ships up in whatever formation you wanted, relative to the wind direction, and you'd have some idea of what the enemy fleet could or couldn't do, again relative to the wind direction. It would probably require a larger area for the battles, for one thing. The current design is either a direct copy from the land battles, or just aimed at getting the action started and over with as quickly as possible, so the "action gamers" won't get bored.