Low Priority Improving Steam ships

[Robert Nutter]

Very straightforward, then! I'd say that definitely seems a bit much, judging by how large the planks are in relation to cargo capacity. I'll have a play around Still not sure what my original issue was, as I say, perhaps was just taken aback by how much wood repairs used!

EDIT: I also notice the puffs per second parameter. Is it possible to make the smoke thicker/more prolific using this, or vice versa? As burning potentially wet planks or low grade coal would certainly have that effect in an early boiler...

 

[Pieter Boelen]

EDIT: I also notice the puffs per second parameter. Is it possible to make the smoke thicker/more prolific using this, or vice versa? As burning potentially wet planks would certainly have that effect over coal in an early boiler...

Possible, yes. It is this line from AIShip.c:

if(fX != 0 && fY != 0 && fZ != 0)   StackSteam(rCharacter, makeint(abs(stf(GetAttribute(rCharacter,"Ship.Power")))/12.5));

Decrease that 12.5 to get more smoke in general.

Just be aware that more particles = less performance. Especially when your camera gets close to the smoke.
As you can see, at the moment the density of the smoke depends on the engine power setting.
More power, more smoke.

 

[Robert Nutter]

I'll have to have a fiddle with that too! Shouldn't need much more, just a tiny bit perhaps...

I've done some research and a good example is that 40 cords of wood can be burned in approximately 12-14 hours of continuous steaming across 230 miles. This sounds about right to me as they were very dirty runners on wood, so i'm going to trust that figure. A cord is probably equal to about 1.5 units of our planks in-game, judging by what else you can do with them ie build houses, repair hulls etc etc and also their impact on capacity... a plank unit is pretty massive if you think about it. So to around 800 in-game minutes that's 60 planks to be consumed...which gives us 13 minutes (780secs) to one plank within the game's time scalar; that sounds about right to me.

The game time is around 15 real seconds to 1 in-game minute, am I close? If so, that's 4 minutes to 1; so it's 780 divided into 4, which is 195! I'll give this figure a try. Please do correct me if my maths is wrong though, as it's not my strongest point

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Just see how it works in the game. 180 instead of 60 doesn't sound like much of a stretch.
I originally put that 60 because it is a nice round number (1 per minute) and it goes fast enough to SEE that it does something.
It is basically the first number that I thought of and it has never changed since.

 

[Robert Nutter]

Am doing that now! Seems to work fine. I changed that to 195 as my arithmetic was off But I believe this is as close to a balance between good game-play and historical accuracy as we'll get. We need to make the risk of running out of fuel very much a tactical concern for players, especially on steam-only ships, but also giving them enough engine time to make it worth them buying a steamship in the first place.

 

[Robert Nutter]

The way I'm finding it, having used it in game, is that it seems to last forever to begin with but once you actually get into a good battle, they start shooting down...probably because you're occupied so time seems to move faster. Either way, I think consider that if you're doing multiple battles, even 100 planks will start going down very fast even at this slower rate. It makes it more historically accurate in that you don't need to continually stop for wood if you have a good stockpile...and the fact we have sails too on the frigates only adds weight to this. It also makes steam much more useful in direct sail as (if you so choose to), you can avoid tacking at critical heading changes etc.



As for smoke, I've found 7.5 to be a more realistic figure...not too thick not too dissipated; it's also black as opposed to grey, which is far more accurate for coal (and looks cooler with wood too!). You can almost reach out and touch it! I don't experience any noticeable framerate drop, even when looking straight into it, compared with 12.5, though obviously everyone's system responds differently to particles. I'm just thinking, as early 20th century liners and battleships spat out HUGE amounts of smoke in photographs....and this is over 100 years earlier! I think they would've run pretty filthy, on coal or wood. Fume density also depends heavily on quality with coal, and I doubt the caribbean would've had access to much, if any, decent coal. It would've spent months coming across the Atlantic at best, at worst (and more likely) it would've been from North American coalfields which at that time lacked the increasingly sophisticated mine infrastructure of England and Wales.

Am I looking into this too much?

 

[Pieter Boelen]

195 and 7.5 it is then. We'll see what happens.