Simply adding 'more sails!' isn't the way to make a ship faster, but is a good way to weigh things down and sink yourself.

A large collection of clipper ships would beg to disagree.

My gut reaction is to try and model the wind, but first I'd try the game without it and see if it's fun. The reason why it might be better without wind is because of the infinite ocean. In realistic* games like Sid Meyer's Pirates!, there are lots of reasons to sail into the wind. But if there's always something interesting down-wind, why would I sail into it?

- Eck

By the way, the game is already looking nice. Good job.

It depends on how you view the space that the player is navigating. Is it an abstract world map, where the player's unit is more like an icon representing multiple ships or what have you*? Like a JRPG where the player is travelling around the land map represented as one character, but is actually multiple characters. If so, then I kind of lean towards abstracting the wind out, so that it just alters the players speed.

On the other hand, if combat occurs directly on that map instead of loading to a separate 'battle map', then yes, I think modelling the wind with more complexity is more appropriate.

* (or Pirates! i think would be another good example of being an abstracted world map, or Mount and Blade, etc.)

FYI There's no abstract map. It's all happening in one 3d world.

My gut reaction is to try and model the wind, but first I'd try the game without it and see if it's fun. The reason why it might be better without wind is because of the infinite ocean. In realistic* games like Sid Meyer's Pirates!, there are lots of reasons to sail into the wind. But if there's always something interesting down-wind, why would I sail into it?

- Eck

By the way, the game is already looking nice. Good job.

That's actually a very good point. I hadn't thought of that.
To make people Want to sail into the wind I'm thinking of the following options:
- Return to NPC questgivers to get your reward
- Wind keeps slowly changing direction and intensity (this seems obvious)

- Like in Fallout 3/NV/4, I can show nearby points of interest like towns, or perhaps treasure.

Do you have any more suggestions?

Also, judging by the replies in this thread, people seem to want to sail more than I thought. I'm definitely going to add the wind mechanic. Maybe I'll add the AI, maybe I'll add the option to turn it off. Thanks for the ideas guys!

Pirates! is in my top 10 games of all time. Of course people want to sail! (Also if you haven't played it yet, you definitely should)

http://store.steampowered.com/app/3920/

I like randomizing the wind direction. In Pirates!, the wind direction was random, but you're in the Caribbean so the wind tended towards East. In my mind, I was thinking of a trend towards east in your game as well. I think getting rid of the bias to easterly winds would be more fun.

- Eck

If your game world is large enough, you could consider implementing Trade Winds-like loops of prevailing wind direction. That way a player who mostly sails downwind would eventually tour a very large loop of the environment.

I would definitely have the wind and have the AI as an option.

I think the AI should he presented in the same way to the choice of manual or automatic gearbox in a racing arcade game. It gives you more control but isn't necessarily required to be able to play the game in its entirety.

Note that this does mean you'll have to test the entire game in auto navigation mode and in manual helm mode... Is this a good term for the settings?

i just want to ask, in what are you making that game? and what forces do you use to calculate physics model, because i have problems with calculating proper forces for my game.

Simply adding 'more sails!' isn't the way to make a ship faster, but is a good way to weigh things down and sink yourself.

A large collection of clipper ships would beg to disagree.

Yes, but those were the result of hundreds of years of refinement and engineering progress, and there was a little more work to those ships than simply adding another stick of wood and whatever canvas could be found.

In the games I worked on we went a midway, you can sail straight towards the wind, but it's like <10% of speed. but you can also zig-zag and you're way faster. to support the smarter way, we've made the AI on purpose travel the stupid way, thus player with a little bit of mind can easy take advantage. we also had special ammo that was aimed at dealing damage to parts of the ship, sails were one of this part.

the ships had over-sized flags and the battle field had clouds floating above the sea battles to hint the importance of wind. In the overview 'traveling' map the wind had no influence to make the movement more predictable/deterministic. randomness adds to a simulation, but players often feel like it's random punishment as it is not following clear rules from a strategic point of view.

Simply adding 'more sails!' isn't the way to make a ship faster, but is a good way to weigh things down and sink yourself.

A large collection of clipper ships would beg to disagree.

Yes, but those were the result of hundreds of years of refinement and engineering progress, and there was a little more work to those ships than simply adding another stick of wood and whatever canvas could be found.

There's no doubt naval architects have a rich history of perfecting designs. However, since I really want my game to be a game, and not a simulator, I'll definitely be simplifying a lot of this. In my opinion:
- More sails means more surface to catch the wind, unless the sails are blocked by other sails.
- More surface to catch the wind means more forward force.
- Square rigged sails would produce most forward force, and therefore most capable of running.
- Fore and Aft rigged sails would produce less forward force, but since they can swivel, they're much better at reaching.

i just want to ask, in what are you making that game? and what forces do you use to calculate physics model, because i have problems with calculating proper forces for my game.

I'm building this game in VB.Net using the XNA framework. I don't use an engine because this is a learning experience for me. This means I have to calculate all forces myself. For most of the game, I can get away without actually using physics. For instance, I have a wind direction variable and wind force variable. Those two together control the size and speed of the waves on the ocean. If you want to know anything more in-depth, please PM me and I'll try to help you with whatever I can. If you do PM me, please tell me what software/framework/engine/language you use to create your game, and what the problem is.

In the games I worked on we went a midway, you can sail straight towards the wind, but it's like <10% of speed. but you can also zig-zag and you're way faster. to support the smarter way, we've made the AI on purpose travel the stupid way, thus player with a little bit of mind can easy take advantage. we also had special ammo that was aimed at dealing damage to parts of the ship, sails were one of this part.

the ships had over-sized flags and the battle field had clouds floating above the sea battles to hint the importance of wind. In the overview 'traveling' map the wind had no influence to make the movement more predictable/deterministic. randomness adds to a simulation, but players often feel like it's random punishment as it is not following clear rules from a strategic point of view.

Good suggestion! Right now my flags and water all follow the wind direction. I still have to update the cloud system to take wind into account. I thought about having some kind of wind indicator on my UI, but I think I'll just keep it at flags, water and clouds.