In Sid Meiers Pirates! (2004 i think) the wind was really annoying. There was always a hassle going east (wind was most of the time coming from the east). I even avoided some parts of the map (gameworld) since getting back from there was so annoying.

If your player can just continue to the same direction all the time, this doesnt matter much, but if player sometimes "goes back" (to visit towns/islands already visited) this must be taken into consideration.

- Maybe make wind direction change more over time so a player can always navigate to where he/she wants to go.

- Make wind less realistic (sailing into the wind is slower but NOT almost zero, or make zigzagging give the ship a fair enough speed).

Plz dont annoy the player to make the game more "realistic", its never a good idea.

Plz dont annoy the player to make the game more "realistic", its never a good idea.

On the other hand, don't make it so unrealistic that the suspension of disbelief is broken, as it would be for anyone else who has actually sailed a boat in their life if the game lets one sail straight into the wind instead of "beating" (tacking back and forth) upwind. Without this "disadvantage" you'd might as well not have a sailing game or even specify a wind direction at all. Again, if you are making a sailing game, it should have actual sailing in it. It sounds like OP is planning to distinguish between running and reaching, already, too, which suggests that some amount of realism IS the goal here. If OP plans to have any kind of ship-to-ship combat, wind direction and the inability to sail upwind would be hugely important to tactics just as it is in real life. Therefore, I suggest that making the wind direction variable is a better solution. Not only is it more realistic, but it gives even more opportunity for tactical thinking - handling wind shifts is super important in modern sailboat racing, never mind naval combat under sail!

Or, alternative solution, OP could have realism settings that let players choose how they want to play the way some other naval sims do.

Personally, I would never knowingly buy a game that lets me sail upwind with no option to turn that off. I have a copy of Assassin's Creed: Black Flag that came with my Xbox One and while I'm pleased with the assassin gameplay (mostly), the ship-to-ship combat feels so unlike actual sailing that I've been avoiding those bits.

In a sailing game you might be simulating issuing orders to a sailing master who WONT destroy his ship (and just wont do things that might) and thus your orders get limited by that reality (wont keel over, but the order wont be executed to do fully what you want).

Sailing was about thinking ahead to be in the right position/heading either in relation to land or to other ships (or both) to be able to make use of the wind to carry out your goal. For distance travel it was matching the wind to eventually achieve the distance and position you want and often requiring a sequence of moves (ie- tacking)

Really realistic sailing also includes compensating for uncertainty of the wind conditions and trying to stay in a flexible state when possible.

--

An old quote I remember about some of the best sailing ships ever built - the Clippers, whose Captains LIKED storms because it meant that their ships could sail all the faster (Good captains, good ships and good sailors manning them)

I think so long as tacking is automatic, the suspension of belief is upheld.

E.g. you want to sail upwind? your boat moves in S-shaped curves, and there's nothing you can do to stop it behaving that way. I don't really see how anyone would want to do this type of movement by hand as it would get annoying very fast.

E.g. you want to sail upwind? your boat moves in S-shaped curves, and there's nothing you can do to stop it behaving that way. I don't really see how anyone would want to do this type of movement by hand as it would get annoying very fast.

I think that you may be misinterpreting how tacking works in practice.

Sail boats have very limited acceleration, and when they lose speed, they drift downwind. Tacking (apart from roll-tacking a small racing dinghy) kills pretty much all your speed, so repeatedly 'zig-zagging' is rarely an efficient way to get anywhere, and would only be used when tacking up a narrow channel, or the like.

On the open ocean, it's not uncommon to hold the same tack for multiple *days*, before tacking back. Even sailing between closeby islands in the caribbean, we'd often take just two or theee tacks of several hours each.

Sail boats have very limited acceleration, and when they lose speed, they drift downwind. Tacking (apart from roll-tacking a small racing dinghy) kills pretty much all your speed, so repeatedly 'zig-zagging' is rarely an efficient way to get anywhere, and would only be used when tacking up a narrow channel, or the like.

On the open ocean, it's not uncommon to hold the same tack for multiple *days*, before tacking back. Even sailing between closeby islands in the caribbean, we'd often take just two or theee tacks of several hours each.

Many people (including me) are used to seeing the excessive tacking of America's Cup and similar racing, where one needs to remain on course and close to the opponent and the boats are designed to lose little speed.

Your observation suggests that the best user interface for tacking might be the completely explicit one of changing course. AI assistance could still play a role in easy navigation to adjust the course depending on varying wind strength and direction.

Level of realism can be hard to discuss as theoretically as in this thread (you need to test it in your own game-enviroment). In general however, its not certain that a feature makes the game more fun just becouse it's "how it works in real life".

I do agree however, that if you do want to convey a certain feeling (in this case the feeling of actually sailing a lumbering ship) some features may be required. But try to simplify less fun aspects of it to fit the scope of the game. If there is lot of other things in the game (exploring, fighting, looting, developing your ship and skills/character) you may need to limit other aspects (for example hardcore-sailing-simulation stuff).

Having "alot of everything" may make the game unfun to play (or make it impossibly for you as a developer to complete, which is also unfun).

But some wind mechanics seems fair to include! Limit punishing/unfun aspects of it (such as the one in "Pirates!")

I think Pirates! is a great example of sailing gameplay that is quite unrealistic, but still has the basic principles that make sailing.... sailing

Totally removing the importance of wind direction would break the illusion of sailing completely for anyone that know anything about it me

Yes it could even have one or two more things to keep track of (compared to 2004 Pirates!) BUT plz leave out annoying things like predominant wind direction (or let the player skip time until a more favorable wind direction (for the direction the player wants to go) appears).

Thats my 50 cents at least.