Sailing 101 to 301 - A Crash Course

[Barberouge]

Max speed is in knots

Acceleration is in knots/sec

Deceleration is in -knots/sec

Turning (Slow) is in °/sec

Turning (Fast) is in °/sec

Turning Accel is in °/sec²


What is Turning Decel in ?

[Remus]

Originally Posted by Barberouge What is Turning Decel in ?

Knots/sec

More accurately it should be the maximum deceleration due to turning. At least, I think that's what it is, but there are loads of hidden stats with turning and FLS have never published the mechanism.

[Barberouge]

I still don't understand it.

How could a knot/sec value be 5 times higher than normal deceleration ?



Here are the explainations from the guide:

* Deceleration—essentially, the rate at which the ship can slow down: the speed a ship loses when it turns or lowers its sails.

* Turning Decel—ships are slowed by turning. The Turning Decel is an indicator of the minimum a ship is slowed by turning.

And from the sailing 101:

* Deceleration - how fast you lose speed

* Turning Decel - the minimum deceleration suffered when turning

[Remus]

Originally Posted by Barberouge I still don't understand it. How could a knot/sec value be 5 times higher than normal deceleration ?

Ah, good point.

However, I think the mechanism works roughly as follows:

• You have full sails. This basically gives you the Acceleration value, although as this is multiplied by some function of ship speed, if you are at Max Speed you don't actually accelerate.
• You turn. This gives you in addition to the Acceleration value you have already the Turning Decel Value. As these have opposite effect, one is subtracted from the other. If you end up with a negative acceleration, your ship will slow down.
• If Turning Decel is lower than Acceleration then you will always have positive acceleration and you will not slow down when turning at full sails. That is, you will not slow down due to turning, but you might slow down due to polars.
• If you hand sails at the same time as turning you will slow down quicker than you would have done if you just hand sails.

However, reluctant as I am to say so, I think Taelorn made a mistake and that Turning Decel is the maximum deceleration suffered when turning.

[Barberouge]

So Turning Decel would be a factor of the deceleration in knots/sec suffered by turning at max turn rate (depending on the speed) ?

Then why would they say that Deceleration is "the speed a ship loses when it turns or lowers its sails" ?

And if Acceleration, Deceleration and Turning Deceleration are all factors of final acceleration, how could the Turning Decel be so high compared to Acceleration ? I don't feel that we decelerate so much quicker when we turn than when we don't. Why wouldn't they have picked up a constant easier to compare with Acceleration ?

[Remus]

I don't have answers to your questions as the Devs have chosen not to publish either the mechansim or the list of values they use for manoeuvrability.

This also makes testing manoeuvrability almost impossible - myself, I have only ever tested in a straight line, except for one interesting (and successful) attempt at reaching the absolute turning cap in a 'Currituck' Periauger, then spinning it round in a circle and noticing the considerable changes in rate of turn due to different polar speed values.

However, a couple of quick tests on Testbed and Antigua reveals my earlier post appears to be mistaken. I still think that Turning Decel is a linear deceleration (and that Taelorn's post supports this viewpoint), but Acceleration does not have the effect on Turning I attributed to it. Most ships on Testbed have 75% Acceleration compared to that on Live. If my earlier post were correct this would mean that ships would decelerate more as they turned on Testbed, but my testing shows them to be much the same. Also I was using a Halifax Fallback, one of the few ships whose Turning Decel is lower than its Acceleration. yet the ship still decelerated, even when turning towards a higher polar speed.

Would anyone (a Dev perhaps) care to give us a more authorative answer?