Boats are STILL too slow to control

[ZombieDupe 467]

After fiddling with boat mechanics quite a bit, I'm starting to realize that even though it is better and faster there are things that let down sailing that still make it annoying as ever. What I mean is that even though travelling with them is fine now, controlling direction is a nightmare regardless. You almost cannot use them for any effective and interesting sea combat because they are too slow to turn with sails, anchor and reel, that is to say too slow to change direction, too slow to stop and get going again, not to mention the time taken between changing sails and anchor (eliminated with multiple players, but there can often be lack of communication with control, btw I love the idea of coordinating sea combat with other players while the boat is moving, that's why I'm actually making this thread). Sea combat and sailing itself could be so much more interesting if we could have quicker control. Here are some easy fixes to the problem.

* Anchor should raise anywhere from 0.2 to 0.6 seconds after you clicked to reel it in and have not let go, depending on the depth of the water you're in if you want to keep that neat trick (or add a more advanced version of the anchor that does this, in which case some way of removing the anchor without leaking the boat would be nice).

* Anchor should also deploy anywhere from 0.2 to 0.6 seconds.

* When deployed, anchor should stop the boat completely, no matter what, even if you have 10 sails strapped and ready to move the boat.

* Sails should be able to make a 180 turn in 1 or 2 seconds (2 for regular sails, 1 for malbatross feather sails)

There are also very limited options for weapons with this kind of approach, really only Winona's catapults, which take up a lot of space along with the generator and the shootius really isn't practical, since it's so costly and you can't remove it without destroy it (if it dropped when dying instead of being completely destroyed that would be great). Melee just wouldn't be anywhere near as effective with the idea of moving boats during combat, only situationally. Like the aforementioned two, you can have stationary ranged weapons without destroying melee combat, because melee allows you to move on land and deal extra damage when enemy gets close to boat, while the stationary weaponry will have the reach more specifically on certain land locations or on a moving boat.

[__IvoCZE__ 10565]

No oars???

[Hornete 15599]

I think the numbers where they are now are fine, changing them further I think would be the wrong way to go about things and making boats more interesting the way they are now. Something I've really been wanting a lot is mobs that help you with actions on the boat, as a sort of replacement for players if you're solo. I'd really love to see some mobs, existing or brand new help you raise/lower anchors, heave sails, or even warn you of on coming obstacles.

I think the current "clunkiness" of the boats adds to them, if that makes sense. I dont think they should be super controllable to the point that it's just WASD movement, I like moving around my boat taking care of the many actions needed, if you're not aware, the steering speed of boats depend on the current velocity of the boat. The faster the boat currently is, the less steering speed, and I like that a lot personally, I do some neat things with lowering my anchor, then steering as my boat is slower, raising anchor slightly, letting it fall again, steer again and etc. It feels rewarding to me personally, and just having steering be as fast as 1 second would be kind of lame in my opinion.

Also do you use oars? They are AMAZING in controllability.

[ZombieDupe 467]

9 minutes ago, Hornete said:

I think the numbers where they are now are fine, changing them further I think would be the wrong way to go about things and making boats more interesting the way they are now. Something I've really been wanting a lot is mobs that help you with actions on the boat, as a sort of replacement for players if you're solo. I'd really love to see some mobs, existing or brand new help you raise/lower anchors, heave sails, or even warn you of on coming obstacles.

That will not fix the slow deployment, reel-in (especially the reed-in) and the slow sail turning of the boats.

9 minutes ago, Hornete said:

I think the current "clunkiness" of the boats adds to them, if that makes sense. I dont think they should be super controllable to the point that it's just WASD movement, I like moving around my boat taking care of the many actions needed, if you're not aware, the steering speed of boats depend on the current velocity of the boat. The faster the boat currently is, the less steering speed, and I like that a lot personally, I do some neat things with lowering my anchor, then steering as my boat is slower, raising anchor slightly, letting it fall again, steer again and etc. It feels rewarding to me personally, and just having steering be as fast as 1 second would be kind of lame in my opinion.

Also do you use oars? They are AMAZING in controllability.

I also love the clunkiness, but at the moment they are too clunky to do almost anything with. It is still station your boat and do combat while it's stationed or just have it to travel elsewhere. You would still, rather do anything on land than sea, even though there is potential to like both for the way it all works. Almost none will love sailing for anything and Klei won't be able to implement any meaningful content if the boats stay as they are. Even if they have speed up and slowdown (deceleration/acceleration), a moment of animations playing for the anchor, it should not be anything other than brief or you can do nothing interesting. Limiting potential of content for the sake of extra realism is one of the dumbest thing you could do as a games designer.

11 minutes ago, __IvoCZE__ said:

No oars???

Oars are fine in my opinion, maybe the regular oar is a bit too slow, the driftwood oar could be repurposed to just last longer? I don't think there's much you could change with the way they work, but convince me otherwise if you have some ideas.

Actually scratch that, that is exactly what should be done with them. Regular oars should last longer and row faster, and the drift wood oar should last a lot longer, maybe a little added speed. There is also the malbatross bill I forgot about, that could maybe just have no durability at all since it's also a crafting component for things and at that point, long-term fighting Malbatross just so you can get the bill again to use as an ore feels like a chore.

[Well-met 7079]

Absolutely not ever since they reworked the physics.

The problem (and likely yours) is the camera distance is too short to react in time to obstacles, to the point players nearly always navigate with the automap opened at all times

 

[Guille6785 2725]

I still think oars are too slow tbh

[SonicDen220 3367]

Yeah, I agree, I'd really like if lowering/raising anchors and sails and rotating the mast were faster.

[Duck986 2841]

just dont swim lol

[reallychina 867]

I also feel like the anchor is too weak and slow and sails are too slow to steer.

 

The oars are very good now and the control with them is great. Not to mention they are now craftable with no station.

[Shosuko 5270]

I think boats are in a good spot right now for early game use, but the late game fully built boats need some work.  I think an upgraded anchor / steering similar to the sail would do a lot.  Quicker turning and anchor lift / drop times would do a lot to fix it.

Something to reveal a larger area on the map when you're boating (either naturally b/c you're on a boat, or maybe a sail topper / crows next / pirate hat idk) would help too.  Usually when I'm exploring by boat I'm not close enough to the shore to catch every biome I cross unless I'm hugging the shore line.

Something kinda tangential I'd really like to see is structure collision being removed while on a boat.  Structure collision really restricts what we can put on a boat, makes it tougher to be on a boat with multiple people, deal with fully rigged boats, and combat on boats like for sharks that jump on you, squids, cookie cutters, etc.  With structure collision removed while on boats we'd be a lot more free for boat basing, multiplay, and combat !

[Nettalie 1640]

The only part I somewhat really agree with is the anchors being slow to raise, but other than that I don't personally think boats currently have many issues. Oars can bring in a lot of the maneuverability one might desire unless you only use regular wood oars which caaaan be a tiny bit slow, but even then I feel it's more than enough.

As for melee combat I'm not sure how that could really be improved within the context of the ocean without entirely changing what boats are currently, since I feel like at a certain point boats could become way less interesting to play with if they become too controllable, if that makes any sense. Having more reasonable ranged options would certainly be nice for this, like as you said a sort of stationary projectile thing like a canon or maybe if some of the ranged weapons were to be reworked it would really help, though in the case of that last one that could also apply to the rest of the game since currently the only really consistently powerful options for combat are melee.

[Friendly Grass 679]

9 hours ago, Well-met said:

The problem is the camera distance is too short to react in time to obstacles,

Do you have the Seafaring Camera enabled?

[HowlVoid 8683]

I think we need more types of boats.

A smaller boat that you can pick up and gets a bigger boost from oars for example, maybe one which you can't place structures. As well as boats with built in structures that don't take up room (Like a dragonfly boat that doesn't catch on fire and with a grated furnace pit in the middle of the boat that you can walk over).

[Filip_G 64]

23 hours ago, ZombieDupe said:

* Anchor should raise anywhere from 0.2 to 0.6 seconds after you clicked to reel it in and have not let go, depending on the depth of the water you're in if you want to keep that neat trick (or add a more advanced version of the anchor that does this, in which case some way of removing the anchor without leaking the boat would be nice).

* Anchor should also deploy anywhere from 0.2 to 0.6 seconds.

* When deployed, anchor should stop the boat completely, no matter what, even if you have 10 sails strapped and ready to move the boat.

* Sails should be able to make a 180 turn in 1 or 2 seconds (2 for regular sails, 1 for malbatross feather sails)

That´s all? Nothing else?

Sanity should drain slower?

Grass should be greener?

Spiders should be more spidery?

Deerclops should be more friendly?

...

Klei did an awesome job in making the game quite realistic, which makes it challenging, If you find it too challenging try searching in steam workshop, maybe you´ll find some Compromising mod for noobs...

[Cr4zyFl4mes 576]

15 hours ago, Friendly Grass said:

Do you have the Seafaring Camera enabled?

 I haven't been playing for a while, did they add this recently or is it a mod?

[Friendly Grass 679]

Just now, Cr4zyFl4mes said:

 I haven't been playing for a while, did they add this recently or is it a mod?

Configuration option in the game. When you're on a boat it will position the camera relative to the boat instead of the player and will let you see more in the direction the boat is going.

I don't remember if it's enabled by default. I think it is.

[ALCRD 2667]

Even with seafaring camera i still crash into stuff while exploring cause i can't usually turn / stop on time.

Even with just 2 sails active.

[Shosuko 5270]

5 minutes ago, ALCRD said:

Even with seafaring camera i still crash into stuff while exploring cause i can't usually turn / stop on time.

Even with just 2 sails active.

Yeah exploring is very dangerous, and seafaring cam doesn't do very much for that.  What would help is a larger reveal radius on the map so we can see dangers further out - or quicker turning speed, and anchor drop / raise.

Currently I use an oar to explore and only use sails once I've charted where I'm going which helps, but means a fully rigged boat is end-game only.

[HowlVoid 8683]

1 hour ago, Shosuko said:

Currently I use an oar to explore and only use sails once I've charted where I'm going which helps, but means a fully rigged boat is end-game only.

THIS. Exploring the ocean in the early game is such a slow slog. 

This game needs the spyglass or some variant of it. Make it a bottle, pig skin and some rope and it would be such a handy early game tool.

[Filip_G 64]

Sailing is very easy if you give it some time to learn the mechanics, cos even when you are sailing with 2 sails you have enough time to stop completely or change direction when you spot any obstacle. When you just drop the anchor, the speed of the boat decreases drastically and you have time to lift up the sails to stop or just turn them to change direction. If you really sux in this, you could use oars too, helps a lot (if you know how to time them ofc). I have seafaring camera disabled so I can´t imagine why are you have these problems... are you playing DST on tamagotchi or what?

[__IvoCZE__ 10565]

On 3/21/2022 at 7:55 PM, ZombieDupe said:

Spoiler

 

Oars are fine in my opinion, maybe the regular oar is a bit too slow, the driftwood oar could be repurposed to just last longer? I don't think there's much you could change with the way they work, but convince me otherwise if you have some ideas.

Actually scratch that, that is exactly what should be done with them. Regular oars should last longer and row faster, and the drift wood oar should last a lot longer, maybe a little added speed. There is also the malbatross bill I forgot about, that could maybe just have no durability at all since it's also a crafting component for things and at that point, long-term fighting Malbatross just so you can get the bill again to use as an ore feels like a chore.

 

 

No(t using) oars???

[Cheggf 8678]

10 hours ago, Shosuko said:

What would help is a larger reveal radius on the map so we can see dangers further out

I find swapping between the map and the boat to be annoying. Maybe an item that expands the reveal radius and either zooms the seafaring camera out a bit more or adds some UI element to show you upcoming danger, like the magnifying glass from Smash Bros?

If those are too moddy just a bigger reveal radius would also be good. Maybe it could be a crows nest mast upgrade and it's crafted with a crow who sits in it. Would fit with the funny pun style the game has going for it.

[QuartzBeam 8116]

9 hours ago, HowlVoid said:

THIS. Exploring the ocean in the early game is such a slow slog.

Is it? I've found early game, oar-based sailing to be a ton of fun.

37 minutes ago, Cheggf said:

Maybe it could be a crows nest mast upgrade and it's crafted with a crow who sits in it.

There is, in fact, a mod on the workshop that does just this, though it's incomplete and generally pretty rough around the edges. The crows has a little speech bubble to warn you about nearby, but off-screen points of interest (e.g. sea weeds, bottles, etc.).

I think the an official version could just use the same icons the game already uses to point to nearby players (and Wagstaff). At least for points of interest.

Warning players about obstacles would be considerably trickier, because if you are heading towards a cluster of Sea Stacks, you certainly don't want 30 fricking indicators popping up and occupying half your screen just for daring to be in the general vicinity of those sea stacks. Nor do you want warnings to pop up for solitary sea stacks that you can easily avoid.

It would have to be a somewhat more sophisticated system, such as giving you a single, generic "slow down" indicator if you are heading towards a sufficiently dense cluster of sea stacks.

[Cheggf 8678]

18 minutes ago, QuartzBeam said:

Is it? I've found early game, oar-based sailing to be a ton of fun.

There is, in fact, a mod on the workshop that does just this, though it's incomplete and generally pretty rough around the edges. The crows has a little speech bubble to warn you about nearby, but off-screen points of interest (e.g. sea weeds, bottles, etc.).

I think the an official version could just use the same icons the game already uses to point to nearby players (and Wagstaff). At least for points of interest.

Warning players about obstacles would be considerably trickier, because if you are heading towards a cluster of Sea Stacks, you certainly don't want 30 fricking indicators popping up and occupying half your screen just for daring to be in the general vicinity of those sea stacks. Nor do you want warnings to pop up for solitary sea stacks that you can easily avoid.

It would have to be a somewhat more sophisticated system, such as giving you a single, generic "slow down" indicator if you are heading towards a sufficiently dense cluster of sea stacks.

Could give every sea stack an individual indicator but if enough are close enough to each other replace them with a single larger indicator of a group of sea stacks.

Also what do you mean you don't want an indicator for a single sea stack? The whole point of the indicators is to let the boat go fast over unknown waters and a single sea stack can prevent that. If you're going slow enough to avoid one stack you're probably slow enough to be able to drop anchor in response to a group of them. 

[QuartzBeam 8116]

8 minutes ago, Cheggf said:

Could give every sea stack an individual indicator but if enough are close enough to each other replace them with a single larger indicator of a group of sea stacks.

I... guess?

Tbh, I imagine (/like to think) if Klei ever did implement such a structure/item, the crow would be a touch more vague with what it was seeing (being incapable of speech and all that) and we would get indicators like a skull for danger, and a glint for bottles.