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The Problem with the Sails and Anchor due to Waterlogged

petterr44

By petterr44

    • Fixed

Most of us are very happy to see this update, some enjoy going to sea to get valuable resources and come back while others, like me, love building a houseboat and live on the ocean for extended periods of time. In both cases, the ocean offers a new DST play experience full of new/different adventures! 

According to the update log, the “top speed of rowing was reduced so that they are still awesome for moving in tight spaces while still giving the sails the spotlight for open seas”. Here is the problem with this:

If you’ve been sailing in DST, you will be very happy with the new speed of sails but you would still want to be able to navigate through tight spaces using the sails and the anchor without needing the oar. Let me elaborate a bit more. 

Before the update, the boat still drifted slowly in the direction of the open sails when the anchor was down and that was crucial to driving the boat as it allowed you to maneuver your way through sea stacks, salt formations, and sea weeds smoothly, with precision and without risking crashing into them (without ever needing an oar). You could drop the anchor, leave one sail up, and drive/steer from one formation to another knowing that you won’t hit the sea weeds hard enough to get them to attack you or crashing into a formation causing a leak in your boat. And if you needed a bit more movement to reach the next one, all you needed to do is to very briefly lift the anchor and drop it to gain a bit of momentum. In a similar way, driving through sea stacks and by just using the steering wheel and the anchor, you could drive the boat with the anchor down and smoothly navigate through the stacks without ever hitting them all while your character is standing still in place on the boat. By simply placing the anchor and the steering wheel next to each other, all you need to do when you encounter formations is to drop your anchor and then you simply can navigate those formations with the steering wheel (and the occasional very brief lift of the anchor) efficiently, with very high precision and in a very short amount of time. Unfortunately I am unable to take a screen recording to demonstrate this anymore, because now this no longer works.

Following the waterlogged update, the anchor completely stops the boat regardless of how many sails you have left open. Because of this, all of the above is not possible anymore and it also means that to go through tight spaces you have to do it with the oar and you now have to perform 5 actions instead of 1:

  1. Drop the anchor
  2. Close the sails
  3. lift the anchor when the boat is halted
  4. row in one specific direction with an oar
  5. If you gain too much momentum, you have to either run to the other side of the boat and row in the opposite direction to slow down the boat or you have to run to the anchor to drop it and then re-lift it again  (which takes a very long time in the deep sea). 

It's much harder to make curves which means you will hit the formations much more often and you are more likely to make leaks as controlling the speed is not as reliable with an oar. Don’t forget that if you have a houseboat full of structures on the outer edge and other players accompanying you, your path will often be blocked and this will prevent you from reacting with the oar fast enough.

As it currently stands, the sailing experience feels broken when using sails as driving the boat to perform certain tasks like getting salt, barnacles, figs, is now much slower in general as you have to do it with the oar. The reason why I said that you have to do it with the oar is because trying to do it with sails and anchor without the old drifting mechanics will now take even longer than doing it with an oar and became very frustrating so you are better off just using the oar, all of this also completely taking the spotlight away from the sails.

My suggestion would be to allow the boat to drift in the direction set by the steering wheel if you have sails open and the anchor dropped. If you do not want the boat to drift 1 open sail while the anchor is dropped, then at least make it possible with 2 or more open sails.

Steps to Reproduce

All explained above.

  • Like 2
Go to bugs

User Feedback


A developer has marked this issue as fixed. This means that the issue has been addressed in the current development build and will likely be in the next update.
ALCRD

While i somewhat agree.

This fits more as a suggestion / feedback rather than bug report.

So you posted this in wrong section.

Edited by ALCRD

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Josina

Dear Klei,

I strongly agree with petterr44's criticism and suggestion. I'm an avid sailor and love living on a houseboat in DST, and since the update I can't get myself to sail as the new anchor / steering mechanics were essentially broken with the update. For sailing to be an enjoyable experience you should be able to (as you have been) sail smoothly with sails, which is no longer possible. It is incredibly frustrating to keep having to lift and drop the anchor and sails constantly now, and it makes navigating sea stacks, sea weeds or salt much slower, more dangerous, and cumbersome. The only way to cope with this is to switch to the use of an oar, which doesn't make sense. It's like depriving a car of the ability to drive below 20 mph and forcing the driver to push it manually whenever they are not looking to drive fast on a highway. 

It makes sense that the anchor was made stronger as top speeds of the boat have been increased, but it should not have a *complete* stopping power when sails are open, as this both violates physics and makes driving choppy and cumbersome.

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