Battle for Middle Earth 2 1.06

Living on the coast of Maine, USA and having worked on traditional sailing ships from Maine to the Caribbean, I have come to appreciate the strategy that was needed to win naval battles during the age of sailing ships. The Patrick O'Brien novels of sailing British Navy give wonderful descriptions of the tactics of how to engage in battle, always by having the right approach to using the wind to your advantage and to avoid being its victim.

From my glimpses of the naval battle demo put out for BFME 2, I am very concerned that a wonderful opportunity for strategy and skillful micro has been missed by having the sailing ships over simplified. It appears that they move like magic carpets, gently getting under wiegh and coming up to speed and making a straight course to the waypoint commanded by the player. The sails are animated to be full of wind at all times but when several ships are together, like during the fight between the corsairs and elven ships, the wind seems to be coming out of at least two directions depending on the ship. Ship speed seems to be constant without regard to what course the ships are headed. Sudden stops happen when a ship arrives at its commanded waypoint. The ships behave most un-shiplike.

If you have ever sailed before, you already have a basic instict of how a sailing ship behaves. For the benefit of those that have never sailed, I will attempt a brief description of how sailing ships behave.

1) WIND DIRECTION LIMITS A SHIPS COURSE. No sailing ship can sail directly into the wind. The sails use the wind to push the ship. Sails can be plowed directly by the wind (when sailing dead down wind), much like a parachute, or can create "lift" by creating suction in front of the sail (when sailing across the wind or heading into but not directly at the wind) much like an air plane wing.

With a clock serving as a compass, if the wind is coming from 12 o'clock, square rigged ships, like the elven ships, can sail at decent speed as close as 68 degrees to the wind or between two and three or nine and ten o'clock. Lateen rigged ships like the corsairs could sail closer into the wind, perhaps as close as 57 degrees or ten or two o'clock due to the design of lateen sails. Because of this ability to sail closer to the wind, pirates throughout history have selected fore and aft rigs like the lateen and later the schooner because they can out manouver another ship that is square rigged. In order to sail a ship in the direction of the wind, you need to tack or change course to bring the wind from one side of the ship to another. By zig zagging as close to the wind as possible, you can claw your way to windward.

There is a great link below which compares the lateen and square rigged sailing performance and the diagram about tacking to windward.

http://nabataea.net/sailing.html

2) SAILING SPEED CHANGES WITH COURSE. A ship will generally sail faster when it is going down wind than when heading into the wind. The elven ship, being square rig, would be able to go very fast down wind and slower at a greater angle to the wind. The corsair, being lateen rigged, would go slower directly down wind but faster at an angle to the wind. When any ship is sailing as close to being into the wind as possible, it would going its slowest.

The strength of the wind will also affect speed. To a limit, the more wind, the faster a ship goes.

3) SHIPS WITH SAILS ARE ALWAYS IN MOTION. With two exceptions, when there is wind blowing, a sailing ship is always moving. There are no brakes to stop and fight at will. The exceptions are by anchoring (or tying up to dock) or by heaving to.

Anchoring is what ships do when they want to stay put but raising anchor takes some time so getting under wiegh again is delayed. There are instances in naval battle history when sailing ships have moved in to engage the enemy and dropped anchor to stay put and finish them off. When at anchor, a ship will point directly into the wind. When tied up to a dock, a ship will be broadside out to defend.


Heaving to is a way of setting sails so that one sail is opposing another and the net affect is to cancel out any motion. It takes a little time set the sail and to actually slow down to a stop but it is effective. Heaving to was a common technique during historical naval battles. Square rigged ships are best at heaving to and when stopped can actually slowly pivot around to engage the enemy with a broadside. Lateen rig ships like the corsairs are much more limited.

One form of heaving to is to actually sail into the wind and stall the ship. Gradually the ship will come to a stop and wil eventually sail backwards as the wind pushes it back. It will often fall off to one side or the other on its own or by choice by setting the sails.

By cleverly exploiting the behavior of ship handling in motion and lack of motion, you can take advantage of a situation and give your opponent a full broadside without them being able to retaliate.

4) A RUDDER ONLY WORKS WHEN A SHIP IS IN MOTION. I noticed that in the BFME Naval demo, corsairs are taking hard turns before the ship is really in motion. A jet ski can do that but a sailing ship can only respond to rudder commands when there is water moving past the rudder. If you are setting sail, you need to get the ship moving forward in any direction then you can actually get the rudder to change the heading of the ship. The speed of changing direction increases with the speed the ship is moving through the water. If a ship is moving slowly, it turns slowly.

There are some cases where the sails be set to help make a ship turn. Square rigged ships like those of the elves can actually pivot in place by setting sails but only slowly. A lateen rig like the corsairs really can't pivit in place. To make a tight U turn, a ship needs to moving at a fair rate of speed with a good about of momentum.

Heck with a bit of momentum, any ship can turn and move directly into the wind until the ships stalls. Using momentum is a great way of catching your opponent off guard and sneaking in against the wind to deliver a fatal broadside.

This problem of no rudder with no motion has big consequences in naval battle. By understanding what your opponent can and can't do in manouevering thier ships, you can take decisive advantage.

WHAT DOES REAL SAILING HAVE TO DO WITH BFME 2?

I think that by adding the above four behavoirs of sailing ships will add a lot to naval battle play. I'm certainly not advocating making ships so difficult to command and manouver in battle that it would be as hopeless as Mumakils in a hockey rink.

For those of you that have sailed, sail handling becomes intuitive quite quickly.

The real question is what is reasonable for EA to program to make a playable sailing ship.

Wind direction and intensity would need to be a weather feature that would be added. It could variable as in real life to add interest to battles. The same body of water could serve so many different strategies with the different wind directions. Heck, for that matter, what about water currents? A river mouth has a lot of current around as do islands close to shore.

The various ships would have different charactistics of speed and course with relation to the wind speed and direction with corsairs being able to sail closer to the wind and tack more quickly. Each ship can heave to better or worse with elven ships being able to pivot and manouver at rest by adjusting sails.

However the physics of sailing ships can be programed, I think the end result would be well worth it and make the game much more fun to play.

WOW, you definitely know a lot about sailing, i agree that it will add more strategy having the wind in battles but naval battles is not the top priority in BFME2

I was just wondering about wind the other day. I think it would be a great strategy option (and a few powers could be made of controlling the wind).

A great article.

I've not been into sailing much myself, but i've read lots of books dealing with warships of many vintages, especially sails. It would be godlike if they could include all aspects mentioned, but i dare say that would be an entire game unto itself with the amount of work that would need to go into it.

Y like your idea but .. well just as artic said it needs to be a whole game and nobody is rlly!!! interested in naval me personally dont care 4 the naval i think it just stand in the way and btw wow what a big article you know much aboat ya yaarrr matie

A very good post/topic there,mate

All that is mentioned above is an exellent edition to the game with effects of weather like Lighting,Rain,Wind,ect...

It would be great if EA do add these things that are mentioned.

I agree that naval battle could be a game unto itself. Not being a programer, much less a programer familiar with developing BFME 2, I don't know what is do-able without major work.

I would welcome anything about real sailing behavior that could be incorporated.

I'm just worried that I'll be bummed if I play naval battles in BFME 2 and it just looks so silly the way the ships are moving. I realize that is only my limation, however, and probably anyone else that sails. Most people would never notice.

One easy thing to incorporate would be gradual starts and stops so that ships are mostly in motion at all times. That would be realistic enough for me if I had to settle for less.

I would like to see naval battles enhanced with whatever can be incorporated without major reprogramming. The opportunity to use good strategy and skilled micro would be worth it.

Right now, the major stategic idea is you can only attack with a broadside from only one side. Thats important but limited.

What about ramming? What happens when boats hit each other or pile up on each other?

Your idea is most interesting, and it would definitely make navy more engaging, but I see a few problems with it.

1) The most obvious problem is balance. If Player A is in the north and Player B in the south, and the wind suddenly changes to blowing southward, how is player B supposed to make that desperate assault on Player A's base that absolutely has to stop him from turtling to Gandy? If a player puts their money into navy (which could be quite expensive for all we know) and has their plans foiled by wind is that really fair?

2) Control and responsiveness. No good RTS game was ever made that had unresponsive and difficult to control units. One could even argue that ease of control and the results of it is what makes RTS games unique. With the implementation of wind, you would have to tack (sp?) into the wind just to go somewhere. This replaces the traditional "click there and go there" approach and makes you have to give far more orders just to move a short distance. Again, most people do not buy RTS games because it is fun to move units around in them, spending too much time on this just distracts you. Imagine having to move a group of drunk archers that could only move diagonally. If you wanted to go straight up for about two screens length, you'd probably get annoyed at them after a while.

3) Not allowing ships to turn on a dime effectively increases response time. If a ship is facing south and you tell it to go north then, depending on the ship's turn radius, it may take another 3 or so seconds before it is actually able to obey the order you gave it. For an analogy, imagine a group of cavalry running around in circles for 3 seconds before obeying any movement order you give them.

Those are my only gripes. I actually like your ramming idea, but it might pose a severe balance problem. I'm really not going to buy this game because of realism (who buys games with dragons and wizards if they're looking for realism?) so I don't want anything to take away from the immersion. Personally, I would get quite frustrated if I had to take into account all the factors above just to move a ship and that would definitely prevent me from being immersed. It's a good idea though, just not good for this particular game imo

Hehe, cool. New England.

Excellent article. I can appreciate what you're saying as I had to learn how to sail Lasers for NROTC (it was quite fun). However I definitely think something like this would be far too confusing for the average player. While I love ANYTHING that requires more micromanagement, there are a billion other things going on in the game to have to manage, and sailing would require too much concentration, and for very little gain.

I have a feeling that naval victories and naval dominance will not play a massively important role in winning a game or not. In otherwords, you can go without having ships or building a navy in a 1v1 online game (just as you could ignore a navy in RA2 and go strictly for ground assualts if you wanted). It would be nice if this was NOT the case, but based on what I've read and seen, EA's design of naval strategy does not seem to place a great deal of weight. It's a nice feature for when you're bored I think, but time will tell. That being said, it would be too much micro for such little benefit.

As Phantom pointed out, wind adds a random factor to the game, and randomness in RTS is just not cool as then it destroys the notion of competitive gaming where every little ounce of skill counts, and bad luck can completely, unfairly, offset the skill of one player and permanently cripple him all game. Phantom's other points are quite right as well. Responsiveness is key. Even the acceleration factor of the ships is pushing it, but it's not so bad that it requires you think 2 mintues into the game when you want to begin moving your ship to get up to speed. It's more like a 2 second delay which a human can easily extrapolate for. But there's no substitute for instant responsiveness.

But tbh, I'd love to play a RTS game that focused purely on 100% real physics and strategies of naval combat. That would be very cool.

Manuevers such as dropping an anchor to turn fast, broadsides, crossing the 'T', sail adjustments, boardings, etc... There's oodles of stuff that could be implimented, but it would put naval combat beyond the reach of most beginners. It would be clearcut who knows and doesn't know their stuff.

yes and thats what the game would be like with boats probably when you turn they're doing it...lol

any way good idea but it is too complicated to put in a game with other Mechanics...

it would be a good mod idea... but that too is alot of work...

Agreed. It would probably be fun to play a RTS that focused just on naval combat and didn't force you to spend all your time building a base and making sure the land was secured. You would then have the time to play with all the intricacies of the ships, sort of like Ground Control but on the water Some of you (well, probably none of you) might remember that on the N64 version of Starcraft there was a mode that allowed two players to control the same units. Your pop cap was doubled of course, and if a similar mode were to be incorporated into team games (not necessarily into just BfME 2) sometime in the future it could probably make for a lot of really good games. One guy could be the admiral and another the general, you get the idea.

Well, I can see a way that they can get around the problem of wind - oars. In the books at least the Corsairs have boats manned by slaves working the oars (after all, they WERE sailing up the Anduin).

Broadsiding, and raking (crossing the T) are actually in the game, which is just awesome. It will lead to some cool micro battles I think.

Amen. No more just-leave-your-navy-on-patrol crap. Now you actually gotta use em, and plan the engagement.

Exactly. A good RTS game should be designed such that EVERY unit can be controlled in such a way that it behaves BETTER than if you just let it do its thing (such as going on patrol). That's so important I can't describe it, and one thing I've always liked about EA's RTS games is they do a fairly decent job at this. Zero Hour is FULL of units who's usefulness becomes exponentially greater the more attention you give them. This is why truely good RTS players continue to play the game as religously as people play Starcraft. The only difference between the two games is balance and support.

Seems like most people think that adding realistic naval ship behavior is too complex and counter to the purpose of an RTS. Many, many very good comments on the ideas of naval battle. Thanks!

I realize there is probably a lot of programing involved with doing this. I remember EA talking about all the work involved with just the Nazgul and Eagles to make them believable. These creatures actually have to fly and look believable which EA pulled off impressively, IMO. Players don't need to micro every swoop and turn and attack. They simply click on the attacking target and the animation takes care of it from there.

Perhaps ships could be programed in a similair way. Animation would take care of the details of ship movement like heaving too or tacking. Maintain the click and forget but give some options to allow for strategy. Maybe it would be possible to choose what part of the ship to fire at such as the stern (back), bow (front), or left or right side (port or starboard to be technical). That way there can be choices of what attack angle to come at. The computer can move the ship into place. Nazgul can attack a particular archer in a batallion in BFME with a different effect. Hit the second to the end and you take out one end of the line, hit the middle archer and you have archers at both ends and two more swoops to finishe them off.

Having variable speeds according to the heading of a ship to account for wind might be easier to program than many think and would give some variable to ponder for strategic value. The wind direction doesn't need to change, it can just be a set prevailing wind which will not corner any ships against a coastal feature. Trolls and Nazgul move faster when attacking than when not. Why can't she ships simply be programed to go slowest when going into the wind and fastest when going down wind. I think that would be awesome! Ships could sail directly into the wind but slowly, a simplification of the fact that a ship would zig zag to go into the wind.

In that way, the handling of elven ships and corsairs can differ. The corsairs lateen rig can sail faster than the elven square rig when heading into the wind. The reverse would be true when going directly down wind. Balance can be maintained by making opposite abilities which each can use to unique advantage.

I don't think ships should handle like horse archers that can only fire from the sides. They should be a little more challenging than that, like Mumakil but with player contribution to movement.

When you really think of it, the whole idea that arrows could sink a ship is a little far fetched. Burning it with fire arrows is plausible though. Why not have the fire arrows set the rig on fire. Without sails, the ship is dead in the water. At that point it can be crippled. Give a little more time for the fire to really catch on before the ship sinks. An incremental functionality would give some interest. A ship would lose sails/masts first and be dead in the water. It could still attack back but without moving. Transports would still have it's valuable cargo. Give players a chance to come rescue thier disabled ships with reinforcements. Partly damaged sails might result in slower speed.

I think ramming should be a valid option. It should hurt the attacking ship as much as the attacked ship since these craft are not designed to ram. By sacrificing one of your ships, it might serve a strategic purpose.

All the movement issues aside, what is up with control of the sea? Is it only to attack coastlines and ferry troops?

I can't think of a compelling reason to have to build anything on the shoreline. I can understand the ferrying of troops though. Wouldn't it be a bummer to lose a transport ship full of expensive, fully upgraded elves and a few heros?

I guess I don't fully understand the concept of a transport ship and a battle ship. From the information we have so far, it seems that you can load archers on your battleships, including those with a fire upgrade. Can you unload them again? I have a feeling they will work like haradrim or orc archers on Mumakil.

Does this mean that archers loaded on a transport cannot attack simply because they are on a transport? I don't think elves would need to transport much other than elven archers so whats the use of a transport if you have a battle ship that can load and unload. Just extra capacity?

Elves and mounted elves move fast enough around the battlefield that the bother and risk of transporting them on the water might not be justified.

In the end, naval battles might not have much point in multiplayer online gaming. It might only have purpose in the campaign as part of the story line.

I'll just have to wait to find all this out. I only hope that I'm gratified with some little scrap of sailing realism.

I think I proposed something like this before in a thread long ago. It was shot down for the same reasons yours was

But you seem to have everything more worked out. Keep pushing it and maybe it will become a reality.

As I've said, one of the workarounds to the problem of wind is to give the Corsairs' ships oars. They have them in the book (it is EXPLICITLY MENTIONED) and realistically, how else would they get upstream to Minas Tirith? You can't always rely on the wind.

As a person just getting into sailing in the last year I found your article very interesting. Thanks very much