Those of you who have played at any official SDGS hosted Sailpower events may have noticed a major change on the speed values on your favorite ship. Starting in May we began testing a new speed engine on the back end that uses the same core rules but makes the ships handle in a far more authentic manner. We have now run this system at two hobby store level events, and at two conventions and I am happy to announce the system is here to stay.
Essentially the new system equates an inch of movement to about a quarter knot of speed. This opens up the normal wind speeds to higher values then before. Since we were making this change we decided to make two other changes as well.
A suggestion was made by several players that they would prefer to see the ships have the proper “wind shadow” caused by the presence of multiple masts. Originally this was left out as it was deemed to be too confusing to newer non sailor players, however we added this in, and has tested well, so all multiple mast ships have been adjusted to have a slight speed dip on the forward most heading.
Another thing that was done in the initial game release that we wanted to correct was to make the drops for heading up wind more significant. Originally we compressed all these speeds a bit in a combination of trying to make the sail system more forgiving and to keep the game moving (ships upwind would still be moving)
What we found is that with the expanded speed range for running with the wind, ships tended to zip around with the wind, and as long as players rolled for wind changes every turn the game actually moves along faster with the new system.
Thus we have a 50% speed drop from the highest speed to the upwind speed heading for fore and aft rigged ships and a 75% drop for square rigged vessels.
Players have told us that this makes them “feel” or get a sense of the wind direction much more realistically when moving about. You feel fast when running with the wind, and you feel like getting out and pushing when your square rigger is headed upwind!
We have released updated stats for all ships we are aware of from players, as well as the base template ships and our convention ships at the downloads link on our blog!
Enjoy!
Brian Carnes
Designer, Sailpower: Fun Scale Combat in the Age of Sail
www.SailPowerGame.com
blog.sailpowergame.com
