Improved Dinghy

[Marian]

Okay, I'm really annoyed here. How in the world are towns supposed to do anything to stop pirates? Everyone says dinghies are the answer, and I've bought into that for a long time, but it just doesn't work.

This has happened multiple times:

Pirate undocks.

I undock the same hour, then start docking to them. (usually starting off at about 75%, meaning it should finish the next tick.)

Next hour rolls around, and I stop docking because the target is moving.

How much am I expected to be?! You can't get much closer than one hour away. And of course the target is moving! So are we only allowed to fight pirates that are polite enough to hold still while we catch up to them, or what?

Dinghies either need to be move slightly faster, or we need to be able to build an improved one with a little iron and steel. Pirates have always had an edge against defenders unless someone just happens to be awake at the time they're stealing/attacking, and you know what, mostly I'm fine with that. But when you can't do anything about them even when you are awake except waste a day out at sea watching them sail further and further away while you have absolutely no hope of catching up, that's just completely unfair.

[Agar]

If you undock from the same point as them, and undock to the same direction as the pirates, docking is instant. Otherwise, you're not on top of them, and you'll never get them.

If it was an option to dock from a docked boat, So that you could immediatly dock to the pirate vessle without having to guess which way they went, that would let you immediatly dock. The dinghy isn't the problem, telling which way, exactly, the pirates went is.

[Frits]

The exact number? On a typical coastline that chance is about 1 in 180, i hope i'm wrong...
Or can i change directions until i hit the right number?

[Talapus]

The exact number? On a typical coastline that chance is about 1 in 180, i hope i'm wrong...
Or can i change directions until i hit the right number?

When undocking, you anly get a few choices. I would guess about 3 to 4 choices on a typical coastline. And since you can see boats on the map, you can eliminate most of those choices unless the town is flooded with boats.

[SCUBA]

I undock the same hour, then start docking to them. (usually starting off at about 75%, meaning it should finish the next tick.)

What do you mean with the same hour. Hour 1 is from 1:0:0 to 1:35:59, or from 'boat tick' hour 1 to 'boat tick' hour 2? To have instant docking yoo have to undock within the same tickperiod for boats and not in the same clock hour, to have instant docking to the pirates. Same undocking direction also offcourse.

[tiddy ogg]

This is can of worms time. Differentiation between range and hand-to-hand weapons, (shock, horror) cannons etc.
Plus ship-to-ship combat, of which there have been several threads.

[Spider]

I remember I had a dinghy and I was right next to this other boat and I kept docking back and forth between the two, and after a bit of that, someone joined me on the dinghy and then we tried to the dock to the other boat and instead of it being instant, it took us one turn to dock onto the other boat, so is weight plays a role in docking???

[Chris Johnson]

Yes - Docking is just movement - It is completed instantly if the distance to the target is close enough that it would be accomplished in less than one Cantr Hour, if not then docking is handed over to boat processing . The distance a boat travels in one Cantr hour depends on the weight it is carrying.

[Marian]

Okay, looking back I see that I undocked in the same hour, but I missed the boat tick by just two minutes.

That still doesn't seem really fair, that's a pretty small window of time for catching another ship and the odds of someone successfully doing it are prety low.

As far as using a bigger ship to chase it, wouldn't having a dinghy attached just slow you down to the point where the results are the same? And what if you bring a second person along?

So how about that improved dinghy? We need a ship with decent speed that can dock to a longboat...to balance it out maybe other small ships can dock to it too, so it wouldn't be completely safe the way dinghies are now?