Navigation Map

[mtm21]

Well I will suggest here also then. I suggest there should be a navigation Map for boats so they can find the closest island. They should be built into the boat like a radio. With this being built you can go to the location screen and zoom in and out of where you are for accuracy. This will stop lost boats getting lost at sea. Alternativly a sea telescope would be good to see in really long distances. Another way of doing this is to shade the water like for instance make the furthest away from island a very dark blue. And closet a very light blue, almost white like waves. Hopefully this one hasnt been suggested yet. I supposed that is three suggestions in one.

[Hellzon]

Well I will suggest here also then. I suggest there should be a navigation Map for boats so they can find the closest island. They should be built into the boat like a radio. With this being built you can go to the location screen and zoom in and out of where you are for accuracy. This will stop lost boats getting lost at sea. Alternativly a sea telescope would be good to see in really long distances. Another way of doing this is to shade the water like for instance make the furthest away from island a very dark blue. And closet a very light blue, almost white like waves. Hopefully this one hasnt been suggested yet. I supposed that is three suggestions in one.

My musings:
Visibility should be better on sea, yes. I'm afraid that's what lighthouses and harbours are for, though.
Telescope is a good idea. Could perhaps work on land too.
Shading the water is a VERY neat idea. More work for New Lands (i.e. Jos Elkink) though, I think. (The map graphics are hand-drawn, right?)

[Agar]

Shading water is a VERY good idea. That flat blue of the sea can kill a man. Shading would be a gradiation that could be followed right in so people don't sail, "Just past" a land and never know it's there.

That would be a big undertaking, but would have the biggest impact to sailing since ... Sailing, really. Change everything in a good and realistic way. I'm all for it.

[Phalynx]

Shading would do it for me too... The ideal would be for the map at sea / on the lake to be on a much lower scale, but a depth contour on the map would be good, although if you are in opne sea you are still pretty much comitted to going and goin untill you hit land, which is crazy...

[wichita]

Water shading worked quite nicely in Civ Call to Power. I like it, as well as coloring the wake behind ships to indicate direction. That was a great suggestion.

[Liljum]

Shading is quite nice. But aren't we losing the option of exploration, when you get info about where the nerest island are.

Do you really think that america would have been found if you knew the best way to get to india before even getting out on the seas?

Colour shading might be great if you allready have visited that island before. So your "knowledge" guides you right.

[Phalynx]

So maybe a navigatio tool is a knotted rope with a rock on the ends... primitive measure of depth??

[Heiner]

Shading is quite nice. But aren't we losing the option of exploration, when you get info about where the nerest island are.

Do you really think that america would have been found if you knew the best way to get to india before even getting out on the seas?

Colour shading might be great if you allready have visited that island before. So your "knowledge" guides you right.

Shading would in fact be pretty realistic, as long as only coastal waters are shaded. Most seasoned seafarers of old were able to make out the proximity of land and its approximate direction long before actually seeing it, by means of smell, observing the wave shapes and rythm, currents, looking out for birds and more other methods than I care to name or remember.

[formerly known as hf]

I like the idea of shading / rope dipping.

I have no idea how the map works, I assume it's an image file linked to a database with co-ordinates of locations? Would it be possible / easy to add shading for depth? I doubt it somehow.

The rope-dipping sounds good to me. The co-ordinates for each boat is recorded, it has to be I suppose. Are coastlines in the database as co-ordinates? If so, would it be possible for the 'rope' when used, to check the location of the nearest coastline co-ordinate and convert that into some kind of depth?

If not, then locations must be recorded as co-ordinates? If so, using the 'rope' could check the co-ordinate of the nearest location, convert and also convert the distance into a depth.

Obviously there should be a limit, if the location / coast is beyond a certain distance, then the depth is too great for the rope to extend to...

[wichita]

sextants
telescopes
sounding weights

All things RD will gladly add once ProgD decides to program them.