Forced Docking

[Kael]

I think this may have already been suggested before but I haven't found anything about it so I'm going on ahead.

Would it be possible to implement a way to force docking from smaller ships to bigger ships? Say a Galleon is sailing around and it sees this little dugout canoe, it then throws over some lines to drag the ship over to the galleon and make force it to dock to the galleon.

But like docking, if the dugout canoe were to move, it would cancel the progress.

[Solfius]

I'm inferring from this that currently there is no way for a large ship to get a small ship to dock onto it?

This would be a good idea for recovering all those crewless ships out there, as well as the obvious

[Pie]

I think it should be posible just to align two ships up and through some boards over them, instead of putting one ON the other.

[Phalynx]

I find the idea that particular boats can't dock with each other bizarre... With a couple of ropes any boat can hook up to another..... Why is it like that?

[Liljum]

I find the idea that particular boats can't dock with each other bizarre... With a couple of ropes any boat can hook up to another..... Why is it like that?

Yes and make high sea trade possible without sending your dinghy.

[Crosshair]

Maybe grapples? They could be thrown at a ship, to stop it moving, and the boarders could then dock to it, and if there were people on the boat, then perhaps the could try to repel the boarders...

[Liljum]

Ohhh. Another good thing for pirates!

[Marian]

I think it's a good idea...and it could even tie in with my old 'coil of rope' suggestion. Right now I think the way no one can do anything about a person in a dinghy at all is a little unrealistic, and of course there's a few abandoned canoes and dinghies I see just sittign around on the water.

[Kael]

Thats why I like the idea of forcing them to dock to you. There are too many small ships around that could be filled with booty, but you just don't know.

You can't have big boats dock to small boats becuase its not really plausible to have a giant Galleon attached to a dinghy. That's why you would have to have some kind of rope/grapple or other device that forcibly moves thier boat to move to yours.

[Phalynx]

You can't have big boats dock to small boats becuase its not really plausible to have a giant Galleon attached to a dinghy. That's why you would have to have some kind of rope/grapple or other device that forcibly moves thier boat to move to yours.

How retarded is that... on the open sea if a dinghy can dock to a galleon then a galleon can dock to a dinghy....

There is absolutely no difference that skillfull piloting couldn't resolve..

[Just A Bill]

How about this, the Grappleing iron is a big hunk of metal attached to a lenght of rope. It can be thrown a couple of pixels. Once the ship is grappled it cannot move on its own and each turn the smaller ship is pulled one pixel closer to the larger. Once the two ships are in the same pixel, the smaller boat automatically docks to the larger and cannot undock while the grapple is in place. A button on the larger vessle allows the crew to release the Grapple freeing the ship. The Grapple shows up on the smaller boat as either a person or animal and can be attacked. If sufficient damage is done to the grapple it breaks, then the smaller ship can move normally. You might also allow the grapple to be pried off the ship using a crowbar. If the grapple is removed via weapons, It is destroyed. If it is pried off, it ends up on the deck of the larger vessel. If it is released, it ends up on the smaller ship.

[Doug R.]

Perhaps maintaining the grapple should be an active project on the larger ship? I hesitate at this suggestion because it give tremendous power to the crews of large ships. Perhaps the visibility of smaller ships should be reduced, so that you had to be closer to smaller ships to see them than bigger ships. This would give smaller ships a chance at evasion, since they can see the big ship coming from further away. Otherwise, they're screwed, since most big ships are way faster than smaller ships (except the sloop).

edit: Although if movement cancels grappling at any distance (even overlapping pixels), then my concern is pretty much negated.

[Hellzon]

If I get it right, this is mostly for reeling in dinghys (et al) with dead bodies on them. So if the grapple is easily evaded by a living crew (or merely by moving the boat) all would be well.

[Solfius]

I knew this sounded familiar:
http://www.cantr.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=250&start=0

[Kael]

Well Solfius is heading for a more piraty kind of suggestion. To board another ship and then kill everyone on it, and then take thier stuff.

I'm just trying to make it so that there is a possible way to gather up dinghys or other small boats while on a longboat or galleon, that you have seen just floating around for the past few years.

I like the whole grappling idea, but to make it fair for both the boarders and the bordees. You could implement it so that if a grappling project (with a maximum of three people) got past say 50% then it would be impossible for the people bieng boarded to escape. But if it was less that 50% than they could easily start moving and cancel the project.

But then again that could be a pain to codify.