Zezo forum:

Post by Freako95 | 2014-10-13 | 09:23:58

Hi,

I'm still not sure whether tacks slow you down or not. Do sail changes slow you down?
Is there anything else that slows you down in VirtualRegatta? (Besides going straight into the wind ;) )

Regards,
Freek

20 Comments

Post by din0 | 2014-10-13 | 09:38:57

You get 2 minute penalty for every change of tack or sail. The boat goes 10% slower within the 10 minute iteration of change of sail or tack.
If you change sail and tack and the same time its still only 1 penalty.

Post by NK | 2014-10-13 | 18:23:40

Thx dino,
Does even a 1 degree correction on course give a penalty?

Post by zezo | 2014-10-13 | 18:38:05

Only change from port to starboard tack gives you penalty.

There was one leg in the Clipper where every turn caused penalty, but that was not such a great idea and was fixed soon.

Post by NK | 2014-10-13 | 20:13:43

Thx zezo

Post by Freako95 | 2014-10-13 | 09:44:29

Thanks!

Post by samob | 2014-10-13 | 22:47:53

http://www.virtualregatta.com/forums_EN/viewtopic.php?f=150&t=14445

that says that any manual course alteration is penalised? is there a way we can know for sure that it is only when changing from port to starboard? thanks for the help

Post by zezo | 2014-10-13 | 22:55:30

That was before they fixed it. I've never seen a turn penalty since the first leg of the Clipper.

Unfortunately the English forum does not get a lot of attention.

Post by Maharani2 | 2014-10-14 | 17:49:54

This is a text from FAQ of VR:
Does my boat slow down when I manoeuver?

It does indeed! To avoid rewarding manoeuvers that are close together and to not penalise navigators who are less available, a penalty system for manoeuvers is in place. After each change of direction or sail, the speed of the boat is limited during the next two minutes that follow the manoeuver.

Does my boat slow down when the direction is changed manually?
- Yes, for two minutes after the change.

Does my boat slowdown when the direction is programmed to change?
- Yes, for the few minutes that follow the programming, even if it�s at the end of the iteration. The slowdown will be carried over to the next iteration.

Do boats slow down with the regulator when the change in direction is minimal and the wind angle remains constant?
- In races in interpolated winds, the regulator is not penalised. During races with fixed constant winds, every heading change is penalised, even it�s done by the regulator.

How does the slowdown affect the boat when I�m navigating with waypoints? Do I slow down with each iteration? Do we slow down when we pass a waypoint?
- The course between waypoints is orthodromic, the heading changes lightly with each iteration when waypoints are active. These tiny heading changes caused by the rhumb line are not penalised, only the heading changes resulting in the validation of a waypoint

Do we slow down when we change a sail or when the sails are in automatic?
- Yes, you slow down with any sail change, manual or automatic.

Post by Maharani2 | 2014-10-14 | 01:13:25

Funny to read this - and another funny question:
Is there a rulebook for the regatta, an officell on from VR?

Post by Micke | 2014-10-14 | 09:28:53

Game Rules: http://vvor.virtualregatta.com/reglement_EN.pdf?v=7

Post by Maharani2 | 2014-10-14 | 19:01:19

Yes, I now this doc. I looking for some more details.
... and I found it in the faq ;-)

Post by Maharani2 | 2014-10-14 | 19:01:22

Yes, I now this doc. I looking for some more details.
... and I found it in the faq ;-)

Post by mj | 2014-10-15 | 09:00:05

OK, I still cant figured out does it slow down under auto TWA changes

Post by din0 | 2014-10-15 | 20:25:32

No it does not. Until there is no sail change.

Post by headless_monkeyman | 2014-10-20 | 04:23:34

I have been watching carefully and I never see any slowdown. I have played on other engines and it is obvious when you are slowed down because your boat speed drops, and goes below the polars. Here I'm getting nothing to indicate the penalty.

I had a similar strange experience when I briefly touched ground. I was very lucky because the stupid facebook notice that comes up every ten minutes annoyed me enough at the time that I decided to look at my boat. I had only been aground for about ten minutes. But I didn't see a drop in boatspeed when I went aground, and the boat just showed what was appropriate for the wind and sails the whole time. I had expected to know when I was free because of boat speed but it was entirely useless.

Will they be debugging a bit and upgrading the Flash client to add anything nice like measurement tools and polar information between legs? Is anyone hiding a nicer client out there that uses the data? I see that there are some navigation tools out there like Zezo and a polar tool :D

I desperately want to be able to move the track tool from place to place in the calculated chart in Zezo. It is so frustrating to have it stuck on that first point when I am having doubts or ideas three or four hours down the track (and don't want to lose the parts of the track I want to keep as is).

Great app! Thank you, and I'll send you a token of my appreciation on payday!

Post by zezo | 2014-10-20 | 21:39:19

The slowdown is not visible in the game interface. But it's there. If you do the great circle math you'll notice 10% shorter track segment after a tack.

There is no decrease performance after run aground, and you may not lose much distance if you happen to get grounded close to the ent of the track and get the notification within 10 minutes. But be carefum when sailing away - zoom to max and check for stray pixels in the way. I once fell into a 1-pixel "bay" and lost two hours getting out of it.

About the flash client, I would not rely on VR to make significant changes to it within the game. It's been mostly the same for more than 5 years, with the only nice recent addition - the track drawn by the scheduler. But they lived 5 years without it.

The Dutch platform used during the previous race was developed more actively and we saw a lot of changes and extras coming between the legs. Sadly, it did not make it in the long run.

Post by headless_monkeyman | 2014-10-21 | 03:00:07

I was going to paper chart it tonight and see what the difference was. I assume that I will get exactly what everyone including the rules say I will. I am just the sort that likes to see neat rows of numbers confirming everything - when I race IRL I am the same way.

If I take a peek behind the curtain with a copy of Fiddler2 or some of my Kali tools will I see pretty much the same data as other racing clients like SOL has?

I would really like to be able to log my track, as well as the weather and performance at my waypoints.

I was just about to say "I know there are some tools out there but I don't speak French and it seems to be required". Then I remembered that my 18 year old speaks fluent French! Maybe this is the year I (try at my age) pick up a bit of a new language.

Cheers!
Kurt

Post by zezo | 2014-10-21 | 14:20:22

There is a windows-based tool by a Brazilian guy, called VRtool, and also a web site to get your boat position and do some calculations (http://pacotool.fr/

The game interface communicates with the server in XML so if you run some kind of sniffer/browser dev tools you'll see all available information in plain text.

Post by headless_monkeyman | 2014-10-21 | 19:24:07

Did my little sniff with Fiddler. Lots of data in the clear as I expected (full disclosure: I used to make games like this for a living). I just need a little help getting started, particularly making sure I configure VRtool right. I think I have it loaded up correctly except that I do not know if I am supposed to be able to fill in a server address for the vvor.virtualregatta.com servers etc. Or maybe it is just a better place to put the daily grib files and do manual plotting?

I don't want Zezo to recalculate on me, so I stay zoomed all the way in and on present time's weather at all times. I need to start looking around and running the possable scenarios in my head soon. Not that I am complaining about my current method or tools. I have passed about 70,000 people since I got started 6 or so hours late! But I've always done really well navigating races all the way to Dakar. We shall see where I am in a few days. I have not done this in a long time!

I will save my notes to donate toward any translations of things we find helpful. But my daughter is right - she knows French but has never sailed using it. And she is only a line of sight, not even coastal navigator. She raced a Quarter Ton in middle school and high school, but only on the San Francisco Bay, so she is not used to the tools or terms we use navigating.

Cheers!
Kurt

Post by headless_monkeyman | 2014-10-22 | 23:35:45

Anybody know how they put together their occasional checksums? I'm betting it is just for data integrity, like a fingerprint of the contents of the request, and not "serialized and salted" etc.