Why Padstow, Cornwall?

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[Ifful]

I was looking at the new location through G.Earth, and it looks like a nice spot to simulate.  Or, at least, as nice a spot as any other.   I'm saying nothing against the choice of Cornwall as the new environment, but I wonder if there was any particular reason for VSTEP's decision to use it instead of somewhere else.

Was it by popular user demand?  Did one of the developers grow up there?  Is it famous as a port?  Some sort of historical significance perhaps? 

Just curious.

[dharl]

I was wondering that my self!   The North Cornish Coast is very pretty, and i know it very well due to lots of family holidays in the area.   But Padstow (or PadSTEIN as the locals call it ) dosnt have a very large harbour..and what you have either drys out or you have to be a very small vessel to get in!   A better Cornish port would have been Falmouth on the South Coast.   Not only does this have a DEEP harbour and river to explore but also some very intresting docks and dry docks which coyuld have produced some intresting missions....

Cant wait for New Horizons to come out though! 

[Traddles]

The only answer I can give to the question "Why Padstow?" is Why not?

[Eemspoort]

"Why not" is pretty simple to answer. There is allready a Brittish enviorenment.
If it has to be Brittish, why not London, with the river Thames?, so you can pass the London-bridge?
Something that sounds formilliar for most users, something that atrackts more people.
 And i know, we have 2 USA harbours, not really nescesary either, but they are both big harbours and interesting.
But okay, i'll just wait and see what the new place brings.
I'm looking forward to New Horizons as well! 

[sixflagscoasters]

I think you mean the Tower Bridge.....not the London Bridge.


The Tower Bridge has the nice towers on either side, and has a draw bridge section in the middle.


Here is the link to the London Bridge:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Bridge


And here is a link to the Tower Bridge:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_Bridge



You let me know which one you were talking about.

I think the Tower Bridge would be nice to drive under. I would also love to see it move up and down.

The River Thames would be a nice place/environment to sail around in.

[Acidmax]

  yea but anuder gud 1 is Auckland harbour in New Zealand

[thassos]

Don't know how many other small harbours are included in the Cornwall environ for boating from one place to another but the main activities in this part of Cornwall are pleasure, fishing and rescue.  It would be interesting if the tide actually went out and missions could be a challenge to beat the tide but, alas, no.

[JHB]

Just to build London for ShipSim....ouch! That must be like New York (plenty of work).
Besides I don't see the importance in new environments. If new environments is important then some serious questions need to be asked:

- What does these environments give the player (features)?
- What can the player do in these environments?

I wonder what kind of features this new environment gives me as a player? Only some graphics and still it's the same "sail around and have a look concept" that matters? Can I moor my boat at any quay in this environment? Can I refuel my ship at some special location? Is there any dangerous places that I should keep myself off?

What does Cornwall actually give me? Lighthouses?  Do I find the same buoys and navigational sea marks that they use in Cornwall.?Is there any special landmarks that I should pay my attention to...?

Besides, what is so great with a new environment in this game? Just sail around huh? What kind of jobs do sailors in Cornwall perform each day? What kinds of boats do they use etc..? Maybe this is something that can be more exiting that just another  environment with the standard repeating graphical elements that you have just seen 1000 times before....What kind of missions do we get for this environment? Something new exiting stuff or what?

Yeah why Pastow Cornwall? Why just another environment? To bring something new? Hopefully it is new.. but I have my doubts I'll try to be smarter next time I ask serious questions about the New Horizon...

[Traddles]

If you stop to think about things for a short while, you will notice that there are a number of pleasure craft in the game. Speedboat, jetski, water taxi, and in the New Horizons add-on there will be two motor yachts. Now when did you see jetskis and speedboats flying round in major shipping channels? The Cornish coast, including Padstow, seems to me like a pretty good place to enjoy pleasure boating without the need to be avoiding large commercial craft all the time.  I think that might be a fairly good reason to include a bit of Cornwall in the game. It could have been anywhere in the world with similar facilities, we already have the Phi Phi Islands haven't we? I can't see any big ships sailing round there in reality, nor, I feel sure, can anyone else.
Perhaps it would be wise to criticise AFTER the release of New Horizons rather than before.

[mvsmith]

Good points, Angus,
But: Any bets on how long before we see missions about docking Latitude in Padstow?
It’s a different environment from most others—except for Phi Phi—and it’s up to creators to come up with new, but realistic, missions to use its features. Hopefully we will see something other than a destination for Ocean Star or POR—currently employed on the San Francisco to Phi Phi run.
Marty

[TerryRussell]

Good points, Angus,
But: Any bets on how long before we see missions about docking Latitude in Padstow?

Heh heh. Working on it now....

Padstow was a surprise to me, I mus say. With appologies to anyone from that area, it's nothing special from a boating point of view. I've studiously avoided it whenever going around the coast there in my (real) boat.

To answer some of the questions above:

London is pretty boring really. Lots of bridges if you like staring up at the underside as you go beneath them. The Thames is substantially without any creeks or off-shoots where a vessel can be moored. Not like Rotterdam etc. The section where the Medway comes off might have been good, but that's not in London as such.

Now Bristol would have been good. Lots of places to moor a vessel. Lots of twists, turns and backwaters, etc.

And hey, we Brits sold London Bridge to an American some years ago. It's rumoured he thought he was buying Tower Bridge and had a bit of surprise when he got it home and unwrapped it. He was so unimpressed, that he stuck it in a desert out of the way. Or something like that. 

[SKIP14]

same here we holiday in st ives and  visit falmouth st mawes brilliant scenery and an ideal place to sail

[Bottman]

Guess it is also a kind of a trial area. To improve the water for example, the details ashore. And maybe the beginning of a broad range of smaller (and therefor cheaper to create) environments for the future. For several port-to-port missions it would be nice to use those instead of the large ones. Well, it's just a guess..

Regards

[Captain Spencer]

In my personal opinion I think cornwall is a great place to have modelled in the game. To be honest as Traddles said you wouldn't see huge commercial craft going in and out of the small harbour there now would you?

I actually can't wait to get the classic cruiser and cruise up and down the cornish coast. I'm looking forward to it. I must admit, I think there needs to be a passenger side of things where you can have smaller boats rather than ALWAYS going around in the latitude or the sherpa pretending to be the 'big show'.

Don't get me wrong, I love piloting the larger vessels, although I welcome with open arms the smaller vessel side of the  game. We do need to balance it out a bit more.

As you all know, there are loads of things that could be done to improve the game (or any game for that matter) but it's just a matter of time.

All hail Cornwall! 

[Kevinmcg_ships]

I hope this will mean we'll see the Firth of Clyde included at some point in the future.  

The river Clyde would be an excellent choice. It contains:

1 deep berth (perfect for the Latitude oil tanker)
1 Container/Cargo ship pier (great for Veermas and crane operator missions)
At least a dozen passenger/ferry piers
Several NATO jetties
A major Royal Navy submarine base
A fleet of 4 full-time tugs (Svitizer's)
1 major dockside and 2 minor docks
2 big marinas plus smaller marinas ispreaded across several communities.

[Dave M]

I hope this will mean we'll see the Firth of Clyde included at some point in the future.  

Hi Kevin,
I've just had a look at the Firth of Clyde on 'Microsoft 3D Virtual Earth'. Unfortunately quite a bit of it is blanked out due to,(I imagine),security issues? (I was going to comment on the stupidity of this but I didn't want the CIA knocking on my door and doing a 'Rendition' on me) . (Which means that the RN base and the NATO base would be out of bounds in the game). It certainly looks interesting, I imagine that you have to know the area to get where you are going. I looked at Liverpool as well and that had a tidal basin, (meaning missions with a time restriction due to tidal movements), with a very narrow entrance and a container terminal, grain ships?, and coal or aggregate terminal, all seemed to be medium sized ships, (not Vermass size or VLCC), which is something that is missing from ShipSim 2008. I think that the more ports available the better, it gives ShipSim some variety.
Regards, Dave

[mvsmith]

And hey, we Brits sold London Bridge to an American some years ago. It's rumoured he thought he was buying Tower Bridge and had a bit of surprise when he got it home and unwrapped it. He was so unimpressed, that he stuck it in a desert out of the way. Or something like that. 

He wasn’t the first American to get burnt. J. P. Morgan had the Titanic built in the UK for his White Star Lines, but the @#^ thing sank before it got here.
Marty

[TerryRussell]

He wasn’t the first American to get burnt. J. P. Morgan had the Titanic built in the UK for his White Star Lines, but the @#^ thing sank before it got here.
Marty

That's the problem with you Yanks. You think us Brits are trustworthy! That'll teach you.

Oh-oh. Gotta go, here comes the wife (the Jersey Girl). 

Did I mention I'd sold her into slavery to pay for the all the Ship Sim add-ons? There's gonna be real trouble when she finds out.

[Kevinmcg_ships]

Hi Kevin,
I've just had a look at the Firth of Clyde on 'Microsoft 3D Virtual Earth'. Unfortunately quite a bit of it is blanked out due to,(I imagine),security issues? (I was going to comment on the stupidity of this but I didn't want the CIA knocking on my door and doing a 'Rendition' on me) . (Which means that the RN base and the NATO base would be out of bounds in the game). It certainly looks interesting, I imagine that you have to know the area to get where you are going. I looked at Liverpool as well and that had a tidal basin, (meaning missions with a time restriction due to tidal movements), with a very narrow entrance and a container terminal, grain ships?, and coal or aggregate terminal, all seemed to be medium sized ships, (not Vermass size or VLCC), which is something that is missing from ShipSim 2008. I think that the more ports available the better, it gives ShipSim some variety.
Regards, Dave

Hi Dave,

Liverpool would be a very nice addition too!

I've sailed past the NATO jetty and the Royal Navy sumbarine base a couple of times on Clyde cruises (on the paddle steamer Waverley), no problems apart from a couple of MOD police boats lurking around, keeping a very close eye on you! 

Kev

[SirXpression]

Yup...I WANT WAVERLEY & THE CLYDE 

[sonarman]

Yes the Firth of Clyde (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firth_of_Clyde) for me too, Simon Richardson (who designed the fantastic new tug in the  forthcoming addon)already has a Waverley model and we have seen his Clyde Puffer model sitting waiting to become playable already at various locations in the game.

Kevin is right, the Clyde offers so much scope with liners, container ships and tankers visiting on a regular basis not to mention the naval base, marina and 11 ferry routes using ferries of all sorts of shapes and sizes even a seacat sevice to Ireland. It is also a spectacularly scenic area with sandy beaches high mountains fjord like sealochs small vilages large towns small piers, linkspans and large docks.

Check out this old comedy series from youTube "the Vital Spark" (http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=vital+spark&search_type=) it's set in the Clyde region and follows the mis-adventures of a  Clyde Puffer (small Scottish Coaster) & her crew (think Fawlty Towers at sea).

And here is a page about the Ferries of Caledonian MacBrayne (http://www.computing.dundee.ac.uk/staff/irmurray/ferries2.asp) the Clyde's largest ferry operator.

[thassos]

I WANT WAVERLEY & THE CLYDE 

we'll be told that this isn't the right place for this but the Waverley has been requested many times.  One objection is that the paddle movement would be difficult but I say that the paddle boxes are so close to the water that lack of paddle movement would only be noticed very close in.  All that needs to be different from a screw driven ship is the water disurbance behind the paddle boxes as well as from the centre of the stern
Detailed plans are available

[sonarman]

Yes, good idea Thassos, it should be noted that Waverley's engines are single shaft i.e. the paddles do not turn independently, which should make programming things easier.

here is a link to a previous discussion in which I described the ship's dynamics (http://www.shipsim.com/ShipSimForum/index.php/topic,218.0.html)