Towing on the Hip

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[Cloud]

Greetings,

With the greater number of possibilities mentioned for mooring lines in 2008 I was keen to put them to the test. I played the mission where you have to tow a disabled yacht with the pilot boat. Rather than follow the mission instructions i decided to tow the vessel in on the hip and put her along side.

For those not familiar with towing on the hip, it involves making fast on one of the towed vessel's quarters so as to have more control in tight situations and to put the towed vessel along side. The new functions in 2008 allow you quite a bit of flexibility to run head lines, breast lines, springs, whatever you want. So to my satisfaction towing on the hip was possible. Only problem is, that because you have no control of heaving in or slacking out lines, you can not control how tight they are, and consequently, while you can do the maneuvers, the slackness in the lines makes it quite sloppy.

In any event, just wanted to share some of my initial experience with the new version and perhaps one of the developers might get some ideas for improvement...Please....Consider adding the ability to heave up and slack out lines...and anchors also. It would open up so many more possibilities.   

So, hope everyone is enjoying the new version.

Cheers,

Larse Klaoud

[adamano]

Very nice post, i learnt a few things from that

[Cloud]

Hi Adamano,

Thanks for the feedback and I'm glad you liked that. Just one tip that may not be immediately apparent if you want to give it a try. For the case i show in the pictures, with the pilot vessel made fast on the port quarter of the yacht; when you want to turn to port going astern gives you more leverage and turns tighter.

Alternatively, to make the starboard turn you would make the more obvious maneuver with engines ahead and helm to starboard. This is the way it's done in real life and was glad to see it worked effectively in the simulator.

If you made fast the pilot boat on the other quarter you would do the opposite. Now...if only you could take the slack out of the lines.... 

All the Best,

Larse

[mporter]

Now...if only you could take the slack out of the lines.... 

All the Best,

Larse

Yes, the slack in the lines (very stretchy lines) has been a problem from the beginning -- no real chance to come alongside with a spring-line, for example.  I'll be interested  to see whether this has improved in
SS08, but from what you say I'm afraid it hasn't.

Cheers,
Michael

[Cloud]

Hi Michael,

Yes, unfortunately the problem persists in this version as well.

The development team has obviously spent some time revisiting this area, but stopped short of offering any other control of lines other than running them the way you want.

Also just discovered that there are no bollards anywhere in the environments unless it's inserted by a designer as part of a mission; so in free roam mode forget about using mooring lines to tie up at any berth, quite annoying actually given all the wonderful new bitts the vessels have now. Additionally this means that even in a mission, you can only make fast at locations the designer intended for you to go along side.

Seems like small fixes so i hope these issues will be addressed.

All the best,
Larse
 

[mporter]

Hi Larse,

Yes, we can only hope -- but hope is a virtue!  And of course this is in the detail level, even if annoying.

Cheers,
Michael

[Cloud]

Indeed,

The Devil is always in the Detail as they say. 

Larse

[mporter]

Indeed,

The Devil is always in the Detail as they say. 

Larse

And Mies van der Rohe used to say "God is in the details"