Zezo forum:

Post by marlean | 2014-11-19 | 22:49:49

Sorry, I still have not figured it out:
At 8am and 8pm the wind changes. Do I have to program my new heading for 07:57 or is it still ok to change the heading at 08:00 or 08:05 for example?

Thanks,
Jan

10 Comments

Post by zezo | 2014-11-19 | 23:34:15

07:57 would still use the old wind. I think the program should be at or after 08:00, but there are people who know more than me about the quirks of the game.

Post by marlean | 2014-11-20 | 04:33:07

that is what I also thought and what would be logical. However if you program your direction at 07:57 then the red cross is exactly at the position of the wind-change mark. If you program it at 08:00 then the red cross is after that mark. As I tend to loose a couple of places when there is a wind-change I was thinking that maybe I am doing it wrong all the time.

Thanks for the answer anyway.

Post by karriv | 2014-11-20 | 08:25:28

I specifically asked this during the prologue, and after a few rounds of clarifications I got the reply that you should program the new heading at 7:57. The next iteration uses the new winds. This is consistent with what I see in the game.

Post by din0 | 2014-11-20 | 13:00:44

I think we should program heading at 0757 and 1957.
If you change the course manually it dosent metter, you have the whole 10 minutes to do it between 0757 and 0807. The boat will go the whole iteration with the new course.
But if u set program at 0800 the boat will go three minutes with old course in the new wind.
It looks like this according to my experience and also to paco calculations.

Post by marlean | 2014-11-20 | 13:05:29

thank you very much for your answers. That's very helpful.

Post by NOR7034 | 2014-11-20 | 19:29:30

This is my experience:
The VORG race notice indicates the iteration steps are done at the 7'th minute. However, it is often long past the 8'th minute before I see my boat has moved. Therefore I would be very careful to make or program changes around this time as You don't know if it affects the last 10-minutes period or not.
When You see Your boat has moved You have all the time up to the next 7'th minute to make the changes. What matters is Your setting at the 7'th minute, not what You selected earlier in the 10-minute periode or at which time You did the change. The only way the boat can alter its course within a 10-minute periode is with the help of Waypoints!

The period between 0757 and 0807 and 1957 and 2007 is special as the weather changes, but what I wrote above still applies. The new weather is used for the calculation of the whole 10 minute periode. The only thing to notice is the use of Auto TWA. If You want to change or set Auto TWA, don't program it at exactly 0800 or 2000 as You don't know if the system calculates the wind angle from the old or new weather. It is much safer to do that say 3 minutes past the hour when You are sure the new weather is present..

The course line in the game is not 100% correct. It seems to be lying 10 minutes ahead most of the time. (There is a Warning message on the screen indicating this also..) See what happens if You program a course change 10 minutes ahead! Often the change is displayed at a distance it would take 20 minutes to get to. I think this is the reason why the box indicating weather change also behaves so strange. For the same reason don't rely on this tool if You are close to land..

Post by din0 | 2014-11-20 | 20:25:17

NOR7034 wrote:
However, it is often long past the 8'th minute before I see my boat has moved.

In my opinion it's only what you see (display delay of the moment at 7th minute). The program gets executed at the exact time you set it.

NOR7034 wrote:
"The only way the boat can alter its course within a 10-minute periode is with the help of Waypoints!"

That's not true. You can change the course with 1-minute precision with the programmer. (But the in-game track tool dosen't show it) It works similar to waypoints.
I'm sure about it, I've been playing this game for some time already :)
(my boat is piorun3_zegluj)

Post by zezo | 2014-11-22 | 13:33:11

The game server starts moving the boats at :07, but the process takes some time. If you update past the :07 the change does not take effect, and which is worse - it's sometimes reset to the old heading.

Post by din0 | 2014-11-22 | 20:35:42

That's why it's better to change course using the programmer exactly at xx:x7.

Post by headless_monkeyman | 2014-11-25 | 07:41:17

This is my take on it, but I'm new to this system and I don't read french which I find really slows me down. Google only translates so well... But here goes nothing:

Imagine that for every boat there is a little post-it note which is the last 10 minutes of moves. At the 7' marks the notes are all passed in for calculating, and new notes are started for each boat. Everything on the note will be done in order, and the confusion mostly comes from the rules about crossing "box" borders into new wind. With some healthy additional confusion thrown in for the twice daily weather changes.

Also making it difficult for the observer is the fact that after all of the notes are passed in the server has all the time it needs (as long as that amount of time is less than 10 minutes) to calculate the results of those lists and distribute the new positions and course data to the clients.

The game rules and a PDF one of our players wrote both help with untangling the sequence of events, and I suggest literally taking a piece of paper and walking through a few scenarios to "get" it. You can then make a couple little formulas to exploit your knowledge.

Take my 2c with a grain of salt. I've been using this system for a whole leg and a half now, and this leg I have not been able to give it the time it deserves. Hopefully if I am on the wrong track someone will be able to make corrections for me, so I thought I would write this.