Hi,
First of all thanks to all that registered an tried Tacticat (www.tacticat.com).

I have to say that we didn’t expect so many people entering in the first couple of days, we are a bit overwhelmed. Given the poor quality of English documentation and usability aids we wanted to give you a hand being also there, but covering all times in order to help European, American and Australian sailors has resulted tougher than we expected.
Remember that Tacticat is not officially supported, we are a group of friends enjoying it and willing to share with you.

In this two days we have had accesses from several countries and, it seems, the system works better than expected. Connections from USA and Australia are better and the simulation smoother than for us, usual players in Spain. The statistics shows peak attendance of 8 boats (Spanish, German, American) on Jun19 11PM CET (one of the legs finished with a heart-attack final downwind run and three boats finishing in the same second!).

Several of you have entered the regattas, fight against other boats, messed with robots… and apparently enjoyed it.
Others have had problems getting their bearings around, getting control of the boat or hiting the right keys… It is Tacticat problem, not yours. Although it is not clear how to solve it (better doc, a training field, an automated tutor….)
Harder than expected has been the communication among Spanish and English. To the usual problems of a foreign language add that you are commanding the boat, the stress of the start,… I suppose that will improve naturally with time.

Now the plan:
- We will wait a week or so in order to receive requests of those having tried the game in order to change the program and ,make it better.
- With all requests and other ideas we already have we will generate a new version in some time, say a week or two maximum.
- After that, and a some testing we will make the general availability announcement.

Timing is not clear, we are approaching the peak season for sailing in Spain, Hobie Europeans are almost there, the world soccer championship, some of us helping in the Americas Cup events in Valencia, final examinations….

So, those of you having comments or requests helping make a better product , please let it know. Everything can be considered…


That’s all, see you in the hyperspace. <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

(Please aquata and rrk8005, you seem to have repeated problems connecting, can we help?, send a note to Tacticat at adecat.com and we will try to solve it).

Some hints and tips to win

Let’s assume you already have some control of the boat, know the race course and so on (meaning you have already Tacticat-sailed half an hour or more).


1. Get a good start, Tacticat automated skippers handle perfectly the boat, you only have to observe the line, the boats arrangement and the wind. Good Tacticat sailors wait parked above committee boat and try to start with as much speed as possible using somewhat kamikaze approach. (I’m sure they would not do it with their own boats…).

2. Train your timing, the count down is difficult to follow perfectly (not a bug, but an intended feature trying to induce some stress to the people starting!) and time required to get to the line depends a lot of how windy it
is.

3. Watch out for wind favored areas and sides. Wind is only visible in short ranges, zooming in, but you can use the i key to get extra info. It is like observing if a far away boat is trapping or not.

4. Be attentive to changes to wind directions. You will soon realize that the important thing is not the absolute values of the shift but the changes and how you synchronize the tacks.

5. Don’t mess with robots. You are always taking risks.

6. Careful with sailing rules. If you are found in a no-rights collision you will be completely stopped, and you will have to recover (and do a 360!). Rules calculations are not always right, sometimes even if you are not the offender you will be stopped, so don’t take unnecessary risks.

7. Precollision courses are normally warned (server makes projections based in current positions and speeds but cannot anticipate users’ changes of mind). Overlapping situations are dangerous if boats have not exactly the same speed or beating angle. Take into account that rules 17 and 17.2 are strictly monitored by the system.

8. Try to pass buoys approaching far and exiting close. Use the quick-gybe command (double enter) when required, not fast in terms of VMG but sometimes the only option not to loose a lot of way.

9. Blanketting effects on broad reaches are somewhat exaggerated. We know it. But makes very interesting boat-to-boat fight for the finish.

10. Be careful in high winds. Things happen very very very fast. Don’t take risks.

11. Be careful with hyperspace. Be ready to press H and deactivate it when you are not sure what to do in the next seconds. Hyperspace engages when ALL connected sailors agree, time jumps 5x, and disengages when ANY ONE disagrees, time returning to real pace (agreement is changed by each user pressing the H key and represented in the top bar as a check-box).


...Still waiting for comments and suggestion to do it better..

Amando Estela (HC16: 108034, Tacticat boat: aestela or tacticat)

This is to somewhat apologize, to mmadge and others Tacticat-sailing yesterday night (European-time).

One of the main objectives Tacticat tries to achieve is to make young people into sailing, and more specifically, cat sailing.

Youngsters like playing games, internet games, and meet to chat and all this. Tacticat offers also that. While sailing they meet together and discuss sailing and play against real champs sometimes winning. That attracts them quite a lot.
And I, for my self, prefer my son playing Tacticat than other more popular games.

We are getting young people interested and, (why not confess it?) stealing from other sailing classes into cats.

But an undesirable effect is that sometimes things run a bit outta control. They chat more than sail, they joke and laugh.

Yesterday night was the case. I was busy with those of you entering first time, checking server stability and communications, and a full uncontrolled chat was happening, Spanish slang and completely jibberish for me (not a young). I had problems following the conversation with the new sailors.

This morning I’ve reviewed all messages and I’m afraid you might got a bad impression.

I’ve made the warning in the Spanish forum and if things don’t go better we will open an independent regatta field for those more interested, any given time, in casual chat and leisure sailing that discussing favored sides, wind shifts and boat-to-boat tactics.


Oh, youth! How I envy it!
40ish year old,
Amando.

I tried it for the half hour before my supper last night and was somewhat overwhelmed at first (as could be expected). You were there immediately helping me out and congratulating me on a good start. I started to get into the groove but had trouble with getting tied up at the mark roundings. Nothing new there <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />.
The double gybe is something that I hadn't read about and that may resolve one of my biggest problems. My leeward mark roundings were not very seaman like. Can you explain what the happens on the double enter command? I would have thought that it would have cancelled the gybe. Is that the point? It stops the boat at the mark in preperation for the upwind turn?
I would also appreciate a detailed explanation of the wind info graphic. You explained the color coding for the windshifts to me.
I think your english help file has some images in it explaining the status windows that are still Spanish.

I appreciate your efforts here. It is a good product.

The Enter key.
- When beating if you press ENTER the boat tacks. So far, so good.
- If you start the tack with no speed, or very slow, you end in irons.
- If you are in the process of tacking, pressing ENTER aborts the tack (rudders centered and usually you are in big problems)
- Going broad you press ENTER, the boat gybes. The gybe is a quite slow one. It is intended to maximize downwind VMG and should be used as the standard gybe.
- During the gybe, pressing ENTER stops the gybe, rudders centered and you are not in big problems but your boat loses against standard gibing boats.

The standard gybe can be used in the buoys roundings, provide that you enter separated and try to exit close. Sometimes this is not the case. You need a quick gybe (that will penalize speed but at least will send you quickly in the other tack). Quick gybe is done by clicking ENTER twice. The system recognizes the two hits as this order.




The wind.
Wind is modelled as a time-dependent vectorial space giving a strength/speed and direction for every point in the regatta field. This version is limited and wind direction is constant for all points and more or less coming from the north.
That means that, at any moment, at any place, we have different wind values, always changing smoothly.

Every time the regatta is re-set a new wind is generated, as a combination of moving puffs, favored sides and shifts.

You get access to wind information with a variety of tools:
- A wind compass is always displayed (TOP-LEFT), marking the current deviation of wind from NORTH. That is displayed by an arrow and numbers (degrees). Green numbers mean starboard favored tack while beating, red numbers for port favored tack. (But that, as every sailor should know is very relative…)
- The W key switches between 3 display modes: No wind displayed, numbers, and gray scale. These modes print info over the regatta field to give you an indication of wind speed. They are deactivated if you zoom out in order to prevent a God view: you are only allowed to see the wind in the neighbourhood of your boat location.
- The I key, prints extra info for everyboat. One of the parameters displayed is the wind speed at the location. You can check the wind for a far away boat (in reality that is like checking if they are double-trapping or capsizing, or …)




The English doc is something that can be improved. I agree. We worked hard on a Spanish version that nobody reads.

Amando,
I was one of the new people last night, the chat you speak of was only a minor problem. I really appreciated your help as I have never raced before (but, have sailed a Hobie 14 for 20 + years). It took me a little while to understand the start, I drove around in circles for a bit. I got the hang of it after a while, I even think I wasn't last!!!!! I'll be back, it may even convince me to figure out the Portsmith rating for my boat and try the local sailing club's races!!! Anyway thanks again for your help.

Ryan