On Being A Shit Helmsman

On the Stormcloud and in the Calcium Kings, the Sea of Thieves guild I belong to, run by my long-time friend Bacxaber, everyone kinda has their own job. I’m a cannoneer and bucketer, Bacxaber is main cannoneer and boarder, he’s normally the one who boards other ships and forces them to drop anchor, and both Zach and Fox split being the helmsman and firing cannons, with Fox doing more cannoneering and Zach doing more repairs. We know what we are good at, we know our jobs and it cuts down on unneeded communication.

But sometimes, the normal team isn’t around, and sometimes we have to change things up. And, occasionally, that means I am the helmsman. The problem is, I’m… pretty shit at it.

Okay, fine, I can helm a sloop. But sloops are easy to helm. They’re super mobile, everything about them is quick and snappy and they stop relatively quickly. Sure, sloops are only the fastest when they’re sailing directly into the wind, but a sloop can be maintained by a single person, and if you fuck up, you can just hit the anchor and have that anchor be back up in seconds. You can also see further on a sloop, the sails are slightly less in the way. While it is true that the Dark Adventurer sails got nerfed to be the same as all the other sails in the game, on a sloop, it doesn’t make much difference.

Brigs and galleons though are an entirely different story. And the biggest difference by far is the drift. A sloop will quickly come to a halt, but a brig or a galleon will just keep on going, long after you’ve raised your sails. If you want to stop RIGHT NOW then you can hit the anchor, but there’s still a bit of a delay, and the anchor on a galleon in particular takes foreeeeeever to raise.

You also need to consider speed. Brigs are actually really speedy, and can really zoom if you have the wind in your sails. Galleons on the other hand always seem slow, even when sailing with the wind, with all sails down and properly rotated. When we were three-manning a galleon, we ended up only using two sails, because it takes a long time to raise all of them. But, on the plus side, when it comes to battles, you can just put your sails up and turn your galleon into a rotating guns platform.

However, these ships also steer weirdly. Sloops will happily turn however you want them to. Brigs require a bit of effort, but helming a galleon is like driving a tank. They are slow and cumbersome and non-responsive. On the flip side, the Man-o-War you helm in the third Monkey Island tall tale looks like a galleon but doesn’t steer like one, it somehow both handles like a tank and turns far too quickly, more than it should. So you’re expecting galleon controls but end up overestimating everything.

My biggest issue though is that I always over-steer. I seem to always turn the ship a bit too far, then have to waste time correcting myself. Which isn’t that big of a deal when just idly sailing between islands, but it can spell disaster while in battle. The most important thing when fighting another ship is making sure that your cannons can hit their cannons, while keeping out of their broadside so they can’t hit you.

The few times I’ve been a helmsman while in battle, things haven’t gone particularly well. Although one of those times, we somehow sank without having any water on our ship, and in an invisible storm. Your ship is supposed to start creaking when you’re about to sink, but at the time, those creaking sounds were broken. Other times though, I’ll admit, I was just outplayed. But, to be fair, I’m still learning.

And, at the same time, I am getting a bit better. My last time as a helmsman, I took out my new brig, Arkay’s Fang, out for a spin, and we didn’t crash into anything at all. AND I only sailed past our intended destination a grand total of once.

Still, I need more practice. But at least, when we normally play, I can rely on my team to do the job of helmsman better than I can.