Misarranged ships in Kallisti Wharf

[srmalloy]

It's not properly a geometry error, and doesn't affect gameplay, so it's a low-priority problem, but on the east side of the central island in Kallisti Wharf, there is a drawbridge with a cargo ship passing underneath that has a tugboat assisting it. Curiously, they're working against each other:

You can see that the bow of the cargo ship is pointed to the left, while the bow of the tugboat is pointed to the right. Now, either the tugboat is towing the cargo ship -- in which case it would be towing the ship bow-first, to maximize the effectiveness of the cargo ship's rudder -- or the tugboat is acting as a drag/steering assist for the cargo ship to help it maneuver in the confines of the port -- in which case the bow of the tugboat would normally be facing the stern of the cargo ship, so the helmsman of the tug is properly positioned to steer the tug to assist the cargo ship.

 

Regardless of which is the case, one or the other should be flipped around.

 

[Rudra]

Random thought given the drawbridge is stuck up as part of the map design, and what I thought might be going on when I first saw it, what if the cargo ship is stuck and the tugboat is trying to pull it back out of whatever underwater obstacle (a sandbar perhaps that the ship was too big to clear?) it plowed into? (Edit: Otherwise, what would be the point of designing the map to always have the bridge raised.?)

 

Edited September 3 by Rudra

[srmalloy]

Unlike Independence Port, Kallisti Wharf has been maintained, so the channel under the bridge would have been dredged; if there had been damage to the channel causing it to be insufficiently deep, it would have been published in the Local Notice to Mariners bulletin, and hazard bouys would have been deployed until the channel could be dredged. Emil Christie wouldn't have let a hazard like that go unmarked long enough for a ship to be caught in it; it would reflect too badly on how he manages KW.

[Rudra]

2 hours ago, srmalloy said:

Unlike Independence Port, Kallisti Wharf has been maintained, so the channel under the bridge would have been dredged; if there had been damage to the channel causing it to be insufficiently deep, it would have been published in the Local Notice to Mariners bulletin, and hazard bouys would have been deployed until the channel could be dredged. Emil Christie wouldn't have let a hazard like that go unmarked long enough for a ship to be caught in it; it would reflect too badly on how he manages KW.

That's assuming Kallisti Wharf is normally a large port and the ship wasn't at or near the port's limit for passage. That also assumes there wasn't some other concern that caused the ship to get stuck. The ship's angle does not lend itself to the theory of having been knocked sideways by severe winds and running aground, but I don't recall other large ships like that in the zone. (Will check shortly to see if there are.) So if the pass was dredged, given how small the port we see at Kallisti Wharf is, there is still a chance that a miscalculation on the helmsman's part or some other circumstance we do not see caused the ship to get stuck. The only things I have to base any of this on though is the directions of the two vessels in question and the fact the zone was designed with the bridge always up for a transit that shouldn't take more than a few minutes not counting raising and lowering times for the bridge. (Which also can explain why no previous notices were announced.)

 

Edit:

Yep, just verified. That is the only large vessel on the map. So it looks to me like it managed to get in, but is now stuck while trying to get back out.

 

Edited September 4 by Rudra
Edited to change "ability to pass" to "limit for passage".

[lemming]

There's probably some coralex causing issues.

[srmalloy]

On 9/3/2025 at 4:04 PM, Rudra said:

there is still a chance that a miscalculation on the helmsman's part or some other circumstance we do not see caused the ship to get stuck.

That's argued against by the ship being in what would be the middle of the channel, and not misaligned like we saw with the Suez Canal and the Ever Grounded Given ramming the side of the canal. The fact that it's been sitting there pretty much forever is, I think, an artifact of the devs not being able to implement dynamic ship movement like the car and truck routes we see on the street -- and we saw how twisted those could be, with some of the pileups of cars and trucks orbiting in an intersection in KW. An argument against suggesting dynamic ship movement is dealing with the ships entering or leaving zones through the gates in the War Walls; unless you just handwaved it and had ships going through the gates like the appearance/disappearance of the Ghost Ship or had them fade in/out at the gates, you'd need additional animations to show the gates opening and closing. And having moving ships doesn't really add anything significant to the game.

[Gerswin Jr]

The ships are clearly racing and the tugboat has a small lead.

[Rudra]

22 minutes ago, srmalloy said:

That's argued against by the ship being in what would be the middle of the channel, and not misaligned like we saw with the Suez Canal and the Ever Grounded Given ramming the side of the canal.

That is what I said in that comment you quoted:

On 9/3/2025 at 5:04 PM, Rudra said:

The ship's angle does not lend itself to the theory of having been knocked sideways by severe winds and running aground,

 

 

 

22 minutes ago, srmalloy said:

The fact that it's been sitting there pretty much forever is, I think, an artifact of the devs not being able to implement dynamic ship movement like the car and truck routes we see on the street

That is countered by the fact they could have just left the bridge down and the cargo ship on either side rather than locking the bridge up with the ship always there. It is further countered by the game having moving boats like we see in Talos Island moving around (that you can't stand on), the Ghost Ship we see transiting Independence Port and Talos Island, and the Rikti Dropships that follow their specific to zone map paths during Rikti invasions. All of which were in the game well before Kallisti Wharf was added. (The cargo ship could have just moved from zone sea door to zone sea door in the War Walls following a set path like the dropships. The game already has that capability and we see it used.) (Edit again: Though in that case, an elevated or arched bridge would have been better for the ship's passage.)

 

22 minutes ago, srmalloy said:

An argument against suggesting dynamic ship movement is dealing with the ships entering or leaving zones through the gates in the War Walls; unless you just handwaved it and had ships going through the gates like the appearance/disappearance of the Ghost Ship or had them fade in/out at the gates,

Fading away works just fine. The devs showed they were fine with things fading in and out when they added the phasing to Atlas Park and Mercy Island. And phasing was added well before Kallisti Wharf was. Hells, the sea doors of the Kallisti Wharf War Walls could have used phasing to give the impression of them being open as the ship enters/exits until we got close enough for it to fade away like how many mobs do in Atlas Park and Mercy Island.

 

I get the impression I'm not going to convince you. And I know you can't convince me. The arrangement of the ships, the placement of the cargo ship permanently keeping the bridge raised, the ease with which the bridge's presence and ability to facilitate the passage of large ships like the cargo ship could have been implemented in numerous ways without having a transit obstruction, the ease of which the check points at the bridge to stop traffic could have been implemented without changing anything about those posts even with the bridge down, and that big ships like that have gotten stuck before even in places where it was suitably deep and wide enough for the ship to pass but human error (or other factors) caused the ship to run aground, get stuck, or suffer unexpected damage all leads me to believe the tug's and the cargo ship's arrangement is intentional, and the cargo ship is stuck. Just without any above water indicator of why/how.

 

Edited September 5 by Rudra
Edited to add "moving around (that you can't stand on)".

[srmalloy]

25 minutes ago, Rudra said:

the game having moving boats like we see in Talos Island moving around (that you can't stand on)

The problem with moving objects isn't that you can't stand on them, but that you can't stay standing on them, as we see with all the cars/trucks and the blimps/dirigibles; I think it was a decision by the original devs to make the boats intangible rather than deal with the issue of people sliding up and over the gunwales (or having a collision box where you couldn't land on the deck, and would just slide smoothly off); the cargo ships are big enough that making people slide off them would be immersion-breaking. 

[Rudra]

26 minutes ago, srmalloy said:

The problem with moving objects isn't that you can't stand on them, but that you can't stay standing on them, as we see with all the cars/trucks and the blimps/dirigibles; I think it was a decision by the original devs to make the boats intangible rather than deal with the issue of people sliding up and over the gunwales (or having a collision box where you couldn't land on the deck, and would just slide smoothly off); the cargo ships are big enough that making people slide off them would be immersion-breaking. 

No more so than my inability to stand on any other boat more than large enough for my character to be on because I just fall through them into the water because they move around as opposed to the ones that don't move that I can get on.

[Vic Raiden]

Creating a code for standable moving platforms and applying it to ships, cars, trams etc. shouldn't be all that difficult... right?