Valkyrien Sails

Valkyrien Sails is an addon bringing immersive sailing mechanics to Minecraft. With this mod, you can build realistic sailing ships and sail them with the power of the wind!

Blocks

Helm Block: A helm block that has 720 degrees of rotational freedom! While on a Valkyrien Skies ship, right-click to ride it and adjust the wheel angle to your heart’s content. This will turn an invisible rudder and drive your ship about.

Sail Block: When placed in one-block-thick groups on a Valkyrien Skies ship, these blocks will begin to provide thrust based on their angle to the wind. The sails will behave differently if the group is parallel or perpendicular to your ship’s hull. Right-click to douse them, and to set them again! All connected sails will do so in unison.

Ballast Block: A heavy block for keeping your ship upright and weighing it down. Place these at the bottom of your ship to keep it upright by counterbalancing the weight of the masts and superstructure, or just use them wherever to adjust the trim!

Buoy Block: A block that acts as a cube of sealed air. It also provides a small boost in buoyancy, similar to the Eureka Floater. For use if your ship is still just a bit too heavy.

Magic Ballast: If you are really struggling with balancing your ship using ballast or the ship is still just a bit lopsided, you can use Magic Ballast to provide a subtle righting force to your ship. Be careful, though! Using too many will make your rudder sluggish.

Rigging: A climbable fence block for decoration and reaching the topmasts.

Redstone Helm: A variant of the helm block which outputs a redstone signal strength on either side based on how far the wheel is turned in that direction.

Rope: A crafting ingredient, but also placeable. Will toggle connected sails when right-clicked.

Mechanics

Wind: Wind will blow throughout your world, and the direction and velocity of it will change over time. While standing on a ship with sails, particles will appear indicating its speed and direction. It will pick up significantly during rain, and even more during storms.

Ship Assembly: Thanks to VLib, you can smash a Dedication Bottle on the side of an isolated build, and it will automagically assemble! If you rename the bottle, the ship slug will match your custom name.

Shipbuilding

How to get a ship ready to sail using Valkyrien Sails:

1. Construct your ship.
2. Assemble it using your preferred assembly method. The Dedication Bottle is the built-in one.
3. See how it sits in the water. It will likely tip over due to a high center of gravity.
4. To stop it tipping over, place Ballast blocks as low down in the ship as possible to bring the center of gravity down.
5. Once your ship is sitting upright, begin placing Buoys until the ship is sitting where you want it in the water. If it tips over again, continue from step 4 and repeat until the ship is sitting how you like it.
6. If your ship is still a little bit lopsided for some reason, add one magic ballast to straighten it out that final bit.

To see where your center of mass/gravity is, press F3+B and look for the yellow cube outline somewhere within your ship. Your goal is to get that to be either at or below the waterline.

Sailing

Sailing is fairly simple in Valkyrien Sails. Since the sails cannot be angled, the sails always assume that they are optimally angled to best catch the wind. There are still things to consider, though.

• With the default configuration, the helm behaves how a ship’s helm does in real life, meaning it simply simulates a rudder. Since rudders do not generate any force on their own and instead rely on directing the waterflow when the ship is moving, the helm will not do anything while the ship is stationary, and it will become more effective as the ship gains speed. If you do not like this behavior and want the helm to turn the ship even when it is stationary, disable the “realistic-rudder” option in the configuration file.

• There are two ways to construct your sails: parallel to the length of the hull and perpendicular. There is a difference in how they will act.

  • Sails that are perpendicular to the hull are the kind most are familiar with. They are called “square-rigged sails”, or just “square sails” for short. Square sails are the most effective when sailing directly in the direction of the wind and will become less effective the further from that they get.
  • Sails that are parallel to the hull are called “fore-and-aft-rigged sails”, or just “fore-and-aft sails” for short. These sails are actually the most effective when the ship is sailing perpendicular to the wind. They are much better at sailing against the wind than square sails are, however they are less effective than square sails when the ship is sailing with the wind.

• When sailing with the default configuration options, you must be careful never to sail directly against the wind, because you can become stuck. Since your sails cannot generate forward motion directly against the wind, you also lose the ability to steer using the rudder and become completely immobilized until the wind changes. This is called being “in irons” and can be avoided by using a maneuver called “tacking”, which is basically sailing at 45 degrees on either side of the wind to maintain momentum and only crossing the wind briefly when you are “changing tack” to the other side. There are many great diagrams and explanations online if you are still confused.

Dependencies