Boat Doesn't Float Enough

[Tender Loins]

so ive tried all ic an but it seems no matter what i do, my boats always go about 80% under the water and 20% is actually above able to be walked on. I mean i look at real life ships and it seems like its always the other way around. Like looking at this ship linked as well as all modern day ships i dont egt why i cant get mine to float higher :(
https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTh8HENtRJrvCmgQOCFOYF1rgwHYiDJ6cCWGJ4q0sGYuPPaahbLpg

[From The Depths]

I presume you have an air pump in there somewhere?

[Tender Loins]

yeah air pumps go in the bottom deck if its a big boat.

if its only a one story boat theyre still in there but theyre hanging around on deck like me

[From The Depths]

Well if the air pumps are working (look at them to find out!) and the boat is made of wood then if you want it to lift out of the water then either expand the air space under the water or make the above water part of the boat lighter. Making the keel lighter but placing it further down helps with this whilst maintaining stability!

[falizure]

while having x amount of your ship above water make help with its appearances, tactically though its more of a blessing if it rides lower, assuming you have sealed compartments to prevent flooding of the entire ship in a emergancy that is, but due to the way dramatic effect water has on shells and horizontal missiles i often try to actually force most of my ships under water, its not a perfect defence but it is more then just the ships hull and design itself, especially against long range shells since by the time they near their target they often are at a good angle to bounce right off the water before they even make it to your hull, also if you take into account how few players actually build subs and/or torpeos its a even better defence, although im not sure how the upcoming cannon shell customizations will effect tactics, if it does change it enough then that strategy may change in the future.

[Tender Loins]

i know its more tactical but it would be more realistic and just better looking (in my opinion) if they floated higher.

im not sure exactly the way air pumps work, but so far i havent been able to make use of them to make my stuff float as i'd want. i guess ill have to experiment with them later

[falizure]

sadly theirs not a lot of ways to make it float higher up other then the ones like the developer said, air pumps and more air, might be able to get hydrofoils to help a bit but if your designing something like a old sailing ship they would probably make it look really ugly, so i cant really suggest much beyond that, i think they probably had the best advice in that case

[From The Depths]

You can always put propellers on the bottom of the ship, facing upwards, and leave them running!

[onebit]

Show a pic of your boat.

[VbHD]

Originally posted by From The Depths:

You can always put propellers on the bottom of the ship, facing upwards, and leave them running!

Made me laugh. Setup a complex controller and you've got a switch-powered-rising-boat-thingo

[Bobblehead O Doom]

Just set the propeller facing down to "MAIN" in its settings and it will run whenever your main propellers try to run or you could use an Complex controller to make it run all the time. I find switching it to main works perfectly fine with AI though as the main propellers are pretty much always running anyways..

[Ancient]

Originally posted by POTOPatrick Not-Star:

im not sure exactly the way air pumps work, but so far i havent been able to make use of them to make my stuff float as i'd want. i guess ill have to experiment with them later

More or less, any airtight space with a pump inside will create a certain number of cubic meters of buoyancy, based on the unoccupied space of the area it is in. Bigger space, more buoyancy. Mouse over the pump to view it's status. Heavier ships like an ironclad with a lot of topside metal armor will require a larger combined buoyancy from all your compartments below it. Any leaks in the structure that allow water in will cause the pump to fail and the compartment to flood when exposed to water. If the blocks are repaired and the source of water stopped, the pump will resume and maintain the compartment once again.

In real modern naval vessels, this compartmentalized structure is usually engineered with such great redunancy that the ship's deck remains slightly above sea level even with ~50% of the compartments flooded. Many U.S. navel destroyers and other vessels of history have used dedicated ballast systems to adjust the ship's visible profile tactically when engaging enemies.

More or less, I take my ship and divide it up into decks (horizontally) and use bulkheads (vertically, viewing the ship from the sides) to create a series of sealed compartments. On a large ship, like a batleship or a carrier, I usually create a small flood deck at the lowest deck and purposely let it flood by sealing it and not putting in any pumps (Check out the default Ocelot from DG story mission #2, it also used this flooded keel type for the lowest deck, they even put the engine in there haha). This, along with a smallish lead keel will keep the ship's keel pointing down, while the compartments above are sealed with pumps and keep the ship's deck facing the sky while also keeping it afloat.

If you need the ship to stop pearldiving forward, flood a lower stern compartment to lift the bow. If your ship tends to plane too high above the water and tries to backflip when you throttle, flood a lower bow compartment. You can even have a flooded compartment above one that is dry if that suits your needs.

[Bedlam]

simple solution:make it larger, or make it Wider. ill post one of my own creations that ride a tad low and how i fixed it