The Secret to Sky Lord's Pitch Roll Yaw Battle

[deadshadowrunner]

Yes,I know many people think the numbers for Pitch,Roll and Yaw in the Grand Archipelago battle in Sky Lord is gibberish and the choices you make are all random. Well,that's what I thought too until I sat down and figured out what it all meant. Beware:This explanation is not for the faint-hearted!

I will split this into different sections to make it clearer to read. I will begin the explanation in the next post.

[deadshadowrunner]

Win Criteria:To win,your Pitch,Roll and Yaw must match the Grand Archipelago's. Meaning,your Pitch must be +35,your Roll must be +60 and your Yaw must be +13. This is because the Grand Archipelago's Pitch,Roll and Yaw always stays at +35,+60 and +13 respectively,no matter what you do. If all three match it means you are directly behind the Grand Archipelago.

[deadshadowrunner]

Let's start with section 11 of the book.

Your position is Pitch-16 Roll+22 Yaw-31. The Grand Archipelago's position is Pitch+35 Roll+60 Yaw-31. Your relative speed is 1000. If you choose to maintain your speed(section 205), your position changes to Pitch+19 Roll+82 Yaw-18. This is because your original Pitch-16 plus the Grand Archipelago's Pitch+35 = Pitch+19. You'll find the same goes for Roll and Yaw.

Formula if you maintain speed: Starspray's Pitch/Roll/Yaw + Grand Archipelago's Pitch/Roll/Yaw = New Starspray's Pitch/Roll/Yaw

[deadshadowrunner]

Next, on section 11, if you choose to accelerate to 2000(section 360), your position changes to Pitch+1.5 Roll+52 Yaw-24.5. This is because your original Pitch-16 + Grand Archipelago's Pitch+35 = Pitch+19, and Pitch +19 + Pitch-16(which is 19-16) = P+3, and divide that by two to get P+1.5. Same goes for Roll and Yaw.

Formula if relative speed changes to 2000:(Starspray's Pitch/Roll/Yaw + Starspray's Pitch/Roll/Yaw + Grand Archipelago's Pitch/Roll/Yaw) divided by 2 = New Starspray's Pitch/Roll/Yaw

[deadshadowrunner]

Finally, on section 11 if you choose maintain speed and Yaw-10(section 107)your position changes to Pitch+19 Roll+82 Yaw-8. You notice Pitch and Roll are same as if you maintain speed only(section 205) but Yaw changes to -8 instead of -18. This is because after adding the Grand Archipelago's Yaw to your Yaw,you then change any signs to the opposite sign(+ to - and - to+),then add or subtract that to the result. So in this case,after Yaw-31 + Yaw+13 = Yaw-18,you add Yaw+10(Yaw-10 changes to Yaw+10) to get Yaw-8.

Formula if maintain speed and any of Pitch/Roll/Yaw changes:Starspray's Pitch/Roll/Yaw which changes + Grand Archipelago's Pitch/Roll/Yaw +/-(remember to change + to - and - to +) change = New Starspray's Pitch/Roll/Yaw

[deadshadowrunner]

I hope you understood these articles and I hope you found them helpful.There are still some parts I have not explained (like if the speed is 500) which I will explain in the future.Please give feedback so I can make these articles clearer if they are unclear or hard to understand.

[kieran]

This is brilliant so far! I tried a few times to make sense of that battle and never could and so dismissed it as arbitrary nonsense. Guess Martin Allen is much more conscientious than I gave him credit for.

[sylas]

its not going to make me read the book again (not ever if i can help it) but i applaud you for sussing it all out

[slloyd14]

Well done! I didn't know what pitch, roll and yaw were when I first played the book and I never thought that there was an order. It's a shame few people would have got that far to work it out.

[The Editor (Alex B)]

Jun 23, 2014 9:05:42 GMT deadshadowrunner said:

I hope you understood these articles and I hope you found them helpful.There are still some parts I have not explained (like if the speed is 500) which I will explain in the future.Please give feedback so I can make these articles clearer if they are unclear or hard to understand.

Would you like to write stuff like this for the magazine?

[time4tea]

Hey, this is a really helpful thread, thanks so much for posting this! I had no idea what I was supposed to be doing with the Grand Archipelago dogfight, but after reading your first couple of posts it made a lot more sense and I was able to find my way through it. A couple of observations I would like to add though:

Firstly, I believe the goal is not to match the Grand Archipelago's numbers, but to get to 0,0,0. To quote paragraph 206:

Your position, relative to the Grand Archipelago, is pitch 0, roll 0, yaw 0: you are directly behind it!

Another thing I noticed is that the way the numbers change seems to be reversed in a couple of paragraphs (which I assume may be typos?). My take on how it seems to work is as follows:

The numbers for the Starspray seem to be relative to the attitude of the Grand Archipelago: so when you are at 0,0,0, you are right behind it. The Archipelago's numbers represent the change to it's direction - those will get added to your current numbers after the next 'step'. The numbers for the manoeuver you choose represent your course correction to try to align with the enemy ship, so those will be subtracted from your numbers after the next step. If you are moving faster, then the Archipelago's manoeuvres will have less effect than yours, so if are going at 2000 relative speed, the effect of increasing by the Archipelago's numbers is halved.

However, on a couple of paragraphs the above behavior seems to be reversed. On paragraph 82, if you halve speed, maintain course (go to 366), the Archipelago's pitch and yaw seem to be subtracted from yours. Then, on para 193, if you maintain speed and roll -120 then you achieve the 0,0,0, but this is in reverse to how your manoeuvres affected it previously. I assume these must be typos (there may be others on different paths that I didn't find).

Hopefully that contributes a little to understanding what this is all about. It seems like an interesting puzzle, but a shame that Martin Allen didn't manage to give some basic instructions.

(Btw, the route I took through the dogfight was: 11, 205, 336, 82, 366, 231, 193, 125, 206. There might be other viable routes and that one might not be optimal)