The size and mass of the Titanic are formidable, and nothing happens quickly. You have to plan turns, acceleration, and deceleration literally minutes ahead of time since the ship is so sluggish to respond to helm and power inputs. Using the Titanic we are able to see a small quirk with the ship handling in Ship Simulator 2006 in that when you make sharp turns using the longer vessels, the ship actually appears to “skid” around the turns as if the turn isn’t being initiated by the rudder at the rear of the vessel. You can see the skidding effect mirrored in the way the ship wake is rendered with the forward half of the ship seeming to slide toward the outside of the turn.
In more advanced missions you gain control over more than one vessel at a time in order to complete more complex maneuvers such as using tugs to push or pull ships to port. By clicking on the different ship icons at the top of the screen you can jump to each bridge to control each vessel. The dynamics of pushing, pulling and towing ships seems to be very well done. For instance, when towing another vessel, if you put the rudder of the towed vessel hard over, it will come out of line with the towing vessel and additionally it will tend to pull the towing vessel off course as well. These interactions can be very complex, and coupled with the effects of wind on the individual vessels things can get very interesting.
