Testbed - Demasting & Accuracy cap

[Liq]

I've been testing demasing on the testbed for a bit.
There seem to be quite a few new +accuracy upgrades / skill books. The ones a clanmate has found so far are the following:

• "Table Of Parts Of Ships Of War" -10% Dispersion
• "Flag Officer" -8% Dispersion
• "Sir William Congreve's Sights" -5% Dispersion

Additionally, if running carronades, the perk "Carronade Expert" lowers the Dispersion by another 5%.

All these buffs combined result in an accuracy bonus of +28%.

Now, I'm wondering, is there a cap for dispersion? Because I think the point of Carronades is to be somewhat in-accurate close up damage dealers and they're not meant to be laser guided missiles.
Combined with the buff regarding demasting (It takes 7 32pdr hits to demast a surp's main mast, see the video below), and the repair time being upped to 15 minutes, demasting might actually become a more often used thing to do in battle. We will know once it goes to live servers I'm very curious to see.

(In this Video I didn't have any accuracy buffing upgrades / skill books, so imagine if someone stacks all possible upgrades together, that might result in some crazy sniper action.)

 

Edited May 9, 2017 by Liquicity

[TommyShelby]

27 minutes ago, Sir Texas Sir said:

a duel, which is a controlled environment that most folks play by set rules.   Though how often do they do this in OW fights?  I know we do at times in Live as a means to stop/slow down the other guys and most of them have no clue how to demast for the life of them, but we do so we use it.  That is called experience.

In OW Fights? Pretty much every single one  Nothing more enjoyable than demasting a ship. 

In my experience there is no "best" way to demast. There is so many things to take into account before you choose whether to mast snipe or mast rake. It would probably take me an hour to list all the factors one needs to consider. 
 

[William Death]

2 hours ago, TommyShelby said:

In OW Fights? Pretty much every single one  Nothing more enjoyable than demasting a ship. 

In my experience there is no "best" way to demast. There is so many things to take into account before you choose whether to mast snipe or mast rake. It would probably take me an hour to list all the factors one needs to consider. 
 

Agreed 100%. Nothing quite like hearing your crew cheer as you watch the mast fall by the board. 

I love to demast in OW PvP. Granted I'm not very good at it, but I am practicing and learning all I can. It has saved my hide multiple times. Most recently I was in my speed-fit Bellona (my OW baby, absolutely love that ship) and ran into two battles where demasting allowed me to either escape certain sinking, or pull out a win. About a week ago, I got into a battle with two first rates and a pavel (all player-controlled). I was going to fight the two first rates until the Pavel jumped into the fight. By then, I had my sails chained to shreds and the only way I could get ahead of the Vic that was at my broadside (and keeping me tagged) was to take down his foremast. It worked and I made it out. In another engagement, about a month ago, I ran across a lone player Bellona. I quickly realized I wouldn't be able to stick on his stern very well (he turned nearly as well as me and I didn't have the HP to play any tactic that made me tank broadsides from him), so I used my superior speed to get range on him and demast. It worked and I was able to de-crew him and win the engagement.

When I was first learning how to demast, I only did mast rakes with a full broadside. Lately, however, I've been practicing my single-shot technique. It still needs work, but I've found both to be very effective. Like you said though, which one to use is dependent upon the situation. I had two duels with the same person last night, the first in Pavels (which I won by demasting) and the second in first rates (which I lost by demasting [I swear though, his mainmast only needed 2 more hits before it fell! I was counting!]). Both duels I used the single-shot method mostly, and he used the mast-rake method mostly. 

Also, I don't know what server you plan to play on after the wipe, but I'd love to get in a battle with you to watch a master de-master at work. I'm 100% sure I'd lose if I was fighting you, but I'd come away having learned some things.

[Cmdr RideZ]

14 hours ago, Hodo said:

In NA we dont have the rigging to worry about so a lot of the effectiveness of chain is lost.

I believe so.  This should be simulated.  Chain shot should be always the 1st option to shoot rigging if asked from me.  Current mast meta is making these, maybe not useless, but clearly not as useful as those could be.

The game would be also better if grape rake would be the way to cause crew damage.  Round shot rake damage should be nerfed to give room for grapes.

The game has 3 ammunition types.  Would be more interesting if we had to actively change ammunition type.

Right now you can safely just sail with round shots, as that works for all.  You get a good place to rake, you take it.  You get a good place to shoot masts, you take it.  You get a good place to shoot hull side, err, well, you skip it.  But still, the point is, you can just sail with round shot.

What if you get a good place to rake, you have balls loaded, you take it but you know the damage is not really that high.  You would need to know beforehand that you are going to rake and load grapes.  Skill cap would be higher.  I like this as this asks you to see couple steps forward how things should develop.  This is something that you cannot practice with bots, this is more than just a mechanical skill.

To me personally, Naval Action combat at least was awesome.  The depth came from wind, positioning, maneuvering, and then there was a short moment to use mechanical skill.  It created good amount of depth, better than in any game that I have been playing so far.  So in one way yes, I am here after something that I liked.  Now I am just afraid that the game is going to burger game category.

Lets make a scenario...  We remove everything else except side hull damage.  I am not really asking this, but for this scenario.  We come to system that is just hull bashing, right?  But how you define who is going to win?  You have to be able to cause damage without taking damage.  This is something far more complicated than just "Hull bashing".  Could it be more difficult than mast sniping?

So now one guy is better than you with wind, positioning and maneuvering.  It is actually hard to get damage because he always seems to know how to position and maneuver.  So how do we make it easy for you?  We provide you mast raking and sniping.  If enemy is positioning and maneuvering well, estimating his position well -> Who cares as you can always shoot masts!  So forget the rest, just learn some mast sniping.  Lets then make those masts to be toothpicks so everyone has to do it, so that now the game is just about mechanical skill.  Yes, this sucks.

[William Death]

3 minutes ago, Cmdr RideZ said:

The game would be also better if grape rake would be the way to cause crew damage.  Round shot rake damage should be nerfed to give room for grapes.

The fact is, ball was used for raking historically and it is fine in game. Grape works for when you are broadside to broadside and you get all (or almost all) the HP gone (by shooting the side of the ship with ball). It takes out boatloads of crew in a single broadside. Also grape is quite effective when you shoot down onto your enemy's decks (as in from a large ship into a small ship). No need to buff grape or nerf ball in any way.

[Cmdr RideZ]

2 hours ago, Willis PVP2 said:

The fact is, ball was used for raking historically and it is fine in game. Grape works for when you are broadside to broadside and you get all (or almost all) the HP gone (by shooting the side of the ship with ball). It takes out boatloads of crew in a single broadside. Also grape is quite effective when you shoot down onto your enemy's decks (as in from a large ship into a small ship). No need to buff grape or nerf ball in any way.

Think about it a bit more.

edit...

Think about Trafalgar, Victory raking Buc.  Correct me please if I am wrong.

It did not go like...  "Oh, Bucs stern is here, good place to rake, so lets rake".

Nelson actually planned his maneuver.

Also, was there just a "standard" load in cannons or did Nelson ask something else to be loaded?  Was it a multi-projectile round?  Maybe a low velocity one because of that?  Which ammunition type in NA would describe this the best, needs preplanning, has multiple projectiles and is low velocity?

Check casualties.  I think that in NA with standard ball you can cause equal or more casualties than Nelson was able to cause in this one.

Planing, tactical gameplay, provides often depth more than direct reaction based games.  Skill is different, as your have to think a bit more what you are going to do.  You still have mechanical execution there in the end.

The same reason why I do not like the current mast meta, as it is creating pretty simple gameplay.

Lets see, the wipe is coming, and it can be that I am wrong.

Edited May 19, 2017 by Cmdr RideZ

[William Death]

I was going for demasting in this Santisima duel with a buddy. However, I decided to be clever, I had his foremast about ready to topple, when I noticed he would be lined up for a perfect stern rake as I passed astern of him. I had double ball loaded (I was out of charge shot and double works quite well at demasting if you are within range), I luffed my sails enough to get to a nice, slow speed (every ship has a preferred speed to rake at, some prefer faster speeds, some prefer slower speeds), and set sector to 250 (since his stern gallery was roughly that distance). Fired when the shot lined up. As you can see, the results (384 crew and 11 cannons) were devastating.

That was not even a perfect stern rake, because, if you notice, his ship is not 90 degrees to me, if it had been, I would not be surprised to see 450 crew or more and closer to 20 cannons. Still, its the most crew I've ever taken off in a single rake. I've taken max 17 cannons out in a single rake since then, and also about 350 crew.

I usually average about 250-300 crew per stern rake in a first rate duel. I don't see the problem here, he could have easily braced, or simply out-maneuvered me, after all, I was missing my foremast. Instead, he became confident that I was strictly going for masts. I surprised him by raking his stern, and then whipping my ship around to port and demasting him with the starboard broadside  

As an aside, the next duel we did, he soundly beat me by demasting. I think I made him angry LOL.