Boarding + 'Determined Defender' suggestion

[maturin]

3 hours ago, Juan Navarre said:

Further, in 1799, the USS Chesapeake was heeling enough that she could only hit the rigging of the Shannon, when she lost maneuverability and became entangled with the other ship, and was subsequently boarded. The only way she would be heeling that much is if she was under enough sail to be going more than 2 knots.

 

You are misremembering here.

Shannon was to leeward in the engagement. Her fire shot away Chesapeake's headsails, causing her to luff up and become unmanageable. Then boarding began, necessarily with the two ships essentially stationary.

As for Serapis vs Bonhomme Richard, the British ship's jibboom became tangled in the American's mizzen shrouds (the textbook method for grappling an opponent, on the part of Cpt. Jones), but the boom broke. So Serapis may have had a bit of way on. After that, Serapis' anchor became afoul of her enemy's sides. But it was dusk, with a land breeze on the east coast of Britain. Probably not that windy.

As mentioned above, the preferred method of boarding an opponent was letting him ram you in the shrouds. It went without saying that this was not advisable at 10 knots. Battles were just fought at slower speeds in reality.

 

Quote

Historical accounts aside, I can't think of any mechanism that would prevent ships with similar velocities from grappling because of their speed through the water.

The momentum of the ships moving apart, snapping the grapples like spaghetti noodles. A line strong enough to withstand that kind of force cannot be thrown because it is too heavy.

[Juan Navarre]

22 minutes ago, maturin said:

You are misremembering here.

Shannon was to leeward in the engagement. Her fire shot away Chesapeake's headsails, causing her to luff up and become unmanageable. Then boarding began, necessarily with the two ships essentially stationary.

As for Serapis vs Bonhomme Richard, the British ship's jibboom became tangled in the American's mizzen shrouds (the textbook method for grappling an opponent, on the part of Cpt. Jones), but the boom broke. So Serapis may have had a bit of way on. After that, Serapis' anchor became afoul of her enemy's sides. But it was dusk, with a land breeze on the east coast of Britain. Probably not that windy.

As mentioned above, the preferred method of boarding an opponent was letting him ram you in the shrouds. It went without saying that this was not advisable at 10 knots. Battles were just fought at slower speeds in reality.

 

The momentum of the ships moving apart, snapping the grapples like spaghetti noodles. A line strong enough to withstand that kind of force cannot be thrown because it is too heavy.

I stand corrected.

[Sir Lancelot Holland]

On ‎5‎/‎16‎/‎2018 at 11:54 PM, Nick the cursed said:

Hummm... I had to give up the fight because he had Determinated Perks... After some hard work against a Frigate...

Good fight, btw...

To a degree I would agree DD gave me an advantage, equally I agree you worked hard to get into a position where you could board, I do think that a single still picture does not reflect how the battle actually progressed.

My first thought was 'expletive' It's Nick the Cursed! Many have heard of you, few have heard of Sir Lancelot Holland   so from a morale perspective you were already ahead, it was also clear you had already been in a fight. Despite low crew numbers and the loss of 25% of my sails I was still able to manoeuvre fairly well and where I could managed to get a few good broadsides into your Snow. Indeed it is a testament to the Snow and your ability having lost 35% of your own sails that you got close enough to attempt to board.   

To be honest it was going to be anybody's fight, either of us could have won even at the point where the decision was made to disengage and yes it was a good fight, it's rare that i get into a 1v1 fight, usually I get on the wrong side of a  high numbers fight, all that really taught me was that to win you need numbers, which is sad for so many reasons. The battle ended as so many battles in this age ended, with both of us believing we could have won, that the mutual decision to disengage, repair, and go our separate ways was the right one, made with honour by both sides.

Should DD be removed, no I don't think it should, I do think though it should be more balanced maybe linked to morale and the condition of the opposing ships which may be a more reasonable solution. 

[The Last Templar]

Its great to read the different views on the perk itself, but the truth is it's very demoralizing to work so hard on outmaneuvering a ship (in most cases, much bigger) open its stern, perform accurate stern rakes with grape and cut swaths in the crew,  deplenish the crew hit boxes (or as far as your 6lb guns could) sail well enough to put yourself in a position to board, just to see those cursed yellow letters. My most recent experience was being tagged by a bucentaure when I was in a snow, within the first half hour I had it's crew down to 230, to my 160. After noticing grape was no longer effective along the stern I did what I could to inflict physical damage on the ship, however being a realist I surmised that broadside to broadside a snow is no match for this 2nd rate, even though it de-crewed. After another half hour of close quarters raking with both grape and ball the crew was down to around 190. With 20 minutes left in the battle I was ready for my patience and hard work to pay off, and while the bucentaure was in irons I laid my ship along the stern with 100 boarding prep.  What happens next is predictable. I saw the prompt and proceeded to smash my head into the desk. An hour long engagement, almost entirely one sided, ended by a passive perk that is entirely overpowered. The most reasonable solution I can think of is to make the perk morale based. I find it hard to believe that a ship that lost over 80 percent of it's crew  and was for lack of a better word, handled in combat, could still have the "determination" to ward off all boarding attempts made, especially those from the stern where the glass windows would theoretically be smashed by the consecutive rakes. I don't hate the concept to prevent rage boarding, and making the perk morale based can not only prevent instaboarding in battles, but also reward players that put so much effort into de-crewing and out-sailing larger ships. 

Thank you for reading,

Cheers

Edited June 11, 2018 by The Last Templar

[Cr33D]

What about if determined defender  will give you a time advantage only. Eg. You can't be boarded within 30secs if your crew is more than 30 percent of your opponent in change of insta boarding. Better organised defense of the ship,  removing grapple hooks etc. This would give a defender few more options and pretty easy to implement ?

 

[Slim McSauce]

On 5/8/2018 at 3:26 AM, admin said:

I know we always bring it to the conversation, but there multiple historical examples where determined crews resisted the boarding from much larger ships for hours, even after losing half of the crew. Redoutable was never boarded, despite having 50% less crew. 

Can you achieve this result by creating a system of boarding that allows players to remain sailing and being able to use their crew to fire arms and balancing on realistically how long would it take for 2 crews to whither each other down with muskets/grenades and swivel fire and what's fun and fits into the battles? I think that it's a big upgrade to boarding if you could do it in real time, and not a Pokémon battle of ships.

Also how difficult would it be to model not even the crew, but their shots like a swivel being fired from a top masts, or muskets going off. No smoke but tiny raycast tracers that don't get in the way of the visuals too much but just so you can get that they're shooting. Grenades could explode right on the enemy ship, no need for the model of the grenade just an explosion with some sound and you'll know you're within range of a ship.

If you could make boarding this way it would really be the grand finale of your combat simulation. The only thing that doesn't fit with combat is boarding, because it's turn-based and completely cuts into what a ship battle would look and play like. I very much want to see a ship get tackled by another, some rope going out in simple fashion, one ship trying to drag the other to a complete immobile standstill, or slow enough until men can reasonably climb aboard. 

Would this be a viable goal? I know performance is a big issue but as long as the simulation is there, in real time, it's good.

 

Edited July 4, 2018 by Slim McSauce