ajffighter86

A simple solution to this would be if they implemented crew hiring. Crew would be hard to come by in small pirate towns, but in large national cities like Charleston or Port Royale, everyone on the dock is signing up to serve king (or president) and country. By necessity, I wouldn't be able to hire enough crew at a time to continuously take a 1st rate ship out into battle as a pirate. Players who follow the flag of nations would have an easier time keeping their ships manned to top efficiency.

Distance is in meters I think. The aiming line is just a no-frills reticle. You have to do a bit of guess work to determine where your shots will land. the "R" key affects the grouping of your shots and you can play with it to try to get more shots to land on the same spot. I haven't quite learned what all those options do. I usually just set it for 100 meters or 250 meters. Try using spacebar to fire a shot or 2 and see where it lands. If you're on target, left click to fire off all of your remaining cannons. NPC will only repair once. Humans can use repairs 3 times.

Aren't they eventually adding a way to increase your ship's durability back up to 5? I agree with others that basically the durability system sounds like insurance. (and quite forgiving at that, I don't know of any insurance provider that would replace the same wrecked car 5 times)

A follow-up: I tested using a common privateer (crew 55) versus some contraband cutters (crew 20) or lynx (crew 20). My add-on upgrade is 'basic marines'. My permanent upgrades are 'extra planking', 'extra bow planking' (both fine quality) and a common quality 'copper plating'. Each battle I simply reduced the enemy's sails using chain shot to slow them down enough to board. I left my cannons loaded with chain shot for the entire battle. I moved in to board with full preparation. I was careful not to kill any of the enemies' 20 crew members before starting a boarding, so the tests would be consistent. For the first 3 battles, I opened up with 'use deck guns' and in all 3 battles I killed the entire enemy crew in one round . The enemy most often used 'counter attack' and only killed 3 of my crew. Battle essentially over before it began, each time. The next three battles, I used the same initial tactics in preparation for boarding, but for the actual boarding, I chose 'attack' starting out. I was able to take down 5 enemy crew or so each round, but I was taking losses as the enemy usually chose 'defend' as the appropriate counter tactic. The battle went my way but each time I would lose about 1/3 of my crew. These were unnecessary losses and I'll explain that below. Conclusion: I like the idea of 'fire deck guns' and think it should remain as a boarding tactic, but frankly it is just too overpowered and almost illogical in its current state, for the following reasons: 1) 'Fire deck guns' takes a mere 9 seconds to cool down (EDIT: can be used every 2 rounds so the cool down is actually a bit longer), (not sure if this varies based on cannon size), which means that my 6 broadside 6lb'ers can be ready again to fire during boarding even more quickly than I can reload them while not boarding. This is an insanely fast reload time for cannons under any condition, but particularly puzzling when most of your crew should be focused on boarding which would actually penalize reload times, not accelerate them to superhuman rates. 2) 'Attack' is more risky and less effective than 'fire deck guns', which pretty much defeats the point of boarding at this point. If I wanted to reduce the enemy's crew to zero, then I don't even need to board, albeit it takes longer, since it's going to take about 30 seconds or so to reload grapeshot if I'm just sailing around firing my cannons. I can just board and fire my cannons point-blank range and win, or I can choose not to board and just chip away at the enemy crew with grapeshot from a distance and win. Basically, we don't need no stinkin' swords, we got cannons either way. 3) Cost-versus-benefit: 'Fire deck guns' costs 15 prep. points and lasts one round with a 2-round wait before using again. 'Attack' requires 30 prep points and locks you in 'attack' for 2-rounds, leaving you vulnerable to an appropriate counter during that second round. You'll take more losses. Basically, I can kill more crew with fewer prep. points using 'fire deck guns', and have less risk to my own crew. Problem: I can see players spamming this to make boarding rather uneventful. It will become a 'fire deck guns' nuclear war with each player just cutting away large swaths of enemy crewmembers every other round, and no one will even touch the other options since they are pointless. Assuming both players choose 'fire deck guns' from the start of boarding, the person with the most crew will always win. ------------------------------------------------------ I encourage anyone else to run similar tests, perhaps in PVP versus people in ships they don't mind losing. My largest ship at the moment is a privateer (I couldn't buy one in port, but some pirates lent it to me after I killed all their crew ) and I haven't tried this in large-crew battles, but I imagine the results will be the same, being that there's not much benefit to using any tactic when compared to 'fire deck guns'. TLDR: During boarding, the only button you need click is 'fire deck guns.' Answered my own questions: 1) No, it does not matter what ammo type you use. Chain shot is essentially useless for clearing away crew members prior to boarding (grapeshot works the best), but during boarding it instantly kills an entire trade-cutter crew in one round. I never changed ammo types from chain since the start of each of my test battles. 2) Apparently it does not matter whether you have your cannons loaded prior to boarding. 'Fire deck guns' is a selectable choice right from the start. Even if you just fired off a broadside before grappling the enemy, this option will be available to you in round-one, with apocalyptic effectiveness. ------------------------------------------------------------------ Open to suggestions on how to improve this. EDIT: Second follow up, tried again with my privateer (55 crew) versus a trader snow (65 crew) for more even matching, and it was still doable simply by switching between 'defend' and 'fire deck guns' the entire time. Granted this was versus AI. Not sure if human opponents could do better at countering, they probably could. Also, I was incorrect as the reload/wait times between 'firing deck guns' is 2 rounds, but this is still quite rapid considering its potential for abuse. My losses were heavier, but still nothing compared to using 'attack' which is more expensive in terms of preparation points and leaves you committed for 2 rounds, vulnerable to an enemy counter.