Barbancourt

I've been trying to learn Flying Colors now and then. I love the old school hex-and-counter war games. I picked up the expansion based around the Russian fleet and battles with Turkish and Baltic neighbors. Unfortunately it's hard to find other people as enthused by spending hours moving around little tagboard counters and battling like it's 1979. The people I know want to play "x-wing" type stuff. :/

After a couple of months of playing some other games I'm back to Naval Action. I retired my old captain and joined the Danish. In part because the continental coast wasn't too exciting and I wanted a base down in the middle of the islands. Also in part because I like being one of the little guys. I've been playing PvE to learn how it's done. It took me much more than an hour to sink a Snow, so I've been trying to capture unarmed traders instead. Still, my first capture of a trader lynx also took more than an hour. I shot his sails down to 60% easily but after that sail damage basically stopped and 60% wasn't enough to slow him to boarding speed, even when I pushed his bow into the wind. Then I tried to shoot his masts with ball but they absorbed numerous hits from the 6 pounders and seemed to be made of steel. I shot his crew down to 2 with grape. Finally he made a stupid turn and I was able to start boarding. At least fighting 40 vs 2 went quickly. Now I may try trading with the captured lynx to save up enough money to buy a ship with bigger cannons, becuase it took far too long to capture the lynx. Seems I'll need bigger guns to do it in a reasonable amount of time.

Thanks, I would like to do some more organized battles too. In these battles I drop into ships are always crossing each other's lines of fire.

I built a new computer for this game back in September but started playing some other games while I was waiting for release. I bought the game when it opened up in mid-December, but only just logged in the first time a couple days back when they said we'd get a free ship if we made a character before the 21st. (though I don't see a new ship on my list now that the 21st has passed? maybe I'm looking in the wrong place?) First thought: "We have to choose a nation? Err, hmmm..." I have seen the game map somewhere on here and kind of wanted to go with one of the little guys, Netherlands or Denmark (which I usually choose when playing Flying Colors), but wasn't sure about the national dynamics so I just made a United States captain to start. Is switching even possible? So, it's kind of a long way from Charleston to the Caribbean, ugh. I started going South, checking for open battles as I went, getting sunk every time. Then I found out you can interdict the ships sailing by and jumped in on a smuggler and then interdicted a "ship" which turned out to be a group of 4 french ships, just past Savannah. "Surprise!" Still getting my cutter sunk every battle. I watched endless youTubes of this game early in the fall, but that does not improve my novice aim much and the spacebar/rightclick combination to fire is not yet natural for my fingers yet. (wish it was the same single-click/double-click firing I'm used to with world of warships) I have about 130xp from randomly landing a cannon ball now and then while sinking. So, at the end of the evening I figured I'd just spend a few days sailing South in PvE and getting sunk (not kidding myself) as many times as I can to get some XP and practice. I'm not sure if there's a better plan? The battles can be kind of frustrating when a horde of ships jump in and crowd the target. One of my battles was 7 US cutters against a single pirate. I got maybe 10 shots off during the odd moments I could even see the pirate through the throng...though when I stopped those 4 french ships I was all alone. Now I am reading in the forum here about "port battles" and nations gaining/losing ports. I was not aware of that. That is probably activity beyond my little cutter? I'd like to get down to the Caribbean and look around and sail past the ships of other "nations", but it seems ports won't be open to me? So much to learn besides just aiming, switching ammo and repairing/survival...