ColonelHenry

Why not both? Wouldn't a custom mode really easy to make since we already have AI building ships themselves? Why can't we just assign player made ships to the AI? Also regarding the free placement of structures on ships, I'm fine with having restrictions on funnels and whatnot but barbettes should be placed freely like the guns; and imo, the option of having the gun determine its own barbette instead of pre-made ones is a must have in the future, having to use the big barbette on a x2 14" turret are both weird and inefficient.

Can we please allow the players to design AI ships in custom battles?

It's quite easy actually provided that you have at least 2 Ardents already in your possession (which you should by this point playing as the Brits). Use those 2 Ardents to soften up and board the Bellona (double boarding), and then turn around and smash the escorting Ardent (and board if you want). The other ships you should bring should be 1 back up boarding focused 5th rate (just in case shit hits the fan), and 1 actually good 5th rate like an Endymion, Leda, or Dedaigneuse (worst of the 3 I listed) to deal with the other ships. Once the 2 3rd rates are dealt with, those other ships should be... well ya know what to do next.

No, that should only be a feature if there are enough people who ask for it. I have experienced that with Men of war series, tbh, it is quite useless. Right now, the custom battle mode should be at least as functional as the Total War series custom battle with its own twist.

The problem is that, AI still build ships that are comically easy to beat, or broken ass ships that irl wouldn't even be considered. It's immersion breaking when I'm trying to build something reasonable. Either I woop their asses, or they woop my ass, or they built something so brokenly fast, they just turn the other way. I enjoy building ships, but I am not enjoying the combat aspect and battles themselves

As the title suggest. I believe it is quite an easy feature to add? Since it just need to assign the design instead of the human player, to the AI?

45 I think. 60 is for the 3rd rate you'll meet in the other mission in the British in the War of Independent chapter

Boarding was a bit cheesy. You can fill 2 6th rates with 300 troops each. Arm them with boarding tools, remove all cannons. You also need are fire ships. You should bring one more with you so you can blow up most of the ships except for one enemy 5th rate, leave it to fight with your damaged 5th rate (DO NOT SINK IT, IF IT BLOWS UP THEN GREAT BUT DON'T SINK IT). So, most of the enemy ships are down, you can focus on capturing the 4th rate. Use those 2 fast but fully loaded 6th rate to approach the 4th rate. Since your speed is really good (no cannons + upgrades), you would only eat one broadside before you catch up and outspeed the 4th rate which... will start the boarding procedure, you will need the 2nd 6th rate to join the boarding. Then voila, you got your first 4th rate. This won't 100% work in this patch on ward since the enemy gets boarding tools as well but you would outnumber the enemy so I'm not sure how that would play out.

^This. Yea, the thing is consistency. I had a ship going from not flashing unit card, seemingly doing well against my 3 smaller ships, and then suddenly, surrender for no reason??? It could have ran if it felt being surrounded since it's a 4th rate against my 5th and 6th rates. But... it surrendered. At other times, I blasted a 4th rate to ****, 1 side armor is nearly gone, blasted multiple broadside into the back, taking in water and still fighting. Sure, ships shouldn't always surrender, but it should be more consistent. Right now, I feel like the RNG just make me want to Esc --> Restart since making one mistake can basically means my smaller ship get blasted with a full broadside and lost most fighting capabilities or the ship I want to capture fights to the death.

Yea, I think ships should surrender easier. They soak wayyy to much damage and crews damage by cannons are underpowered. Some musket fire can kill 5-10 crews depending on the amount of crews. Yet a good broadside by canister can barely get past 10 casualties. We should be able to capture bigger ships with smaller ships by taking out masses, causing mass casualties and shouldn't just by only surrounding the ship with 3-4 other ships.

Yes please. I wanted t\the custom battle mode so I can design my own ships and also the enemy ships. AND then get to save those designs. Pls devs, can you look into this matter?

This one is very dangerous if left uncheck. I'm not sure what's causing it but it has happened twice now, and I can say for sure that the new patches introduced it. Although I do not like land battles, I did play quite a few even before the Chapters were added. I have finished the first few chapters twice before the NA chapters were added. I did not see any crashes what-so-ever. But within the last 24 hrs, I had the game froze indefinitely twice when I group select my land units. As soon as I group select them using the mouse, the game froze in frame with continual of music and sound effect. Especially with the addition of many naval and land battle nn the same mission, this kind of crash can be extremely frustrating for players. I'm not sure if you guys are aware of this bug, and I'm also unsure how to replicate it. Though I can say the missions that it occured: Snatch and Bloodshed. Also is there a crash log? If there is, tell me where the game saves it and I'll send it to you guys.

I agree that it does lack a naval phase... for a Naval focused game lol. I do see the enemy massing their units (I hate land battles so I put that on easy) the enemy does massing units for assault while they skirmish with your troops in other area to probe for weakness. I would imagine on normal difficulty it would be the same with even more troops. I brought ~1300 reinforcement and that was JUST enough to cover most of the front line. Though what I think should happen on this mission is a random chance of an enemy mass assault on different area of defense. On my easy playthrough, it happened to be my least defended area but I think it's scripted for the enemy to strike there en mass not because it was the least defended. Overall, I think the mission is fine, a little bit too easy even on easy mode. Maybe make it so they mass attack on 2 front, but don't go over board with it, else the mission would feel cheap imo.

@WilliamTheIII At what range are you talking about, the 4th rate I see can pretty much pen me at most ranges that my guns could actually fire. Chains have lower range than the normal shell as well. Do you have a vid demonstrating this strategy? My currently strategy is just luring the ship to sail against the wind and then have someone blast a broadside up their ass, and then use a boarding ship to take care of the demoralized crew.

Imo, the game should benefit from a checkpoint system for individual missions. Missions are long and one mistake can pretty much send you back to the restart menu. Some missions can take up to half an hour if your ship had to sail with the wind, only for the objective to be against the wind. It takes ages to replay. Not only that, I hit a nasty crash on Snatch... at the church objective. So now, I have to replay everything again... which I do not intend to. Better yet, can we get a save function during missions?

Also, @WilliamTheIII, No I do not think the land marines can even board ships to begin with. I tried to capture the 3rd rate in firework using my transport ship armed with 310 marines armed with land pattern musket w/ bayonets. They all died while only taking with them 250 out of 500 crews from the 3rd rate (I had the transport ship to be commanded by a high boarding stat captain). I failed like 10 times with no result. So I made a 6th rate Cerebus into a made-shift boarding vessel with no guns: 300 men, best boarding officer I had, sea rifles w/ bayonets. They held their own against the 500 crews despite being outnumbered, I had the transport ship with 310 marines to help with the boarding, all 310 are out of action (I retained about 150 after the battle but still) before the Cerebus get below 200 crews. And the rest of the 3rd crews were killed easily by those 200. So, with this, you should never use land units to board ship, ever.

Hold on, but currently there are no 4th rate in the game? All of the 64 guns are 3rd rate?

How do you fight a 4th rate when there are 2 other 5 rates on you? Yea I brought a Diane and a Hermione. But the thing is, I could barely damage the 4th rate unless I can get broadsides into the back. But the thing is, no matter how careful you are, you can't tank more than 3-4 broadside from the 4th rate. They will screw you over.

No, I know how to fight so it isn't the problem. The problem is that the friggin 4th rate that I see has more guns than both of my ships combined. That's broken. Yes I can win but why bother playing when all you do is cheese the enemy into chasing you instead of the transport? Again, the 4th rate will take out 1/4 of my ship's armor in one single good broadside, how is that fair?

The BR reduction is for the worse imo. Ontario Express is literally unplayable on normal alone. Unplayable as in, I can't engage the enemy without risking losing 1 ship. I can't bring my 4th rate anymore, so I can only bring 2 frigates, both of whom guns combined wouldn't even equal that of the 4th rate the AI bring. How is this fair? They have 2 5th rates to begin with. And now, they want me to fight a 64guns ship of the line. Might as well tie my hands behind my back while playing. I mean, sure I can derp the AI and make them chase me instead of the transport, but I don't want to cheese the game, I want to play it.

On the Ontario Express mission and I think the Rum mission, if you dare to sink a specific ship (on OE, it's the french ships, on Rum I don't remember) the game will just glitch out and no ship can be commanded and ships will just float away as well as their name tag. It's a game breaking bug, I hope that you guys are aware of this.

I'm fine with fighting larger ships but it's the smaller ships that I also have to worry about that makes it nearly impossible to play a mission. Because this isn't Total War, you can't sail against the wind nor does your weapons have consistent range unless you are stationary so managing ships positioning is key to victory... how can I manage position of 3 different ships doing wildly different things at the same time, let alone 5. I really think the give unit to AI needs a little bit more options or at least explanation about what it can do because I want them to focus on one target but they seem to do whatever they like... (they didn't sink themselves but that's because I gave them against weaker ships)

imo, there should be scaling but to a point, it becomes ridiculous. For example, if you manage to capture the 3rd rate on the Firework mission, the later chapters will spawn third rates up your ass... And larger ship combat is completely different than frigate skirmishes. But when you have 2 third rates to worry about and then manage the smaller ships, it becomes impossible to actually do anything. The AI mechanic is still very clunky and kinda unclear for the player what the AI can actually do.

It worked before, but now the mission will result in an auto defeat within 5 seconds of starting the mission

I feel like the economy needs a little more balance for the player since the enemy gets 2-3 ships in any mission while you can barely get 1 5th rate and a troop transport unless you get the correct skill and sell most of your stuffs. Also... really, 5 reputation? Was I blind then? I saw it as 1 reputation!