Guardian54

You need to survive, and that means survive on the field. Running away doesn't count for that, otherwise there would have been no battle to begin with at such inferiority of force.

A stationary/fully dismasted sailing ship could technically move and turn by dropping boats to tow it. A stationary sailing ship that has been dismasted and is under fire, however, COULD NOT POSSIBLY turn by any means except being driven by the current, which would be glacially slow at best. It would be good if stationary ship turn rates could be nerfed to something like 1/10 of the present rate, particularly when under fire (when boats to tow the bow around would be shot to splinters) Otherwise, one runs into the UTTERLY LUDICROUS situation of a deeply-loaded frigate with some sail damage (let alone another third-rate) being unable to reliably get behind a dismasted third-rate to rake its stern until it surrenders, because the dismasted third rate can somehow turn on the spot fast enough to keep the frigate under fire, especially once the time comes for the frigate to need to sail into the wind to continue the raking attack. So stationary ships with no (working) sails should turn LAUGHABLY slower than they currently do, at least when under fire.

I am displeased to inform everyone that grapeshot seems incapable of penetrating frigate armour when fired from a third-rate's guns. It can damage crew and masts on deck but will refuse to go through the enemy's gunports, let alone their sides. So I cannot do Objects in Motion until the hull damage bug gets patched out because I am determined to have a perfect capture record (thus far I've lost the captured San Silvestre to magazine detonation though during the capture of the Arrogante). Let's hope that patch comes out soon like they promised (they promised to release it today)

Not hard at all. Just tilt it depending on what the player chooses for big battles like Snatch.

It seems to me that to capture guns you must have them under control at the end of a battle, not abandoned. I've captured a good few guns before, but there does seem to be an appreciable fraction discount, ugh.

1. Research the Light Infantry to make room for Grenadiers to pop up. 2. PROFIT!

First of all, it's grapeshot, not canister. Canister usually comes in a can (hence the name) and is musket ball sized, grapeshot is CONSIDERABLY larger to actually be able to punch through some boards. Are there rough rules on how much armour grapeshot can penetrate? Like "1/3 as much as Ball at same range from the same gun" or something? Because it seems that when I shoot brigs with heavy guns firing grapeshot, I can still just lol through their armour and wreck guns, crew, etc easily. I'll test this tomorrow if the hull damage bug hasn't been patched out enough for Arrogante to not roflstomp the French frigate line in "Objects In Motion" by then. Because dropping the enemy down to 40% hull (or in the last of the three frigates in the enemy vanguard, 20% hull) but 50% armour in one broadside doesn't give me much chance to capture them as I don't have enough men in my fleet to just overrun ALL their crews even with great melee skill and sword bayonets. I dearly hope there's established rules for this...

Weird. Even on Easy in the British campaign, due to presumably poor purchasing decisions or preferring to rely on grapeshot instead of boarding pushing my repair costs up and reducing money gain from selling obtained ships due to damage, I kept running low on money even after getting +25% income with a +20% income bonus from total success in "Dinner For Admiral".

I don't mean the "+ -90% accuracy" and such obvious problems that somehow comes from Marksman Training (which I didn't dare take on my fusiliers in case they went full stupid somehow). I'm talking about how "+5% rewards from Admiralty" is OP as hell compared to "+5% casualty recovery" or "5% discount". Because you need +100% income vs -50% cost i.e. 10 ticks before the discounts start eclipsing the income upgrade, and you don't get nearly that many ticks. This seems to make it so that your first thing to fill after Luck (superbly useful for making money and reputation on side missions) and maybe technology is going to be gold income, every single British campaign, because it's the primary source of income. Gold is used for everything, so item-specific discounts should go 10% per tick to make it more worthwhile to pick and to snowball faster to "you can afford 2x as much stuff (additional fees may apply though)!" at the top end, compared to gold income which is universal. You can spend a skill point on a 5% discount on any one of those items, to a max of 25% discount... or you can spend the same 5 skill points to get 25% more funds which allow you to be more flexible and buy more overall. It's very obviously not balanced.

I am pleased to report that the (detached) Skirmishers problem has apparently been fixed so that Grenadiers can actually reliably beat them within 6 volleys if the Grenadiers have the stamina remaining to keep chase for that long and close distance whenever they are reloading. In other words, micromanagement FTW.

Shh, no taking steroids when on duty! ...I mean that's APPARENTLY how it works... I know, it's ridiculous that I fire like 15 guns into his side with grapeshot (canister doesn't work vs ship hulls, grapeshot can once they're weakened enough) and still only manage to kill 8 people on his gun deck. If I aim at his weather deck a lot of the shots miss high so I don't bother, and even then the killing isn't nearly effective enough. Seriously, once the armour is compromised each shot of grapeshot that hits the enemy ship and penetrates its residual hull thickness should kill at LEAST one crew member, and that's for a 4-pounder!

My own unit of 30 skirmishers detached from a normal unit, vs a dedicated enemy unit of 50+ skirmishers is a foregone conclusion. Believe me, I tried it. Better to have the fusiliers just keep on exchanging volleys than throw men away like that. At least Grenadiers are somehow the same price as Fusiliers so I was lucky to switch to them really early in a campaign. (It's nice that you can't upgrade/switch unit types for the same unit in this game, because I don't think fusiliers can magically grow taller to qualify as grenadiers) You sailed far too close and presumably didn't wear their armour on that side down to 0 with round shot first. Because even a cutter with 6 guns per side can pull 3 casualties per salvo with canister if the enemy has 0 armour left on the side being shot. Meanwhile a 5th rate vs a troopship in that 2.3 (IIRC) intercept mission, in the same stage as Crossfire, can only do 8 crew kills per salvo of canister even after his armour on that side was at 0, ugh. However, I kept the ships easily far enough apart despite me being upwind (at half sail though) that he couldn't snipe any of my men. As an example, Age of Empires DE got good enough with the AI coding that the AI now knows to scout with sheep.

Manual aim is REQUIRED to hole get the enemy's sails properly, and their sails also have to be out to do this unless you manage to dismast them with round shot (if calibre is small). The sail damage is annoyingly slow regardless though. Oh right, it's critical to have multiple ships ganging up on one to get them to surrender. Otherwise even troopships will stay at Wavering morale for insanely long times while you're slowly depopulating them. Multiple ships surrounding them convinces them to surrender much faster.

You would think that Fusiliers or Grenadiers would be trained to "if ordered to shoot at skirmishers, shoot as soon as you are in range, forget the volley or formation when it comes to fighting skirmishers, just shoot before they run away". The way skirmishers can fire and the Fusiliers just refuse to fire back until the whole lot slooooowly turn around to face the skirmishers--who are long gone out of range by then--is quite irritating. Because any officer with half a brain is going to train the men to use line tactics when facing line infantry, but against skirmishers just shoot as quickly as you can aim before they run away again. Please program the units to fight more intelligently against skirmishers! Because really, if they were armed with rifles or better muskets as skirmishers usually should be, they'd be out of range anyhow, it's quite irksome to have 1/3 of your unit in range yet no one shoots because they got to turn half the unit or more to be in range first. I am continuously losing more men than I kill in land battles on EASY, albeit with captives making up the gap, because of the inability of enemy troops who are routing to actually run away more than 10 meters before rallying to let off another volley, the inability of my troops to navigate, the left-click drag often disrupting manoeuvres, and the accursed lack of anti-skirmisher firing.

This is seriously terrible when you're just verifying a unit's stats before a charge makes contact, and tends to disrupt manoeuvres in general. It cancels charges even when you are paused. I think a more Total War like momentum charge calculation might be better than the MOBA-style ability button like thing we have at present if this control problem doesn't get fixed. I know it's a part of the "manual pathing" function but really, it's... a drag *inb4 infraction for bad pun.