ZachPruckowski

It might be really helpful to have some general guidelines in terms of milestones then - to someone who is unfamiliar with the concept, "not winning early missions by enough to build for later missions" looks like "I was advancing and then suddenly hit a brick wall of impossible missions".

I had enough difficulty capturing the 5th rate, LOL. I doubt anyone looking for a beginner's guide is gonna be capturing that 3rd rate.

So I'm a first timer to the Ultimate series, and I'm noticing as I'm slowly learning my way through my first campaign that you need to have won "by enough" in previous stages to be in a decent position in later stages. I've restarted a few times, using what I learned to do better in earlier stages so I could advance. It feels like at an entry level of skill that you can find yourself in a place where you need X for a mission but don't have the gold to buy it unless you've planned ahead 2-3 missions. What are good target benchmarks for the campaign? I'm thinking things like "you need 2 full troop transports (and decent troops) for Crossfire" or "you need at least a 5th rate if you want to capture a ship in Fireworks" or "you need 5-6 land units for Snatch". Thoughts? Obviously I'm a noob playing on Easy, so I don't know if what seem like reasonable milestones for me are silly to more veteran players (maybe some of you are out there capturing 5th rates with 7th rates?)

I’ve definitely been able to capture both ships without one sinking. I’ve found a trick is to double-team a ship when the icon starts flashing white (meaning morale is wavering) which causes surrender. Either that or take armor down a bit and grapeshot until I can Board. I’ve done the first mission 3x and double captured twice.