Suicides

[Dragonfire]

I think it's ridiculous that people scuttle rather than surrendering the ship. Really this is cutting off your nose to spite the other players face. Not very honourable.

If you don't have time, just surrender right away. It's just a ship. Buy another one.

 

As others have said scuttling your own ship in conditions where most of your crew would perish (for instance in battle) would have been an almost non-existent thing.

Almost every battle historically had the losing ship striking it's colours and surrendering.  

 

A good example being one of the USS President when it was captured by the British. Why surrender twice instead of scuttling? But they did.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capture_of_USS_President

 

I think it is even more ridiculous that it takes 4 ships jumping one and very dishonorable for those 4 to not finish the battle once they have the one ship helpless.

To not do the honorable thing and just either capture the ship or finish it when it can no longer defend itself Sir.

 

Perhaps it would not be a necessary tactic if the mindset of the attackers would not be they same as a cat playing with a captured mouse and let the Captain take a more honorable direction and fight it out to the death. Perhaps the ability to at least turn ones ship a little even due to wave actions totally demasted might need to return to stop the just sitting out of firing angle by multiple ships against one.

 

If you Sir like to speak of Honor maybe your thought should lean in that direction for both parties.as it is not an honorable fight if you do not at least let your opponent chose to try to defend his ship or destroy it as he sees fit .

 

With that said could it not also be an alternative to your proclamation that the choice of the Captain in your words choses a ridiculous solution to the problem by not surrendering but a thought comes to mind. What was stopping the other ships playing like a cat with a helpless mouse from just saying "We taught this one ship a lesson he is helpless now and no danger to us" ,  from just stopping the battle and sailing away ?

 

That Sir would  be a more Honorable outcome.  

 

Point to historical data all you like those instances mean nothing unless the player base plays with that code of conduct and lets be honest with each other, that is not going to happen ever so using that as an example is wasting your time 2016 historical data in game shows maybe 1% ( A guess ) of players will abide by what happened and play with the mindset of the era this game is modeled after.

[Cmdr RideZ]

I think the pirates at least will be encouraged to attack with multiple small ships against the big ones.  Ganking will be part of the game mechanism in the future, for pirates at least.

 

And if you do not understand, that you do not take that Vic out for a walk alone.  I believe it was the owners fault, like seriously, losing the Vic was his way to learn it.

 

...

 

Yes, the crew patch may actually fix this one.  I think that if you surrender you should be allowed to keep your men.  If you surrender a Vic, have no idea how this would work.  Where are the men waiting you?  Well, I suppose we will see that soon.

 

...

 

The suicide mechanism is not cool, it is not realistic, and it does not make the game to be better in any possible way.  Well, if all the sailors were Japanese, then it might be.

[Æthlstan]

So you peeps who are saying its not realistic, have you ever heard of Abandon Ship? A crew could survive a sinking if they could reach the boats

[akd]

That assumes sufficient boats for all the crew, which was unlikely, especially in an emergency / combat situation (imagine the preparation and planning it would take to orderly load entire crew of a lineship into boats even if there was sufficient space). Voluntary sinking would almost certainly be death for some of the crew, which can be accommodated in game by chance of crew / officer loss less than blowing up but greater than surrendering afloat.

There is nothing realistic about "scuttling" without loss in the Age of Sail.

[KrakkenSmacken]

Well that's true, he has.  But God I still hate that avatar Quin ! 

Yea, I'm with you on that one.

 

But otherwise Quin is spot on so far on this topic.

[Peter Fouche]

I hope the crew content patch will fix this. Crew are expendable atm, nobody cares about a couple of pixeled sailors, but give them names and blow a bit of life into them... Well it may be a very different story. People will then start to surrender in order to protect their crew and officers in a hopeless fight I am sure.

Edited June 15, 2016 by Peter Fouche