Ship and weapon types

[roachbeef]

I'm curious when I can start unlocking ships higher than 5th-rate, and if so what types area available (I'm head-wall-bashing with the fireship vs. 64-gun mission). Has anybody further up the campaign mission figured out what types of ships there are? I know the 5th rate is called Hermione and the 6th rate Cerberus (unless there are other types) but I'm curious what the further ship classes and class names are.

 

And I'm wondering if the Land '78 Musket with spike bayonet is the "best" land musket or if there are better weapons further down the line.

Edited December 25, 2019 by roachbeef

[WilliamTheIII]

The best ship you can buy is the 5th rate Diana which has excellent armor and hull but only 40 guns. The Endymion (which can be captured) is the by far the best 5th with 52 guns and incredible armor and hull. The Dedagiunse is also pretty darn strong and the ai will have a lot of them. The Cerberus is really nice for the 6th rates but there are better one’s such as the unity and porcupine. The 7th rate snow is also quite strong. 

For dealing with the large 4th Rates (and the one 3rd), capturing them is not only the easiest method but also allows you to go toe to toe with these behemoths. Ball shot plus crew shock can see a crew of 200 take the Ardent’s(500 crew) with almost no casualties.

The meta for land battles is to volley and then charge so guns with high melee stats are quite strong. The Pattern 78 is the most balanced weapon and is quite nice. You can also unlock some sniper guns such as the Baker with dragoon tech. In general, I normally have one unit with long range guns (with decent reload) that can outrange the ai (who mainly uses the Spanish M1717) and the rest have the melee gun as it absolutely demolishes units.

I wrote this in mobile and will polish it up when I am at a computer but just thought I should still do my best to explain. 

[roachbeef]

15 minutes ago, WilliamTheIII said:

You can also unlock some sniper guns such as the Baker with dragoon tech

Thanks for the explanation. I'm in the 2nd-to-last stage (can't click next stage pass that) and unlocked all available tech including the "Dragoon '56" tech but don't see anything more advanced than the Sea and Land Patter 78s so I guess the merchant inventory is RNG-based or the tech is from a more recent patch.

[WilliamTheIII]

I had them show up on many a patches ago. Not sure if you need to advance the stage for that stuff to show up.  

[Rygoat]

There are 3 unlocks for the pattern 78.  Stock, w/ bayonet, and w/ sword.  Typically, I will only get the bayonet one through tech RNG.  

Merchant inventory seems RNG based, but with different min max values based on the stage.  The merchant inventory seems to retain the sold items as well, and adding the new items to the existing availability.  This was fairly evident with the sea services 38.

[SweatyPenguin]

I am not quite sure how far they want to go. If we go on all the way to Napoleonic wars, we could possibly see even breech loading rifles and definitely carronades. The latter of which is in the game already, HMS Indefatigable has them on in historical battles. The tech appearance during campaign as far as I know is almost completely RNG based.