How do you effectively fight larger ships with small ships and capture them?

[lrodgy]

Having some issues figuring this out, I find myself consistently fighting larger ships and larger fleets and I see many people recommend you capture rather than sink ships especially early in the campaigns, however I'm at a loss as to how to best achieve this. I find myself trying to demast and remove rigging with chain, but even if I do so it doesnt seem to affect the willingness of the opposition to surrender, and I cant figure out a reasonable way to board without taking massive casualties myself. I played a bit of naval action a few years ago, enough to understand the basic concepts of raking and following up with grape etc, but grape in particular doesn't seem to do much at all. 

If anyone has any real, practical examples to share a video or similar of that would be great!

 

Thanks in advance.

[Salty Sails]

Grape is pretty strong after last patch.

Ship will sometimes surrender when they are under fire from tow ships at same time with balls.

Most important thing is, to have a good officers and boarding weapons, to fight against biger ships with more crew.

You can board 1 ship with 2 smaller ships at same time.

 

[SweatyPenguin]

You can surrender ships by continuous broadsides of round shot. To achieve that you have to have a superior number of ships nearby and at least one of them has to be super close. This does not work reliably however, or at least I haven't been able to find a way to make it so. Nor have I been able to make any connection to damage dealt to said ship that would corelate with it surrendering. Sometimes they give up in three broadsides, with armour barely scratched, sometimes they'd rather sink.

You can also cheese the game by using fully loaded troop ships as boarding vessels.

[Guardian54]

1. Ensure you have as many crew on your ships as can fit after you get Optimal Crew and Best Weapons (your shipboard muskets should have sword bayonets if you plan on doing any boarding, but regular bayonets will do if needed)

2. Get rid of their rigging on ALL the ships you're engaging, as in fire pure chain until they're all immobilized.

3 Sit across their stern (or bow) and shoot them with grapeshot, or ball if grapeshot isn't working for some reason (probably just not straight enough down their stern and the flank is ricocheting too many of your grapeshot due to the armour still being up.

3a. If they are beached, shoot them in the side with ball at an angle they can't shoot back at until the armour on that side is down to almost nothing, then go grape until the crew surrenders or is down to few enough men you can board.

4. Keep shooting until they surrender. Then haul up alongside and transfer a prize crew.

Mind you I have yet to buy the game since I haven't gotten a reply on my inquiry about multi-part first/last names for the red-ribbon-officer yet, but this is what I've observed from watching gameplay videos.

[Anthropoid]

On 1/17/2020 at 11:12 PM, Guardian54 said:

1. Ensure you have as many crew on your ships as can fit after you get Optimal Crew and Best Weapons (your shipboard muskets should have sword bayonets if you plan on doing any boarding, but regular bayonets will do if needed)

2. Get rid of their rigging on ALL the ships you're engaging, as in fire pure chain until they're all immobilized.

3 Sit across their stern (or bow) and shoot them with grapeshot, or ball if grapeshot isn't working for some reason (probably just not straight enough down their stern and the flank is ricocheting too many of your grapeshot due to the armour still being up.

3a. If they are beached, shoot them in the side with ball at an angle they can't shoot back at until the armour on that side is down to almost nothing, then go grape until the crew surrenders or is down to few enough men you can board.

4. Keep shooting until they surrender. Then haul up alongside and transfer a prize crew.

Mind you I have yet to buy the game since I haven't gotten a reply on my inquiry about multi-part first/last names for the red-ribbon-officer yet, but this is what I've observed from watching gameplay videos.

Yep; that is it.

However, keep in mind, With less than 24 guns in the 4-6 Lb ballpark, and only mediocre crew/captain chain shot is likely to take  LONG time to fully immobilize them. I haven't experimented much with manual aim though, and that may help a lot.

I'm wistful for Sid Meier's Pirates days when I could rip a merchants sails to shreds in only a dozen or so volleys instead of the 80+ volleys and they are still making 5 knots that I've experienced with this game so far.

[Guardian54]

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.