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Captured ships


Charlie1957

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Hello Gents, 

I m not sure if anyone else has come across a certain theme with this game, ok it may be my imagination but does anyone else get the impression that you have five or six  ships battle really hard to beat and capture a larger ship, then when you capture the larger ship and after up gunning and improving the ship to the max, it turns out to be a paper tiger not nearly as effective as when you were up against it.

I realise that the game has to be balanced, and there is a myriad of combinations and calculations involved in striking that balance, which the producers of this game have done extremely well, in these types of games cannot be easy. As I said it may be my imagination, I do find ships once captured are very much less effective, thus the he game may suffer as a result.

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It is that way, yes. Not so much with regular ships, but with elite ships, privateers, port raids ships, and few others, they fight like tomahawk equipped Iowa class and when you capture them, they are fir bermuda shabby grey ships (overplaying the issue, but they mostly are).

It is something you need to get used to and it is only getting worse with constant buffs to those. They have hidden modifiers we cant get in the name of balance. Unfortunately.

I mean, I am almost fine with them having huge armor and firepower, but I am not OK with their speed. It denies physics. There is no way for player to make e.g. Santissima with 100+ amor go over 13knots like home defence fleets do. You just need to settle with one simple explanation to ease your mind over this - Magic

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59 minutes ago, Trawn said:

It is that way, yes. Not so much with regular ships, but with elite ships, privateers, port raids ships, and few others, they fight like tomahawk equipped Iowa class and when you capture them, they are fir bermuda shabby grey ships (overplaying the issue, but they mostly are).

It is something you need to get used to and it is only getting worse with constant buffs to those. They have hidden modifiers we cant get in the name of balance. Unfortunately.

I mean, I am almost fine with them having huge armor and firepower, but I am not OK with their speed. It denies physics. There is no way for player to make e.g. Santissima with 100+ amor go over 13knots like home defence fleets do. You just need to settle with one simple explanation to ease your mind over this - Magic

I think you refer to NA, don‘t you!?

This thread is about UA: AoS though.

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2 hours ago, Charlie1957 said:

then when you capture the larger ship and after up gunning and improving the ship to the max, it turns out to be a paper tiger not nearly as effective as when you were up against it.

At least some of this might come from the untrained crew you place on it.

Thier expierience does far more than the ships Upgrades imo.  

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Do you put a green crew with no experience on it? Do you keep the guns on it that it had when you captured the ship? If the answer to both questions is yes then there is your explanation. For instance, when i captured a Diana class frigate in my current US campaign i put 32pdr congreves on it. Those cannons allow a 5th rate ship to deal some serious damage to a 3rd rate ship, like the HMS Lenox in the Battle of Yarmouth. You have to research the better cannons and that can take time or you do what i did and try to rush the research for better cannons. I also put an upgrade on the ship that allows for faster reload. 

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So just today I had the pleasure of shooting enemy 5th rates with my geared up 3rd rates. All the jazz: experienced officers and crew, amped up cannons, reload/spread upgrades. It was lovely, I often toppled masts in one volley! Attacking enemy 3rd rates was an issue still, having to strip their armour first (I think I'll go 3rd rate boarding, sounds scary), but I'm happy that the game kinda shifted into a higher gear - naval battles do play different with 3rd rates now!

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If you think 3rd rates are fun wait until you capture a 2nd rate. In my current US campaign in the beta branch i have one 2nd rate Barfleur class with 90 cannons, three 3rd rate Bellona clas with 78 cannons and three 3rd rate Ardent class with 68 cannons. All Bellonas and one Ardent are trophies and the Barfleur and two Ardent class are in use. And it is like you said, you must put a good crew on those ships, good officers and the best cannons and upgrades you can buy. Putting one ship of the line into service for your fleet costs a lot of money (and i mean a lot) but it is worth it. Expect to spend around a 100k for cannons, upgrades and crew. And for a 2nd rate it is even more than that. I think i spend over a 100k just for the cannons of the Barfleur class, add the costs for five upgrades (yes, i said five), a good crew and you're looking at well over 160k. 

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The game isn't finished yet so i am testing things. What is possible, how much does it cost and so on. Besides, when you do have a 3rd rate SOL you will want to use it against other 3rd rates. And since 3rd rates have a really large amount of armor, along with lots of hp for sails and mast, you will need the biggest cannons you can put on there to make a dent in the ship. So in my US campaign i have put 32pdr french re-bored guns on the three SOL i am using. And those are the best cannons i can put on there at a much lower cost compared to other 32pdr cannons. The cannons on the first deck don't really matter that much, put some 6pdr or 9pdr woolwich in there and it will be fine. But the second and third deck need the best guns you can put on there. The Barfleur class goes even further because you can put 32pdr congreves on the first and second deck for a lot of damage at close range along with 32pdr french re-bored on the last deck. Or you can put 32pdr woolwich cannons in the second deck for more firepower at long distances.

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@Malkor You might be right about the necessity of gear enhancement, when it comes to line fights between SOL.

I haven’t had such major sea battles yet - did the British campaign and am almost up to the battle of Yarmouth in the American campaign.

But I’d guess the success even of such battles depends also on how well the broadsides would be delivered (stern takes, masts shot away) and thus on manoeuvering!?

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There are two battles where you have to field your SOL and fight a good old fleet battle. In one the british bring a 2nd rate Barfleur class and i think it was 7 or 8 Ardent/Bellona class ships. The second one is the last battle of the war and you're facing 10+ SOL, once again led by a 2nd rate Barfleur class. In both battles you will have control over french SOL, four for the first major battle and eight for the last one, including a 1st rate Ocean class. Make sure to have at least 4 SOL that you can bring to those battles. In fact, sell everything else in order to get the money you need to put cannons, upgrades and crews on your SOL. 

Maneuvering in those large battles isn't easy. When you're controlling 8+ SOL in a fight against the same or higher number of SOL, the good old line of battle where each ship follows the other is your best bet. Wait for a good moment to break the formation in order to take advantage of an opening in the enemy formation. My Ardent and Bellona class ships had the reduced cannon weight, faster reload, faster speed and better turn rate upgrades. On my Barfleur class i also added an upgrade to improve the hp for sails and mast. You can put a better armor upgrade in but i would advise against it. If you're using cannons with good penetration then you shouldn't need more armor. Besides, those SOL already have a bunch of it.

A bigger problem is figuring out how to deal with those SOL: sink them or capture them? Since these two major fleet battles will be the last battles before you are send off fighting pirates a couple of years later, there isn't much point in capturing those ships. You can capture the Barfleur class in the first battle and then use it in the second one against the british. Otherwise i would just sink all the ships. Or capture them, whatever lets you take them out faster. I captured the Barfleur class in the first battle and then used it in the second one. I also captured the Barfleur class in the second battle but that was just pointless. I would advise to use manual aim, aim midships near or below the waterline and hope for a magazine explosion. Crossing the T of the enemy whenever possible and viable should of course also be done. But this was all on easy difficulty, on medium or hard you might want to get the extra armor upgrade for your SOL for these battles.

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One thing I'm curious about is would the extra armor upgrades be better than the repair kit. Since you can repair every few minutes to max out your armor and hull, as long as you aren't taking too much crew/module/cannon damage along the way that would seem the better option.

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On 4/7/2020 at 11:03 AM, pandakraut said:

One thing I'm curious about is would the extra armor upgrades be better than the repair kit. Since you can repair every few minutes to max out your armor and hull, as long as you aren't taking too much crew/module/cannon damage along the way that would seem the better option.

I use repair kits all the time so when I get to harbor my repair costs are low as far as putting more armor on a ship I am not sure for I never do that but as for  repairing the armor it works good for that is the ship to use that can take the damage while other ships that don't have repair work in areas where they won't take the main hits from a enemy ship.  

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Is anyone using the sail repair kit or the more hp for sails and mast too? Sometimes the enemy goes for your sails or hits a mast with a lucky shot. I am thinking about getting rid of the faster reload upgrade and replace it with something else.

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4 hours ago, Malkor said:

Is anyone using the sail repair kit or the more hp for sails and mast too? Sometimes the enemy goes for your sails or hits a mast with a lucky shot. I am thinking about getting rid of the faster reload upgrade and replace it with something else.

I haven't used sail repair kit.  My question is would it just repair the sails or would it repair the mast too?  Enemy seems to knock down my mast more than I can do to them it's almost like a 10-1 ratio.

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