Barbancourt Posted January 22, 2016 Share Posted January 22, 2016 I built a new computer for this game back in September but started playing some other games while I was waiting for release. I bought the game when it opened up in mid-December, but only just logged in the first time a couple days back when they said we'd get a free ship if we made a character before the 21st. (though I don't see a new ship on my list now that the 21st has passed? maybe I'm looking in the wrong place?) First thought: "We have to choose a nation? Err, hmmm..." I have seen the game map somewhere on here and kind of wanted to go with one of the little guys, Netherlands or Denmark (which I usually choose when playing Flying Colors), but wasn't sure about the national dynamics so I just made a United States captain to start. Is switching even possible? So, it's kind of a long way from Charleston to the Caribbean, ugh. I started going South, checking for open battles as I went, getting sunk every time. Then I found out you can interdict the ships sailing by and jumped in on a smuggler and then interdicted a "ship" which turned out to be a group of 4 french ships, just past Savannah. "Surprise!" Still getting my cutter sunk every battle. I watched endless youTubes of this game early in the fall, but that does not improve my novice aim much and the spacebar/rightclick combination to fire is not yet natural for my fingers yet. (wish it was the same single-click/double-click firing I'm used to with world of warships) I have about 130xp from randomly landing a cannon ball now and then while sinking. So, at the end of the evening I figured I'd just spend a few days sailing South in PvE and getting sunk (not kidding myself) as many times as I can to get some XP and practice. I'm not sure if there's a better plan? The battles can be kind of frustrating when a horde of ships jump in and crowd the target. One of my battles was 7 US cutters against a single pirate. I got maybe 10 shots off during the odd moments I could even see the pirate through the throng...though when I stopped those 4 french ships I was all alone. Now I am reading in the forum here about "port battles" and nations gaining/losing ports. I was not aware of that. That is probably activity beyond my little cutter? I'd like to get down to the Caribbean and look around and sail past the ships of other "nations", but it seems ports won't be open to me? So much to learn besides just aiming, switching ammo and repairing/survival... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EvalMonkee Posted January 22, 2016 Share Posted January 22, 2016 (edited) That is probably activity beyond my little cutter? I wouldn't say so, most are still in lower level ships due to the wipe. So you can make more of a difference than you may expect, given a little care and coordination in battle. Edited January 22, 2016 by EvalMonkee Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Prater Posted January 22, 2016 Share Posted January 22, 2016 The small battles in the Mission Tab is the best place to learn the game in my opinion. You are playing against other players, where you will learn more. The Basic Cutter is free. You don't need to put upgrades on it. Do Small Battles for a few hours and get the hang of the game. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Barbancourt Posted January 23, 2016 Author Share Posted January 23, 2016 Thanks, I would like to do some more organized battles too. In these battles I drop into ships are always crossing each other's lines of fire. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
prreich1 Posted February 12, 2016 Share Posted February 12, 2016 I would also argue that admiralty missions are a good starting point to learn, as well as save up and gain xp. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Barbancourt Posted April 19, 2016 Author Share Posted April 19, 2016 After a couple of months of playing some other games I'm back to Naval Action. I retired my old captain and joined the Danish. In part because the continental coast wasn't too exciting and I wanted a base down in the middle of the islands. Also in part because I like being one of the little guys. I've been playing PvE to learn how it's done. It took me much more than an hour to sink a Snow, so I've been trying to capture unarmed traders instead. Still, my first capture of a trader lynx also took more than an hour. I shot his sails down to 60% easily but after that sail damage basically stopped and 60% wasn't enough to slow him to boarding speed, even when I pushed his bow into the wind. Then I tried to shoot his masts with ball but they absorbed numerous hits from the 6 pounders and seemed to be made of steel. I shot his crew down to 2 with grape. Finally he made a stupid turn and I was able to start boarding. At least fighting 40 vs 2 went quickly. Now I may try trading with the captured lynx to save up enough money to buy a ship with bigger cannons, becuase it took far too long to capture the lynx. Seems I'll need bigger guns to do it in a reasonable amount of time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Atreides Posted April 21, 2016 Share Posted April 21, 2016 Hint on trader cutters and lynxes... sail parrelel and grape the deck. Don't worry about sails, armour or boarding. Just grape grape grape the deck, get the crew to 1 and it surrenders. Exit battle and bingo, new ship as well as loot. Note: this method gives very little xp and gold, except selling the loot and capped ship in port. If you want to make xp bang away at armour until you sink him. Fair winds and tight lines Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Barbancourt Posted April 21, 2016 Author Share Posted April 21, 2016 I wasn't sure what would happen if the crew went to zero, so I stopped when they got down to 3. However, I couldn't cut the speed of the lynx enough to board. How often does the server get rebooted? The last 3 evenings I've started playing and within an hour or two the notice of a server reboot came up so I had to quit the game for the day. GRRRRRRRR Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Atreides Posted April 21, 2016 Share Posted April 21, 2016 (edited) I discovered this one day after a tease cutter surrendered and I spent an hour trying to catch it with it slowly outpacing me, gave up and surprise! I capped the cutter. Server maintenance time is 0700 GMT Edited April 21, 2016 by Atreides Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Barbancourt Posted April 21, 2016 Author Share Posted April 21, 2016 I discovered this one day after a tease cutter surrendered and I spent an hour trying to catch it with it slowly outpacing me, gave up and surprise! I capped the cutter. Server maintenance time is 0700 GMT Heh, it's happening at 9PM for me - prime game playing time. By the time it's back up it's too late to start playing again before bedtime. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Capt Hornblower Posted April 22, 2016 Share Posted April 22, 2016 ummm..., what free ship, and which 2st? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Barbancourt Posted April 22, 2016 Author Share Posted April 22, 2016 ummm..., what free ship, and which 2st? I bought the game back in December, when they were offering the yacht as an early adopter bonus. I haven't sailed it "in anger" yet because it looks too purty to get scuffed up. Saving it for later when I know what I'm doing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Haratik Posted April 22, 2016 Share Posted April 22, 2016 You'd have a better time in the Yacht than a basic cutter bud. Don't worry about scuffing it up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Capt Hornblower Posted April 22, 2016 Share Posted April 22, 2016 I bought the game back in December, when they were offering the yacht as an early adopter bonus. I haven't sailed it "in anger" yet because it looks too purty to get scuffed up. Saving it for later when I know what I'm doing. hmmm..., maybe they'll do something like that again Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Barbancourt Posted April 23, 2016 Author Share Posted April 23, 2016 (edited) You'd have a better time in the Yacht than a basic cutter bud. Don't worry about scuffing it up. Does the yacht have more firepower than the cutter? Sinking or boarding anything solo with the basic cutter takes me an hour or more. Basically I'm mostly cruising around in a trader's cutter checking out the ports in my region and making money to buy and test-drive other ships. However, my rank is low so when I bought a Snow to try it's less than half crewed. Edited April 23, 2016 by rownd Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Barbancourt Posted April 23, 2016 Author Share Posted April 23, 2016 (edited) Well this is weird - last night I spent over 100000 gold on an outpost, a forest to farm, some commodities, and a Snow. This morning I log in and the ship, outpost and forest have all disappeared, as well as the gold I spent on them. I think I may have been rolled back to the previous save. Do people often lose an entire game session or more of progress? Edited April 23, 2016 by rownd Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Barbancourt Posted April 24, 2016 Author Share Posted April 24, 2016 (edited) I made a new captain on the PVP server, though I can't remember if I've even seen a player in several hours of sailing. After about 7 failed attempts in 4 hours to locate and initiate combat with trader lynxes (they always escape my slow cutter), I got really frustrated and started targetting slower ( == more powerful) ships. I just fought my first fully armed cutter and got annihilated in less than 5 minutes. 1 XP! Well, 1 is greater than 0, so since I earned just enough cash with the new captain to mount carronades I'm going to try Full Frontal Suicide Assault on any ship with less than 100 crew as a means of generating any XP at all. It's kind of tricky in this area because I had to sail into enemy territory to actually find enemy nations to battle, but now that I'm across the "border" they're swarming and I have to isolate traders and cutters when they don't have allies sailing nearby. At the same time I can't trade at these closed ports or store anything at the one neutral port here. Let's see what bigger guns can do... (...answer, 8 XP) Edited April 24, 2016 by rownd Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Barbancourt Posted April 24, 2016 Author Share Posted April 24, 2016 (edited) Is it normal to get solidly stuck pointed into the wind in battle with 100% sail and crew assigned to sailing? The last two battles I entered I got stuck pointed into the wind and nothing I did would make the ship turn for an extremely long period. Once the battle ended with me still stuck into the wind, and the other time it did eventually start turning far too late to matter. It feels like a bug, but I'm not experienced enough to say. YARRRR! Got my first capture in 2 days. (yeah, just a trader) 30 XP away from level 2 and being able to man the trading brig I just stole from France. Speaking of which, I was interdicting multiple french traders near the same french ports, and it's kind of silly how the french warships sailing around there just didn't care. Edited April 24, 2016 by rownd Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Barbancourt Posted April 25, 2016 Author Share Posted April 25, 2016 (edited) Stole a couple more trader's cutters north of Caracas, from the Brits this time. I was something like 0-for-8 chasing lynxes last night and this morning, and now captured 3 larger traders in a row. Trying to capture lynxes was my error - the first lynx I captured so easily I guess I had a terrific initial positioning in the battle to shred its sails before it could get up to speed. Edited April 25, 2016 by rownd Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Capt Hornblower Posted April 25, 2016 Share Posted April 25, 2016 just finished taking my 7th or 8th lol, both french, and British carrying contrandband, the villainous dogs Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jean LaPointe Posted April 25, 2016 Share Posted April 25, 2016 ......?french, and British carrying contrandband, the villainous dogsI resemble that remark, LOL Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Barbancourt Posted May 2, 2016 Author Share Posted May 2, 2016 (edited) Heh, in about my 4th or 5th session playing on the USA "PVP" server I finally saw a player sailing today. (PVE had lots of players) Fortunately they were flying the same flag so I didn't have to worry about getting blasted. I just zoomed on through... Saw another player later on. Nobody seems to like Venezuela on the USA server. Finally made it to level 2 and ditched the cutters for a privateer and a captured traders' brig. Edited May 3, 2016 by rownd Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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