Ship Combat - Cannon (some info)

[Seccirsin]

Hello guys,

I have some questions regarding ship combat and i'm hoping some of you guys can elaborate on it.
I'm playing with the 5.0 patch, all DLCs and on PoTD. 
I've dome some searching but I either couldn't find an answer or it was related to an older version (so, it's possible that what info I found, it would not apply).

What little ship combat I've done (i've yet to pass level 10, as i suffer from restartis) I've enjoyed greatly. Looking at wiki and the shops in Neketaka I though of some 'build' or rather theme.

1.I'm set to either buy the Dhow or the Galleon. It's purely based on looks. What do you guys think of them?
2.I'm interested in the Wyrmtongue cannons (the Magranite ones not too much, as they require getting too close for comfort). Strategy would be (at least in my head) to hit grape shot (above deck) and disable as many enemy crew as possible and incinerate their ship, then close to finish the job.  Now, is there any 'specialty' to the fire cannons? What makes them different from the normal ones and are they worthwhile? 


Thanks!
 

[Gromnir]

fire cannons do fire damage. am not being flippant. deck and sail fires is much more likely when using wyrmtongue... though there were a time when the wyrm cannons were kinda buggy. am not certain o' their reliability at this point.

most o' what you might wanna know 'bout ship combat is in the links, though initial ship distance changed after the linked content were created. at release, and for 'bout a year following release, ship combat initial starting distance from enemy were ~ max range. this made imperial long guns effective in a few situations.  however, now combat starts at ~350ish. so, double-bronzers is even better than they were before.

kinda a downside to truncated starting distance is the rathun now get more o' a jump on you. with the dhow, by the time you turn to starboard or port, the rathun may already be too close to get a decent shot with double-bronzers. either keep the double-bronzers and use the sloop, or keep the dhow and use the short-range cannons available. damage isn't your primary goal when fighting rathun ships. disabling the crew is your goal. grapeshot the rathun a few times and they sink no different than a sack full o' kittens.

HA! Good Fun!

 

[Seccirsin]

@Gromnir

So fire cannons (magrite and wyrmtongues) only give an increased chance of deck/sail fire?  Ok, i guess it's fair, but I expected something more, similar to the old greek fire.

When firing grape shot and trying to thin down above deck crew, does cannon damage matter? From what little I've experienced, it always seemed I can only injure/kill only one person per cannon.

Also, could you give some insight into ship types?  Oh, and if possible, favorite cannons and why.

 

[Jayd]

In my experience fire cannons are garbage because they have fixed ammunition (your choice of cannonball/grapeshot, etc. is meaningless when using a fire cannon) and they have a fairly even chance to hit sails or hull. Effectively this means that to sink a ship you need to get through both its sails and its hull since your shots will be hitting both. This is just bad. Any normal cannon is better.

 

As for best ships, it's kind of boring but I think the Junk has it. Five cannons firing at once is just overwhelming, and ship fights become trivial. Now that you can board without penalty the only reason to not use one is that it's expensive (initial price and maintaining the crew). Before a Voyager could be used to close in quick for the board at least.

[Boeroer]

You are right. Fire weapons always use the same (burning) shot but the UI fails to communicate this. Chanshot etc. have no menaing whern using flame/fire based cannons.

For me the best ship (cost-benefit-ratio) is the starting Sloop. I can sink every ship with it (needs a few upgrades to safely tackle stuff like Deck of Many Things). The key are master cannoneers and cannons like Iron Thunderers which reload within Jibe + Hold Position.

The Voyager comes next for me. Because you can equip her with two long-to-mid-range cannons on the bow and a Flamethrower on the stern, combined with palm sails. Just sail towards the enemy, then, when nearly ramming him, turn around and sail away while firing the flamethrower all the time. It works against every ship. Sometimes they have Vaillian Hullbreakers and that can end badly while you apporach though.   Also against Rathûn this tactics might fail more often. But for the money it's an excellent ship. 

Junk obviously has the highest firepower, but it's way too expensive for what you get (in my opinion).

Usually I just use the sloop and give it good upgrades (like Red Dream Hull).

 

Edited August 10, 2019 by Boeroer

[xzar_monty]

2 hours ago, Boeroer said:

For me the best ship (cost-benefit-ratio) is the starting Sloop. I can sink every ship with it (needs a few upgrades to safely tackle stuff like Deck of Many Things). The key are master cannoneers and cannons like Iron Thunderers which reload within Jibe + Hold Position.).

Now that I've done my playthrough and won't be doing another, I would be really interested to know what kind of loot you get if you sink the Deck of Many Things. I'm positive you're not going to get everything it carries (surely?), so this would be a really interesting piece of information.

Incidentally, I thought the Deck of Many Things perfectly exemplified the problem of items in these two titles (PoE & Deadfire), where balance was so important for Obsidian. I thought such a special ship was a superb idea, so I went on the Deck, checked what they had and found that there was... nothing. Even at the point where I had way more money than I knew how to spend, I think I only considered one item worth spending money on -- can't remember what it was. Again: this is a result of the way the game is built, I am not complaining, the game is great, no question, but this is a drawback.

[Boeroer]

Slippers of the Assassin for example are pretty good (for the right character). Also the Cap of the Laughingstock is quite good if you know what to do with it. Hylea's Talons are very nice for Monks.

But yes: nothing breathtaking a la Carsomir +5 or so. 

[xzar_monty]

Yeah, I think it was Hylea's Talons that I seriously looked at, given that I was playing a monk. Maybe I even bought them, I'm not sure, but I think I did.

So, what do you get if you sink the ship? (Is that a spoiler?)

[Boeroer]

It got changed. In the early version of the DLC you could pick the chests and get all the items (like you still can) and then sink the ship and get the same items again.  So after looting and sinking you'd have two Slippers, two Talons etc.

Nowadays I'm not sure what you get when you sink it. I didn't try for a long time. With "good" characters I usually don't sink neutral ships like merchants and the Deck. 

[xzar_monty]

Ha, Baldur's Gate II has essentially the same bug: you can pickpocket Tolgerias for the Ring of the Ram and then kill him for another. (Fixed in the EE, I believe.)

Edit: or was it Kangaxx and the Ring of Gaxx?

Edited August 10, 2019 by xzar_monty

[Boeroer]

Both afaik.

[Seccirsin]

Thank you guys for the insight.

Could you also answer this question? 
When firing grape shot and trying to thin down above deck crew, does cannon damage matter? 

 

[xzar_monty]

Whoops, we sort of hijacked your thread. Apologies for that.

[bringingyouthefuture]

I like the flamethrowers the best on a Dhow for aesthetics - with the palm sails and going all speed, that way can charge every ship if I need and not take damage!!  The flamethrowers reload so fast so get in close and then go to town on the enemy ship, getting close enough can be a little tricky, but fun.  um ... not sure about the damage question.

Edited August 13, 2019 by bringingyouthefuture

[Madhofd]

On 8/10/2019 at 2:15 PM, Boeroer said:

You are right. Fire weapons always use the same (burning) shot but the UI fails to communicate this. Chanshot etc. have no menaing whern using flame/fire based cannons.

For me the best ship (cost-benefit-ratio) is the starting Sloop. I can sink every ship with it (needs a few upgrades to safely tackle stuff like Deck of Many Things). The key are master cannoneers and cannons like Iron Thunderers which reload within Jibe + Hold Position.

The Voyager comes next for me. Because you can equip her with two long-to-mid-range cannons on the bow and a Flamethrower on the stern, combined with palm sails. Just sail towards the enemy, then, when nearly ramming him, turn around and sail away while firing the flamethrower all the time. It works against every ship. Sometimes they have Vaillian Hullbreakers and that can end badly while you apporach though.   Also against Rathûn this tactics might fail more often. But for the money it's an excellent ship. 

Junk obviously has the highest firepower, but it's way too expensive for what you get (in my opinion).

Usually I just use the sloop and give it good upgrades (like Red Dream Hull).

 

What sails would you give the starting sloop? And wouldn't you get through scripted events which require a Boatswain? Sloop doens't have the Boatswain-slot. And I believe the Dhow has the same speed but with the added boon that you can fire 3 cannons at once instead of 2. So isn't the Dhow strictly a better Sloop?

[Boeroer]

No. Afaik it has +100% turning time (takes 2 turns for a jibe instead of 1), its chance getting hit is 60% instead of 55% (sloop) and with the money you need to buy a dhow (35,000) I can easily buy the Red Dream hull upgrade (16,000) and still having faster jibe, more hull health (90 vs. 65) and spared 18k. With master cannoneers it's not that important to deal a ton of damage per cannon salve but to cause special events like flooding, man over board and such. If you can cause this often you win since the enemy will always have to react to that and can't fire back. And the 1 turn jibe helps a lot with that. You can send enemies into a never-ending loop of special events which will win you the fight. That's why I always would use Berath's Blessing points for the cheap multi-master sailors you can buy in Port Maje. 

I never had any troubles without a boatswain that are worth remembering. 

Hence the sloop is by far the best ship in my book (if you look at the cost-benefit ratio).

I use the Berath sails which came with my game. Usually don't need to upgrade the sloop's sails for ship combat. It's only a thing with the Voyager (+flamethrower) for me.