How does the number of ship defenders work in boarding/deck combat?

[Yefo]

In deck combat on ships, prior to engaging, there is a "ship defenders"  stat which I was recently trying to optimize, but I'm confused as to how it works (does't work...?). What I'm trying to do is increase my number of attacks/defenders to better my odds in ship to ship combat and be able to take on ships higher level than myself, primarily for looting purposes. However, even though my ship defenders currently says "17", when I engage in combat, I think I only have 11/12 people on deck. Because of this, I have a bunch of questions:

1. Do different ships allow different numbers of attacks/defenders? Like, will a junk let me have 20 guys, buy a sloop only  handful? If so, does anybody know the stats per ship?
2. Are attackers/defenders the same, or different? In other words, the stat does specifically say "defenders". Should I not expect to have that many guys if I'm actually the one starting the battle?
3. Say I have 17 people who can fight in the ship battle according to the stat, but only 12 actually appear on the deck. How do I control which 12 show up? Of course my active party will be on deck, but what about the rest of the fighters?
4. Any other tips here?

 

Note: while the cannon minigame thing can be amusing sometimes, I'm not really interested in optimizing for this minigame and would rather have a boarding event, so not really looking for tips for the minigame.

[Yefo]

To add further confusion to this, does it also depend on the enemy ship? I just attacked Biakara at sea who has a pretty small huana ship and my ship had zero additional fighters... just my five base guys. In my previous ship battle, I think I had eleven fighters. Any idea what is going on here? Luckily I was way overleveled for Biakara so it didn't matter, but that would be a real bummer (especially in trial of iron mode) if you attack a ship expecting to have 12 fighters and only 5 show up haha.

[Yefo]

Another oddity: I equipped a couple of my recruits (who are not in the party, but sometimes participate in ship battles) with superb and exceptional plate armor. However, when inspecting these two people in ship combat, they have 19 and 18 base armor respectively! I verified they did not have any sort of crazy buffs or something. The game seems to buff your non-party ship combatants from the looks of it, but again, I have no idea what the formula is.

Would love to hear from anybody that knows what is going on here  

 

[Helz]

Good questions, sorry I can't answer most of them. From observation, the pool of fighters who appear on deck is drawn from the active party, the non-party companions, and the active ship's crew. Early on, I'd see 2 or 3 ship's crew fight alongside my party, but after every companion was recruited, I rarely see any ship's crew anymore. I've only used the sloop, so I'd guess that more crew will fight on the bigger ships.

I can confirm that the more enemy crew you injure before you board, the fewer you'll have to fight. If you get their active crew to zero, they'll be left with their captain and reserve fighters only, and a lot of corpses.

[Yefo]

I still have a lot of questions, but one more observation: I think the game prioritizes your highest level non-party companions, but I haven't done exhaustive tests, so can't be 100% sure. That said, I hired two new companions at (Player Level - 1) and they showed up in all of my ship battles. My next highest level companions were (Player Level - 2) or lower.

[thelee]

hm, i assumed you got everyone who could fight to join you, but perhaps it's capped by the max number of ship defenders the enemy has? you can't get more than 1:1 for each?

[Yefo]

Ah sorry I missed this reply. Let me add a few things I think I observed...

- I had ~18 total companions, give or take, because I recruited most of the story characters, a few side kicks, and maxed out on hirelings
- In a given ship battle, the number of companions actually assisting me was not consistent
- Sometimes I only had my base party in the battle (myself and my four active party members). The trend I seemed to notice with this is that it would sometimes happen when attacking a weaker vessel, but I can't say for sure if that had anything to do with it)
- The pre ship battle status pop up that shows hull health, sail health, and most importantly in my case number of defenders, would almost always show a much larger potential number of defenders than would show up on my ship. It did seem to be affected by the size of my ship (it might only say 8 or so for a sloop but show 18 if it was a junk), but the actual number that showed up in battle did not match this regardless


A few other details:
- I was playing on POTD trial of iron mode, but this sort of thing has happened to me on all the modes I have tried since owning the game
- I have the latest version of the game on PC and it is unmodded, so either this is all intentional or there are some bugs...?

[xzar_monty]

On 9/8/2020 at 7:08 PM, thelee said:

hm, i assumed you got everyone who could fight to join you, but perhaps it's capped by the max number of ship defenders the enemy has? you can't get more than 1:1 for each?

Because of this thread, I have paid some attention to this in recent days when playing the game (which I haven't had much time for). It appears that things to indeed change around, and in a way that is difficult to pin down, like Yefo suggests in his comment right above mine. I am inclined to say that you do *not* get everyone who can fight for you, at least not all of the time, although I wouldn't want to claim this in court without checking it further.

Anyway, I do believe Yefo is right in saying that "In a given ship battle, the number of companions actually assisting me was not consistent". This is my experience as well.

[xzar_monty]

I just had two battles in quick succession. My main group was me, Eder, Serafen, Maia and Aloth. I have recruited all the companions.

Of those not in my party, Fassina and Xoti didn't appear in either battle. In one of the battles, I also had Mirke, Rekke and Ydwin with me, and in the other, I also had Tekehu and Konstanten. This is either exactly how it went, or at least very close. I didn't write notes.

So this does change. I don't know the logic, but it definitely does change. (I don't mind.)

Edited September 15, 2020 by xzar_monty