Ship combat strategies

[masterty66]

I've been playing this game for a while and one thing I've never fully grasped is alternative ship combat strategies. My strat has always been to load up on double bronzers and blast enemy ships into dust. Jibe-->wait-->blast--->repeat has always been my strat and it's always worked. I take some hits but the double bronzers usually out dps the enemy ship's cannons regardless of what ship I use.

On this current run I decided to try and mix it up and use the Voyager with a flame cannon on the aft but even when I went to within 100 meters and tried burning them I found two things:

 

1) the flame cannon did OK dps but didn't generate a ton of events and

 

2) the enemy ships still blasted me to bits even when I was within a range where they should have been taking huge accuracy penalties

 

Now I am using Ondra's challenge which I think buffs enemy ship captains so maybe that's why, but is there any good strat aside from the double bronzer bombardment? I don't mind that strategy - it works super well - but I wouldn't mind trying other ship combat strats if there are any that work well. But every time I go away from the double bronzers I struggle lol. There really just isn't much more efficient than blasting with those it seems. Or maybe I just don't understand alternative strats well enough to execute them well. But unfortunately the Voyager was a massive bust for me this run so I upgraded to a Dhow and my usual double bronzer strat and it is still dominating like it always does. But like I said I wouldn't mind trying other strats if I can figure out how to make them work.

I know you can also just board too but I'm using Berath's Challenge this run so I've been avoiding boarding because I think my party members that I'm not using can die permanently in those fights so it's not worth the risk/micro to keep them alive during those fights.

Edited November 28, 2022 by masterty66

[thelee]

2 hours ago, masterty66 said:

1) the flame cannon did OK dps but didn't generate a ton of events and

generating events is highly dependent on how many ranks your cannoneers have in cannoneering. there is a 0% chance at 1 rank, and a tiny chance at rank 2. you really need rank 3 or 4. 

 

2 hours ago, masterty66 said:

2) the enemy ships still blasted me to bits even when I was within a range where they should have been taking huge accuracy penalties

being really close doesn't seem to hurt enemy ships nearly as much as being far away does. anything in between is so marginal that i hardly can tell.

and even then, you should be sailing at full speed (parallel to the enemy ship of course) to maximize the accuracy penalty when they fire (the AI even sometimes tries to wait for you to stop moving before it fires).

 

i'm assuming you're talking about the flame cannon that has 0-75m range (the 0-400m pretty much sucks IMO). it's frankly bonkers good, but you really do need cannoneers at rank 2 for it to really shine; plus you should either be in your starting ship or the voyager, basically a ship that can turn on a dime. voyager's the best, since you don't even need to turn to get into firing position. you won't be able to strafe the enemy ship in between shots with a voyager, but i just hold position in between shots anyway to maximize the accuracy at ~100m (any closer and the AI is likely to try to ram and board you) and i quickly overwhelm the enemy ship with events before it even matters that you're not strafing them.

 

2 hours ago, masterty66 said:

Now I am using Ondra's challenge which I think buffs enemy ship captains so maybe that's why, but is there any good strat aside from the double bronzer bombardment? I don't mind that strategy - it works super well - but I wouldn't mind trying other ship combat strats if there are any that work well

another one that works well for me is to get the cannons that have up 600m range (i prefer the higher fire rate one to maximize events), and sail to pretty much >550m. strafe the enemy in between shots and fire when you can. manyenemy ships don't have that cannons that cover the 500-600m range, and even ones that do, the AI is silly enough that sometimes it'll turn to its short-range cannons and then never switch over once you sail out of optimal range.

 

and yeah, ondra's challenge does buff enemy ships quite a lot.

[masterty66]

34 minutes ago, thelee said:

generating events is highly dependent on how many ranks your cannoneers have in cannoneering. there is a 0% chance at 1 rank, and a tiny chance at rank 2. you really need rank 3 or 4. 

I had some high ranked cannoneers but it still didn't seem to happen super often for me. Or not as often as I'd hoped. 

 

36 minutes ago, thelee said:

being really close doesn't seem to hurt enemy ships nearly as much as being far away does. anything in between is so marginal that i hardly can tell.

and even then, you should be sailing at full speed (parallel to the enemy ship of course) to maximize the accuracy penalty when they fire (the AI even sometimes tries to wait for you to stop moving before it fires).

Yeah it didn't seem to hurt the enemy accuracy much. My strategy was to put a flamethrower on my aft cannon and get within 100m and shoot/dance away if they tried to board, but even that close the enemy still bombarded me easily.

 

37 minutes ago, thelee said:

i'm assuming you're talking about the flame cannon that has 0-75m range (the 0-400m pretty much sucks IMO). it's frankly bonkers good, but you really do need cannoneers at rank 2 for it to really shine; plus you should either be in your starting ship or the voyager, basically a ship that can turn on a dime. voyager's the best, since you don't even need to turn to get into firing position. you won't be able to strafe the enemy ship in between shots with a voyager, but i just hold position in between shots anyway to maximize the accuracy at ~100m (any closer and the AI is likely to try to ram and board you) and i quickly overwhelm the enemy ship with events before it even matters that you're not strafing them.

Yeah I was using the 0-75m one. I would just rush towards the enemy and then turn my ship and start burning them with the cannon, but they would just shoot me back and kill me faster than I could them. Being close to them didn't seem to hurt their accuracy enough for the strat to work.

38 minutes ago, thelee said:

another one that works well for me is to get the cannons that have up 600m range (i prefer the higher fire rate one to maximize events), and sail to pretty much >550m. strafe the enemy in between shots and fire when you can. manyenemy ships don't have that cannons that cover the 500-600m range, and even ones that do, the AI is silly enough that sometimes it'll turn to its short-range cannons and then never switch over once you sail out of optimal range.

 

and yeah, ondra's challenge does buff enemy ships quite a lot.

I haven't tried that. Might have to give this a shot some time.

The only effective strategy I've seen so far for myself is to load up on double bronzers and just blast the enemy to bits lol. I wish I had the finesse to pull off something else, but so far that is the only thing that has consistently worked across my many playthroughs (apart from boarding ofc). 

[thelee]

i think the aft strategy isn't very good. doubling your chances to get events is extremely good, and the voyager can turn around really fast anyway.  you should definitely have a cannon in the back that you can fire back at them while running away, but otherwise 2x flame cannons in the front will shred the enemy to ship much quicker with events and damage.

[masterty66]

37 minutes ago, thelee said:

i think the aft strategy isn't very good. doubling your chances to get events is extremely good, and the voyager can turn around really fast anyway.  you should definitely have a cannon in the back that you can fire back at them while running away, but otherwise 2x flame cannons in the front will shred the enemy to ship much quicker with events and damage.

Interesting. I'll try that instead and see how it goes. Thanks for the tips.