Naval battles info? tips?

[wanderon]

Ran into my first naval battle with the beta yesterday and was more or less completely in the dark as to how to proceed and was unable to discover any tool tips etc that explained any of the options offered - is there any info on this anywhere? Do we have any idea how close the current beta is to the release version?

[master guardian]

they introduced a feature for those who want to skip the naval battle where you can board straight away thank god

 

you will take damage when you do this though

[Hamhaus]

 

Saw this from Cohh's videos, at the end of the video is a Naval battle.

 

This is what I can figure out so far with the naval fights:

 

The compass shows your ship in the middle and it's position and distance to the enemy ship which is on the circumference of the compass.

 

Because the canoons are fired from the side, it's probably good to have long ranged cannons on one side and short ranged ones on the other.

 

I'm guessing that staying in a perpendicular position from the other ship would slightly reduce the damage inflicted, and being in a parallel position would cause more damage when cannons are fired.

 

If things get bad there's the option of sailing towards the enemy ship and hit the deck.

 

and it seems that damage to the ship can mess with the ship's mobility (like sails being burnt, hindering any turning).

 

That's all I can gather so far.

[Awkward Davies]

Never mind the maneuvers, just go straight at them.

[Wormerine]

Things are extremely poorly explained in beta and many tooltips are simply inaccurate. I won't watch any Let's plays as release is just around the corner, so I can't explain how much it has improved.

The gist of it is as follows:

1. You and your enemy take turns one after another (exhibit A)
2. Who goes first is determined by advantage (exhibit B). Advantage is a roll, which chance of success is determined by comparing captain level (exhibit C) of enemy captains. If they are if equal level, the roll is 50-50. Roll favours captain with higher captain level, though exact math behind it, so far, is unknown. In addition player with advantage gains minor boost to movement (possibly other stats as well, I am not sure).
3. Compas in the middle (exhibit D) shows distance to enemy ship and players and enemies positions. If you want to move toward/run away enemy ship you have to face him with bow/stern, and you can only fire, if you face your enemy with the side which has cannons equipped (it is confirmed that some ships do have space for cannons on bow/stern side. Port/Starboard sides are easier to hit, while bow/stern sides provides more evasion, but hits become raking hits doing double damage.
4. Every round you give out a command (they should be shows in this space). Among them are full sail move, half sail, stop, turn, jibe (turn 180 degrees), fire!, Report to stations! (order crew around), Brace for impact (50% chance to negate crew damage). Some actions can take more than one turn, depending on ship type (speculation? Ship crew experience? Not sure). Different maneuvers give you different results and boost to stats (stop grants +20 accuracy, Full sail moves you forward and grants bonus to evasion).

[side note: playing beta 4 I had a feeling that movement in relation to each other had an impact on evasion/accuracy, rather than an individual move. I wasn’t able to experiment with in enough to confirm that]

1. Different cannons have different range/damage/reload time. In the beta you can’t choose what ammo you want to use (round, grape, chain shot) however, it is supposed to be different in full release. Different ammo will target different parts of the ship (hull, sails, crew respectively.)
2. In the bottom of the screen (exhibit E) you can see your: ammo count, hull strength, sail strength, crew. You need ammo in order to shoot, when hull reaches 0 the ship sinks, if sail reaches 0 mobility is greatly reduced, crew gives an idea if boarding is a sensible option.
3. There was a talk about being able to use repair tools during combat to repair ship/sails. Have no idea if it will be in the game (wasn’t in beta).
4. Injured crew can’t performed their duties. They need to be moved to idle slots to be patched up by surgeon. This can be done using Report to stations! Crewmember will be patched up after couple turns, and can help out again. After combat he/she will still have to heal his/her injury by spending time in the idle slots and consuming healing supplies.
5. With every damage to the hull, there is a chance for a special even to occur (red icon will be displayed here). They can include loose cargo, man overboard, fire etc. Player will have to assign crewmembers to fix the problem via Report to stations! order or suffer consequences (loose items, crewmember dies, suffer damage to hull/sails etc.).
6. It is possible to board enemy ship by closing distance between you and enemy ship. Once distance reaches 0 (see exhibit D) you will have option to board enemy ship. In this case, the game will switch to traditional isometric view and combat will start. Your crewmates will join the battle, and injuries gained during combat will be present for both them and enemies. Killing all enemies will end an engagement. In the full release, it is possible to skip to Boarding, and not engage in ship to ship combat at all, but you will suffer automated damage.

Edited May 7, 2018 by Wormerine

[wanderon]

I was unable to discern where the ships were in relation to one another - the only things I could see were the distance amount and whether or not the opposing ship was currently turning to port or starboard - not where they were facing when they began that turn in relation to my own direction - I had very few cannon balls so I didnt attempt a shot until the success percentage it was sometimes showing me was over 50% and by that time I had taken sail damage and was unable to take a shot at all (fire button disabled) I apparently only had a single cannon ready to fire with no idea if I could make another one ready, there was an option to report to _____ but nothing seemed to occur nor was it intuitive who one might report to or why - so basic cluster was all I got from it

[Wormerine]

I was unable to discern where the ships were in relation to one another - the only things I could see were the distance amount and whether or not the opposing ship was currently turning to port or starboard - not where they were facing when they began that turn in relation to my own direction - I had very few cannon balls so I didnt attempt a shot until the success percentage it was sometimes showing me was over 50% and by that time I had taken sail damage and was unable to take a shot at all (fire button disabled) I apparently only had a single cannon ready to fire with no idea if I could make another one ready, there was an option to report to _____ but nothing seemed to occur nor was it intuitive who one might report to or why - so basic cluster was all I got from it

Few guesses - you didn't assign crewmember to man the other two cannons (press H on world map). You can easily get 100% chance to hit by getting into good range (press on the compas and left click on cannons to see their stats) and using "stop" before shooting. You can see what each manouver does by hovering over an icon (in beta 4 a lot of those a innacurate). When checking you ship (press on compas) you can see if someone is injured - they will have a "blood drop" icon. By guess is that you were hit and crewmember who manned the only cannon was injured. It is also possible that he didn't reload it in time (it takes on full turn to reload it).

 

Edit: Report to stations moves you to ship management screen. Simply drag around crew members. On bottom left is the reserve/healing area - wounded crew should be moved there to be patched up. “Events” appear in a window in upper left with a bar just under it. It will fill up depending on how many crew will be assigned to it (up to 4). The more, the quicker they will fix it. Once you are happy with the setup confirm, and crew will move to newly assigned places.

Edited May 7, 2018 by Wormerine