[Ship Combat] Combat not working as expected - bugs?

[Hadarmil]

OK, ship combat sort of works but I have a few bugs/gripes:

 

1. When boarding, there is no correlation between enemy crew to number of encountered enemies. I can mow down an entire crew of 6 and while boarding 12 full health enemies will be waiting while my side will be a random half of my crew. Numbers feel somewhat random and higher level ships seem to spawn enemies out of thin air no matter what happened before I boarded.

 

2. Chance to hit is completely off and 100% shots(expert cannoneers at optimal range) miss a LOT while causing low damage to enemies whose novice crew outside optimal range somehow eat up my ship.

 

3. Hullbreaker and the Hognose cannons have the same stats but different prices...though I can swear the Hullbreaker does more damage somehow. Hidden stats?

 

4. Gripe - While boarding all ships are the same size...I understand the limitations, but c'mon.

 

 

And that's it for now.

[Amentep]

It seems the issue with taking the crew of a ship down to 0 and then still facing a full health crew is already reported as a bug, so I've merged threads.

[Takkik]

+1

really frustationg to manage to injury most enemy crew and when you board you have a full group of enemis waiting for you. And number of enemies have no relation with size of the ship or size of the crew. I boarded a ship with less crew than me and I'm outnumber  / 3!

 

Another problem, game don't use you're formation when spawning your group. At least, don't put our MC in front. Everytime I tried to board a ship my character got wrecked by an alpha strike of gunners.

[PangaeaACDC]

So far I like the ship combat, although it was very confusing to start with. It's not really that well explained despite the long tutorial, and the hover information needs to be better. How much is the bonus for stop, and similar things like that. We need to know these things BEFORE making the moves.

 

One thing I've noticed, in addition to the above posts, is that when I choose Full speed ahead (or whatever they named it), I sometimes gain 50m and sometimes 70m. In the same ship combat. That doesn't really make much sense when nothing else has changed.

 

For the longest time I didn't know what the windows with 4 empty squares meant when you or the other ship takes some kind of special damage. Apparently you can place crew members there to put out fires and whatnot. Things like this needs to be better explained or be more intuitive.

 

Don't think it's mentioned anywhere that Raking shots have +50% damage either -- except post-fact when you hover for more info.

 

Another thing is that if a ship manages to escape before getting sunk, and you re-engage in combat right away, their hull is fully fixed, while ours is not. Surely that isn't fair?

[Valermus]

Agreed all above.

Also while in boarding combat, if you cast Withdraw to your last standing man; opponents disengage from combat and you win the combat automatically after a few seconds.

Boarding ship seems pretty useless since as much as crew you injure (kill?) doesn't matter; you get outnumbered and gunned down so quickly especially in higher difficulties. You can't even get in formation on your ship (too narrow walkable surface perhaps?).

 

[Nemesis7884]

grape shot should damage crew and chain shot should damage sails - but when i use them the opposite happens...so grape shot damages sails and chain shot damages the crew...seems to be a bug...anyone else noticed?

[Kapten Teo]

Never noticed it like that, but each has a chance to damage the other (according to the tooltip). How frequently and reliably do you get the "wrong" outcome?

[anathanielh]

Grape shot has a low chance to hit sails and chain shot has a low chance to hit crew. It’s in the descriptions

 

You’re just very unlucky, friend

[flamesium]

Grapeshot definitely works at taking down crew. At least until you board and the enemy crew are all alive again.

[Kragtor]

Grapeshot definitely works at taking down crew. At least until you board and the enemy crew are all alive again.

 

Yeah, I had a ship combat where I took the enemies 9 crew down to zero, boarded to fight 13 full health people.

 

I couldn't do the math, so I force shutdown my computer and went to sleep.

[Zagrim]

Grape shot has a low chance to hit sails and chain shot has a low chance to hit crew. It’s in the descriptions

 

You’re just very unlucky, friend

Ship combat seem to be either: Rush to board and kill them or sink them. I was dissapointed when I found out that you could not just soften them up before boarding them.

[Juodas Varnas]

 

Grape shot has a low chance to hit sails and chain shot has a low chance to hit crew. It’s in the descriptions

 

You’re just very unlucky, friend

Ship combat seem to be either: Rush to board and kill them or sink them. I was dissapointed when I found out that you could not just soften them up before boarding them.

So... Whats the point of grapeshot then? Can you take out a ship by shooting the crew with grapeshot?

 

Cause i've tried and couldn't do it, the hull gave out before the crew did.

[anathanielh]

 

 

Grape shot has a low chance to hit sails and chain shot has a low chance to hit crew. It’s in the descriptions

 

You’re just very unlucky, friend

Ship combat seem to be either: Rush to board and kill them or sink them. I was dissapointed when I found out that you could not just soften them up before boarding them.

So... Whats the point of grapeshot then? Can you take out a ship by shooting the crew with grapeshot?

 

Cause i've tried and couldn't do it, the hull gave out before the crew did.

Injuring crew just forces them to be put into rest or makes them less effective at their role. This makes it easier to shoot up the ship from a distance.

I’d suggest either immediately boarding or if you believe you can’t fight the enemy, injure the crew and blast em from afar

[Wormerine]

 

Grape shot has a low chance to hit sails and chain shot has a low chance to hit crew. It’s in the descriptions

You’re just very unlucky, friend

 

Ship combat seem to be either: Rush to board and kill them or sink them. I was dissapointed when I found out that you could not just soften them up before boarding them.

I remember reading to my surprise recently that it is not intended behaviour and they will look into it. However, it worked the same in the beta.

[PangaeaACDC]

Seen this yet? Pretty cool. Consumed due to

Of course not something you can plan for, so given how rare this is likely to be, I found it cool (heh) that they added a special slide for it.

 

 

 

A different case, where I destroyed their sails to start combat, because I didn't want them to get away. They didn't in the end, but it looks like lacking sails has ZERO effect on anything? The -50% is due to lacking people on deck, not messed up sails. Very weird.

 

 

 

 

I really enjoy this part of the game though, and hope merchant ships will respawn, because I can definitely seem myself sinking everything on water   The biggest hindrance is needing to fix the hull. And galleons and junks can really mess you up if they are fully decked with cannons. I assume the "red head" ships are, so haven't dared to take on any like that.

[Lysistratus53]

So far I have found the following:
Shooting sails to zero has no effect on combat speed or manoeuvrability. Where can you buy the "outboard motors"?
So far (2 play-throughs) boarding has only yielded 3 cannon.
Disabling crew yields pretty pictures of dead crew on deck. This can reduce the number of (Fire giant/vikings), but I have not noticed a reduction in other combats.
Ship speed is erratic (but first time you dial in full-speed you will only achieve about half speed). The enemy appears to speed up at once.

[omgFIREBALLS]

I'm a bit rusty about this but I believe I can explain the last two.

Disabling crew: Some (I guess most) ships have what are called "deck defenders" - you can see that number somewhere in the UI. They are entirely exempt from the broadside battles and cannot man the ship, nor be harmed by your cannons. If you board though, they are what you have to contend with (not sure if that's on top of other crew).

Speed, from the wiki:

Quote

Both ships have 3 turns each round. At the start of each round, one ship wins the Advantage at random. The roll is modified by each captain's rank and the ship's combat speed. The ship with Advantage acts first for the round, has increased cannon range, and 50% bonus movement speed.

(As I recall, it was just bonus 20 speed, but I haven't bothered with ship to ship combat since the last big patch)

https://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/Ship_combat may be enlightening, but it doesn't seem entirely correct.

Edited December 31, 2019 by omgFIREBALLS