Ship battle tactics

[Fredward]

So I've been wanting to buy the 20 000 ship, mount the long distance cannons and use the combo to keep out of boarding reach and poke 'em full of holes while dodging cannon fire. The stats say there's a 55% chance to be hit (if I read it correctly), I'm assuming that's the base and then the enemy's cannoneer skill gets taken into account, does movement detract from enemy accuracy like it does from mine? Like if I jibe cannon accuracy goes way down, is that true for them targeting me too? 

 

Actually since that ship mounts cannons at aft and fore (back and front in case I misused those terms) could I just avoid being shot at by making sure the enemy ship is never facing me from the sides? 

[Veevoir]

For being in aft/fore line the enemy gets an extra malus to accuracy (same for player if you try to T-bone the enemy). But if the hit.. they hit hard, all shots along the line of the ship are raking shots.

[rheingold]

You are the only one. This tactic is boring. Battle turn by turn is boring.

 

You have better loot with a direct approach. Frankly, you think this is interresting to do that every time ? (One or other anyway, rush or cannons)

 

When you compare that to gwent for example ? With the gwent, I have the same pleasure each time I begin a game. Here "rush rush rush". "Quick to a true battle."

 

Extremely deceptive and disappointing for me.

Some people actually do like it and think it has potential... just needs some tweaking and it will work fine. By some, I am of course, referring to myself, I wouldn't dream of speaking for anyone else...

[theBalthazar]

No it is just I say 'for me'

 

AND...^^

 

I noticed, a lot of people think like me. It is different. I don't speak for the community or what.. : p

 

Frankly, everybody is not crazy about that. Read, take a look of few important forums in the world : it is not dithyrambic about battle ship... All test I have read say multiclass is cool and fun. Nobody go against that, or too few. Battleship in contrary cleave ernormously...

Edited May 16, 2018 by theBalthazar

[Mazama]

I hired a bunch of adventurers, name them all salty pete or some other piratey name, and boarded every ship. You can annihilate the enemy crew in less than 30 seconds without input on PotD, so it seems more efficient to just skip the scripted battle.

[Senenleigh]

Different ships different tactics. Some ships have higher health hulls, some of higher health sails. Focus on an area that is a weakspot on the ship.

[Lokithecat]

I wouldn't say it's a bad idea to gun down enemy ships... but I've found it more efficient to board them (after chasing them down, not ramming off the start for massive self inflicted injuries).

 

Getting into drawn out gun battles tends to mean injuries to my crew, repair damage to my boat, less loot, and generally just a pain in the butt.  Boarding gets you a massive Morale bonus (share the coin), and you rarely have injuries or repairs to deal with, and more loot recieved. 

 

Mid / Late game, especially if you have been gathering companions, you have a very large 'boarding' party ready to fight (I give them all range weapons when not in party), and if you want even more #s to fight the enemy, your 'hired' adventurers (the created characters from Inns) will fight as well.  Since you can level up your main party, and then swap in the 'extras' so they get caught up on levels, you don't even have to take the 'extras' out to train their levels for effective ship combat.

[luciffer]

How do I use grapeshot? or just don't use it at all? I thought I could shoot all or most enemy crews to death, but seems it doesn't work out?

 

And How do you prevent enemy shooting one of your team to death in the early game, that's say, when just leaving Port Maje?

[cfleeton]

I’ve experimented with grapeshot and found it good for whittling down enemy crew so they’re not shooting back. Seems like a good tactic if their hull & guns outweighs yours.

 

Generally I thoroughly enjoy the ship combat, for its novelty, but I don’t devote a lot of thought or analysis to it. It’s a mini game. If I wanted to focus on that I’d play a different game.

 

I’ll happily buy DLC that expands this area, but I’m happy with it already too.

[Camonge]

Use grapeshot and see AI spend the next 3 turns reporting crew up and down like a ****roach on fire. It's very effective crowd control.

 

Grapeshot affects boarding, but in a smaller scale than minigame's. After making a few quick tests, I could reduce a small vallian boat boarding party from 9 to 7.

[illathid]

 

As for the text based ship combat. There are imo two ways to equip your ship.

1. If you have a small one that have a one turn jibe, you can equip it with all round cannons with a 4-5 reload time on both sides, fire -> jibe -> brace -> repeat.

2. If you have the bigger ships with 2 or 3 turn jibe, jibe will become less efficient since your shot after a jibe will most likely happen on the round your previously cannons are finished reloading. So here I prefer to place one side with the short range cannons and one side that have can shoot farther.

Bigger ships can benefit from jibe if they use Double Bronzer (8 turn reload, 12-15 damage) on one side and normal guns on the other. Fire Double Bronzer -> jibe -> normal gun -> normal gun -> jibe -> double bronzer to finish off (if not already dead).

 

 

I use a galleon and Just have double bronzers all around. It takes 3 turns to jibe so you can just alternate sides firing both.

[neotemplar]

I liked ship combat, but I think they should completely exclude the option to board immediately from the menu. 

Boarding is too much the easiest way to deal with anything, and allowing it ASAP is too OP.

You should be put in risk and engage manually, and engaging a huge ship should be a challenge.

There must be an option to evade boarding, keeping distance and shooting the opponent.

Because now speed and maneuverability pretty much don't matter at all.

 

You can use a sloop to board a galleon without any real risk of being just torn to pieces with gunfire.

Without any risk to lose the fight due to much larger galleon crew.

 

The game fails at simulating "size and firepower vs speed and maneuver", which was the case of almost all sea encounters IRL.

 

There was no reason for me to have anything but galleon. While real galleons often suffered from "mosquito" ships, outmaneuvering them (see Great Armada vs Brits+Dutchmen) 

 

Ship combat needs a lot of changes.

[Azalore]

I know you can upgrade hull, sails, gun, but... how do I get bigger ship?
Also does boarding gives better loot or is it RNG based?

Edited May 18, 2018 by Azalore

[Climhazzard]

Boarding ships is the lowest investment option.  If you take the Berath's sails blessing you can pretty much complete the game without investing a single copper into your ship.  You can go pretty light on crew as well, you don't need cannoneers at least.  If you want to make the fights easier then level up the companions and sidekicks you aren't using.

 

Or as someone else put it, 1,1,1,1,1,1,2.

Edited May 18, 2018 by Climhazzard

[neotemplar]

I know you can upgrade hull, sails, gun, but... how do I get bigger ship?

Also does boarding gives better loot or is it RNG based?

You buy it (her) from a trader. There is no option to capture a better ship (sadly)

No option to sell previous ship, it is "stored" (where???)

There are so many things to fix...

 

Logically, boarding must lead to much more loot, but I'm not sure, better leave this to the ones who tested it.

[Teacher]

The best damage is with the double cannons. You can park at 400ish range, stop, fire, jibe, stop, fire, repeat basically. With 3 star cannoneers you should have 100 accuracy 48-60 damage per 5 turns.

 

Edit: With galleon. Without the whole jibe business, golden cannons do most dmg I think 8-something 400 range 5 turns. You can brace/deal with damage in between shots.

Edited May 19, 2018 by Teacher

[Azalore]

I love the concept so far!
btw. Is there a way to spot enemy ships quicker? Sometimes I feel like I'm spending so much time just roaming around the map... Should I swim around big islands or more into deep sea?

Edited May 19, 2018 by Azalore

[omgFIREBALLS]

 

I know you can upgrade hull, sails, gun, but... how do I get bigger ship?

Also does boarding gives better loot or is it RNG based?

You buy it (her) from a trader. There is no option to capture a better ship (sadly)

No option to sell previous ship, it is "stored" (where???)

There are so many things to fix...

 

Logically, boarding must lead to much more loot, but I'm not sure, better leave this to the ones who tested it.

Logically, you should get very little loot when sinking and logically, you should get to keep the ship when you board. But these things have to give way to game design. There are many things that say **** logic in order to work in the player's favor.

 

As far as I can tell, boarding gives more loot but it's all weak items and you'll presumably never miss out on a unique by sinking. Meanwhile, sinking gets your crew more experience but you can always grind experience by sailing into storms deliberately. So in the end, it comes down to preference and/or the necessary approach to defeat an opponent who is too superior in one of the respects.

[baldurs_gate_2]

I never tried that mini game. I always entered the other ship and killed em in a normal battle.

Edited May 19, 2018 by baldurs_gate_2