Ship to ship combat is a crucial aspect to the game. Whether you’re commiting some honest piracy, defending against the navy or pirates, or even surviving bounty hunters it is important to know how to effectively sail a ship for offence.
------------------------------------Upgrades.
A good ship is not a fast ship. For combat, speed makes it harder to keep at the same pace of your enemy. Instead your upgrades should focus on being moderately fast, good resiliance to fight off wind and most importantly decent ship turning. If your ship is fast or you need speed, then you must need ship turning.
------------------------------------Cannon Balls
Before we start talking about tactics we must talk about artillery. Light cannon balls go 1.5x the distance of the cannon markers before falling. They have long range but in my opinion become useless and obsolete by swift swivel canons.
Heavy cannon balls are best used when aimed for the deck, top hull gate or just below the mast.
Heavy Exploding, Dense cannon balls and Heavy grapeshot are best used when target is trapped and not moving or if you keep pace with them. Heavy grapeshot are obsoleted by normal ones and should only be used at close range when you are ahead of the target.
Exploding and normal cannon balls in my opinion dominate medium range fights and are my go to cannon balls.
Grapeshot is best used at close range, when you are ahead of your target, when you cant get a clear shot
Chainshot should be used to keep pace with faster ships
You should try to get used to using 3ish different cannon balls. Practice using 3 that you find best for you. The rest should be situational.
------------------------------------Ship To Ship Tactics
Pressure Cone.
Go infront of the ship and turn 45* to the left or right to force them to slow down. This allows you to use your cannons. When your in the perfect spot, they can only use 3-2 cannons on you whilst you have full coverage. This does not require much turning but it does help a ton.
Chase Avoidance
When your being chased command your crew to use swivel cannons. If you dont have swivel cannons, make a quick turn and stop your ship to form a barrier. Make a reverse cone where the stern of the ship is where their bow is pointing at. Then use grapeshots or medium balls depending on distance
Recovering from a hit
When your being badly damaged with no escape, turn your ship 90* facing towards the ship side hull. Then climb aboard their ship. One of two things will happen. If its an NPC fight. The ship will stop and they will attack you. If it is a player fight and they did not stop, you must stop your ship for a second and start it up again and climb back on your ship. If they did stop, you must fight hand to hand.
If your not too particularly skilled with pvp, put stern to the ship’s hull instead. Look backwards and try to constantly match the back of your ship to the side of their ship.
------------------------------------Boarding enemy ships and player to player ship combat.
When boarding an enemy ship its crucial to have a move that will keep you in the air. For mages that is magical leaps, for warlocks, its a crash move. you must target the second mast. The one at front carryig the front sail. If it is a sailboat, you should try aiming for the front deck of the ship.
On the ship, theres two senarios.
One is the ship is moving meaning you must not use any moves that take time. For example explosions, magic blasts and charge up moves. This is because u will fall off and be stranded in the sea. Use quck attacks only.
For mages, use a full gun loadout, flint lock, musket and dual flintlocks.Stick to high ground whenever possible. For conjourers and weapon users, use the click attack and avoid charging moves. If you are forced to use charging moves, go to the front of the ship to do so. Make sure to have a large AOE to effect the whole ship.
I also recommend avoiding weapon users who are on a ship and instead force them off the ship using some sort of snare or launching move. Air magic is very good for ship combat.
Crucial combat basics
=fast hitting
=Good AOE
=Not alot of charge.
------------------------------------What kind of ship?
That’s up too you.
Sailboats are good for bounty hunting. You can use the Pressure cone to board the ship and gain some extra damage. It is harder too see, and apparently quicker. For this ship, focus more on speed, cannons arent as relevent. Its single swivel cannon can be used well if you have fire or burning magic along with swift on the cannon.
Ketch best ship IMO for combat ESPECIALLY with friends or a clan. You can board, sink and fight just about anyone if u have a good crew. Really good against ketch and sailboats but a fast turning caravel with ram can be a bit challenging. Luckily it makes up for it with high health (goes up to 7k i’m pretty sure )
Caravel Good against the ketch. Good for chasing ships but awkward cannon placement. Still a good ship. Good for solo pirates and has bounty hunting advantages.
And thats the basics to winning! Most people are disadvantaged because they dont plan. If you do you instantly have leverage. Unfortunately me being a new user inhibits me from replying but yeah.
With all due respect
Captain Rocco Burns of the Tarocan Pirates
