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Post by Capt. William Thorne on Oct 15, 2005 14:50:54 GMT -5
I gave some thought to a potential tactic to use in battle. I dont know how feasable this will be, but its something to consider:
Have both sides of the ships cannon loaded and ready to go.
Say you had the weather gauge and were approaching the enemy from the starbord side.
When you are in range, fire a broadside from the starbord guns. While the crew is reloading, turn the ship 180 degrees. By that time, the crew should have re-loaded the starbord cannons. Now just switch them to the port side and have them fire a broadside from that side.
Depending on how fast you are moving and how quickly your individual ship can come about, The time it takes to have the crew switch sides should be relatively shorter time than waiting for them to reload. Plus turning 180 limits any one side of your ship from encountering heavy damage. It sort of spreads out the damage (which may or may not be of any help. I dont know yet)
If you are working as a unit, traveling in a wolf pack, one ship can cover your turn
Also, if wind is even the least bit realistic, you should be able to steal the enemy's wind and rob them of any chance of leaving the battle. How much advantage a person has with the weather gauge is still to be determined.
Again, probably a no-brainer tactic, but I'm just thinking up ideas while Im in drydock.
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Post by Cap'n Worley on Oct 15, 2005 17:10:43 GMT -5
If only they would let us in game for a day we could have a handle on how things work. I have been thinking of tactic while playing Pirates, but you cant compare the two. Ive also played a little age of sails(trial), all I hope is they find a happy medium.
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Post by Cap'n Worley on Oct 17, 2005 15:44:59 GMT -5
I've done some recent reading about ships made by Isildur and I don't see us having too many captains with SOL or really large warships. I'm sure some of us will capture them, but doing so puts us in PVP mode until we get sunk. Limits abuse of ships and give us pirates a lot of action, if thats your cup of tea. I agree that the 2 prong attack strategy proposed in the beginning may not work well. That leaves us with 2 options as I see it; all sailing the same ship in engagements or some of us using sloops of war and doing chain shot runs at the target slowing them and giving the larger ships in our hunting party the advantage. A tactic most likely everyone has thought about at one point. I still thinks it impossible to try and second guess the system until we get our hands on some game time.
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Post by Capt. William Thorne on Oct 19, 2005 13:43:19 GMT -5
I agree with the two prong attack strategy. It seems that nabbing a big ol ship of the line might make you a very popular person, which is not necessairly a good thing when you are outside of the law, like we plan to be.
I think the strategy would work best when sailing as a guild. In other words, if we can coordinate several ships sailing together as a small armada, then using the two prong attack would be most effective.
Even if we dont use the two prong attack (hereafter abbreviated as "2PA") it shouldnt affect the structure we've established for adminstration of the guild. There can still be two groups (packs, divisions, orders, whatever) It just wont matter as much during the game.
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Post by Capt. William Thorne on Oct 28, 2005 10:28:36 GMT -5
Here is a quote from Pox on the FLS site about his feelings after playing the version they had at the PAX show, There are some really good notes to consider in this:
My first battle was a Flute vs a xebec (i dont think i have the name right). The flute was the slower moving less maneuverable but with heavy firepower. The xebec was fast and very maneuverable. The xebec firepower was primarily spindle mounted cannons lower caliber and shorter range than the flute.
This was the first time tryint the game for both players. Also both players were recieving great info on combat and skills during the battle
I found it hard to maintain a good broadside shot on the xebec. Due to her maneuverability. I realised that the xebec could stay in my blind spots all day long if i couldnt reduce her edge. I shifted to chain shot. In roughly 2 or 3 shots i had severely damaged and destroyed most the sails and mast onboard the xebec. I then set my ship up for full broadsides and the xebec went down.
Second battle
I was now in the xebec and another player was in the flute. I had one game experience and the other guy didnt. Just keep that in mind.
I had located the player flute and was making a fast charge to the rear quarter. I used a enemy ship between the player ship and me to close range without taking heavy damage.
*** this worked great. You cannot fire through a friendly ship to attack an enemy so fire lanes and LOS are very important***
Once i reached the rear quarter and had "T" up with the flute i engage with chain shot again. To make the slow flute even slower. After about 7 shots or so (Small caliber guns dont do alot of damage against a bigger ship) I had finally destroyed most of the enemies sail, mast, and somehow two cannons. I then dropped sail used regular shot and sent almost all my shots thru the rear armor on the flute. Took a while but the small faster ship was able to defeat the heavy big gunned ship.
Couple of notes i noticed while playing...
The object collison doesnt exist yet. Otherwise the first game would have been a mess seems we were driving while drunk with no cops to pull us over.
Weathergage and shiptype has a huge impact in how fast and what direction you need the wind to be from for speed. The xebec worked great if i had the wind coming from about 45 to 60 degrees to either flank. Where as the flute only appeared to like the wind in the rear 180 degree arc.
Skills that are in the game such as Pirate hunter, rapid reload, repair hull, repair structure, repair sail?, accuracy, moredamage, defensive. Actually showed an effect on actually game play.
Broadsides----when you fire them you do appear to get a ripple effect with smoke and fire. If you are being attacked and the cannon balls are big enough (or your in the way) you can see them coming.
Now i have had a small taste of what they have been working on and cant wait.
BTW i did ask several times about alpha and beta signups list and i was told numerous times that "The sign up list will be up on the website this month.(assuming that means september)"
And i only got one free tshirt for my two ship kills. But hey i support the Pirates.
Pox
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Post by The Black Dog on May 3, 2006 2:48:25 GMT -5
I think there is an important lesson to be gleaned from this bit of gameplay we've been so generously teased with. As pirates we will most likely be facing larger more heavily armed ships a great deal of the time. Our advantage will be speed and maneuverability. It will be important for us to emphasize our advantage in this respect, by using chain shot to further slow our opponents, if they can't maneuver they can't hit us. Secondly I think the other important tactical lesson here is with our speed and maneuverability we must constantly hold the iniative, meaning that we must be tactically aggressive. This means forcing our opponents to maneuver as opposed to allowing them "stand their ground" and exchanging broadsides. Hit and run tactics will be our bread and butter, if they start to maneuver one way we need to go the other and force them to change direction as much as possible while wearing down the enemies sails. Once their limping give 'em a broadside of grapeshot and board the lubbers. Yarr!
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Post by Capt. Don Cogliostro on Jun 11, 2006 20:12:30 GMT -5
A variation on what you suggest would be two smaller ships getting behind a larger one and following a zig-zag pattern back and forth firing at the rear of the larger ship. The pattern would have to cross itself in order for both of the smaller ships to always be able to fire opposite the curve (ie: turning towrds port and firing your starboard cannons then reloading the port side just in time to turn starboard and fire your port cannons) This would allow the crew to achieve something very similar to your example. You really don't even need two smaller ships one could do it just as well.
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Post by Capt. William Thorne on Jun 21, 2006 7:13:42 GMT -5
I see both pursuing and pursued probably adopting this tactic. My guess is that chases will be long extended zig-zags across the sea and battles will probably be circles or figure 8's as people try to capture the weathergauge and get in position.
Had a chance to go to E3 this year and while I saw many pirate themed games coming out, I didnt see FLS and POTBS anywhere. I looked for them, but couldnt find em. Then I hear that they WERE there and some people got a chance to see the game up close. Grrr.
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