From YPPedia

A ship is your vessel for moving pirates, commodities, going pillaging and holding other events.

A scaled down image showing all the ships' main decks. From left to right: sloop, cutter, dhow, longship, baghlah, merchant brig, war brig, merchant galleon, xebec, war frigate, and grand frigate.

Construction

There are eleven basic kinds of ships made at shipyards, plus one special edition sloop available in December 2009 and one special edition grand frigate in January 2010. Each one requires different amounts of various commodities, labor, and doubloons (doubloon oceans only).

Capacity

Each ship class has a different capacity of total pirates, duty stations and commodities it can carry.

A Comparison of Ship Volumes

Ship Handling and Station Performance

All ships move at a slow speed from league point to league point even if nobody works on a station, although damage and bilge will rise in this case (see floating). Assigning swabbies or pirates to some stations improves performance. This will raise the speed or keep damage and bilge low respectively.

With only swabbies working on stations during a swabbie transport the different ships can reach the following performance figures if the specified minimum is assigned to carp and bilge. Players can perform much better though the max and min speed of each vessel is fixed. (Referring to diagonal leagues. Horizontal are 40% longer)

Note that you get the max number of swabbies only with swabbie transport. With all other voyage types you will get only 4, with the exception of a sloop in which you will have only 3. (You may get some temporary additional ones if a player leaves in battle)

If no sails station is worked at any longer the ships will decelerate with time. Also they will accelerate to full speed if there are enough sailors working. Swabbies will always perform a high fine rating during the voyage, player ratings will vary depending on their skill. The following numbers assume swabbie performance.

Damage

Each ship class can handle a different amount of damage in battle. Maxing for swordfight damage (this is a historical name which predates the Rumble puzzle) will cause the occupants to have the maximum amount of black blocks in the Swordfight puzzle or lock out a large portion of the Rumble board during the melee stage of the battle. If the ships are at war, or in a sinking blockade, reaching full damage will cause a ship to sink.

Friendly Fire

When ships from the same faction in a normal blockade shoot or ram each other, Friendly Fire applies. Friendly Fire means that a "friendly" ship causes you only 50% of the damage that would be caused by a normal enemy ship. Friendly Fire applies in blockades for all ships in the same faction, and flotillas for all player ships, but not in Brigand King blockades, or Atlantis.

Ram Damage

When one ship (in sea battle) attempts to move into the square that another ship is occupying, the other ship is rammed and both ships suffer damage. If a ship hits a rock, it takes a small amount of damage. The edges of the board also act as rocks, except for the far edge (opposite the safe zone) of a flotilla, blockade or Atlantis board, which acts like a wind current facing inward.

There are four size classes of ships: small (sloops, cutters and dhows), medium (longships, baghlahs, merchant brigs and war brigs), large (merchant galleons and war frigates), and grand (grand frigates). If the ramming ship is in a larger size class than the ship being rammed, the smaller ship is usually "pushed" out of the square it was in, although collision mechanics can often be more complicated than this.

When a ship hits another ship, it inflicts damage upon the other ship based on its size. For example, if a sloop rams a merchant brig, the sloop receives the equivalent of 0.667 medium cannonballs worth of damage, and the merchant brig receives the equivalent of 0.5 small cannonballs worth of damage.

Ram damage

Note that, if two ships are facing each other and both move, the results will be different depending on the size classes of the ships. If the ships are in the same size class, they'll move into each other simultaneously, and deal a single collision's worth of damage to each ship. However, if they are in different size classes, two collisions worth of damage are dealt to each ship. Our best explanation for this is that the larger class sizes move "before" smaller class sizes within a single phase of ship movement. For further details, and more complex collisions, and those involving winds and whilpools, see the article on Collision mechanics.

When a ship hits the edge of the map or rocks, it takes the amount of damage shown in the table below. For example, if a grand frigate hits rocks it receives the equivalent of 1.5 large cannonballs worth of damage. The numbers correspond to exactly 3 SF blocks worth of damage to the ship, or one twelfth full SF damage.

Rock damage

Historical Note

Prior to release 2004-04-28, there was no such thing as grappling. The swordfight began when both ships occupied the same square on the battle navigation board. Also, before this, the edges of the board acted like winds that pushed ships back onto the board.

See Also

• Collision mechanics

• YPPedia Ships Portal
• Ship Buying Guide
• List of known ship name fish names
• List of known ship name adjectives
• Ship icons displayed on dockside and when targeted

Blockades

In blockades, each ship class also has a different influence diameter. When choosing which ship to use in a blockade, it is important to know the trade-offs between influence diameter, firepower, damage capacity, and manpower required to run the ship.

External/Other Links

• Commonly discussed ideas from Game Design
• Ship totals from each ocean (Feb 6, 2007)
• Total ship counts 31st July 2009
• Ship Graphics (Outside)
• Ship Graphics (Inside)
• Ships Types resource, listing Stations, Capacities, etc... by Baldwin

Ship

Sloop | Cutter | Dhow | Longship | Baghlah | Merchant brig War brig | Merchant galleon | Xebec | War frigate | Grand frigate

See also: Shipyard | Shipwrightery | Pillaging