Sea battle
Sea battle occurs when one ship attacks another during a pillaging run. When one player-controlled ship attacks another player-controlled ship, this is called PvP. Regardless of the ships involved, the sea battle is played the same way.
The general goal of a sea battle is to shoot the other ship as much as possible and then grapple it. In sinking PvP, however, the goal may instead to be to sink the other ship rather than grapple. Also, traders may wish to flee rather than fight.
There are three stages of sea battle: pursuit, navigation, and boarding.
Contents
[hide]Pursuit
To begin a sea battle, one ship must pursue the other. Any officer aboard his or her own crew's ship may initiate pursuit. This is done by selecting a target ship on the open sea and pressing the "Attack" button under the Vessel tab. Only one ship may be pursued at a time. In order to intercept the target, the two ships must have the same approximate course and speed. If the target ship gets too far away from the attacker, the pursuit is automatically cancelled.
When a player ship is being pursued, the pirates aboard that ship receive a warning of the form, "You are being pursued by '<ship>'." When an interception occurs, the pirates receive the message, "You have been intercepted by the <ship>!" Similar messages appear aboard a player ship pursuing a target.
Once an interception occurs, the navigation phase begins.
During the navigation stage, the commander of each vessel maneuvers his or her ship around the sea battle board. They have thirty seconds to plan each turn. Once the timer runs out, their moves are executed and planning for the next turn begins. While planning, the other pirates aboard the vessel work to provide their commander with sailing and gunning tokens. These tokens are used by the commander to move the ship and fire the guns.
Sailors produce movement tokens, which allow the ship to move forward, turn left, or turn right. The higher the vessel's bilge level, the slower the movement tokens are generated. While a commander may save movement tokens from turn to turn, they will eventually disappear if left unused for five turns. A tool tip is displayed by hovering the mouse over each token type in the battle navigation window. This tip indicates how many tokens of that type will be discarded if unused for each turn.
Gunning tokens are produced each time a gunner loads a cannon. Each gunning token allows the commander to fire one shot at an enemy. Guns may be loaded before battle. For each gun loaded, the commander gets one gunning token. Unlike movement tokens, these tokens never expire. Firing a gun decreases the number of available gunning tokens by one.
There is also a third type of token, grappling tokens. A commander never runs out of grappling tokens. Grapples may be thrown off of either side of the ship and have a range of one tile. If they hit the other ship, the sea battle moves on to the boarding phase.
A turn consists of four phases. During each phase, the commander may choose to play a movement token, fire some number of cannons (determined by the size of the ship) off either side of the ship, or attempt to grapple the other ship. The commander is not required to make any moves, however. In any given phase he or she way move, fire cannons or grapples at the other ship, or either, or neither. Gunning and grappling tokens may not be played on the same phase. As the commander schedules actions, the activity bar above the ship, visible to the other vessel, fills. A good commander uses the tokens available to him or her judiciously to take advantage of the situation at hand while keeping enough in reserve for later turns. Each phase plays out as follows: First, any movement tokens scheduled for that turn are played. Next, if a boat is resting on a special sea tile, such as wind or a whirlpool, the ship is moved once according to the rules of this tile. If this movement places the ship on another special square, it has no effect for this phase, but will act during the next phase if the ship remains there. Finally, any cannons or grapples scheduled to be fired this round are shot off. It is important to note that some ships may only play movement tokens on three of the four phases of any given turn, though the boat commander may choose which phase the ship rests. This is done by dragging the octagonal icon to another location.
Ships may take damage during sea battle in four ways: They may be hit by cannon fire, they can try to move into a board square they are not allowed to (namely, those occupied by rocks or those off the edges of the board), they may be rammed by the other vessel, and finally by regular wear and tear. All damage other then wear and tear will cause unbreakable black blocks to appear in bottom of the crews' sword fight puzzle during the boarding phase. Optimally, the commander will cause a great deal of damage to the enemy ship while protecting his or her own, putting the other players at a significant disadvantage during the sword fight.
The navigation stage can end in two ways. If one ship is unable to cause damage to the other ship for some period of time, the undamaged ship may choose to disengage, returning both vessels to sailing at sea. The disengage counter starts at ten turns each for the vessels. For each cannon ball that hits a vessel, two turns are added to that ship's disengage counter. When the counter reaches zero, that ship may choose to disengage. If the counter is at zero and the ship is hit, the counter goes up, and the ship must again wait to disengage.
If, however, one ship is able to grapple the other, all puzzling stops and the sea battle moves on to the boarding stage. It is important for pirates not to move from one room to another aboard ship while in between stages, or, due to a bug, they may not be included in the melee.
Boarding Stage
During the boarding phase, the members of each ship's crew engage in a multiplayer swordfight. Teams receive damage penalties depending on how many times their ship was damaged during the navigation phase. Once a player has been knocked out, he or she has nothing to do but watch the rest of the fray and cheer on his or her teammates. The sea battle ends once all members of one of the two teams have been knocked out, thus losing the battle.
Teaming
One thing that you may be told to do by your commanding officer while in a battle (or just before one) will be to "team up". Here is a basic run-down of how to achieve teaming in a battle:
When you get into a battle, both teams are displayed. Your team (in this case, your crew) will be on the left-hand side of your screen, illustrated with their heads, their swords, and a small rectangular box that represents their personal puzzle. The enemy will be on the right-hand side of your screen with the same items (head, sword, and box).
Once the battle starts, there will be small, dual-colored dots that appear next to the rectangles of both teams. These dots indicate how many opponents are currently focused on that particular person (i.e. if your pirate's head is next to a box that has two dual-colored dots next to it, two enemies are currently attacking you). The exception to this is the large, orange dot. This indicates a total of five opponents - five of those little dual-colored dots combine to make the large orange one.
The dots themselves are colored based on the two colors of each person's sword. So, if you happen to have a sword that is blue and purple, your personal dot will be a small purple dot surrounded by a blue circle to be the small, dual-colored dot that is specific to you.
It is easy to know where your personal dot is residing, as the enemy you are currently focused on will have a white rectangle around his box (as apposed to the orange of all the other enemies' boxes). This should always let you know who you are focused on at any given moment, if you just look over to the right-hand side of your screen.
Now, here comes the actual teaming. The phrase "teaming" refers to "ganging up" on the enemies (typically in groups of 2 and/or 3, depending on what your captain dictates). The easiest way to tell if you are currently "teamed up" with someone else is to look at the enemies on the right-hand side of your screen for that tell-tale white rectangle. What you want is for 2 (or 3) of those dual-colored dots to be next to the white rectangle. If there isn't (if there is only one) then you are not teamed. You should look up and down the row of enemies for an orange box with only 1 (or 2) dual-colored dots next to it.
The next step is how you change from one enemy to another. Once you have located an enemy that you feel rightly deserves a thrashing by you personally, simply take your mouse and click on the orange rectangle next to his head. You may also use the page up and page down buttons, the "A" and "S" buttons on your keyboard or your mouse wheel to scroll through the enemies if you do not like using the mouse (or don't have one, or it isn't working for some odd reason). Now, since you have clicked on an orange rectangle with at least one dual-colored dot, that rectangle should now become white, and your personal dot should join the one (or more) that was there before you clicked.
Each captain is different and will give you different instructions reguarding teaming, such as how many people per team there should be or perhaps who you should focus on. Many captains ask that their crew attack the more powerful swords first—typically cleavers, skull daggers, and scimitars—before worrying about the lesser evils like foils. Always listen to your captain, and if you are confused about anything, ask them.
Winning and Losing
A portion of the contents of the losing ship's hold and booty are transferred to the booty chest of the winning vessel. Personal and crew sea battle ratings are adjusted. If the losing ship was a brigand vessel, there is a chance a new chart will be placed on the winning boat's navigation table. If both ships involved were player ships, then an entry is made on each crew's sea battle record page. All pirates aboard both ships at the end of the battle receive credit for an additional battle for the booty split, which will be represented as a ship icon. You must remain aboard the ship until the end of the battle to receive credit for it!
Damage Chart
| Ship Name | Max SF Damage | Full Damage | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Small | Med | Large | Small | Med | Large | ||
| Sloop | 6 | 4 | 3 | 10 | 6.66 | 5 | |
| Cutter | 7.5 | 5 | 3.75 | 12.5 | 8.33 | 6.25 | |
| Merchant Brig | 12 | 8 | 6 | 20 | 13.33 | 10 | |
| War Brig | 15 | 10 | 7.5 | 25 | 16.66 | 12.5 | |
| Merchant Galleon | 18 | 12 | 9 | 30 | 20 | 15 | |
| War Frigate | 30 | 20 | 15 | 50 | 33.33 | 25 | |
| Grand Frigate | 36 | 24 | 18 | 60 | 40 | 30 | |
This chart shows how to inflict maximum damage on a ship of any class, using a specific size shot. Note that ramming rocks or other ships also does damage, and is not figured in here.
Note that to sink a ship, it must become fully damaged. Because Carpenters make repairs during battle, more shots than specified may be required for "full damage". This is not a factor in "SF damage", as it reflects only the amount of damage received during the battle, not how damaged the ship actually is.
While pillaging, there is a maximum effect that damaging your opponent can have on the swordfight. Shooting a ship more than the "Max SF Damage" will further damage the ship (which remains after battle) but will not affect the swordfight. Shooting a ship after it has received "Full Damage" has no effect (unless at war, see below) other than preventing your opponent from making any repairs while in battle.
If the encounter is a PvP battle between flags at war, a ship is permanently sunk if it reaches maximum damage.
During a blockade, a ship is sunk if it reaches maximum damage, but is not lost forever, unless the battle is a sinking blockade.
