Now Boarding, Party of One....

[thefadedrose]

Yes, there has been a few times that I boarded and other ships suddenly come up and start blasting away. One time there was so much smoke I couldn't see and was lashing out blindly with my cutlass but I made it out alive. LOL. I ticked off a few people tonight who decided every flagship was theirs even though they were busy enabling theirs. First come first served! LOL. Those little sloops are like mosquitoes....annoying by coming and blasting away! But oh, well, I had fun. I do the same now....grapple then start taking out the captain with my cannonballs then I board. I can handle three Level 9's with no problem but if there is a Level 20+ that I hadn't taken out then I am in trouble. I sat out on Padres trying to level up my cannon skills and I got bored with that after awhile and then went out plundering.
Well, at least you got to go out and hit a few balls. My Uncle works at a golf course and loves it! He gets to play all the time. He had tons of snow these past few months so he hasn't been able to go out and hit a few balls but he is waiting inpatiently! LOL. Kani

[Bilgepump]

Question: Why do you take out the masts after grappling?

As far as I can tell, it has no effect on anything after the ship's crippled.

[Steely Jim]

I am not entirely certain to whom that question is directed, but personally there is only one reason that I take out masts after I have grappled a ship: there's a big ship circling me and my prey, and I'm waiting to board until I'm looking at their aft sailing away from me. So, no it doesn't add anything, but cannonballs are free and it's good for my timing when swinging back to my ship.

Other than that, as I alluded to in post #30, I take out masts before I fire grapples. Although, as I discovered yesterday when I was trying to test out the bug where enabled/crippled ships just kept on sailing. What I discovered is that I've become so fixated on de-sailing enemy ships in the distance, that I sort of have to make a conscious effort now to let them get to me with some sail power intact. Actually, that was born out of laziness, as I got tired of sailing out to board ships and started leaving them with sails for long enough to let them sail back toward me.

EDIT: I remembered another reason: I'm waiting to see if more mobs will come out on the deck before enough time elapses that I can't put off boarding anymore. This usually happens when I'm boarding larger ships, and hoping to take out as many mobs as I can before boarding. Again, taking out masts doesn't add anything to my character, but it keeps me occupied while I'm waiting for someone else to stroll across the deck of the enemy ship.

EDIT2: After re-reading my first post, I suppose it wasn't made clear that I did take some actions between earning boarding rights, and actually firing my grappling hooks/lines; in any case, as I divulged later in the thread, I had to give that up because I discovered precisely that it wasn't useless to keep firing even after you have earned boarding rights--after all, someone once took the boarding rights from me by continuing to fire on a ship that I had already reduced but hadn't yet grappled.

So, there can be an effect to continuing to fire on a ship before it is grappled, as you could potentially steal someone else's boarding rights.

[thefadedrose]

I agree with you Steely Jim and that is the exact reason why at times I take out the masts due to the fact the soldiers don't come out all at once plus as I said earlier someone stole my boarding rights one time but now I don't let that happen. It only takes me one time to learn with the exception of boarding too early and with me being solo I try to take out the higher level soldiers then board. Besides from all that ....it is fun to take down the masts...it helps with the cannon skills so what more can I say. Kani

[Bilgepump]

Ok, that makes sense.

[Steely Jim]

I just solo boarded a Level-19 Navy Centurion off Cutthroat Island. The crew consisted of the helmsman and 6 Level-10 Sargeants. I took out the helmsman and 3 of the Sargeants with regular cannonballs before I boarded. I took out the remaining 3 Sargeants with cutlass, after I boarded.

I plundered 2 Royal Chests (both emeralds), 1 Treasure Chest, and 1 Cargo Crate.


EDIT: Hmm, apparently I'm slower to report my failures, but I also had a negative outcome with a Level-20 Ironwall off Isla Perdida yesterday.

I got ambushed! After grappling, I took out the helmsman, a level-12 Thug, and a level-10 Thug with regular cannonballs. I boarded, with 14 seconds left, to find a level-10 Thug and a level-16 Grunt waiting for me. They were far enough away that I could pan the camera around to look for other mobs; I didn't see any. So, I engaged them both with cutlass drawn.

We exchanged attacks, and suddenly 4 more level-16 Grunts appeared in a semi-circle to my left and behind me...in other words, they surrounded me! I did manage to get a tonic but I was only carrying the +400 health variety; and, I was trying to switch to voodoo doll when they brought me down.

[Bilgepump]

Originally Posted by Steely Jim

Hmm, apparently I'm slower to report my failures, but I also had a negative outcome with a Level-20 Ironwall off Isla Perdida yesterday.

I've had that happen. We were out sailing, and took down a couple flag Ironwalls. They only had thug crews, so it was no problem.

Then we hit one that had all hired guns in the crew, and woke up in jail...

[Steely Jim]

Hehe, yeah, I've seen that surprisingly high level crew for a particular ship happen on most ships types, although I would definitely say that the EITC seems far more likely to both field generally better crews than Navy ships of around the same level-type, and also more of a chance of a better than average crew ship type.

It's sort of funny though. I do sort of pick on EITC vessels more than Navy vessels, so the I laughed at the "ambush" tactics. It was sort of like they were "settin' a trap fer ol' Steely Jim."

[Samson Whiteberry]

Has anyone experienced the yo yo effect on a ship? After grappling the enemy ship seem s to go on a yoyo ride and swings itself all around the ship until it ends up a few meters away and we have to grapple it agin. This has happened a few times .

[Steely Jim]

That one's new to me. So far, once I've gotten it grappled it stayed that way.

Does it "heal" at all, or is it simply something that makes you fire the grappling hooks again?

[Darthkuriboh]

I've boarded solo before (theres a level 18 greyhound flagship tht haunts the area between port royal and tortuga).. used to be I could down it, now all of a sudden the entire crew is level 22+ officers. Needless to say, I don't board it alone anymore.

[Steely Jim]

It sounds like you got caught by the old "random higher-level crew than normal aboard the ship you just boarded" phenomenon. It seems several of us have experienced that as normally occurring, so you should be safe to go boarding Navy Greyhounds again. You will find a surprisingly strong crew aboard every once in a while though.

EDIT: I was out double-checking the flagship locations, and boarded a level-9 Navy Panther off Driftwood. The crew consisted of 2 level-4 Navy Cadets (1 was the helmsman), and 2 level-6 Navy Guards. I plundered 1 Treasure Chest, and 2 Cargo Crates.


I also added location information to post #1, on the first page of this thread. The flagships do sail around, but can mostly be found around the same old haunts.

I suppose the next step will be to post a "example normal crew, example good crew, and example plunder results," for each type of flagship.

EDIT2: Solo boarded level-15 EITC Corvette (so, that's Outcast), and found 2 level-7 Thugs (1 was the helmsman), and 2 level-10 Thugs aboard. Plundered 1 Treasure Chest & 3 Cargo Crates.

EDIT3: Solo boarded level-19 Navy Centurion (Kingshead), and found 3 level-5 Navy Cadets, and 1 level-5 Navy Guard (guard level is not a typo). Plundered 1 Royal Chest, 2 Treasure Chests & 1 Cargo Crate.

EDIT4: Found an unexpected level-18 Navy Centurion northeast of Cuba, and followed it to the southeast coast of Port Royal, where it started to turn back around toward Cuba. For now I don't know whether it is a random in addition to where the regular flagships are, or if it was an odd respawn for something else in the area. On board were a level-9 Navy Guard (helmsman), and 3 level-18 Navy Veterans. I plundered 2 Royal Chests, 1 Treasure Chest & 1 Cargo Crate.

[Steely Jim]

Pardon my double post, but I wanted to keep this information separate from my little nest of edits in the above post.

I'm moving to a more organized recording system for boarded ships, so I've thrown out a couple of ships I already listed due to them having incomplete information. I'm going to want to board each ship type multiple times anyway, to distinguish relative crew strengths. For now, this still pertains only to solo boarding, as having a crew would modify the plunder.

Note: This new format adopts some abbreviated naming conventions. When listing the ship, I just give the name and the numerical level in parentheses (example: Bulwark (7) would be a level-7 Navy Bulwark). The "Location" is the location that is listed under the compass on the heads-up/on-screen display. When in "Uncharted Waters," I will add the abbreviation for the different "route names" I made up (now seen in post #1). So, possible entries would be UW-TGR, UW-BR, UW-TPR, UW-JRR. Also, plunder will now be abbreviated (Royal=RC, Treasure=TC, Cargo=CC). Finally, I am including a line for Captain's Treasure Sense Points (CTSP--I know it's for solo captains, but without the "C" it would always seem like "teaspoon" to me).

For those who may want to play along at home, here's a template for the form:

[b]Ship (#):[/b]
[b]Location:[/b]
[b]Crew:[/b]
[b]Plunder:[/b]
[b]CTSP:[/b]

I've now moved all the examples of plundered ships out to post #1, and added some Kingfisher examples.

[thefadedrose]

Not to dispute the above Jim, but I noticed the one night when I switched to a more quiet server (because of one ship deciding all the flagships in the ocean were theirs) the bulk of the ships had switched sides. How can I say this better? Okay, I had been playing where the bulk of the ships were out toward Padres, Kingshead, & Port Royal area and when I switched to a quiet server it was the reverse...towards Rumrunner's, Driftwood, Cuba, & Port Royal. Not to say there were other ships on the opposite side but they are usually thicker on one side than the other. Have you noticed that yet? Kani

[Steely Jim]

My next step is actually going to be to go back and figure out whether there is a rhyme or reason to the placement of non-flagships, and also to figure out the ultimate source of the seemingly anomalous flagships (are they odd respawns of other types, or do random flagships just spawn in odd locations occasionally?).

The regular flagship positions I've given held up on server after server, quiet or ideal (although sometimes the ideal was confusing when someone had just sunk the ship). You should be able to go to any server, and find those flagships around those positions; however, some are more wide-ranging than others. For example, the EITC Barracuda tends to almost hug the shores of Driftwood, while the EITC Ironwall can be anywhere from the south side of Isla Perdida to almost the north side of Tortuga; however, that seems to reflect the normal travel range of that ship (most of the time the Ironwall will be sailing east-west across the Scurvy Shallows or the Blackheart Strait, or circling Isla Perdida).

There also seems to be a number of "anomalous sightings" of flagships,and I don't really know what to make of them yet. It wasn't just the Sentinel and Centurion I mentioned here already. One of my first solo boarding experiences was with a pair of Sentinel flagships that kept respwaning off Driftwood; however, I've neither been able to replicate that situation, nor ever found any other Sentinels off Drfitwood (plus, that time, the Panther and the Barracuda were also there, as expected). So, there are sometimes flagships that appear outside these regular locations.

A few days ago, things seemed a lot more random to me. If you'd asked, then I probably would have guessed that spawn were generally either Navy or EITC, and that type depended mainly on what other vessels were already on the map (anywhere) for that group; however, now I've seen some regularities that I need to keep observing.

I noticed that in the pack of ships sailing the Salty Flats, there seems to almost always be 3 Ironwalls, 2 Barracudas and an Ogre; however, sometimes the Navy ships were dominated by galleon types, and other times it was dominated by sloop types (mostly war sloops). I don't fully understand how the computer selects the non-flag support fleets that sail around, but I am working on that.

EDIT: Just as a note, the ship locations listed under "Piracy Routes," on the first page, are usual locations. The location named for each example ship was taken straight from under the compass on our heads-up/on-screen display.

EDIT2: Since I'm now only recording boarded ships where the entire boarding process is completed, I had 2 failed attempts yesterday. First was an Ironwall-23 (1 lvl-22 Hired Gun & 4 lvl-11 Thugs), and the other was a Man O' War-29 (1 lvl-22 Officer & 3 lvl-29 Officers).

I know I can get examples for the Ironwalls, as I normally end up taking them down. For the time being, it may be difficult for me to get solo examples for the Man O' War, Colossus, and Barracuda (although I haven't tried the Colossus or Barracuda yet).

EDIT3: I added an example Ironwall, but it only had 4 lvl-10 Thugs aboard. I think that's one of the lowest-level crews I've ever seen aboard an Ironwall, so I may take that one back out eventually.

EDIT4: I caught the Ironwall respawning right off the east coast of Isla Perdida. I cannot confirm that this respawn point is as reliable as the Bulwark and Greyhound off the Devil's Anvil, but I will try to make sure I take the Ironwall in sight of Perdida a few more times to confirm it. Since this Ironwall had a more usual crew aboard, I also included it among the examples.