Cannons/boarding/aggro issues

[KongSuo]

I've noticed a series of weird issues that crop up from time to time, and all seem to be related, at least to my unweathered eye. In no particular order (and sorry ahead of time if they sound confusing, I'm a novice at "bug reporting"),

Issue 1: I remapped aimed shot to the spacebar from V (probably irrelevant, but still). The cannons don't necessarily always fire when I ask them to, though. Was just playing to fiddle with the sound options as alluded to in a different thread, and my ship simply would not fire. At all. It was an allied ship, but that shouldn't make a difference, should it? Edit: second part of this was my fault. Deleting the options file removed keymaps and didn't think about that.

Issue 1.5 semi-edit: Firing arcs are hilariously small. Like an inch and a half, if I'm lucky, and that's on a 52 in. screen. Another realism thing, I'm guessing?

Issue 2: Boarding. I can't board grey or green ships, but only red or previously red but surrendered ships. This seems like just a realism thing on the surface, so just wondering about it. It works fine when I run up the roger, but even a pirate who turns grey and is trying to escape a losing battle can't be boarded until he surrenders once he turns grey, and that just seems a little odd.

Issue 3: When a ship is grey, I can sit there and unload multiple broadsides with no effect in its aggro condition. It just sits there and takes it. This is the one issue where I was specifically running the white flag (the one next to my personal colors), so I assume that has something to do with it?

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Issue 1: I remapped aimed shot to the spacebar from V (probably irrelevant, but still). The cannons don't necessarily always fire when I ask them to, though. Was just playing to fiddle with the sound options as alluded to in a different thread, and my ship simply would not fire. At all. It was an allied ship, but that shouldn't make a difference, should it? Edit: second part of this was my fault. Deleting the options file removed keymaps and didn't think about that.

The cannons don't always fire using manual aim? But you fixed that already, right?

Issue 1.5 semi-edit: Firing arcs are hilariously small. Like an inch and a half, if I'm lucky, and that's on a 52 in. screen. Another realism thing, I'm guessing?

A lot of work was done in the past to make the cannon firing arcs realistic.

Issue 2: Boarding. I can't board grey or green ships, but only red or previously red but surrendered ships. This seems like just a realism thing on the surface, so just wondering about it. It works fine when I run up the roger, but even a pirate who turns grey and is trying to escape a losing battle can't be boarded until he surrenders once he turns grey, and that just seems a little odd.

Green ships are friendly so you have no business boarding them.
Gray ships that are still sailing are also neutral, so same situation.

Issue 3: When a ship is grey, I can sit there and unload multiple broadsides with no effect in its aggro condition. It just sits there and takes it. This is the one issue where I was specifically running the white flag (the one next to my personal colors), so I assume that has something to do with it?

Sounds like that ship already surrendered.
When surrendered, a ship turns grey on the mini-map and should also be flying a white flag.
If they surrendered to you, then you can board them and talk to the captain about terms.
It is also possible that they surrender to someone else, in which case there is nothing you can do about it anymore.

The white flag options in the menu is unfinished. It should be used to surrender yourself.
If the surrounding ships believe your flag, it'll turn every ship neutral/friendly.
Still continuing to fight after doing that is very evil and you'll probably get huge reputation hits for doing that.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

Yes, if you want to board a neutral or friendly ship, then just change your flag. But beware of unforseen consequences.

 

[KongSuo]

They weren't flying the white flag, I was. No dip in reputation that I noticed, though. Am I supposed to be able to change flags mid-combat? Because I can't, even to run up the white flag. The action menu option to put up the pirate flag always works, but the Relations tab of the F2 menu sometimes removes every flag option except the one I'm flying, so there is no way to change it.

As for the cannonfire, the manually aimed shots always work, that was just an issue with the keymapping that I didn't take into account. The main problem is a sometimes sizable delay when doing the autofire thing. There have been times where I've hit the key six or seven times before it actually shoots. I tried to keep a sharper eye on the whens and whys today and noticed that it seemed to be the biggest problem when the ship wasn't fully within my firing arc, so it might just be that my gunners don't like shooting for the fringes lol.

Thanks for the quick replies!

 

[Hylie Pistof]

No you can not change flags while in a battle but you can after or if you are far enough away from an enemy.

Just because you order your crew to fire the cannons, that does not mean that they are able to fire the cannons right away. If your cannon skills are low the cannons fire kinda randomly. Hire a good gunner and you will see a big difference.