Solved Can't board anyone, can be boarded

[Giangiotto]

Note: I'm posting this here because I'm using that giant "Gentleman" mod, not sure if it's a vanilla issue. If it is, do feel free to move this thread where appropriate.

I've been raging at this issue for a couple of days.
I can't board anyone. Others can board me fine though, which is how I've gotten new ships. If I heavily damage the enemy ship but let them kill most of my crew then they will board me and I can kill them all and take the ship.

Still, it's not ideal. I'd much rather just shot up their sails a bit, shoot up their dudes a whole lot and then be able to take the initiative. As it is I always end up capturing ships with a dozen leftover sailors and a hull around 20%

Am I missing something stupid?
Or is my grappling skill so low the distance I can begin boarding at is actually smaller than when the two vessels are touching? My grappling skill is in the high 30s, not really an expert but I would expect it to be enough to throw a bloody hook when I'm ramming the enemy's side with mine.

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Also, I don't want to make a whole new thread for this, so I'll just attach this smaller question to the thread:
Why do so many ships "Strike" their colours and how do I stop them?
They just become neutral and I can't attack them anymore. If I force fire on them I am labelled a "Bloody Murderer".

Bloody Murderer I say?! The fools assaulted my level 6 warship in a bloody 12 4lb cannon piece of crap trading vessel, shot up my sail, got their deck and crew filled with holes and THEN they think they can just go "Lol just kidding we're not actual pirates" and sail away?! This can't be right.

 

[modernknight1]

A few questions....

What nation are you playing? England?

Is it Spanish ships you are trying to board?

I hope you say no.

MK

 

[Giangiotto]

I'm Spanish (Started as the vanilla adventurer Spaniard) and I've been assaulted by all enemies of Spain and by pirates.
Are you trying to say it's illegal to board non-pirate ships unless I directly work for Spain?

In that case I should be able to board at least pirates, no? I'm pretty sure I couldn't board those bufoons either. Hell, I got my warship when a bunch of those fools boarded my old crappy "Sophie" (Which I got when the fools boarded the ship I had before that. And I got THAT one when they boarded the starter gunboat thingy. God that thing's absolutely dreadful)

 

[Giangiotto]

Just tried flying the pirate flag. No dice, even against pirates.
Sat right by the side of a pirate Yacht with just a tiny sliver of "crew" (the commander I assume) and nothing. No boarding.

This is a bit of a major issue seeing as selling ships brings in enormous revenue

 

[superkid]

At the begining when you play on a higher difficulty setting, you can only board the enemy when you're exactly side by side with the enemy. So, the only way to board ships easily is to hire a good bosun with a lot of grapling skills who alse has all of the bosun abilities.

 

[Giangiotto]

It's my first game so I'm on the easiest setting (I actually wanted to play on a mid-setting but the description said the difficulty mostly changed the economy and I didn't want to care about it too much quite frankly so I left it on easy). I also have hired a level 8 Bosun and I'm perfectly side by side. Hell, what I tried doing was ramming their side at an angle, then sliding my ship on theirs for a perfect parallel docking.
I also got a carpenter and the ship integrity skills so it's basically a fortress compared to class 6 and 5 ships.

Pretty sure what I have is the toughest class 6 you can get with it's 8lb colubrines

EDIT- Just checked it, My grappling is 29+20 and my ship is the Light Brig. Nothing light about it for a class 6 I say.

EDIT2- Here's an image of me trying to board them. Ignore my sloppy work, I just have a save right before the battle where I desperately try to board the bastards.

 

[modernknight1]

No its nothing like that...we had some script bugs specific to Spanish ships that I was afraid had returned.

So just a couple questions: What mod toggles do you have on/off? What is your boarding skill? Do you have a bosun? What is his skill? Are you sailing on a ship beyond your current skill level? How many crew do you have on your ship?

MK

 

[Giangiotto]

How many crew do you have on your ship?

I try to stay at 125. The optimal number for the Light Brig (I lost a couple dudes in the image)
I doubt the ship is the issue since I couldn't board with my previous ships either.

Are you sailing on a ship beyond your current skill level?

As you can see in the image, it's a class 6. I can use it. I could use class 5s too but I haven't found a good one yet (and even if I did I wouldn't be able to board it)

Do you have a bosun?

As said before, yes. He's level 8 and rather evil.

What is his skill?

He has 49 grappling

What is your boarding skill?

29 plus a bonus of 20 as said before

What mod toggles do you have on/off

Ship Purchase, Ship Encounters, Reloading, Fix encounter distance, retroactive perks and spread experience are on
Cannon damage is set to vanilla for now because even in the intermediate I had to fire over 900 explosive balls at a tiny trader to get it below 50%
The rest is off.

EDIT- Just retried with everything disabled. Still can't board.

 

[modernknight1]

Sorry for your trouble Mate.

I hate to say this, but I think you may have a corrupt installation.

However, this could be a Spanish only bug. Could you do us a favor and start a new game as an English or Dutch captain and see if it still happens. I know that is a waste of time on your part, but it would tell us if there is actually a problem with the Spanish. Very little testing was done before we released, and I don't think even one of us played a Spanish character. I will start a game as a Spaniard to see if this happens to me. If you play as an Englishman and you can still board, we need to take a hard look at the Spanish characters again.

MK

 

[Giangiotto]

I'll go be Dutch then.

I actually didn't even play the game unmodded (I had years ago).
If it still doesn't work as a Dutch I'll try a full reinstall and a quick vanilla play to see if it works there.

 

[Giangiotto]

Son of a! As a Dutch I can board!
Actually I was boarded but I saw the grappling hook icon so that means it works

I'm glad it works but I miss my beloved Light Brig. Oh well, now I can actually capture all the cool ships I see

 

[superkid]

You could also try re-downloading and re-installing the mod over the fresh stock game.
In my computer, the mod worked fine after the third download... (at the first time the were a LOT of missing stuff and the second time the 7zip could not even be opened...)

 

[giuliootto]

Son of a! As a Dutch I can board!
Actually I was boarded but I saw the grappling hook icon so that means it works

I'm glad it works but I miss my beloved Light Brig. Oh well, now I can actually capture all the cool ships I see

Hi Giangiotto,

I had the same problem, with English.
I restarted the game and untill now the problem is gone. But I'm relly at the beginning.
I've play for many time the vanilla COAS and never had bording problem. But, I remember a similar problem with POTC + BUILD14.
Maybe is somethig related with the new ships.

 

[modernknight1]

Thank you Giangiotto for trying with Dutch - that validates that boarding at least works in what you have. You might want to start another game with Spanish again and see if it works now. One other thing you could try in your existing Spanish game is go back to your last save and start playing. Then go to Options, push Re-init and Accept and go back in to continue your game. push F6 quicksave and then see if you can board an enemy.

So it seems like from what everyone is saying that this could be an installation bug. Did everyone here with this problem load GOF 1.2 over a fresh install of COAS?

MK

 

[Luke159]

I have experienced the problem playing as England trying to board a Spanish ship, in my game i was testing the reload times out so i had maxed my characters skills out and advanced 1 year into the game. I attacked 2 Spanish ships (can't remember what they was now) but they was class 4 ships, anyway 1 of the ships came right up and stopped infront of me. I couldn't board them and they couldn't board me, however after taking the masts sown on both ships and limping away after loosing 2 masts myself i pulled into the nearest town where i was presented with the boarding option to one of the ships i had just ran away from. I boarded which went normal, i killed everyone on the deck and looted the bodies as normal before fighting the captin and killing him. Then i looted the ship before leaving her to sink, after selecting not to capture her i was back at the town about to dock.

I obviously installed GOFG 1.2 over a fresh install of COAS, but i'm woundering if it was because i had advanced using the beta testing window. I will be testing this out again soon to see, but without the use of the beta testing window been active.

 

[giuliootto]

I don't know if it's related, but now I have disable the Talk to the Ships option in the BattleInterface, and restart a game.
Untill now I haven't any boarding problem.
Before of this change I had this problem in two different games.

 

[NunoMG]

Hello guys,
Just to report the same problem with me, i´m playng as English, with Jack Aubrey and suddendly it stop boarding any ship.

 

[modernknight1]

I don't know if it's related, but now I have disable the Talk to the Ships option in the BattleInterface, and restart a game.
Untill now I haven't any boarding problem.
Before of this change I had this problem in two different games.

I definitely think this is related. So if surrender is not active there is no reason to have the talk to ship feature enabled. If surrender is enabled you still need the talk to ship function. I wish we had some decent coders that could test and fix this because I think there is a conflict somewhere in the surrender code (probably just a false somewhere where there should be a true) with regards to boarding, talking, and surrendering. We really needed to test the mod more before we released it, but there are so few of us working on it and everyone is sick of it. I am not even working on it. I am working a significantly different version of the game fore my eras mods.

Next week I will set aside some time one day to scrub GOF 1.2 and see if I can fix a bunch of stuff and release a patch. Maybe Luke will help me.

MK

 

[NunoMG]

I definitely think this is related. So if surrender is not active there is no reason to have the talk to ship feature enabled. If surrender is enabled you still need the talk to ship function. I wish we had some decent coders that could test and fix this because I think there is a conflict somewhere in the surrender code (probably just a false somewhere where there should be a true) with regards to boarding, talking, and surrendering. We really needed to test the mod more before we released it, but there are so few of us working on it and everyone is sick of it. I am not even working on it. I am working a significantly different version of the game fore my eras mods.

Next week I will set aside some time one day to scrub GOF 1.2 and see if I can fix a bunch of stuff and release a patch. Maybe Luke will help me.

MK

Sorry for the question, but where do i disable talk to the ships, since it doesn´t appear in options???
I think the problem started since i managed to hire officers.
I love this game, but still very unstable despite the great improve of performance with GoF.

 

[giuliootto]

I definitely think this is related. So if surrender is not active there is no reason to have the talk to ship feature enabled. If surrender is enabled you still need the talk to ship function. I wish we had some decent coders that could test and fix this because I think there is a conflict somewhere in the surrender code (probably just a false somewhere where there should be a true) with regards to boarding, talking, and surrendering. We really needed to test the mod more before we released it, but there are so few of us working on it and everyone is sick of it. I am not even working on it. I am working a significantly different version of the game fore my eras mods.

Next week I will set aside some time one day to scrub GOF 1.2 and see if I can fix a bunch of stuff and release a patch. Maybe Luke will help me.

MK

I dsable the talk to ship option by commented the related line in the BattleInterface.c.
The surrender mod still work. The Talk to ship interface happear if a ship is surrending to me, but I can't select it anymore.
In attached my BattleInterface.c.