Compounding skills

[ScottsBlood]

As I hate to waste a chance to improve my officers; I'm trying to figure out if it does any good to have two with the same ability. The last game I started, I had the watcher ability, and I gave an officer the watcher ability. Does this mean I have a 50% chance of evading hostile vessels at sea, or did I just waste a good chance to pick an ability I could use? (OR, do officer's <i>abilities</i> even affect your character's performance? Maybe it is just the <i>skill points </i> that help your character directly?). So far, I haven't seen where officers help that much (Except with my gunner (3 accuracy and 3 cannon skill points) and my quartermaster (whoo hoo, money!) and he only has 5 skill points in trading). The manual says if you and an officer have the same skills, the game only counts the higher skill (Coming from Sea Dogs straight to AoP, I really don't understand that, because I liked hiring Dreyfus the Fuse and having 9 (+ 3) accuracy skill). Also, apparantly, officer skills such as fencing and Pistol, don't even help your character. (I've got a guy with very low loyalty who I'm paying 1600 a month for, and I don't even board ships yet, so I think he's gonna get fired today (If he doesn't quit first). My fencing skill is still at 1, so I get the crap beat out of me whenever I try to board an enemy ship).

I'm trying to figure this out. Quite honestly, I can't tell any difference, but others might.

 

[ScottsBlood]

I think I just answered my question. I tried to give my quartermaster a Pack Rat ability, and it didn't add anything to my ship's hold space. My character didn't have the pack rat ability. I think it might be correct to say that officer abilities don't help any, just the skill points.

 

[Officerpuppy]

Maybe if you make him a capt of another ship that will benifit the other ship. Though what I don't like is it seems you have to unassign an officer before you board if you want him to comandeer that ship, why doesnt the game just let you pick and choose who you want in the first place.

I think the only time it does let you pick and choose without having to unassign someone is when you have Fighters with you.

 

[Ropblad]

the fighter abilities benefits the fighters themself for example if he have the hard man ability then his health will increase at 50% but it will not benefit you at any way

i think that the self abilities (like hard man,gunman,tirles and so on) benefit the person who has it while the abilities that should benefit the ship benefits only if the officer asigned to the job (like gunner gets the abilities that benefits cannons)