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[HELP] Crew, Sailing and & Boarding

C

CaptainKraut

Landlubber
Hey there seafarers.

Recently I rediscovered my Age of Pirates copy and was immediately fascinated again. Which made me purchase the second part CoAS. However, untill now this move turned out to be nothing but causing frustration. I never had serious problems with CT but CoAS is just a mess. And at the moment the idea of just tossing it against the wall (which is not to be taken literrally as I only got a digital copy) seems quite tempting.

Since you always start with a crew of 3 to 5 men the first thing I do is hire some guys. And here we go - even if I get the crew limit they still take awesomely long time to set sails. Much more longer than I was used to from CT and than what i saw in gameplay footage on youtube, too. First thing of annoyance even more as I cannot figure out the reason.

But what certainly is the worse point, my crew magically disappears during boarding or getting boarded. After successfully defeating the enemy, I am always the sole survivor. There is not a single crew member left neither on my nor the enemy's crew - never. So then I should usually fight least one more ship all allone. Which turns out to be somewhat challanging - not to say impossible.

Actually, I do not know if I am just too stupid, doing things wrong or whatever the reason might be. I basically am not getting how one shall keep afloat in the very beginning of the game.

[ I know there are few of that 'helpless beginner'-topics out there which I even read. But I still could not find out how t odeal with that crew thingy. ]
 
You are going to have better times as a) your skills grows up and b) your men grows up in experience (crew have ranks, they become better as they become more drilled).

For boarding you need to have weapons, one per man. Defence skills and doctor perks will help too, but probably your problem just now are the weapons (or you playing in a high difficulty level).

Cheers.
buho (A).
 
Thanks for the awnser - interesting part about the weapons, however I cecked them out now and there are even double as many as sailors on my crew.

I've been trying like a doozen of times now. When it comes to boarding there are always exactely two men of my own crew fighting against round about 10 enemies. In the first place I thought that probably all of the die during the fights, but do two casualties really make a crew of 50 die? Of course I take care not to engage a war galley but that happens in fights against the very same ship model as mine is, too. So, if I manage to take out them all, which is quite tough, why is my whole crew dead while only two did acctually fight? Is that natural? To me it just makes very little sense that boarding leaves two ghost ships. You cannot be supposed to get a completely new crew after one battle, can you? By the way, the crew's fighting experience is shown off as 'sea dogs', to me that sounds not that bad.

Another misery is the shooting. My characters accuracy and cannons skill are at level - I do not know whether this is good or bad for the the very beginning. Yet my crew cannot hit a single shot even if the other ships is already in about-to-board-range. While enemies score hits as soon as they get into firing range. Therefore I cannot win a battle by just sinking the ship, in the end there is always boarding which leads to the above paragraph again.

I am currently playing the very easiest diffuclty mode and still there is not a slightest chance to ever win any battle. That drives me crazy. What happens to your crew after boarding? I guess they do not suddenly drop to zero?
 
CaptainKraut said:
Thanks for the awnser - interesting part about the weapons, however I cecked them out now and there are even double as many as sailors on my crew.

I've been trying like a doozen of times now. When it comes to boarding there are always exactely two men of my own crew fighting against round about 10 enemies. In the first place I thought that probably all of the die during the fights, but do two casualties really make a crew of 50 die? Of course I take care not to engage a war galley but that happens in fights against the very same ship model as mine is, too. So, if I manage to take out them all, which is quite tough, why is my whole crew dead while only two did acctually fight? Is that natural? To me it just makes very little sense that boarding leaves two ghost ships. You cannot be supposed to get a completely new crew after one battle, can you? By the way, the crew's fighting experience is shown off as 'sea dogs', to me that sounds not that bad.
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Amount of fighters during boarding represents proportion of number of crew of ships. I.e. when you board with 150 crew while you have only 50 then those 2 guys (plus your character) represents entire crew of your ship, and there are 10 enemies fighter who represents their crew (those numbers are rough). If both your fighters die it's like your entire crew was killed. Therefore always attack ships with similar or less crew number or use grape shots before boarding. Once you get 'Excellent spyglass" you will be able to see amount of crew.


CaptainKraut said:
Another misery is the shooting. My characters accuracy and cannons skill are at level - I do not know whether this is good or bad for the the very beginning. Yet my crew cannot hit a single shot even if the other ships is already in about-to-board-range. While enemies score hits as soon as they get into firing range. Therefore I cannot win a battle by just sinking the ship, in the end there is always boarding which leads to the above paragraph again.
Click to expand...
You probably have accuracy skill below 10 so it's rather crappy, don't expect you hit anything with that. But you can hire chief gunner officer(and many others), look for them in taverns. Before you hire them you can check their skill, look for guy with accuracy skill above 30 it's ok for a start (don't forget to appoint him on chief gunner position). Once you get him you will hit other ships much more frequent and you will increase your own accuracy skill much more quicker.

CaptainKraut said:
I am currently playing the very easiest diffuclty mode and still there is not a slightest chance to ever win any battle. That drives me crazy. What happens to your crew after boarding? I guess they do not suddenly drop to zero?
Click to expand...
This game seems to be very difficult at first look, but once you get basics you will strike terror all over the Caribbean.
 
Indeed, my accuracy is only at level 8 (that figure soehow managed to excape from my last post). First off, I thought that would be much but when I managed to level the heavy fencing skill to 30 in a few fights, I relised that skills scale somewhat different from CT. By the way, the game managed to raise from idsgrace again, when this morning I discovered that one can leave the towns and explore the jungle. Basically, the jungle is very boring and repetetive - do all islands look the same? But the caves are adorable because one can slay skeleton pirates (or pirate skeletons?) there! Which is pretty awesome but also feels somewhat like an exploit. I managed to do rank 2 and earn about 10.000 pieces of eight by selling the sekllies' jewelery. That at least is a feature that makes CoAT adorable for me thus far.

@ Hyde911

If I did get you right, I shall not enter any sea fight before I get me an able gunner? And that aspect about boarding is quite unpleasant, too. As aforementioned I do not attack overpowering huge battle ships but only such of roughly the same size and class as my own ship is. And it just seems to me that you have to be massively superior in number to still have a crew big enough to handle your ship after boarding. I simply think this last man standing fihgts are very strange. What do I profit from it if everybody dies? Boarding in CT was much more adorable in my opinion as the whole crew system with different 'classes' was.

I had one more strange experience today when I was encountered by a pirate merchant shooner right in the port. The supposed-to-be-mighty fortress did fire for about 2 or 3 minutes but did not hit that damn shabby shooner one single time. Then I made enough distance between my ship and the pirates to exit to the map. By that time there were already some plenty holes in my sails when the pirate shooner was still undamaged. I do not get why.
 
CaptainKraut said:
Indeed, my accuracy is only at level 8 (that figure soehow managed to excape from my last post). First off, I thought that would be much but when I managed to level the heavy fencing skill to 30 in a few fights, I relised that skills scale somewhat different from CT. By the way, the game managed to raise from idsgrace again, when this morning I discovered that one can leave the towns and explore the jungle. Basically, the jungle is very boring and repetetive - do all islands look the same? But the caves are adorable because one can slay skeleton pirates (or pirate skeletons?) there! Which is pretty awesome but also feels somewhat like an exploit. I managed to do rank 2 and earn about 10.000 pieces of eight by selling the sekllies' jewelery. That at least is a feature that makes CoAT adorable for me thus far.

@ Hyde911

If I did get you right, I shall not enter any sea fight before I get me an able gunner? And that aspect about boarding is quite unpleasant, too. As aforementioned I do not attack overpowering huge battle ships but only such of roughly the same size and class as my own ship is. And it just seems to me that you have to be massively superior in number to still have a crew big enough to handle your ship after boarding. I simply think this last man standing fihgts are very strange. What do I profit from it if everybody dies? Boarding in CT was much more adorable in my opinion as the whole crew system with different 'classes' was.

I had one more strange experience today when I was encountered by a pirate merchant shooner right in the port. The supposed-to-be-mighty fortress did fire for about 2 or 3 minutes but did not hit that damn shabby shooner one single time. Then I made enough distance between my ship and the pirates to exit to the map. By that time there were already some plenty holes in my sails when the pirate shooner was still undamaged. I do not get why.
Click to expand...



you dont have to be superior to your enemy to defeat them .. your crew has also a "skill level" it goes from sailor( i think) to sea dogs , you can check that if you press f2 & go under the ships tag.. so like 50 man of sea dogs could defeat 100 men of sailors without a problem. also you can recruit fighters ( in taverns just like gunners) they will also fight in boarding actions & they will not be taken into your crew account ( for example if you have a crew of 150 & 3 fighters there will be 3 fighters + you + your crew on the ship when boarding , there will be also 3 fighters if you have a cre of 50 or 20 or whatever )

but you have to know that even if you have 100 sea dogs you can be defeated because you dont know on what a skill level your enemys crew is .. so if they have like 300 experianced soldiers you lose for sure ..

also i would like to add that i had many bugs in the game , if you have the same problem download one of the mods , they dont only fix the bugs but there are some new ships,settings added.
& they make the game a bit easier ( i use the GoF i think its Gentelmen of Fortune mod , they gave me a ship with 50 crew at the begining + some goods to sale + 3000 gold .. that makes the begining a whole lot easier ) but you can make the game more chalangig if you set it to a higher difficulty at the start.

also the game has some "complex" quests so if you get lost or stuck .. just ask in this forum ..

i hope that my answer helps ..
 
Without a gunner mate, a bosun mate and fighter officers you are cooked, Sir!

You, by chance, have not heard the enemy crew yelling "Barbecue! Barbecue!" when you approach?

Cheers.
buho (A) :d:

PD: Grapes is the way to go. And check the white line in the ship state bars, it will tell you how many crew are left.
 
Someboddy said:
also i would like to add that i had many bugs in the game , if you have the same problem download one of the mods , they dont only fix the bugs but there are some new ships,settings added.
& they make the game a bit easier ( i use the GoF i think its Gentelmen of Fortune mod , they gave me a ship with 50 crew at the begining + some goods to sale + 3000 gold .. that makes the begining a whole lot easier ) but you can make the game more chalangig if you set it to a higher difficulty at the start.

also the game has some "complex" quests so if you get lost or stuck .. just ask in this forum ..

i hope that my answer helps ..
Click to expand...


First off, lots of 'managing' in my last post. Sorry about that, I was quite in a hurry but will promiss I won't manage anything in this post.

All right, to be honest GoF was nearly the main reason why I even got me CoAS (by the way is the 'main story' still playable with the new characters or exclusive to the three base game buddies?). I knew from CT how buggy those bloody pirate games are so i did not even try to play it without mods. However I only started with a crew of 5. That's why I had to waste quite a sum instantly on crew. Now I am sailing with 50 men, too (55 is the maximum crew amount of my current ship). But still I got all these problems mentioned. I will just have to try with some officers again but so far I never had a chance in sea battles and boarding. As I already mentioned my crew is 'sea dogs' level in fighting but they do not behave like that.

I will have to sea how this evolves throughout the next days. If it does not I still have the opportunity of slaying skellies.
 
50 men it's VERY low. Most of 6 class ships can carry twice of that. I'd recommend you get some cash by trading, once you get enough cash by better ship with crew 150 or so and then try boarding.
 
I was lucky!

I just joined a fight between a Dutch ship and some pirates. The Dutch had already disabled nearly half of the crew which made it much easier for me to board. Actually, I did not even lose a single mate and could capture an Interceptor. However I had to give her away soon because form then on things developed way better. I soon took over a Battle Corvette and currently I am sailing the Raa.

GoF is really a curse by the way. Because there now is a seemingly endless amount of great looking ships, so I can never decide which one to take. Only those tier 6 and 7 pirate ships still are nuisance. they are still chasing me around the world map but when finally engaging they immediately turn and try to escape - which they mostly succeed in, too.
 
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