Need combat advices as a Galleon.

The Galleon is the weakest ship, and can be kited while blindfolded. Only option is to find an island or rock to protect one side and turn yourself into a rotating gun battery, as the only good thing about the Galleon is the cannons.

• You have to know exactly how good cannoneers your crewmates are, that way you know how far away you should stay from the enemy ship. Because the closer you are the easier it is for the enemy to hit your ship.

• Communication with your crew is the most important thing. As a helmsman you have to be constantly giving orders to them, such as: sails up/down, angle sails but also thinking out loud. If you're thinking about turning left tell that to your crew, if you want repairs tell that to your crew etc. I suggest having a main bilge(es) and main boarder(s).

• Always remember that galleon has the most powerful broadside of all ship types, so try to use it to your advantage.

• Tip for bilge/buckets: you can throw water throug the metal cage above the map. So don't waste time running all the way to top deck.

• Never leave the helm on its own. Unless you are 100% confident about jumping to be 4th cannoneer for a few seconds. But mainly only during emergencies you might have to leave the helm.

Thank you all for your replies. I was already familiar with most of those points, so I think it's probably a matter of execution rather than some magic trick I wasn't aware of. I think one of the #1 thing I need to rectify is my "sloop mentality";

As a sloop, you use your superior maneuverability to stay out of the adversary's broad side. Stopping them for moving and circling around them is how I learned to win. Because I am so used to be the smaller ship, I almost never trade cannon shots in parallel as it would mean getting overpowered; so when I find myself in this situation, I always try to get out of their cannon range by either speeding in front of them or slowing down and cut behind.

But like @ZerRryy pointed out, the galleon has the most powerful broadside, so it is perfectly fine to stay parallel and trade cannon shots with the other crew so long as the other ship is smaller and/or less accurate than my crew. No need for some fancy driving. Breaking their masts might not even be something we should do systematically; if we're going pretty much the same speed, and we hit them more than they hit us, wouldn't it be better to simply aim for the cannons/wheel to kill them on deck and then keep firing until they sink, instead of pining them down and then lose time and angle repositioning the ship in front of them?

@el-glaude

Hi, late to the party here !

i will give all kind of advice i can think of.

1- crew organisation

the crew goes by, Hellmsman, Bilge, Cannoneer and Boarder.
each role should have a canon assigned, i will go from back to front.

Canon 1: Should go to the helmsman since it's closer to the wheel, so he does not have to run to the front of the ship shoot 1 ball and then ruch back to the wheel because it does not have more time to shoot.

Canon 2: Should go to bilge, so he can easely backtrack below deck and repair.

Canon 3: Should go to the canoner sinc it's role is versatile, it's best for him to be around the midle.

Canon 4: should go to the boarder, since it's the most forward and so, the best place to launch yourself in front of ships.

Also, having a set canon prevent any "floating time", where your crew after realoading their cannonball would jump on a canon, only to realise their took the same canon and one has to change.

Supply accesybility:

it's important to grant easy access to supply at key point on the ship. Near the canon line usealy behind the anchor (not on it ! you pitiful sweaty f*k), below deck for easier repairs, near the wheels so the helmsman can stay glue to it, and more specific point like in the middle deck, or ammo box near the ladder and at the back and front of the ship.

the idea being, to kill any downtime of your crew reloading, the more time putting pressure the better !

Hellmsman:

it's my main role so i have a lot to say; first off, all your crew should have experience at helm, wether it's to be able to replace you while you go back from the ferry or the merm, or simply to better understand the way a gally navigate to better help you at sail management.

It's important to realise that anything on a gally takes a ton of time, so you really need to be sure of your actions, i highly recomend to stay at all time around the wheel to be able to react as soon as possible, if your not turning the wheel, keep watch on ladders to catch sneaky boarder ( personaly i use snipe pistol so i d'ont have to run after the guy with the sword) or watch how acurate your volley of canonball is, tell your crew if it's too high or too low, finally snipe the enemy crew/ helmsman, especially if you have an ammo box, whith that you will be able to put pressure, and when you hit some nasty shot, it feels really good ! and then, you can work on back and middle sail if need be.

Sail management ! understand that the galion as the most variable when it comes to speed, wind is your enemy if you catch it on a broadside you will have to reposition, especially if, you catch the wind on all 3 sails !

to prevent that i usally make sure, only 1 sail can catch wind, middle sail is facing the front, the front sail is facing away from the wind (either left or right not full left or full right, so it does not take ages to move them, with this the crew can stay focus on cannon fire), and the back sail is near the wind or against, since i can quickly access it.

Most of the time you will raise the middle sail, for better mobilyty and visibility, but their will be times when it's necessary to have all 3 sail down to match speed etc.
Always be mindfull when you have to raise them.

The N*1 rule: SAILS management is above firing a canon, your priority is to get as fast as possible set up, so then ! you can shred the enemy.

Patience is key, if you need more mobility you can raise the front sail to half, it's also very comon to raise front and middle all the way to get a boost movement before droping the front sail.

another tip: if you want to turn faster, but whitout slowing down by raising sail, angle the sail against wind (it's obvious but still), and keep them against wind as you turn, take notes of wave too, they can help you get a broad or hinder your actions.

Last crucial tip: Ingage in broad as far away as possible.

the more far away you engage, the more big the angle is, and the easier it is to keep said angle. galion really struggle at close range, sure they can destroy you if you get caught in broad, but as a gally crew wining because the other crew made a mistake, is no fun, the fun comes when you are a well oiled crew, and all your actions where clean and perfectly executed, leaving the other ship utterly destroyed.

to be simple at close range the gally become a dog chasing it's tail.

so yeah, as you probably guessed, you need to train your crew at long range, sail around target a fort tower or a rock and do a broad on it.

also comunication, if one of your crew hit the ship have him help the others.

things like "aime for the crows nest" "aim the fat cloud" etc.

that way, even if your crew sucks at canon aim, if one is able to lock, all will follow.

resulting in other crew sh*tting themselves, because once your an artillery galion, your crew trulu becomes op.

there is more stuff but i'm lazy ^^ figure out the rest, have fun with your crew, see it grow in skill, that's the best experience in sea of thieves.

@Ekal5750

Wow!! Thank you so much for your post man! This is EXACTLY the kind of information I needed. It helps a ton! I'll make sure to let my crew know about what you said and we'll start training like this.

@el-glaude

The pleasure is all mine.

When i sail in my galleon all i want is epic fight with other galleons, and all out server war !
so i make it my duty to train others and show them the ways, i hope to meet your crew on the seas one day for a hell of a fight !

Some more tips:

do not ! spam boarding attempt, even if the crew lacks ladder defense, focus on your naval, train it, and master it.
a galleon that spam boarder/send more than 1 boarder, is just screaming "i s*ck at naval".

it is also to me, the most disgusting stain on the reputation of the galleon, this, leads to belief that all gally crews are spawncamping tryhard ...

and it leads to crew scuttling as soon as their mast is down, or 1 of our border is succesfull in controling their ship, wich is really annoying when me and my crew like to interact with the opposing crew.

for exemple, allowing them to surrender, take some loot and supplies then leaving them, and making sure to not attack them if we ever see them again and recocgnise their shipset.

because when you sunk countless of ships, you stacked countless of event, the one true thing that makes the session unique and worthwhile is crew interactions.

I can tell you multiple tales like those.

for exemple we attack a running emissary, caught/kill them, then order their surrender (since we realised they where french like us).

it leads to them telling us they where preparing for a fotd, us telling them we will protect them.

once the fotd arrive, we rolled up, their sloop was on fire, we save it and look for them.

turns out a tucker attacked them, and as they seid that, a sloop was going straight for the fort !
Turned out in the end that, they , put fire on their ship, hoping to tuck on us, since they didn't trust us, the other tucker sloop was just pure luck.
and they were just dumbfounded when whe put out the fire XD.

would any of that have happen if we just sunk them ? NOPE !

second and last story.

Our reaper 5 gally spot a reaper chest at sanctuary's dock, cleary a new player mistake, we set sail looking for doing some "rp".
We plan on requesting they give us the chest, or we will sink them.

we arrive on a sloop, engage conversation and explain the situation, it is ankward but they accept to give up on the chest.
as we finish speaking a galleon is rushing towars us, we fight and sink him.

It comes back a second time, we fight and sink them again, sloop also came in looking to help us.

The third time they are looking to attack the sloop, so we make our duty to defend them !
We sink them for the third time and say goodby to the sloop.

again, an awesome and great experience, we would not have, if we just mindlessly sunk a sloop !

i hope you will understand the value of interaction with other crews.
as it is the key, to clean that stained reputation of galleon crews.

Take care, may the seas bring you glory !

@ekal5750 Copy that, we value proper naval combat above cheap spawn killing in my crew, your teaching won't be misused, haha. I'm also all about good sportsmanship and always willing to be chill with other crews if they are, too. Especially with new players.

Merci encore mon pote! ;)