Winning without boarding

@idneon 10% without boarding in adventure. I don't pvp random ships (only when the emissary is high enough), and usually wait for crews to attack me. I believe this will skew my experience toward pvping fully crewed vessels, and typically more confident (competent) players.

In those cases, the only way to sink them is to either have the right mix of cursed cannonballs, lure them into boarding and dying, or to board myself (even if solo sometimes). Boarding is the most reliable means, but is by no means my favorite tactic.

Sometimes I am surprised when other ships sink without me boarding, but I almost always attribute this to them either being undermanned, leaving the game, or not being stocked. I don't believe any of these reasons would qualify as me winning through naval supremacy though I am pretty sharp on cannons.

When I do sink a ship with boarding, it is done so stealthily (since I primarily am solo). Sneak aboard an unmanned ship, snag a couple of baubles from their stock, then leave them a parting gift - either a gunpowder barrel or a Chest of Sorrows and let those do the work as I escape. But primarily it is done by naval means, since I do play solo most of the time (and most of those times it is self defense or revenge).

Boarding is normally something I do in stealth plays as opposed to seeking out direct combat. If I get into a naval battle I'm pretty good at keeping it as a naval battle and repelling boarders during that time. So someone is sinking by means of naval combat with me, be it us or them (certainly don't win them all).

But for boarding, I do that when I am making a stealth play on a crew. This is normally the crew deciding we should have someone scout out a ship while the rest carry on for the time and do what we were doing. If the stealth play seems fruitful I'll normally try and take out the ship solo and then have my crew come pick up me and the loot (or make use of a rowboat if it is available). Since we prefer to hot mic in game chat for my crew it makes it all a little more interesting too since communication becomes limited during the stealth play.

So, yea, boarding for actual solid combat isn't something I engage with too much. If it does happen, it normally comes during a ram maneuver which we don't do a lot (most times it happens it is the other ship initiating the ram, but not always).

Coordination is the name of the game, and with that it is pretty easy to keep conflicts to naval ones.

Me and my friends do naval IF we encounter doublegunners & bunnyjumpers.
Cuz that kind of people are 90% garbage at ship-to-ship combat 😂😂😂😂

My crew sinks by any means. We send out our attack dog who usually mops up entire crews anchors them spawn kills them while we hammer them with cannon. We want the quick sink. By any means necessary.

Boarding tends to be something my crew use to apply pressure once an enemy ship is already on its way down.

We will send a boarder, but only after the naval battle is won. Once the masts are down and the ship has taken a serious beating, that's when we'll send over someone to make sure they can't turn things around by going full bails and repairs.

Tbh a ballast ball works just as effectively. Sorry to all of the primary boarders, I consider you to be only marginally more useful than a cursed cannon ball.

@idneon said in Winning without boarding:

How many times do you win without boarding?

For my friend and I it's currently 100% of our wins are without boarding. (12 wins / 1 loss last night).

We just dont like to do it.

How many others achieve Naval Supremacy through superior gunnery....Arrr

I board if we are being chased but I just fire cannons most crew members I have board when we fight with another ship

@idneon

I don't keep a count. I do ship battles, I also board and enjoy that aspect of the game. It is all depending upon the situation and the opponents that I face. I rarely board before ship damage has been made, but then again I play a lot of solo so don't have anyone to shoot.

The chain shots are the best addition to ship battles.

Boarding is the easiest way to stop runners from running. That’s why the first thing people do is hit the anchor.

If running wasn’t such second nature to 75% of the player base, this wouldn’t happen. I am also not talking about a solo sloop running from a brig or galleon but full crewed sloops, brigs, and galleons trying to run from a sloop.

@v*ca-hombre said in Winning without boarding:

@kommodoreyenser said in Winning without boarding:

full crewed sloops, brigs, and galleons trying to run from a sloop.

Awww, but that's the kinda stuff that really tickles the funny bone. I don't want it to be 'Sea of Dullards'.

Lol I mean I get a kick out of boarding, anchoring, and killing a full crew as a solo. Mermaid back to put 2-3 holes in them, shoot over again, and camp til they sink.

People think that only galleon and brig crews just go around doing this and it makes me laugh every time.

Honestly though if they want to change the boarding meta, they need to not limit the ways of boarding but change the necessity of keeping your crew onboard. (Take water faster possibly or slightly adjust how slow the sails and wheel work on brig/galleon, maybe make drifting off course more common so it takes the crew on ship adjusting sails and wheel)

Also changing the running meta although I have no idea on how to make fair changes here.

I cant tell you the exact number but myself and my crew back in the day where I PvP'd alot due to forts we never boarded anyone. We never lost a single fort and most match ups we won, like when defending ourselves but of course we lost some aswell, everyone loses now and then.

We just worked very well as a team on our galleon so boarding would have been counter productive to us. Also other crews we would go against would get so caught up in obsessive boarding it actually would give us a huge advantage as we would kill them and their ship would now be down one sometimes even two crew members. This was prior to curse cannons aswell.

I had this discussion once on this forum, someone could not believe we were able to sink ships without boarding but yeah it can be done. Of course boarding its a heck of alot faster but I can enjoy a nice long drawn out ship fight.

@idneon

I'd say it's about 50/50 with us. Some situations it may be best to send a boarder and sometimes we can blast them off the deck with our cannons and sink them that way.

In cases where our crew is equally matched with another in terms of both skill and crew size, I do find it irritating that the fight can drag on forever until one of us gets a boarder on.

I agree with boarding being a viable strategy in ship battles, but I don't like that boarding is in many cases the only thing that can decide the outcome of a ship battle.

@snikefriend said in Winning without boarding:

Unfortunately everyone likes cheap tactics, so everyone boards. Personally I only board when being chased and want to protect my loot but as I said, most people in this game like the cheap tactics Rare is providing them with, so they board anyways.

Sorry for your loss.

Nobody apparently IDNeon except you, I havent tried it much but so far everytime I have been attacked or fought another player ship, all they do is launch(with perfect accuracy) a friend of theirs over to my ship and he kills me, they sink the ship. I never do it when I got loot if I can avoid it but its just not fun to fight other players anymore unless I can find a solo person who will actually stay on their ship and use their cannons. So far the NPC skellie ships are more fun to fight since they actually fight with cannons and sniper fire, they dont launch themselves from their own cannons to board my ship.

I think the devs should make mermaids spawn you on an island close to your ship instead of back on it when you die or floating at sea(unless your by yourself) that way this whole nonsense of non-stop boarding isnt as fruitful if you cant instantly go back to your ship when they kill you or push you off the boat.

I got into the game thinking i would have cool ship battles. thats not the case as players are just lazy, killing you quick hoping for the good loot, while i have none just for that reason, im fighting to fight and have fun lol, since there is no loss to this game unless you grinded for hours to get loot. I just want to fight in a ship and have fun, if I lose or not but launching your friend over to board, versus goofing off and getting yourself to an island faster, is not a fun gameplay mechanic.

@idneon I actually got into a nice ship battle last night, 2 man group, led them to a skelle ship, set their mast on fire, rammed their ship and boarded and killed one of them before they got me and then my baby woke up, so i had to log off anyways lol. was still the kinda fun i was looking for, hopefully didnt get them too mad unless the skelle ship got them.