What’s your fort strategy?

@KattTruewalker
Myself and my sloop's helmswoman points at you try to always have a friendly approach if there's a ship at the fort. We always sail in with our Offer Alliance flag up, but stay vigilant at all times. If that allying fails, we look at our surroundings to see what would be the best approach, a place where we can engage more safely. Use the spaces between the towers and the island to your advantage.

If you are allied and a ship comes, communication is key. Try to persuade the incoming ship that it would be in their best interest to join the alliance. If they prove to be aggressive, work together to bring Mr. Davy Jones' a new ship.

In everything that you do, the most important thing is to always work together with your own crew. Trust in your partner at all times. Without your crew, without the ones that you have with you, you will have a hard time achieving victory.

@katttruewalker hold cannons pointing towards the other ship with sails and anchor raised. Unleash as many cannonballs as soon as they're in firing range keep firing until the other ship is about 30ft away(ish Im bad with measurements). Then open all the sails all at once as one of your crew members jumps on the island with gun powder barrel. Then just sit back and watch as the rival crew sails right into the island trying to ram your boat only to ram your one crew member with the gun powder barrel.
Ive managed to do this once, but having come up with the plan on the fly I felt like Captain of the Year

Most the time its just disorganized buffoonery

I mostly solo so it's golden chickens for me. lol

My strategy at Forts is since Weeks—> Because for the Commendation Legendary Gunpowder Plot! I’m heading to an Fort is no ship in sight, I’m waiting until a other crew is in Fort Range to make the Commendation count, then I’m searching Gunpowder Skellys and group them up with other Skellys to commit suicide! And that’s I’m doing over and over and over only with one Goal and Hope—> Make it count for the Commendation! I try to ally but when a hostile crew there is I try to hide or swim over from an Island to be in Fort Range only in the hopes that the other crew gimme an count for the Commendation! So you see it’s an very sad story, I can’t enjoy Forts right now it’s hard work and hope :(

Until they start giving commendations for being in an alliance and having someone else turn in items, it's better to just attack the people there after they've done some waves first =)

Sneak and steal every time. With the addition of the rowboat this has become even more successful of late.

Favourite heist of recent times was during a 3 ship contest at the fort, myself and my seadog partner silently aided the one ship that was clearing the waves without being detected. Ended up rowing off with the best items under cannon fire from 2 ships.

To this day I'm not sure if anyone involved even realised the existence of a fourth ship in that fight.

My crew:
1- Our strategy is to go there, kill the skeletons, and get the loot. o.O Is there another strategy?
2- Too contested? There is not that definition in our dictionary. The fort will be ours and you can't do anything to avoid that.
3- Alliances? We can't make an alliance if first we destroy all your ships.

Alone:
1- Go there, pray and try to repair the sloop.
2- I think I would avoid other ships if they are galleons. Basically because it would be a really long battle and I don't need a fort that much.
3- Nah, if I play alone, I play alone.

@ionei-falcon dijo en What’s your fort strategy?:

I always try to park my boat in a position that I can leave all the skeletons in the cannon towers alive. They are crucial as an alarm to let you know if other boats are approaching as well as providing extra fire power making any other boat's approach that much harder.

You can kill all of them. The skeletons reappear if a new ship approaches.

I see a lot of people are against forming allegiances with others, but thats the first thing I do as I approach a fort, occupied or not. I have solo’d plenty of forts and have been bamboozaled many times but thats alright, every failure is a lesson for the next go. Keeping an eye out for rowboats has kept me safe a few times. Also keeping an eye on those scallywag galleons or brigs that dock behind rocks or islands to hide and wait for us real pirates to clear forts for them just try to come pirate said loot. At first was disheartening, and infuriating, but with lessons learned from those scurvy dogs, I now always hope for the best but prepare for the worst and prepare boom booms and the sloop for defense.

My strategy has been the same since the forts were first activated. Regardless of what ship I’m on, as long as I’m not solo, always play aggressively when sailing up to a fort that is already player controlled. That is their territory and I wasn’t invited.

If I’m the first ship to arrive at the fort, I’m willing to ally with players that are obviously friendly, or new to the game, as long As it is understand that My crew will be hauling and turning all the loot in. But at the first sign of suspicious plays from the other crew, I immediately turn hostile. Never trust anyone at a fort. Especially these days with how much money you can make and how often they spawn. Pick your allies carefully and even then, be prepared for betrayal. I have lost very, very few fort engagements with this mind-set, and I encourage every other pirate to play the same way. If you let others hang around that aren’t in your best interest, you cut your profits, and waste time.

And finally, even if you’re part of an alliance, make sure your crew picks up the key. This way you can hide it, or run with it. The crew that has the key, has all the power.

@KattTruewalker
"What do we do? What do we do?! What do we dooo!?"

That's the question usually asked by my crew every time we pass an active skull fort. Unless we're specifically on a mission that night to complete "X" commendations we'll usually stop by and try to collect some extra loot. Our tactics have changed over the last 10 months or so and it's entirely dependent on whether we're running with two ships or just one. I'll detail below both scenarios for those that are interested (this is our galleon strategy but the basic idea works for the brig and sloop as well):

Solo Ship Scenario - Uncontested Fort - The Core Strategy:

1. We raise sails and send someone below deck to immediately start repairing the holes of all incoming cannon fire from the skeletons. Two people jump on the island and begin clearing out the "basic" skeletons on the island and in the towers.

2. We usually park our ship between two towers, but out of their range, so we have extra cannon fire should an opposing crew decide to ram us or simply sail by and hit us with cannon fire.

3. Once the ship is secured we send three people on land to begin clearing skeleton waves while one person begins stocking the ship with all the resources on the island. This is because one, you can never have too many resources, and two if hostile ship comes into play we don't want them to be able to restock their ship should they run low on resources. The resource collector also puts the gun powder barrels in one location so that we can keep an eye on them / easily dispose of them should an enemy crew get on the island.

4. Once the waves are cleared we dedicate one person to staying on deck and watching both the crows nest, for someone who might attempt sneaking aboard to grab a gun powder barrel, and the captains quarters where we stash all the treasure usually in one giant pile so that opposing crews can't easily pick out the best items should they happen to get on board at some point. The other three crew members load all the treasure and destroy the gun powder barrels left on the island.

5. We look for another skull fort to rinse and repeat.

Solo Ship Scenario - Contested Fort:

1. Before starting step one of the strategy listed above we need to deal with that second pesky crew. We only do skull forts in an alliance if we were in an alliance prior to seeing the skull fort. Normally we don't trust other crews around skull forts, it's not personal but we've been burned before.

2. We'll take a look and see where the best place to attack them is located. Normally if they're in between towers we'll sail past them and drop someone off with a powder keg on the side that they can't see someone falling into the water (basically if they're facing our starboard side we'll drop someone off the port side of the ship as we sail past). Two more will run distraction for the "swimmer" by attempting to launch themselves at the docked ship.

3. Once the keg is detonated it's just a matter of protecting the holes and making sure the ship sinks.

4. We then start at step one of the strategy listed above except the person gathering supplies stays on the ship and looks out for boarders and anyone who might want to keg the ship. The other three get on the island and destroy every keg they come across.

Two Ships - Uncontested Fort:

1. This strategy is very similar to the solo ship strategy except instead of piling all of the kegs into one pile on the island we load them all into the second ship's, usually a sloop or a brig for more maneuverability, crows nest. This is our interference ship. As soon as that crew spots another ship approaching they run interference on them. They're loaded with cursed cannonballs and kegs and they're only goal is to protect the "treasure ship" (our galleon).

2. From there the galleon crew just completes waves on the island unless the opposing ship either sinks or breaks free of our interference ship. If that does happen our galleon crew reports back to the galleon in order to assist in sinking the opposing crew.

Two Ships - Contested Fort:

1. This strategy is again pretty similar to the Solo Ship - Contested Fort strategy except the interference ship does the kegging while the galleon posts up out of cannon fire range and begins raining cannonballs down from above. Usually two additional pirates from the galleon launch themselves over to the opposing ship and two stay behind to handle repairs and the cannon volley.

2. Once the ship has sunk we follow the strategy of the Two Ships - Uncontested Fort strategy.

We love interacting with forts because it's usually a solid place for some PvP and with the most recent Shrouded Spoils update it's also a great place to make money. This is especially true if the fort is uncontested. Either way it's a win win for us :)

As always, great post Katt. I truly enjoy these discussion starters even if I tend to ramble a bit too much :p

Idk why no one has said this but I make sure our galleon has basic cosmetics. Then on our approach if there is already a ship we talk through game chat to sound brand new.

And then we absolutely obliterate anyone standing. Also I don’t even know what the alliance flag looks like.

@katttruewalker Dock up between the main towers of a active fort after getting stocked up from an inactive one to meet minimum battle supplies stock, bring all kegs off the fort to the crows to keep them from being used against us with leaving one or two for any gold waves that show up as needed.

Door Strat for all but the golds to speed through the waves then its load everything on board and head to any outpost along the way.

I always stay on lookout and watch the horizon like a hawk letting the rest of the crew work on the fort so that I can call out when there is a ship on the way to us or any where near even if they are not pointed at us and I keep them updated on its position, if need be my first mate or I will jump down and intercept with a keg long before they get in cannon range of the fort or our ship.

Here is a clip from closer to the launch of the game of Fort Defense in action: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/268081869?collection=8gS6d1elJhWb4w