Ideas to defend against people who chase you.

No matter the greatness of your idea, it will always get ruined when your wife comes home and starts yelling at you for spending the past 2 hours running from a ship in a video game instead of doing house chores... :(

I had a duo crew chase me for over an hour today when I had absolutely nothing on my ship except an empty snake basket. I ended up having to do chores so I just turned into them, scuttled immediately, and watched as they scrambled aboard to realize I didn't have any treasure lol.

@edemardil have them chase you through a straight away then board them and drop their anchor.

Or if you let them catch you ( while going mostly into the wind) you can anchor turn as they pull up next to you and they won’t be able to recover fast enough before you are long gone.

This isn't something that a lot of people know but you can drop items over the edges of things provided you're close enough to the edge. If I ever get chased while I'm solo slooping I drop a powder keg off the back and try to board their ship if they're dumb enough to follow in a straight line. It's tough but I've done it successfully about 9 times, 3 against a galleon. Best advice is learn to drop kegs off the back off your boat and get better at fighting.

Pirates be relentless ⛵🛳

If I'm sailing solo I tend to travel light. After each island or shipwreck I complete I drop off to nearest outpost. I live by the philosophy "don't carry more than you're willing to lose".

@edemardil sagte in Ideas to defend against people who chase you.:

@cyphronite said in Ideas to defend against people who chase you.:

drop a powder keg behind you and wave goodbye

The problem for me with this is 1. I never end up hitting them. 2. This shows that I want to engage and I do not want to. I want them to go the hell away. lol

It's also a problem, that you can't just throw the powder kegs, only lay them down...and most times i fall into the water with the keg...

I’ve only had a problem with merchant missions and getting chased because I have to dock at a specific outpost. I’ve never run into players camping the outpost on the ground but more and more I’ve seen ships “patrolling” around outposts. It makes sense from a PVP sense. Better field of view, already moving so no cold start, trick ships into docking.

My problem has been that because I’ve run into the tactic enough, I know the signs of a “patrol” which makes me have to lose them to turn in the quests. That takes time solo. And starting merchant missions from scratch can be a *****.

So my tactic is load and unload my ship FAST. Recognize there’s going to be a chase early. Turn into the wind, jump in the water with a keg (ghost ride my sloop), then mermaid back. If no keg then it becomes a matter of how irritated I am with them (will I scuttle or waste everybody’s time).

@edemardil I disagree there, I do a lot of the high end voyages. I play safe and do drop-offs often and don't ride my luck too much. There's no right or wrong answer the experience is entirely subjective.

@rayfromjersey I know the feeling. Been made under pressure to wrap up a voyage on many occasions.

@edemardil what if someone just enjoys chasing? Doesn’t have to be a sociopath, just likes trying to sail the ship efficiently and see if they can outmaneuver. You arguing 20k vs 2k only matters to people who care about loot. Seeing that the loot only gets you cosmetics, not everyone will care about that and will look for other ways to have fun. I’ve chased and for me it definitely gets boring fast once you see the other sailor is just as good as you, I abandon chase. But that’s just me. If I can enjoy a 10-15 minutes chase I can understand someone enjoying an hour long chase. To each their own. One other thing about chasing, it does present the possibility of the unpredictable. You never know what will happen during a chase. They can run aground, the kraken can pop out, a storm, they can run into another ship and get shot at, maybe even a galleon, then it’s a bigger more interesting chase. None of that has a chance if you stop chasing. While yes it can be frustrating for those being chased, I think there are many valid reasons to chase for long periods of time that don’t constitute the chaser to be a sociopath or griefer.

@ghost-0f-dawn said in Ideas to defend against people who chase you.:

Only those who run can be chased. Here's a very simple idea to "Defend against people who chase you."

Defend against people who chase you.

It's quite literally in the title. You can't win every battle, but you'll never win if you never fight. The sooner you learn to accept defeat when it happens, the sooner you'll see much less of your time wasted by your own decisions. Is it better to run for two hours, or is it better to fight for 10 minutes? Win or lose, you'll have an opportunity to be back at your earnings again far more quickly.

So give up and lose gracefully? PFFFT! Not happening. if you fail to catch me, I win no matter what the outcome. I choose how it ends if you fail to catch me.

You wanna win? Catch me. You don't want to waste your time? Don't chase or give up after a bit.

Whatever I'm carrying is mine. I worked for it. If you want it you are going to have to work for it by chasing me and catching me. Until then, it isn't yours.

@ghost-0f-dawn said in Ideas to defend against people who chase you.:

@aod-redshirt People have a hard time reading basic English apparently. This is the second time someone has interpreted "defend yourself" as "surrender." Those two things are inherently opposing. If you want to run like a coward, go ahead. Try and outdo yourself running for as long as you want, but DO NOT complain that there's no way out of running away when you have broadside cannons true and ready at all times.

Coward? YAWN! Try again. If you want my stuff, come and get it. There is no rule saying I have to turn and fight. The longer I can run I just improve my sailing skills. If you can catch me you can have it all. Because when I run I'm carrying something that I want to keep. It ain't yours til you catch me.

I'll repeat it in case you are having trouble reading basic English.

It ain't yours til you catch me.

Have a wonderful day!

@edemardil my crew once took 4 barrels and went to different parts of the ship and dropped them in the water simultaneously while being chased and it created a little wall of mines. They had no chance to avoid it.

@ghost-0f-dawn said in Ideas to defend against people who chase you.:

@aod-redshirt People have a hard time reading basic English apparently. This is the second time someone has interpreted "defend yourself" as "surrender." Those two things are inherently opposing. If you want to run like a coward, go ahead. Try and outdo yourself running for as long as you want, but DO NOT complain that there's no way out of running away when you have broadside cannons true and ready at all times.

This could not be more wrong. In a sloop you have to be more tacticle about your approach going broadside against a galleon is a death sentence. Much better to use the wind, island (or rocks) and other things like barrels to your advantage. Play smarter not harder bud.

Not to mention victory doesn’t always mean killing the other crew. I have on more than one occasion sacrificed my ship as a distraction (while my crew mate returned with the new ship) and boarded the crew that sunk me to take and hide their treasure. They found out what we were doing and chased us for a bit till I boarded on a straight away and dropped their anchor and bounced around on deck as a distraction long enough for my friend to get away then dipped out lol.

Being a great pirate is about more than just fighting it’s about being smart. They won the fight but lost everything while we profited off of hours of their work. Lol

@edemardil A few thoughts for your thread here:

1. As others have said, only carry what you don't care about losing.
2. If someone is chasing, experience has taught me they will not stop... running just to not get caught is not the answer if you value your time. Just sayin'...
3. Last but most important to me, decide what this game is to you, and stick to it. You may find that you experience more fun and less frustration.

Expanding on #3: There are people that: (a) only enjoy endless PvP and nothing else (feels like griefing to most of us); (b) only enjoy PvE; (c) only enjoy chasing (again, often feels more like griefing as it's usually pointless); (d) enjoy pirating / battling but also missions. I'm sure there are also other valid ways to play the game, but my point is not to exhaustively describe all of them.

To the point, and for me, I enjoy this game for the PvE with an occasional chase from a PvP-minded crew that wants my loot. To me, winning in that engagement is me getting all my loot turned in. I don't care what happens to my character or my ship. So, the goal in that situation for me is to focus on getting loot to Outposts. I pay attention to what they are sailing, wind direction, areas I can close them into and distract them (explosive barrels are key to this maneuver), rocks, island corners and such. The point is to pre-plan your final run to the Outpost where you can turn in most or all your loot. By the time they get there, anything valuable is gone and I'm on the dock clapping for their valiant yet pointless efforts. I get all my loot, my toon gets killed, the other crew is still poor and has been properly mocked and we're all on our way. At this point I change servers and it's done. See how the only loss / frustration is theirs?

These are dependent on your ship type and crew size but here are some ways we've been able to loose people or get our loot in without too much trouble. Usually these relentless chase sequences happen when we know the other boat has nothing, just after we see them leave an outpost or after they get sunk and they come back for revenge.

1. Steer into a storm, line of sight is severely limited because of weather effects and waves, plus it's harder to keep your boat on course with the wheel spinning alone.

2. Using a large island that will break line of sight, pretend like you are going to loop around it, the other ship usually will try to take an angled shortcut based on where they think you are going to pop out. As soon as you get around and break line of sight 180 your boat and go the other way.

3. Do drop off drive by's at outposts, have 1-3 crew members jump off with a turn in item as you fly by they can turn in the items and grab supplies then mermaid back to the boat. You can stock up on resources and by the time you unload all your loot you'll have a well stocked boat for a fight and nothing to lose.

reef, rocks, wind and a well placed barrel work 75% of the time when I run.

Jukes fer days... Had a gally chase us for half hour once, made them sink it on some rocks that we sailed through, let them get close enough, we entered rock formation, broke LoS,we went left, they tried to break right and cut us off, the idiots sunk themselves, another time I used an island to break LoS, anchor turned, did that twice, on the third island, I just kept heading straight, they anchor turned and we lost them, I seen glints as they scoped in, me and my friend waved as we sailed off happily... Another method I've yet to try is when getting chased, look for another ship that's either docked or that you can intercept, odds are the guys chasing you will swap targets, at least that's the optimal outcome, try it out though, easy targets make for easy dinner to over-aggressive ships and they will likely flock to it like fly's on "canine excrement"