Our play yesterday again struck me that some ( not all ) dont seem to get Sea of Thieves at all. We had a load of treasure on our Sloop, including an Athena Chest. We were done playing for the evening, so we just wanted to sell our treasure and be done.
Along comes a sloop to attack us, we fight them off, they retreat to repair while we continue to head to the port, my crewmate jumps off with the Athena chest while I sail around the island ( not docking with enemies about ) he returns and by then the sloop is on us again, we put a few cannon balls into him, but mostly we are just trying to sell our stuff, so my crewmate keeps jumping ashore with our treasure selling it and returning while I continue to circle the outpost ( getting some occasional distance so he gets a mermaid )
This entire time the other crew are taunting, telling us what cowards we are, how they are beating us at every turn.
We dont respond ( we hardly every respond to enemy ships vocally ), but can hear everything they say.
After selling the last of our treasure we are done, they are claiming victory. We achieved all our goals, they achieved nothing ( did not even sink us ) we are just laughing at them, as we log off.
Remember that a ship battle may be your goal, but that may not be the goal of the other ship. We literally beat them at every turn ( using their words )