It seems to me that the sea battle mechanics have been altered to give the “Pirates” a better chance. In the original game, the Pirates would chase you and only try manoeuvring once they got to close quarters.

In RoaD the Pirates have been given an edge. Thorin OakShield has described the extra firing arc that Pirate Ships have over the players. I believe that they have a slightly greater manoeuvring ability. Therefore, when a player's Crayer is said to have 90% manoeuvrability, a Pirate Crayer may have more than that, about 95%. (My observation)

The problem, as I see it, is that the game mechanics do not handle manoeuvrability in a logical way. There are five variables in the sea battle
Hull strength – decreases to zero with hit points and the ship sinks, also gives proportional speed decease.
Crew – decreases with hit points and cannon reload times become progressively slower.
Sail Integrity – decreases with hit points and ship speed slows.
Wind Direction – effects ship speed depending on direction of sail. Faster with the wind, than against it.
Manoeuvrability – turning circle – in the game the slower a ship is travelling the smaller the turning circle. True, but its turning speed should also be slower. A ship needs speed to turn; a static ship does not turn.
In the game, a Pirate Crayer has 100% sail damage – 70% hull damage – sailing against the wind; it avoids (“sidesteps”) a broadside fired from 3 ship lengths away. A Pirate Cog, one broadside from sinking, – speed 2.8 knots travelling against the wind turns inside a Snaikka, 100% hull & 100% Sail travelling across the wind.
Ship manoeuvrability depends on many different factors, hull shape, sea state, ballast positioning, direction of travel, sail settings, the list goes on but all depend on speed through the water; in the game it appears that manoeuvrability remains constant, so severely damaged ships almost turn on their own axis making them more dangerous when they are more damaged.

If the idea was to make sea battles more demanding then it has worked but it also appears that sea battles become progressively more difficult. So 18 game months in to a game probably 15 pirate battles, it is taking me around an hour to play through one battle against 3 pirate ships.

I think that “Manoeuvrability” should decrease proportionally with damage – rather as speed does with the hull and sail damage.

Hello Billy

The effect is as you describe it. But not the methrics in the game.

With RoaD teh pirates AI was updated.
All ships have the same abilitys as in P4. Pirate ships have no better abilitys as player ships. With one exeption. If you research naval combat. Ships you have build before finishing the research have to be repaired one time to get the new abilitys. So in such a case it could happen, that your ships are slower than the ships of the pirates. But only in that circumstances.

The AI of a pirate is now devided between the 3 ships. The ability of a pirate is min. a combat 3 and a sailing 3. Pirates start attacking you in the beginning with 2 ships and not with 3. The moment they attack with 3 ships, at last one of the 3 ships will become a "superpirate" with the abilitys of a 5 in both scills. If a pirate is active on a map for more than one gameyear the abilitys of the captains of the other 2 ships will rise, too.

The options allow you to reduce the pirates in the game in RoaD, so you can do that, because the battles will take a lot of time if you do them manually. But if you want to use the pirates as a cheap yard, than you will have to work hard for that advantage.

A other change is, that only the cannons of the marked warships will count in P4 RoaD. So if you protect your convois with 3 coggs / later with 3 hulks the pirates will leave your convoys allone.

Hein

Whatever the changes, it seems that yet again, the Sea Combat for Patrician is _still_ unrealistic .... bovine excrement. For instance, quite frankly, early in a game, there is NO way that just one ship should be able to defeat three pirate vessels -- which from the pirate perspective should be the point. If victims are out of position or unable to outrun the pirates, the smart thing to do is surrender and allow the cargo to be stolen. [The Barbary pirates were notorious for doing this. Fighting back resulted in a MUCH worse fate than just having a cargo stolen.] If a pirate convoy does encounter a challenging opponent that damages or sinks one or more of the pirates, realistically a smart pirate would cut his losses and let that one get away. Pirates are in it for the "easy" money -- and it's rather difficult to spend your loot when you end up at the bottom of the Baltic. Yet, in all of the Patrician games, pirates invariably fight until their own demise, even against an obviously more competent opponent that is actually simply trying to run away.

So, in the end analysis, if Sea Combat is _still_ quirky and unrealistic, it really doesn't matter in what way it is quirky: It's _still_ a poor model of anything vaguely similar to Reality.

[Sorry about the rant tone. Sea Combat is is something of a pet peeve in a game that I otherwise thoroughly enjoy.]

[Weeeellllll, ^^that^^ isn't entirely true. The whole prince demands and the phenomenal escalation of the cost of guild memberships are two other pet peeves.]

[Weeeelllll, uhm, ^^that^^ may not be entirely true either. But I _do_ enjoy the core mercantile elements of the game! Hmm. I should shut up now, shouldn't I? This is me, shutting up. Mmph, mmmph, murf] LOL

the smart pirate would only attack weak convoys
if you use 3 ships to protect your convoys the smart pirate waits and attack the AI
and 1-2 years later they come with 4-5 ships
if you use 6 ships to protect your convoys the smart pirate waits and attack the AI
and 1-2 years later they come with 8-9 ships
...
it could be more frustrating than the current solution

(yes i know they/you can only handle 3 ships in a battle)

(12-04-2011 07:39 PM)Falko Wrote:  (yes i know they/you can only handle 3 ships in a battle)

From what I've seen on the forum and in actual play, trying to combat pirates using more than one ship is a real PITA. Accordingly, players generally manually use one ship versus three pirates, or they place 3 warships and let the computer do auto-combat. Yes, you _can_ use three ships, but unless RoaD introduced some serious changes to Manual Combat, why would you want to use more than one ship? A bad case of masochism perhaps?

to clarify
you can take not more than 3 ships in a battle in P4
with the existing seabattle mechanism my suggested "growing" pirate fleets would be useless

i use auto-fight or control one ship only (and give my other ships the "escape" order)
but there is the semi-automatic fight method that uses all ships
see link at the end of this post
http://forum.kalypsomedia.com/showthread...6#pid79366
but i dont have experience with that method

(13-04-2011 03:20 AM)Falko Wrote:  see link at the end of this post
http://forum.kalypsomedia.com/showthread...6#pid79366

Nicht sprechen. Is there an English translation somewhere?

The messege is the video, on how to fight the pirates in a Ai based automated way in manual combat.

Have a look here

Daniel made the video to show how the developers designed the battle, and how they thought the players would play the manual battles. The game was not designed for the way people like me fight the battles against the pirates. Well but it works and you don't get so much damage. But it cost you a lot more time than the way it was designed. The emproved AI in P4 RoaD workes both ways. Not only the pirate AI is better than in P4, also the Ai of your captains is better. So dump sailing behind a foe is only something a captain with a 0, 1 or 2 in fighting will do. All pirates start with a 3 at least and the moment the pirates attack you with 3 ships one of them will get the captain with a 5 in fighting and a 5 in sailing.

Hein

Three Cogs versus a Snaikka, a Crayer, and a Cog? I'd like to see the video if the sides were reversed.

I've played through the same battle 4 or 5 times and I have reached a conclusion - the sea battle rules are what they are, so I will live with it. BUT having read through several posts and watched the video - the AI tactics are the consistent, they try to attack across the "T" - so across either your stern or your bow.

Turning into their path and not away can beat this tactic. Turn so that you both are heading into the other’s the firing arc.

AND reduce sail !! This makes your turning circle tighter.
Fire and then turn away, half way through this second turn increase sail (I use keyboard "Q" & "E"), you doing an “S” shape turn.
Judging it right takes a bit of practice but with about a 4-ship length gap you get away with you getting a good hit and an enemy miss, unless the enemy broadside spreads, as opposed to a straight line of fire.

(13-04-2011 11:26 PM)billyplod Wrote:  ... the AI tactics are the consistent, they try to attack across the "T" - so across either your stern or your bow.

Turning into their path and not away can beat this tactic. Turn so that you both are heading into the other’s the firing arc.

AND reduce sail !! This makes your turning circle tighter.
Fire and then turn away, half way through this second turn increase sail (I use keyboard "Q" & "E"), you doing an “S” shape turn.
Judging it right takes a bit of practice but with about a 4-ship length gap you get away with you getting a good hit and an enemy miss, unless the enemy broadside spreads, as opposed to a straight line of fire.

That works fine when you are operating just one ship. But if you have more than one ship, you easily spend more than half your time jumping from ship to ship because as soon as you release control, your AI-controlled ship insists on pursuing a less-than-healthy course. (Such as steering directly between two enemy ships to go after the third.) AI-controlled ships don't just fight in a pointedly stupid fashion; they operate in a suicidally stupid fashion.

Agreed - I find it difficult enough managing one ship - I did try a 3 V 3 battle and got "mein Boden" kicked, hard.

There is one thing that I think would help "players" in a sea battle and that's a programable "Fire" key. Steering with my right hand, then map scrolling and sail handling with my left, my left thimb rests comfortablably on the space bar - "turn and fire" or "fire and turn" timimg can be out when you need to use the mouse to fire.

I don't want to be the first to start it but we could be into a "wish list".
- Now see what I've done!

(14-04-2011 09:14 PM)billyplod Wrote:  I don't want to be the first to start it but we could be into a "wish list".
- Now see what I've done!

Right. Now that RoaD is out and the changes it includes can be seen, we now can see what has NOT been changed. So it's only logical to start a "post-RoaD wishlist".

So you folks that have already played RoaD, start making suggestions!