Great tips, Grey Roger. I'll admit it might of been my IRL sailing idiocy that inhibited the schooner. I had to wikipedia what tacking was, boy shoulda known that before trying to sea-battle.
I'm playing in the Golden Era right now as I figured it'd give the widest range of ships, or close to it, and has sort of the best of most worlds. Switched up to an Espadin Gunboat (I'm a Spanish Privateer, after all) and have been enjoying the performance of it a fair bit. I still have a ways to go on my evasive tactics: I open myself up to more broadsides than I should (I think). So far my basic strategy has been smash up the sails/masts with chains, batter the ship a few time with cannon-balls for good measure, than take advantage of the crippled sailing abilities to do some straffing runs with grape-shot. With the Governor hunt-a-ship missions I've had a lot of fun, but I've yet to find an undefended merchant as a target and engaging a British/Dutch/Portugese convoy feels a bit suicidal.
I do have one unrelated question for you guys, rather than making a new thread for it: When I use a musket/sword combo, my character swings the musket around in their hand in the sword-fencing animations. Is this unavoidable/intentional to make bayonets work? IE muskets should only be used with the bayonet blade? Is there a way to make the sword/musket combo more... visually appealing? Or is this alas just a sort-of hard limit with the POTC engine/game? (Let me take this moment to praise you guys again for awesomely adding muskets AND the ability to shoot the crew of a ship pre-boarding. That is a TRUE buccaneer move. My late game goal is to basically try boarding some ships from little row boats once my character is more skilled)
Also side dilemma: The sea battles on max difficulty are great - lower difficulty is a bit easy to force a surrender I find, but I find fencing at low levels on max difficulty kind of brutal. The enemy sort of spam attacks and parrying/blocking only gets you so far (I'm used to mount & blade melee if any of you play that). Anyone else have similar experience or useful tips?
I'm playing in the Golden Era right now as I figured it'd give the widest range of ships, or close to it, and has sort of the best of most worlds. Switched up to an Espadin Gunboat (I'm a Spanish Privateer, after all) and have been enjoying the performance of it a fair bit. I still have a ways to go on my evasive tactics: I open myself up to more broadsides than I should (I think). So far my basic strategy has been smash up the sails/masts with chains, batter the ship a few time with cannon-balls for good measure, than take advantage of the crippled sailing abilities to do some straffing runs with grape-shot. With the Governor hunt-a-ship missions I've had a lot of fun, but I've yet to find an undefended merchant as a target and engaging a British/Dutch/Portugese convoy feels a bit suicidal.
I do have one unrelated question for you guys, rather than making a new thread for it: When I use a musket/sword combo, my character swings the musket around in their hand in the sword-fencing animations. Is this unavoidable/intentional to make bayonets work? IE muskets should only be used with the bayonet blade? Is there a way to make the sword/musket combo more... visually appealing? Or is this alas just a sort-of hard limit with the POTC engine/game? (Let me take this moment to praise you guys again for awesomely adding muskets AND the ability to shoot the crew of a ship pre-boarding. That is a TRUE buccaneer move. My late game goal is to basically try boarding some ships from little row boats once my character is more skilled)
Also side dilemma: The sea battles on max difficulty are great - lower difficulty is a bit easy to force a surrender I find, but I find fencing at low levels on max difficulty kind of brutal. The enemy sort of spam attacks and parrying/blocking only gets you so far (I'm used to mount & blade melee if any of you play that). Anyone else have similar experience or useful tips?
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