Some questions about my first naval encounter

[jkavorski]

So here's the situation. I am a Dutch sailor, and I went to the Townhall in Aruba and got the quest to sink a 12-gun naval cutter called the Perde. I sail around the island and find the Perde. We open fire on each other, and the fight starts normally.

After a few good volleys from my ship, the Perde turns and appears to be retreating, so I give chase. Now here is where it gets weird. The Perde suddenly strikes its sails and just sits there. I'm thinking "odd... well now I can just go up and blast it." But when I get close to it, my crosshair is green! I figure they must have switched sails to try and trick me... but wait. Their flag is French, and I am Dutch (enemies of the French), so even if they had, they should still be my enemy. Scratching my head, I manually shoot at it to make it my enemy again. But every time I manually shoot a round at it, I lose reputation (I assume because the ship is my "ally"). So I'm sitting there, just shelling it, but after a few salvos I am already considered a "horror of the high seas." Also, the Perde isn't shooting back. I don't know if it ran out of ammo, or if it was some glitch where it genuinely thought I was its ally. I am literally just sitting RIGHT next to the Perde, shooting salvo after salvo of cannon fire. At this point, I just quit the game because even if I had won the fight, I didn't want to continue with my reputation being so low. So basically, these are the weird things that happened in this fight:

1. In the middle of the fight, the Perde suddenly struck its sails and became my ally.
2. When I shot at it, I lost reputation, even though it was my enemy at the beginning of the fight, and I had orders from the governer to destroy it.
3. After manually engaging it to make it my enemy again, it stopped shooting back, and just sat there doing nothing.

Can anyone shed some light on what exactly happened?

EDIT: D'oh, turns out that they were just surrendering. I mistook the white flag for a french flag (not trying to take a stab at the French here ). Maybe I should get a better spyglass

 

[Armada]

That sounds like the ship surrendered, but what confuses me is the fact that it was still flying a French flag. Are you sure it wasn't a completely white flag?
I'm also not sure whether surrendered ships should appear as 'allies', so it could potentially have been a glitch. You should also have been able to board the ship if it had surrendered.

Do you have a savegame from before the battle began, having accepted the mission, that you could use to try again?

 

[jkavorski]

Yes! Fortunately I do.
Hmm, maybe it was a surrender (it did give me the option to board when I got close enough).

How can I tell if it surrendered though, as I obviously wouldn't want to try and board it if they hadn't D: Do I get some sort of notification? Perhaps I got one and I just missed it... who knows.

And I could've sworn that the flags had this design on them, but maybe they were actually completely white. It would make sense, as I'm pretty sure that they were flying the pirate flag at the beginning of the battle.

Hmm, I'll just replay from my save point and keep an eye out for whether they surrender or not.
Related Question: If I accept their surrender, would it count as "sinking the ship" as far as the quest is concerned?

EDIT: I also had a quicksave from right when the enemy ship struck its sails. I just loaded it up and looked at the flag... D'OH it was white. Every time I think this mod is acting buggy, it is actually just me acting idiotic
Cheers!

 

[Armada]

How can I tell if it surrendered though, as I obviously wouldn't want to try and board it if they hadn't D: Do I get some sort of notification? Perhaps I got one and I just missed it... who knows.

And I could've sworn that the flags had this design on them, but maybe they were actually completely white. It would make sense, as I'm pretty sure that they were flying the pirate flag at the beginning of the battle.

You should get a notification on the left side of the screen, where various logs and information usually appear at sea. I think you should also hear crew shouting.
If they began with a pirate flag, that confirms that they surrendered. The AI ships are not clever enough to try to fool you by switching flags, hence the only time they do is when surrendering.

Related Question: If I accept their surrender, would it count as "sinking the ship" as far as the quest is concerned?

If you're at a lower level, once you board a surrendered ship, you meet the captain who decides he doesn't like you, so you fight him for the ship. At higher levels though, he might actually surrender.
You will then have the same choices as capturing a ship normally: swap ships, assign an officer, or sink it (after taking all the goods, of course! )
Sinking it should count as completing the mission, so you can return to the governor for your reward.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

Capturing the ship also counts as completing the mission. Sometimes that is a good way to get better ships.

About fighting those surrendered Captains: In this game I won my first fight and then lost six in a row. Now at level 30 I am 5 for 14 overall. Combat is very difficult and at times impossible.