Sky Kiwi
Pirate Master
Note: We're going to refer to hunters and warships as "chasers"
I use Streamable for my video hosting, which unfortunately the TLOPO forums don't let me embed, so you're gonna have to click links. Sorry about that!
Step 1: How to engage a regular ship (or more specifically, when not to).
This is a piece of advice I often give people when I let them sail my ships, and it's difficult to explain. Thankfully, I have the art of videos this time! When you're flagged as a pirate, or engaging a ghost ship under any status, they will speed up once they "spot" you. One thing I find a lot of captains doing is trying to engage them right at the moment they spot you, causing their broadsides to miss.
Here is a video illustrating this speed-up. On high graphics we have the luxury of looking at their water wake to tell when you're spotted, but anyone with a good eye can see it based on their movement. Notice when I approach them they briefly stop moving, the water wake disappears for a moment, and then they start moving (and most importantly: turning) at a faster rate than they were before. That's when you're spotted. This is a crucial moment of "the enemy ship is most likely going to dodge your broadsides", and you should not fire them at this particular moment.
Ideally, you want to shoot them from outside their spottting distance. When you broadside in these such cases it's almost impossible to miss (the only time you will is if they do that crazy 90 degree turn at the corners of their patrol routes, or if the server lags out). Naturally, however, your crew is probably going to be tagging everything they see, so this isn't always possible. In those cases, you want to wait until after they've sped up, and then engage them mid-fight as normal. Which leads us to:
Step 2: Knowing how to not get shot
The enemy AI is predictable. In the case of chasers they simply move faster, which does add some difficulty and lends us some special tactics to take care of them, but let's deal with normal ships first yes?
The art here, and for all enemy ships, has been coined Wily's Loop of Death (you can read more about it there). In all truth @WilyJaymes' guide covers what you need to know, but I figured I would include it especially since videos are very helpful. Simply put, there is a point to the front and the side of an enemy ship that you should stay, which grants you - and more importantly your crew - the ability to hit them while never exposing yourself to the enemy broadsides. Doing so is actually quite easy for normal ships, you simply need to know how to do it. This video demonstrates me holding the proper position against two enemy ships. I could have circled these two ships endlessly.
This logic does apply to hunters, though there is one caveat - picking a side. Many captains like to let their crew stay on one side, and then force the enemy ship onto that side. Personally, I see this as unnecessary risk. Chasers will prefer to be on a certain side of your ship, and if you give them that side it is much easier to keep them in the sweet spot of "na na I can hit you and you can't hit back!".
Figuring out which side they want is easy (@WilyJaymes describes it, but I will too). This video demonstrates picking a side and then holding them in the Loop of Death. Notice as Vengeance gets close to me she slows down, and then she lilts to one side - that side is the one you want to put her on. My mouse movements attempt to demonstrate it. Once I carve in to that direction, you'll notice she sort of matches it, but she lags behind. And most importantly, you'll notice her cannonballs hitting nothing but saltwater, while mine light her up like a fireworks factory.
The toughest ships to take no damage from is the War Sloop hunters, especially if you are in a slow ship (for example, the copperhead War Frigate I'm sailing). Due to their speed they stick a little further forward than the others. Additionally, however, their rounded shape gives their front-most broadside cannon a particularly forward angle, meaning you'll likely get hit by that single cannonball quite often. You can mitigate this by stopping your loop just before she fires, which allows your ship to speed up, then starting your turn again after that particular cannon fires - as I do in this video - but you'll still take the occasional cannonball from them (notice that I do get hit once haha, I'm a little rusty). Practice makes perfect, however, and you'll get the hang of it eventually. To start with, taking a single cannonball every now and again is more than acceptable if you have someone on deck to repair - a single cannonball per broadside isn't much - you should be able to sink her before really needing repairs.
Sometimes, mostly when the server lags and they get left behind, they will switch preferred side. I haven't got a video of this just yet, but you'll be able to tell because they stop holding on to the sweet spot and they'll turn much sharper, and start to "serpentine". This is when things get dangerous, and the easiest way to fix it is to simply straighten out your ship, and then start the loop of death over again. Depending on server health and your personal sailing skill, this might happen a lot, and that's okay. You'll get the hang of it. Besides, your crew looks like they could use some cardio anyway...
All these rules apply to Warships too, not just Hunters. They follow the same logic. The only disparity here is the SOTL's sail very slowly, which makes it hard to keep them in the sweet spot sometimes. Fortunately, because of this, you don't necessarily need to either - you can force them into the sweet spot even on the side they don't prefer. However, that's a little dangerous, and I recommend starting with the preferred side for now.
The general things to remember here:
Step 3: Be Afraid
What? You think I'm some fearless mad man? No. You should always prioritize your ships safety over anything else. While yes, I do get reckless, there are certain ships you should never take for granted. I have always called them The Big Four - which I do admit isn't a very good name, I'm not good at naming things, cut me some slack - and these four ships are the EITC Corsair, EITC Juggernaut, Battle Royale, and Spanish/French Cerberus. Yes, that's right, one of them is a Ghost War Sloop. All four of these ships shoot explosive broadsides and they can and will destroy your ship in one good volley if you let them.
As a demonstration to their power, I actually risked my "never been sunk" achievement to provide you with this rare footage of me doing something insanely foolish. Note I only survived because the enemy Corsair hit multiple sides - actually all three sides because their shots glitched through my ship. Should more than half the Corsair's shots focus on a single side, you will sink.
I also want to point out that my ship is a Copperhead 6 War Frigate - the hardest ship to sink in the game - and I still would have died had that Corsair's shots not glitched and hit my back armour. I also want to point out that the Corsair/Cerberus has a broadside count of 7, while the Juggernaut has 10 and the Royale has 12! To all those nay-sayers out there that insist your Cargo 3 War Brig can take a full Battle Royale broadside and survive? Mmhmm. Sure buddy.
Sorry about my own personal rant injected in here, but geez the amount of people I've had to tell this to...
Step 4: Pay attention, darn it!
Here is what truly separates a good captain from a bad one. I don't specifically mean "don't text and pilot" or "stop looking away from your screen" - I do this stuff all the time. What I'm talking about is put some serious thought into learning your enemy. The enemy AI is very predictable, but of course you need to know how they work beforehand. I covered the most important aspects above, the stuff that will keep you afloat, but when you really know the ins and outs of the enemies you can pull off stuff like this while taking very shots, if any (I made one mistake, I actually relied on my ship firing an explosive and it didn't, otherwise I would have taken even less damage). That video also demonstrates that the Loop of Death can work on multiple ships at once, even regular ships and chasers combined. I also didn't sink as many as I should have while initially pulling them all, but the purpose was to gather a whole lot for looping.
I'll likely come back to this thread to include more details, but I'm not going to cover every single aspect of the enemy AI and how they react to every situation - that just isn't realistic. But as long as you pay attention, you'll learn, and soon you'll be basically invincible (to this day my own ships have never sunk, excluding SvS).
Bonus Information!
Omnidirectional Cannons: One of the more recent patches replaced the enemies deck cannons with a single omnidirectional cannon. This cannon can fire in literally any direction. I hear people talk about War Sloop and War Galleon "front cannons" a lot - this is why. Fortunately, their omni-cannon fires very slow high-arcing shots. Because of this, it becomes almost impossible to fail dodging it. As long as your ship is moving, you will be fine. This means the old tactic of sitting still is effectively gone. Fair warning: a lot of ships have explosive omni-cannons. Off the top of my head, these include the EITC Behemoth, Vengeance, Red Dervish, Scorned Siren, and Tally-Ho. It's especially important to keep moving against these ships.
I use Streamable for my video hosting, which unfortunately the TLOPO forums don't let me embed, so you're gonna have to click links. Sorry about that!
Step 1: How to engage a regular ship (or more specifically, when not to).
This is a piece of advice I often give people when I let them sail my ships, and it's difficult to explain. Thankfully, I have the art of videos this time! When you're flagged as a pirate, or engaging a ghost ship under any status, they will speed up once they "spot" you. One thing I find a lot of captains doing is trying to engage them right at the moment they spot you, causing their broadsides to miss.
Here is a video illustrating this speed-up. On high graphics we have the luxury of looking at their water wake to tell when you're spotted, but anyone with a good eye can see it based on their movement. Notice when I approach them they briefly stop moving, the water wake disappears for a moment, and then they start moving (and most importantly: turning) at a faster rate than they were before. That's when you're spotted. This is a crucial moment of "the enemy ship is most likely going to dodge your broadsides", and you should not fire them at this particular moment.
Ideally, you want to shoot them from outside their spottting distance. When you broadside in these such cases it's almost impossible to miss (the only time you will is if they do that crazy 90 degree turn at the corners of their patrol routes, or if the server lags out). Naturally, however, your crew is probably going to be tagging everything they see, so this isn't always possible. In those cases, you want to wait until after they've sped up, and then engage them mid-fight as normal. Which leads us to:
Step 2: Knowing how to not get shot
The enemy AI is predictable. In the case of chasers they simply move faster, which does add some difficulty and lends us some special tactics to take care of them, but let's deal with normal ships first yes?
The art here, and for all enemy ships, has been coined Wily's Loop of Death (you can read more about it there). In all truth @WilyJaymes' guide covers what you need to know, but I figured I would include it especially since videos are very helpful. Simply put, there is a point to the front and the side of an enemy ship that you should stay, which grants you - and more importantly your crew - the ability to hit them while never exposing yourself to the enemy broadsides. Doing so is actually quite easy for normal ships, you simply need to know how to do it. This video demonstrates me holding the proper position against two enemy ships. I could have circled these two ships endlessly.
This logic does apply to hunters, though there is one caveat - picking a side. Many captains like to let their crew stay on one side, and then force the enemy ship onto that side. Personally, I see this as unnecessary risk. Chasers will prefer to be on a certain side of your ship, and if you give them that side it is much easier to keep them in the sweet spot of "na na I can hit you and you can't hit back!".
Figuring out which side they want is easy (@WilyJaymes describes it, but I will too). This video demonstrates picking a side and then holding them in the Loop of Death. Notice as Vengeance gets close to me she slows down, and then she lilts to one side - that side is the one you want to put her on. My mouse movements attempt to demonstrate it. Once I carve in to that direction, you'll notice she sort of matches it, but she lags behind. And most importantly, you'll notice her cannonballs hitting nothing but saltwater, while mine light her up like a fireworks factory.
The toughest ships to take no damage from is the War Sloop hunters, especially if you are in a slow ship (for example, the copperhead War Frigate I'm sailing). Due to their speed they stick a little further forward than the others. Additionally, however, their rounded shape gives their front-most broadside cannon a particularly forward angle, meaning you'll likely get hit by that single cannonball quite often. You can mitigate this by stopping your loop just before she fires, which allows your ship to speed up, then starting your turn again after that particular cannon fires - as I do in this video - but you'll still take the occasional cannonball from them (notice that I do get hit once haha, I'm a little rusty). Practice makes perfect, however, and you'll get the hang of it eventually. To start with, taking a single cannonball every now and again is more than acceptable if you have someone on deck to repair - a single cannonball per broadside isn't much - you should be able to sink her before really needing repairs.
Sometimes, mostly when the server lags and they get left behind, they will switch preferred side. I haven't got a video of this just yet, but you'll be able to tell because they stop holding on to the sweet spot and they'll turn much sharper, and start to "serpentine". This is when things get dangerous, and the easiest way to fix it is to simply straighten out your ship, and then start the loop of death over again. Depending on server health and your personal sailing skill, this might happen a lot, and that's okay. You'll get the hang of it. Besides, your crew looks like they could use some cardio anyway...
All these rules apply to Warships too, not just Hunters. They follow the same logic. The only disparity here is the SOTL's sail very slowly, which makes it hard to keep them in the sweet spot sometimes. Fortunately, because of this, you don't necessarily need to either - you can force them into the sweet spot even on the side they don't prefer. However, that's a little dangerous, and I recommend starting with the preferred side for now.
The general things to remember here:
- Always be pointing your ship slightly away from theirs
- You can bring your nose in for broadsides, but you should only do so long enough to press your broadside button. Immediately turn back away.
- If you're getting too far from the enemy ships, wiggle! Turning will slow your ship down, even if you're just spamming A+D and going straight
- Your crew will most likely be able to shoot them even if you can't. If you can't get any broadsides off on them, don't worry about it! Your crew comes first anyway.
- Never stop moving. Their omnidirectional cannon (explained below) will be able to hit you no matter where you are as long as you're stationary.
Step 3: Be Afraid
What? You think I'm some fearless mad man? No. You should always prioritize your ships safety over anything else. While yes, I do get reckless, there are certain ships you should never take for granted. I have always called them The Big Four - which I do admit isn't a very good name, I'm not good at naming things, cut me some slack - and these four ships are the EITC Corsair, EITC Juggernaut, Battle Royale, and Spanish/French Cerberus. Yes, that's right, one of them is a Ghost War Sloop. All four of these ships shoot explosive broadsides and they can and will destroy your ship in one good volley if you let them.
As a demonstration to their power, I actually risked my "never been sunk" achievement to provide you with this rare footage of me doing something insanely foolish. Note I only survived because the enemy Corsair hit multiple sides - actually all three sides because their shots glitched through my ship. Should more than half the Corsair's shots focus on a single side, you will sink.
I also want to point out that my ship is a Copperhead 6 War Frigate - the hardest ship to sink in the game - and I still would have died had that Corsair's shots not glitched and hit my back armour. I also want to point out that the Corsair/Cerberus has a broadside count of 7, while the Juggernaut has 10 and the Royale has 12! To all those nay-sayers out there that insist your Cargo 3 War Brig can take a full Battle Royale broadside and survive? Mmhmm. Sure buddy.
Sorry about my own personal rant injected in here, but geez the amount of people I've had to tell this to...
Step 4: Pay attention, darn it!
Here is what truly separates a good captain from a bad one. I don't specifically mean "don't text and pilot" or "stop looking away from your screen" - I do this stuff all the time. What I'm talking about is put some serious thought into learning your enemy. The enemy AI is very predictable, but of course you need to know how they work beforehand. I covered the most important aspects above, the stuff that will keep you afloat, but when you really know the ins and outs of the enemies you can pull off stuff like this while taking very shots, if any (I made one mistake, I actually relied on my ship firing an explosive and it didn't, otherwise I would have taken even less damage). That video also demonstrates that the Loop of Death can work on multiple ships at once, even regular ships and chasers combined. I also didn't sink as many as I should have while initially pulling them all, but the purpose was to gather a whole lot for looping.
I'll likely come back to this thread to include more details, but I'm not going to cover every single aspect of the enemy AI and how they react to every situation - that just isn't realistic. But as long as you pay attention, you'll learn, and soon you'll be basically invincible (to this day my own ships have never sunk, excluding SvS).
Bonus Information!
Omnidirectional Cannons: One of the more recent patches replaced the enemies deck cannons with a single omnidirectional cannon. This cannon can fire in literally any direction. I hear people talk about War Sloop and War Galleon "front cannons" a lot - this is why. Fortunately, their omni-cannon fires very slow high-arcing shots. Because of this, it becomes almost impossible to fail dodging it. As long as your ship is moving, you will be fine. This means the old tactic of sitting still is effectively gone. Fair warning: a lot of ships have explosive omni-cannons. Off the top of my head, these include the EITC Behemoth, Vengeance, Red Dervish, Scorned Siren, and Tally-Ho. It's especially important to keep moving against these ships.
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