Otherwhen
Junior Officer Lesson 7: Serious Pillaging and PVP
First ye read this entire post, then ye practice the everything except PvP against strangers. Do arrange duels with flaggies or hearties. When ye feel comfortable with the information here, ask a training officer to schedule yer lesson.After passing this lesson, ye will be allowed to PvP (attack human ships).
STOCKING
Whether ye be after brigands (oooo blood hunts!) or humans, if ye be doing serious pillaging then ye need a goodly amount of rum and an enormous number of cannonballs. Minimum of 100 shot on a sloop pillage, and more if ye will be attacking merch brigs or larger ships.BOOTY METER and PAY-OUT
Up to a point, the booty increases with each successive win against brigands that ye spawn yerself. If ye attack anything ye see, then ye will be grabbing green Sailors spawned by others who will have very little booty. After a certain number of wins in a row the pay-outs will fluctuate randomly around a decent amount. Usually the pay-out is larger from Imperials than Sailors, from yellows than greens, and from ships larger than yers be. This is just a rule of thumb though.Even if ye stick to greens, each successive win means the next brigand yer ship spawns is a bit harder. If yer skills aren't very strong yet, then divvy whenever ye have won three battles in a row. Lordkalvan finds that if he wins six in a row without divvying then the seventh one will generally be impossibly difficult. Doing a divvy resets the booty meter.
Another way to increase pay-outs is to stuff the ship with pirates with good standings in Sea Battle. Bots, Greenies, Able, Distinguished - these lower yer ship's average sea battle rating, so that ye spawn Sailors.
It used to be that if ye got Kraken's Blood in the booty, ye would immediately speed run to port. If yer confidence in yer abilities is low, then this is a good idea. It's been known fer a good blood hunting crew to get two or even three KB in one two hour pillage afore porting and divvy.
ALLIES
Water Sleeps has a very long list of allies, making it difficult to remember who is allied with us. Our flag policy is that PvP against allies is allowed, but if they ask fer a disengage then ye be required to give it as long as they don't wait until after one of ye already shoots the other full of holes.The easiest way to tell that a ship be an ally is after the battle is engaged. An allied (or flag or crew) ship will be outlined in blue instead of gray. Yer own ship is always outlined in blue, so if ye see two blue ships then ye know tis an ally. If the other ship is outlined in red, then it be from a flag that is at war with ours, and if yer carp gets maxed then yer ship sinks - permanently. (So don't sail painted or renamed ships during a time of war!)
TALKING TO OPPONENTS
The fastest way to find the name of the person in command of a ship that is near ye (and on the battle field is very near!) is to have somebody out of puzzle type /who. Scroll down the alphabetical list of shipnames to find the name of the ship ye be looking at. Next to it will be a number (how many humans are aboard; bots are not counted) and a name (the person at the helm or the last person to do the nav puzzle if nobody is at the helm). Send a tell directly to this person to negotiate. Often allies will enjoy a bit of PvP, and sometimes they ask ye to just grapple and melee instead of shooting them to pieces first.Ye be strongly encouraged to send a tell to the commander of the other ship afterward, whether ye win or lose. "Good fight!" or "Ye whomped us!" or "Better luck next time!" Tis also fun to send him a tell when he first engages ye if ye have time, saying something like "Ye'll not be getting me wheaties!"
If ye max damage an opponent that has expensive cargo aboard, tis nice to rush to port, then take jobs with them to help them get the rest of their cargo to port, and allow them to pay a ransom to get their pillaged cargo back from ye. This is not required, even of allies.
MELEE
Melees with humans be different than with brigands. Humans have been known to stall if they be attacked by even one person. A good PvP crew plans the melee during the battle, with somebody doing /vwho on the shipname and then looking at the Sword Fight stats of each person aboard the ship. Then the crew is paired, usually with one good sprinkle fighter paired with one good blocks fighter, and assigned a person to target first. If there be an ultimate Sword Fighter aboard, ye can allow him to solo and drop attacks quickly then move.Sometimes tis good to target a nobody while ye build yer massive attacks, then switch to the toughest opponent to drop the insta-kill.
Normally ye will want to take down the toughest opponents first. If ye don't have time to look up their stats aforehand, then go fer captain's hats and yellow names first, then green names, and last white names.
If there be two on ye, then stall. Fer that matter, ye might want to stall if there be anybody at all on ye.
FINDING A VICTIM
Random: Tis easier to find a human ship to attack in Diamond or Emerald. Ye can pick a very busy port and just bounce the first league point out from it, watching radar and crow's nesting. /vwho will give ye the crew, and number of humans aboard. The crew info page will tell ye the crew's PvP rank. Unless ye start following the ship fer a while, ye won't have time fer long research on it.Old Salt: At every Inn one of the bots has an extra icon on it, that let's ye buy the Old Salt a drink (fer 10 poe). The Old Salt usually gives ye a useless tip, but sometimes it will tell ye the name of a ship, what the course is, and what the PvP rank is. Usually it just says "a goodly cargo" which frequently means nothing but cannonballs and rum. We don't do PvP fer money usually.
/who: Typing /who gives ye a list of all the human ships in yer general area. If ye be in Sapphire, this may be the only way to tell if there be any prey fer PvP out there at all. After ye do this ye still have to guess what course he's on. If ye have lots of sloops and officers, then ye can have one sloop bounce each league point next to Beta and when one is spotted, a matching number of people jump to the sloop that spots it (possibly abandoning the other sloops). Note that if ye have too many people on yer sloop then the victim will be blue.
MISC BNAV TRICKS
Clearly, when ye be up against strong opponents, yer best bet is to try to max them. With brigands, even if ye be maxed, if ye manage to max him too and then tell yer crew to not use the space bar, ye will usually win the melee if ye aren't too outnumbered. Humans are harder in max-max situations, if they know the same tricks. But lots of the human ships out there are commanded by ... um.... idio.... um.... inexperienced or poorly trained officers. Like ye were a few weeks ago.Both brigands and poorly trained humans can sometimes be tricked into entering wind tunnels that end in rocks or the edge of the board, damaging their ship (sometimes repeatedly).
If there is a dead end alley in tall rocks, then one ship can take a small amount of damage getting into it and then turning so the guns face the only square that the other ship can be to fire or grapple. If yer opponent does this, and ye can't figure out a way to swoop in and grapple immediately (taking a single hit on yer own boat and none on his), or if ye don't want to stand one square away and get both ships maxed, then the only thing to do is to either sit out of range or move slowly away. Sometimes the opponent will give up and leave his hidey-hole (giving himself further damage) and others ye will just end up disengaging. Note that ye can pull this trick yerself!
Most brigand ships can be predicted most of the time, particularly the Sailors. The brigand will look at where it is, and where it thinks ye will be moving, and what tokens it has, and then use its tokens to make the shortest path to grapple ye. If the brigand's broadside passes ye where it can't grapple, then it will fire on ye. Ye can often fool the brigands by loading one shot in addition to one or two moves (so it thinks ye be moving two or three). With Sailors if ye just sit without moving they will often move straight up to yer own broadside, so ye can blast them fairly easily.
Me favorite trick is to run a bit at first. When the brigand has fewer tokens, then it is easier fer me to predict him. If I think that he will come straight at me, I'll fire a couple of times, then load two turns of the same color (going away from him) with another shot on the second turn.
Most brigands do not fire into a whirlpool. If ye need to fix damage, or need time to reload, then head fer a whirly. The brigand likely understands the whirlies better than ye do, and will grapple ye or go into the whirly after ye.
Brigands are often confused by short rocks. If yer ship is sitting diagonally to short rocks it's not unusual fer a brigand to fire at the short rocks instead of moving one square to fire at ye.
Imperial brigands are tricksy. They make random moves, and have been known to sit instead of chase ye. I've seen them head straight fer the dead-ends in the rocks too.
If ye can think ahead during battle, then tis best to look at the other ship's position and decide what different moves ye might consider making. Then plan yer own moves so that ye can hit on most of the ways the opponent can move, and avoid being hit on most of them. In PvP, throw in a few random moves too, so that yer opponent has a harder time guessing what ye will do. If ye have plenty of shot, then any time ye might have a shot at him if he moves one way, fire on that tick.
Sometimes ye can fool an opponent by placing yer first token in the second spot. Please note that brigands use this trick too.
If yer bilge is pretty full, then try to get a quick grapple afore ye run out of tokens.
There be many more tips, so please post any ye come across in the forum. The good ones will be added here.