FotS Naval Battles...wth

[Gen. Sherman]

So I've played enough to get just a few points shy of rank 3 and decided to give some naval battles a try. I've unlocked 1 extra boat so far the wooden corvette kasuga class I believe, and with small funds I bring that, 2 wooden corvettes with the 6 guns, and my ironclad admiral.

That being said, typically with small funds I've noticed oppenents bring much the same thing. So has anybody else summed up victory naval fights in this game being purely reliant on luck? I say this because both players just pull their ships into range of eachother and let them fire away and use the fast reload ability as much as possible and hope for a 1 hit insta kill that seems to happen randomly.

I've tried looking for other factors like, do you get hit less if you are moving?, does firing down wind improve accuracy? Does anything make a difference or do you just position your boats about 1 lengths apart, turn broadside, and sit there and hope for the best?

Oh, funny enough in light of these observations I actually had some accuse me of camping while he was approaching my gun range, so that when I moved he could sit in one spot and just pivot his boats

[Chris lol]

Put your ships way back at your red line (as far away from your opponent as possible).

Enter 1st person mode and you can shoot past the max range of the ships. Herpa derpa

[bushranger]

All my ships keep catching fire after been hit once or twice not sure what the beta testers were doing to think thats ok but naval is pretty annoying.It seems like all luck to me.
Just had a game where my very first cannon shot from the front wtf blew up a corvette giving me a massive advantage then my ships all caught fire 2 min later.In the end we both only had our ironclad flagships left and spent 10min going in cicles,my ship was half sunk with water over most of the deck then his ship routed and i won.

[Knowing Crow]

I lost my first ship in my first naval battle to the first volley, clean blew it up.

So yeah, pure luck seems to be fairly important in naval battles.

[hooma]

guys its necessary to use the right ammo.

for ships with extend range and enemy is not near -> piercing
enemy is near and wood -> explode
enemy ship is iron -> piercing

wait until u meet guys who just bring the one big ship for 14k..

[Gen. Sherman]

guys its necessary to use the right ammo.

for ships with extend range and enemy is not near -> piercing
enemy is near and wood -> explode
enemy ship is iron -> piercing

wait until u meet guys who just bring the one big ship for 14k..

Yes, I have used them all in the appropriate situations. Still my first post is true and accurate.

[hooma]

then u do something wrong. except the situation when u fight vs a ironclod with costs > 10k using the right ammo and movement, concentrated fire and sometimes selfaiming u should win the fights. in the beta i had less problems with that strategy than with the land battles and the bug that lines dont shot back esp when the enemy has a clear line of fire.

i find it very usefull to hang back with ur low range ships and send u gen in first. even without unspend points in leadershiptree for the generalironclod it takes a lot of shots to take it out. so if the enemy get the first shots on ur general u should get 1 or 2 first shots to his ships.

äh and yes dont use the shot at order if ur ships are not in range.

[Abe86]

That's all true, but after playing a few naval battles I also noticed ships that normally take quite a few volleys to beat will explode instantly to a lucky shot. So strategy and shot type kind of gets thrown out of the window by insta-kills, unless we discover there's some skill based thing to it, like having to fire from a certain angle for a specific type of ship, but otherwise, there being very few ships in a naval battle, instantly destroying one based on luck is a big deal, and does make naval battles a very luck based affair in my opinion.

Unless, perhaps overcharging engines, which has a chance to instatnly make ships explode in its description, actually sets your vessel up for an instant kill ? I do think some of my ships that blew up instantly to cannon shots, I had overcharged their engines at some points in the battle?

[Gen. Sherman]

Sounds like a possibility Abe, just for consideration I have never used the overcharged ability once seeing little need to move quickly when the point is to just sit and fire, and still I have had ships blow up at random too.

[Gen. Sherman]

then u do something wrong. except the situation when u fight vs a ironclod with costs > 10k using the right ammo and movement, concentrated fire and sometimes selfaiming u should win the fights. in the beta i had less problems with that strategy than with the land battles and the bug that lines dont shot back esp when the enemy has a clear line of fire.

i find it very usefull to hang back with ur low range ships and send u gen in first. even without unspend points in leadershiptree for the generalironclod it takes a lot of shots to take it out. so if the enemy get the first shots on ur general u should get 1 or 2 first shots to his ships.

äh and yes dont use the shot at order if ur ships are not in range.

I apprectiate the tips but it seems there's very little to do wrong. Though the manual aiming aspect is something that I overlooked in my first fights. Aside from that, there is little difference that maneuver makes unless boats draw close together, then still the chance for instant destruction is totally random.

[Knowing Crow]

I've had situations where my admirals ship takes out 6 wooden ships all by himself without taking any return fire, only to still lose the match due to all of my ships exploding and my command ship sinking after only a few hits, and situations where my L'ocean randomly explodes leaving me with a burning command ship next to it.

I feel that I must be doing something terribly wrong, as despite doing well early on I still manage to lose, and other times I just simply lose. I didn't know about using piercing long range so I should try that out, but there must be a guide to naval combat somewhere. It seems very random, but there must be a way to stack the deck in your favor.

[CptAustus]

guys its necessary to use the right ammo.

for ships with extend range and enemy is not near -> piercing
enemy is near and wood -> explode
enemy ship is iron -> piercing

wait until u meet guys who just bring the one big ship for 14k..

Bring a torpedo boat. Problem solved.

[Abe86]

Yeah, unless we discover there's some skill based trick involved in instantly blowing ships up, that kind of ruins multiplayer naval battles. It's too bad, really, that element excluded I think they are much more involving and require more strategy than the original Shogun 2 multiplayer ship battles (I played when the game came out, when it wasnt even worth trying to win unless you had unlocked cannon bunes).

[Gen. Sherman]

I always liked to do mass non cannon ship battles with friends in S2 on the battle list. Now that can be really fun with all sorts of strategy turned chaos going on.

[krisslanza]

I think the ships exploding is that explosive shells have a random chance to make something catch fire - one of those things that can randomly catch fire is where all your gunpowder is stored, thus your entire ship instantly exploding.

Naval battles do have some pretty heavy luck. I think manual aiming is a part of it, it seems hitting roughly the middle of a ship with an explosive shell will tend to make it explode if it hits. Probably due to the fact the engine is located there.

[Taira]

different types of shots. it really makes a difference. you also have to know what ships to target.

[Gen. Sherman]

I got a couple more matches in last night. Literally a couple, won 1 lost 1. So I was mostly trying out the manual aiming and how effective AP ammo is on wooden ships.
The manual aiming doesn't seem to let you aim much over the horizon line, you can definitely shoot a little further than the auto, but not across the entire map. From what I've seen AP rounds seem slightly more effective against wooden ships, I'm not sure if I could say AP caused more insta kills than SS at longer ranges, sometimes I'll get 1 maybe 2 with either shot type. However the AP rounds did seem cause more fires and reduce moral better than the solid shot did.

[Dutchpower]

get a roanoke.

Win.

Edit:

To help some people out. First of all, try to get an all iron fleet. Wood is terrible. Roanoke's will win you most 10.000 credit matches.

If your enemy has wooden ships just select your general to go with explosive rounds and your main battleship with iron balls. Iron balls have IMO a better chance of causing sudden explosion. Your general needs to take sniper shots at the ships until they are all on fire after that he will soon be left with only his general. Just select both ships and go with penetration shots and finish it.

If he has iron. Just go with penetration shots right away. If he has a ocean class and you have a roanoke. You win. If you both have a roanoke it comes down to first fire first win. And a bit of luck. Also you can try first person here to get more shots off sooner.

If you can also bring three of the general type ironclad (forgot the name) and try to lure him in range battle. As soon as he comes in range go astern and back off so his roanoke will be out of range and can't fire.

[Abe86]

Both explosive shots and armour penetrating shots seem to be able to cause instant kills. Standard ammunation is probably capable of the same.

It does seem to be caused by hitting the middle of the ship, but it's hard to tell for certain. I also thought only wooden ships were susceptible to instant kills, but I found out it can also happen to ironclads (but only with armor piercing shots, perhaps ?).

It's also hard to tell what ship does what, and how effective they are. For example the Kotetsu has two gatling guns that arent mentioned anywhere in its stat sheet, the l'Ocean class Ironclad has few cannons but they seem to cause more damage than what some of the ships that cost less but have more cannons have. It's not only very luck based, but there's a big amount of guesswork involved from the player.
I feel like the naval battles could become truly outstanding with little effort by CA: just clearly lay down the rules of naval battles, preferably presented in the in-game interface, tell us what makes ships explode, give us more precise stats on vessels and their armaments, and so on.

[krisslanza]

AP rounds effectiveness probably is because they're highly accurate, according to their own tooltip anyway. Normal shot is pretty good accuracy, all-rounder. Explosive shells have low accuracy, and can oneshot wooden ships. AP shells have high accuracy and pierce armor.

The Kotetsu also seems somewhat bugged, at least for me. It has this tendency to think the only cannon it has is the fore cannon - even if I mouse over the port and starboard broadsides at the start of the battle, it'll say 0/0 and only for the forward broadside option will say 1/1. This pretty much means my flagship becomes useless if someone shoots it and destroys that cannon, as it'll then act like it has no cannons at all.

I really think for FotS, or even S2 really, navy skills for your general should be a separate skill tree or something... you can make your flagship have about 7000 hull strength, I think if you're in the Command tree and feel like putting points into it.