FotS - Capturing surrendered ships

[zowrath]

Following the fine tradition of capturing ships since ETW up to S2TW before FotS, whenever I make ships surrender I and they are still afloat and not even burning they still gets destroyed when I return to campaign map view.

Trawling through the DB files to find out if there's a variable somewhere that applies to this, as if there's a chance or something that may be set "too high" for FotS. Been at it for roughly two hours now and I'm throwing in the towel and asking if anyone here know where this setting might be or what affects this?

[MacVega]

As far as I can tell, it is still applicable. When I was testing this a few times during auto-resolves, there was a definite chance for capture. I have captured a few ships this way, although it is obviously unreliable and a whole lot less fun that actually fighting it out on the open seas. From what I surmise, I believe the best way to actually capture a ship in the manner you are suggesting in the fall of the samurai release is to actually board and 'capture' the ship as opposed to making it 'surrender' from live fire. I recommend trying this out and if still unsuccessful, I can see if there is a chance setting within the db that might govern this attribute, though where they have hidden it is anyone's guess. If there was any chance modifiers I would think it would be for auto-resolve and not really surrender captures.

[zowrath]

Yeah, I've been hard at work figuring this out. So far I've found out that no matter what, ships that are not boarded but surrender will not be captured in actual combat except if you lose. Then the AI will get your surrendered ships, which is odd.

Ships surrender way too fast, and battles are over in a second, so I have ramped up morale with an even 10 for all ships and diversified the hullstrength more for different ships and what they are made of. Battles are longer, and you can actually reach a ship you want to capture although you obviously take a lot of damage in that process. If you board a ship, it is yours if you win the battle. So that works.

I've tried to tone down fires, but no matter how I juggle the numbers fires seem to pop up at the same rate anyhow so I've decided so far to disable most of them for the time being and hope this is a bug and gets sorted in a patch somewhere down the line. Fires are realistic, but they are happening too frequently in battles for both sides. What could be an interesting long battle suddenly turn in to a big bondfire and the it's over. Not so much fun, gameplay wise.

Now I'm trying to sort out why naval units have homing projectiles. The DB files say they have a base 5 accuracy and 5 reload rate but it's way more than that. Even from afar, most broadsides hit and that is just not right. This is no matter who side is firing, the AI or my AI-directed ships. Also, the AI needs to have better naval formations and orders, every single time you attack them they just sit there and wait and you can just circle them and put then in a pincer and take them out because they no longer have room to manoeuvre. Well, that's covered a bit more than my current topic but I needed to say it.