Remove the invisible corvus!

[Delyon]

Currently a lot of people are experiencing difficulty fighting against transport ships. After playing around with naval battles exclusively for the last two days whilst trying to work out different tactics I think i've hit upon the reason transports are so strong.

When ships board another vessel both ships are locked into to position on the map and are forbidden from moving untill one side wins the ensuing hand to hand fight or one of the ship is rammed and sunk. This effectively eliminates any maneuvering from ship battles one contact has been made and gives a huge advantage to the faction that has the strongest infantry (rome). If your familiar with history every ship basically has an invisible corvus that prevents ships from retreating to prevent being boarded. So if you have stronger infantry chances are you will win the fight once contact is made.

I suggest modders or CA make it so that boarding doesn't lock the ships into place. Instead letting ships sail past those trying to board them. This reflects the historical emphasis on ramming and maneuvering and would deepen the naval aspect of the game immensely. It would also severely nerf transport ships and make them very vulnerable to ramming because they can no longer simply overpower ships so easilly.

TL;DR

1. The current "invisible corvus" mechanic for boarding actions is causing imbalance and dumbing down naval battles.
2. The "invisible corvus" should be removed from the game to allow deeper naval combat and the use of historical maneuvers such as the periplous, diekplous or mēnoeidēs kyklos

[Suite]

It's not only the corvus. Transport ships should have no ability to ram enemy ships or have any offensive ability on themselves whatsoever.

[GussieFinkNottle]

Transport ships need to be transport ships, rather than warships without a mast. Their strong hulls and ability to ram makes them as good as triremes, whereas they should be vulnerable to naval attack and no an effective offensive force

[Riekopo]

It's baffling that these OP transports are in the released game.

[Oestvang]

And when you autocalc, , transports are weak. It's only when you try to fight you discover transports are infact Q-ships.

[CTD_or_Bust]

Perhaps step one would be to remove the ability to ram from transports.

[Swerg]

IIRC the Corvus was only used for a few decades before being discarded due to the instability it caused (the Romans lost a couple fleets to storms because of it.) People went back to the old fashioned 'pull up along side and chuck grapnels over' method. Or switched to things like the harpax:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harpax

The 'best' method would probably be to bring back the previous method of guys throwing grappling hooks over at other ships, assuming it could be streamlined so as not to take about 5 hours as it did in E/N/S2TW