Cheating AI in Ship combat

[bloodraven]

I have found that the game cheats in ship combat. How you ask? Let me tell you of what I found.

Last night I was in a ship combat with two of my ships (sloops on both) against 3 Prussian Sloops. I sank one Prussian ship and had both of my ships at 3/4 health while the other two Prussian ships were at full or close to full health and the other was at about 3/4 health.

One of my ships ended up leaving the battle because of the stupid map. One minute there... the next it was gone. So I figure Heck I'll fight out the last two ships as long as I could sinse my ship was a 5 star and at best theirs were 2 if even that. So I fought on damaging both ships to 1/2 and 3/4 while only dropping to about 1/2 my self. The next thing I notice was that the 3/4 health enemy ship vanished. I was happy to see my odd's improved. I then took on the last Prussian sloop. We fought on and I sunk him but just as I sunk him the game told me that one of my ships had left the battle and I lost. The Prussian sloop was sinking fast with no deck visible and I was within firing range of him when the game exited my ship. I ended up losing the fight even though I was the last ship sailing on the map, had sunk two of the enmy ships and scared off the third.

I have also noticed many times that my 4 star Frigate cannot hit the broad side of the barn. I can have an enemy ship in my green targeting narrowed to take full use of my guns , have the enemy ship at about 1/2 range of max cannon range, both sailing straight, and miss the enemy while he is hitting me like I nobodies business.

I was happy to see ship combat added into a game like this but after playing ship combat... it was done very poorly. I'd like to see a ship combat done more like Age of Sail: Privateers Bounty. Now the ship combat there was good and would have worked great for this game.

Ship combat features i'd like to see in future releases of games like this
*Multipule sail settings, Full rigging, Combat rigging, Sails up
*Ship fire that spreads dealing more damage
*Ability to fight ship fires.
*Ability to change marine crew size for ship capture
*Ship to land combat
*Random sightings of merchant ships and the ability to sink or take the merchant ship as a prize (Could effect diplomacy)
*Better damage models on ships i.e. if I aim for the ship masts i'd like to see ship mast tumble and vanish (Age of Sail PB does this)
*Night combat for ships
*Better ship control
*Ship formations
*Ship way points
*Popup button if you want your ship to leave map when ship nears map edge
*Ability to rename ships or any unit for that matter
*Better crew AI and expertise (better crews make ship turn faster, load guns faster, hit better,
*Ability to repair/refit at sea with a higher cost to do so and not fix complete health/crew.

[Napoleon88]

I think it would nice if you can move your ship with the arrow keys like you're moving a vehicle in a race game.

[Ryoken]

I thought the Sid Meier's Pirates system was a pretty good interface for ship movement. They used the numeric keypad. The directional keys controlled movement/sails. Diagonal keys controlled type of shot/other stuff.

Despite the problems I have with Pirates, it did have a good control system for the ship.

[c-mattio]

Naval combat would benefit from just being slowed down a bit to make it flow better. Also it would be nice to be able to select all ships in combat and to be able to adjust course on a compass.

[Element-UK]

Personall, I love the Naval Warfare and think all is fine apart from not having optional AI assistance when there more than 2 ships. It's slow enough combat when your against the wind or their is low wind. I always slide the bar to give max devastation and the width of youe firing line is crucial. Also I use the 'fire slightly ahead' method depending on the speed of the target.