Then you can board without a fight, take what you want, and sink her. You also don't run the risk of accidently sinking your target. So, if you haven't tried the chain shot out yet, I would suggest it. It usually only takes one volley from 40 or 48 guns to get the ship to surrender.
Edit Congrats on getting your first one. I hope you didn't get it late last night like I did. I was so wound up after that, that it took me forever to go to sleep. I think it will be a short relationship, I still keep my old LF around I am in failing health and I need to hurry up to find 2 more relatives and 2 more lost cities.
Joined: Dec 29, Messages: 2. Flixtonslick , Jan 3, Joined: Feb 26, Messages: 2, Location: Norwegen. I captured two French Ship of the line yesterday with like 5 min apart!
Volum , Jan 3, You can get Sloop Types any day. Longasc , Jan 3, I am playing a new game 's. This time I started as the Spanish for the first time ever. I started in Santo Domingo. The Spanish were at war with everyone. I sailed towards Petit Goave. Explain that. I had just gotten admiral rank with the english.
Elbmek View Profile View Posts. Capture Blackbeards Frigate, fast, versatile and deadly. For a sea pirate Per page: 15 30 Date Posted: 1 Jul, pm.
Posts: Discussions Rules and Guidelines. Audio sounds horrible. Error con DirectX. Whats the best Galleon? But those cannonballs seem so numerous. The first few splash down port-wise and off to the stern, the next fly over your top mast, one of them tearing a small hole in the sail. The last four cannonballs shriek right by your heads, and one smacks into your hull, smashing a hole the size of a grown man into the top deck.
But the Frigate suddenly lowers its sails, and veers off with good speed away to the south. Its sailors struggle and finally raise the sails again, and the ship seems to be whizzing away at a very good speed. As you watch, your cannonfire splashes short of the enemy, well off its stern, leaving no mark on the enemy juggernaught.
Frustrated, you order the sails to be raised, turning to pursue. The enemy captain, encouraged by his successful dodge, lowers his sails once again, and turns his ship with surprising speed to bring its broadside your way again. It fires another deadly volley, but this time your ship has gained some good speed, and you decide to pass underneath the cannonballs, struggling to close the distance. If the enemy wishes to bombard you, they can now do so at leisure, but if only you can get close enough The enemy ship shows no intention to run.
It releases another volley, and this time, despite your speed, you are hit by several shots, some roundshot crashing through your decks, some chainshot ripping through the sail, and little pellets of Grapeshot rip through your crew, decimating your men left and right.
But by now you are close enough. You tack to port, sliding out of the enemy's line of fire, and quickly pull starboard to sail next to the enemy warship, now looming above your tiny vessel, a huge menace of the seas.
With a crash, your ships collide, and hooks are thrown high into the air to catch the top deck of the enemy ship. Pirates scramble up the ropes, some falling off into the sea, slain by bullets fired from enemy pistols - the enemy ship is literally packed with enemy soldiers, all intent on placing every last one of your crewmembers in Davy Jones' Locker. Swords flash as your remaining pirates scramble over their side, and quickly the sound of battle is everywhere.
You hop over the side and into the fray, just as an English officer, an Admiral it seems, storms angrily out of his cabin towards you, a shiny Rapier in his hand As you would probably know if you've read the manual or have played the game a bit, there are several "Classes", sort of like "Families" of ships, from the tiny "Pinnace-class" to the hulking "Galleon-class".
These classes differ from one another in all variables, from crew size to speed and maneuverability. Each family has a different model for its ships, and they are quite easily distinguished from one another also on the main sailing map. The different classes are also used for different purposes by different nations, and some nations will change the kind of ship they use when you select a different era of gameplay.
Each "Class" of ships has three variants - a small, medium and large variant of the same ship-type, kinda like brothers who resemble one another in many aspects, but one's big, the other small, and the last one's somewhere in the middle.
In the case of the Brig class, for example, you may encounter a Brigantine The small variant , a Brig medium variant or a Brig of War the Large variant. The difference between the three variants of any class lies is in these six factors. The bigger the variant, the higher these values grow: A The Maximum number of Crewmmbers you can carry on the ship. B The Minimum number of Crew needed to sail the ship at its normal speed.
C The Maximum number of Cannons that the ship can use in combat not the limit of cannons you can have in the cargo hold. D Amount of space in the Cargo Hold for storing food, commodities, and cannons. E The actual size of the ship model All ships of the same class have the same model, just bigger or smaller depending on the actual variant F And finally, the amount of damage the ship can take to its hull and sails Bigger variants can survive more hits Other variables, like the ship's speed and turn rate, stay constant across all three variants except for the War Canoe, the "small" variant of the Pinnace family, which appears to be faster and more agile than its bigger siblings, although this is under debate.
The Ship of the Line is the largest variant of the Frigate class, and therefore surpasses the other Frigates known in game as the "Frigate" and "Large Frigate" types in all the aforementioned categories.
The Ship of the Line is a "Large" warship. Like the other Frigate-class variants, it is built both to be a powerful, gun-totting vessel, as well as being fast enough to do combat with most other kinds of ships without being seriously outmaneuvered. Once Triple-hammocks have been upgraded on a SOL, it can carry men, a whopping big number. However, the SOL is much much faster and more maneuverable than any Galleon.
In fact, in the right winds, any Frigate type can sail faster than any other ship. Of course, wind conditions are variable, and you won't often encounter such situations where you have an overwhelming wind advantage, but Frigates are still faster than any of the merchants or the galleon class ships in any kind of wind. They sell for gold when they are fully upgraded, too. It can take an awful lot of damage before sinking, although taking enough sail damage can easily hurt a SOL enough to render it virtually useless for most conflicts, just like any other ship.
This is the Frigate's "Best Point of Sailing". When fighting inside a storm, with winds going at 20 knots, a SOL can easily clock 20 and above just by turning downwind, making it the ship with highest speed potential in the Caribbean. These supreme speeds can only be attained at low and average levels of difficulty. After that, speed penalties apply to your ship, while enemy ships become faster.
The SOL has often been called "Elusive", and this definitely has good reason. Some people have finished several games without seeing ONE, let alone capturing one. But why? Why is this single ship type so much rarer than others? Aside from the most obvious reasons like, hey man that's a pretty powerful ship , the Ship of the Line also follows some technical rules that prevent it from appearing as often as any other ship.
You will very often see them sailing out of a port and headed to another city, with cargo on board and possibly a good amount of gold. They are generated frequently, much more frequently than any other ship, and most cities will send one or two of those in a single month, as well as receive about two or three! The largest variants of the various Merchant ship families, I.
This still happens much more often than SOL spawning. In any case capturing one for the purpose of using it in combat is a silly practice since they can't sail to save their grandmothers. You'll often see them as Pirate-Hunters when you've upset a nation - this is a very common occurance - they come out of their cities, shouting at you to stand and fight. It is also very common to meet Brig or Sloop raiders, privateers, pirates and famous-pirates, so these are probably as common as the basic merchant ships in terms of general appearance ratios.
The Royal Sloop is somewhat of an exception, because in some eras it will be much more rare. However one of the named-pirates Roc Brasiliano sails one, and I believe that Royal Sloops can be "persuaded" to enter the water in any era with some triggering event or another.
Shouldn't be too hard to get one, although you can bet that it is quite a good ship. Try it sometime if you haven't already I bet you already have. The smallest variant, the Infamous Indian "War Canoe", will often be sailing out of Indian Villages in a group of three canoes, headed to raid a port somewhere.
You can also enter the village and convince the chieftain to send out his canoes to attack an enemy city, so War Canoes are in no way "rare". Mail Runners, the largest of this type, are probably the second most rare ship in the caribbean, and are often seen only when dispatching amnesty missions or treaty missions, but may occur in different situations too. However, since the three Evil Spaniards used in the game's "quests" namely Raymondo, Montalban and Mendoza sail the three variants of the Combat Galleon class, all you need to be able to get one is to have one of these Spaniards "at large", I.
This sort of spawning easily triggered in many ways, including Dancing with Governors' Daughters and visiting Jesuit Missionaries.
Tracking down the spaniards can be frustrating, it is far less frustrating than trying to find a SOL. This leaves us with the Frigate class. Frigates and Large Frigates the small and medium variants of the family, respectively can sail only out of non-spanish cities, as Escorts to Merchant ships or as Pirate-Hunters sent out to capture you for the bounty on your head. You will also see them as Raiders and Invasion forces sent by non-spanish nations.
In all cases, the Frigates will start popping up usually when the enemy is pretty upset, or if shipping in the area of a city has been hurt repeatedly. The Large Frigates seem to sail only out of "Prosperous" or "Wealthy" cities, while the "regular" frigates can sail out of any city if it has been annoyed enough. And if you don't want to upset anyone, you can try going after the 1 pirate of the Caribbean, Henry Morgan, who sails a Large Frigate, or 2, namely Blackbeard, who sails a "regular" frigate.
In fact, the only kind of SOL you will see in the game will be categorized as a "New Warship" - you'll see this caption over the SOL when it appears on your main sailing view. New Warships are released from cities in what at first may appear to be completely random chance. A common frequency to see one is about one per every months, and even when one is released there is certainly no guarantee that it will be a Ship of the Line. Rather silly.
However, once you've tried the strategies and pointers suggested in this FAQ, you'll see how the chance of having a SOL spawn out can be increased. Don't expect the sea to be crawling with them though. While many affecting factors have been discovered, there is still a great mystery on the exact number and magnitude of factors make them come out.
So far, even with special strategies used, frequency doesn't increase to staggering proportions, just maybe one SOL in a year or two. Battlewise, combating a ship with 48 cannons is always dangerous, but while a Flag Galleon can be a menace simply because it's so heavily armed, the SOL is both much faster and more agile and is therefore several fold more risky to attack.
There are several ways to catch a SOL using different tactics designed for different ships. However, it is generally and strongly advised that you do not go after a SOL with any of the following: A Merchant ships, like the Merchantman, Fluyt, Barque, etc. They're too slow and poorly armed. The SOL can outmaneuver any of them, and plant a gun broadside on you, crippling you further.
B ANY kind of galleon Again, way too slow. You might be able to hit the SOL with a broadside of your own, but by then you've probably taken a hit as well, and the SOL can still maneuver better than you. C A small combat vessel with sail or hull damage. With small ships, you'll often want to board as quickly as possible to avoid having to exchange cannonfire with a ship three times your gun capacity.
If you're already wounded, that both reduces your ability to approach quickly, and increases the chance that at a very short range the SOL will land a good number of shots on you and either sink or horribly cripple you to a point where you can no longer close the distance without taking more and more volleys Until such a point where you sink. When speaking about chance to locate one at sea in the first place, the chances are very very slim.
It depends on a whole lot of factors, from the era you're playing in to the level of discontent you've caused a European power, to the economic prowess of cities belonging to said upset nation. Even in the "Sol Capture Walkthrough" described in a later chapter, where you spend most of your time "engineering" conditions for a SOL to appear, you may not see them more frequently than once per game year, and sometimes even if you see one you won't be able to catch it before it goes into port.
Many people have seen one only to lose it. Its agenda is to leave one city and arrive at another, like merchant ships do, so you're going to have to chase it.
Sometimes they'll be sailing from one port to another just outside your viewing range and your ships may never cross paths. Vigilance therefore is key, but more often than not it is no guarantee that you'll ever see a SOL at all. Ahhh, now we're getting to the fun part.
The Frigate class of ships were designed to serve as the answer to the ubiquitous Spanish Galleon. The Galleons are huge, heavy boats, totting a very large number of cannon, moseying along in the Caribbean with large sums of money or cargo on board. The foreign powers, especially the English, used Frigates to match the Galleon's firepower while maintaining far more maneuverability in combat. If you've ever sailed a Frigate, you probably know how powerful it can be.
A single cannon volley from a Frigate can do horrible things to the enemy from very long ranges, and a full hit with 32 chain-shot cannonballs will often be enough to break the mast on most enemy ships. The Large Frigate holds 40 guns on board, while the SOL carries a whopping 48 guns - that makes for some serious damage.
On top of this, when used by a skilled captain, a Frigate-class can maintain long-range firing distance, blasting the enemy to surrender, while actually being able to avoid enemy cannonfire in a manner similar to the way the Brig-, Sloop- and Pinnace-class ships often do - and this even though the SOL is MUCH MUCH larger, and therefore a potentially easier target than a pinnace.
When the frigate has good speed, it turns very well, rivaling even an upgraded sloop. And then some - even if the enemy managed to smack a cannonball or two on to your deck, the damages taken are often minimal - you can probably suffer upwards of 20 cannon hits before you need to consider running away.
Frigate-class ships are probably the most powerful against Galleons and against any kind of Merchant ship. Their speed and maneuverability is supreme in such cases, and the best advantage is that you can often blast the enemy to a swift surrender from what is basically safe distance. With 48 cannons, this takes far less time than with 16, and since a larger volley is often "wider", it is more likely to hit partially than miss completely, so Frigates can afford bombarding from far away, able to dodge enemy blows and keep pounding until the enemy is docile or weak enough to approach for a boarding, a kill, or a de-mast.
A risky downside to this is that hitting something with 48 roundshot cannonballs more than once will often sink it And that sometimes once is enough. While Frigates are not as useful against the smallest ships Pinnace and Sloop class , careful consideration of the winds allows you to control a battle in such a way that the enemy cannot effectively escape - it either has to turn towards you allowing you to board or at least to fire roundshot and chainshot to slow him down or turn away into a direction where the Frigate can use its superior speed to catch up quickly with the enemy.
This is explained further in the Combat section, below. Also, carrying men aboard makes you into a portable invasion force, capable of assaulting well-protected cities instead of wasting your time chasing merchants and dragging their wounded hulls back to port to sell them and their cargo. A single raid on an enemy city can often produce as much as 4 to 6 and more!
Combined, the SOL's resistance to damage, low crew-minimums, and high cargo capacity, effectively cuts down the number of times you would have to visit a port to make repairs, replace crew, and sell cargo.
To get detailed information on how to maximize your chances of locating a Ship of the Line, read the last section in this FAQ. While battle against a SOL can be difficult and highly dangerous if not handled properly, the most difficult part is actually getting one to show up.
In order for this to happen, lets sum up the most known factors and conditions that must occur for an enemy SOL to be spawned.
You may see different SOLs belonging to more than one non-spanish nation in a single game. Also, the importance of Bounty has not been entirely proven. This is not related to the Pirate-Hunters, which will spawn if you attack friendly shipping in the area regardless of destination or origin. It seems like city population is also an important factor, as well as "national" prowess, I. So far, there have been no sightings of one in neither nor , but it is unknown if they can actually spawn in those eras or not.
Studying these points can give us a fairly obvious set of guidelines we need to use to encourage SOL spawning. The simplest way seems to be just getting a non-spanish city angry, and simply placing it under naval siege, sinking every merchant that comes out of the city, while allowing "improvement" ships like "New Governor" and "Immigrant" transports to enter so that the city remains Wealthy.
This is the most basic strategy you can employ, and reportedly it works best with cities like Barbados which tend to stay wealthy if not directly assaulted.
Sinking merchants repeatedly as well as the pirate-hunters that come out to play raises the bounty on your head, increasing the level of discontent for that city.
However, you need to stay out at sea for as long as possible, or set up a nearby friendly port by conquest or politics where you can stop for repairs and restock - otherwise you might spend one day too many away from the city you're besieging, and might actually miss a SOL sailing out of there.
More on this is explained in the last chapter. Sea combat against a SOL can be handled in different ways, depending mostly on both your stronger points in naval combat as well as the type of ship you're sailing. A smaller ship will generally want to dart in as fast as possible, using superior maneuverability to close the distance and board, while a larger vessel may actually carry out a contest of gunnery and navigation against the SOL to whittle down its cannon or otherwise prepare it for easier boarding.
Causing enough damage to the SOL to bring it to its knees from long-range can take a long time, and is often very ineffective as well as dangerous.
Your most important factor in this battle would be the wind. You'll need to utilize it to your advantage so you can weave in between volleys and board the enemy as fast as possible. Start the battle upwind of the enemy, or otherwise align the ships so that the enemy is situated in your "best direction of sailing". Peahatche View Profile View Posts.
I still prefer the royal sloop over the ship of the line although I admit the broadside is impressive. Telfram View Profile View Posts. Royal Sloop's the king for me. Nothing matchs it for manuoavability an once all the upgrades are on, it at least evens on broadsides and crew for SOL.
Last edited by Telfram ; 4 Oct, pm. Originally posted by DMit. Never cared much for the Frigates or seen a Ship of the Line. My current fav is the War Canoe - easy to sail and maneuver at any difficulty - usually untouchable in combat unless I screw up and it is wipred out if a larger ship catches it in a full broadside - so I pack a spare canoe as a finisher in case that happens.
Its big. Powerful Strong You dont have to worry about anything Except acidentlinally destorying ships on acident. After you are done with War Cannoe Phase Maybe your SOL phase will be next. Just finding one is a task more difficult than anything offered in many other games.
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