Capturing enemy ships in sea battles

So... I fought a sea battle and ended up capturing a nice useful armed trading fluyt off the pirates. Not sure how I did it, I cr if I boarded the boat or it just surrendered.

Since then, I've had several victorious sea battles against the pirate scum, with various privateering vessels left either bobbing surrendered in the waves or actually boarded, and yet at the end of the battle I get no prize money, no option to add ships or crew to my fleet or anything.

Is it random? Am I doing something wrong? Is it to do with remaining move points, whether you attacked them or they attacked you or what? Any ideas?

Ta

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Originally Posted by Fridgebadger

So... I fought a sea battle and ended up capturing a nice useful armed trading fluyt off the pirates. Not sure how I did it, I cr if I boarded the boat or it just surrendered.

Since then, I've had several victorious sea battles against the pirate scum, with various privateering vessels left either bobbing surrendered in the waves or actually boarded, and yet at the end of the battle I get no prize money, no option to add ships or crew to my fleet or anything.

Is it random? Am I doing something wrong? Is it to do with remaining move points, whether you attacked them or they attacked you or what? Any ideas?

Ta

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I would like answers to this to. Why don't surrendered ships seem to be captured? I have had several ships surrender and never been offered the chance of keeping them or selling them.

Anybody got any ideas?

I think you have to board them and kill the crew.

Only boarding surrender should take the boat.

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Originally Posted by pevergreen

I think you have to board them and kill the crew.

Only boarding surrender should take the boat.

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It was common in the 18th century for ships to be captured after actions and reused or sold. In fact, lots of the best ships in the Royal Navy were french built - the french shipyards produced better designed ships, sent them out to sea with (usually) poorly trained crews, the British would fight, capture and repair them then, hey presto, another decent ship joins up.

And boarding them wasn't required: the standard convention of naval war was for a losing captain to strike his colours to indicate a surrender, whereupon the victor would send a prize crew, often just a nominal one if the battle was continuing, to take possession (and try emergency repairs if it was in danger of sinking). Some captains would surrender quickly, some fought harder, but it was rare for one to fight until the ship sank under him while he was still fighting (accidents with fire and explosions excepted).

The conventions of war were mostly followed - to strike your colours and later in the battle sneak away thus canceling your surrender was consider very low behavour indeed. The dishonour it brought, even from your own side, would have been great.


Having said all that, I can see why CA wouldn't reproduce that in Empire for game play reasons, and I'm perfectly content. But the occasional surrendered ship surviving would be nice.

Perhaps the is something we don’t yet know about the procedure or perhaps it is a malfunction.

If ships captured and not in danger of sinking are not added to your fleet the it is a problem.

I hope one of the CA Staff will be good enough to clear up the issue.

The main confusion is why it should happen one time and then not subsequently. And as I said, some of the surrendered ships had been boarded... oddness...