Naval tactics!

[A Very Super Market]

Don't bother broadsiding.

But if you must.
Clicking it once means that your ship will stop firing and start trying to load every cannon. You can cut this time short at any time.
Clicking it the second time will fire whatever cannons on that side of the ship within the red area.

[Fisherking]

I know boarding is a mess, but when you do it might be a good idea to remember taking the ship off fire at will…then you can use the whole crew and not shoot your own guys to pieces.

It is bugged that the enemy ship continues to fire once boarded and these seam to be the last to die.

[Ardri]

I made a rough sketch (very rough) using paint to show the naval tactics I have found to work quite well. 3 victories in 3 battles (French vs Pirates) without a single lost ship in pretty balanced fights on hard difficulty. The green arrow on the left is the first group of my ships and the green arrow on the right is the second group of ships. The two groups are spaced out where if a third row of ships were in the middle they would both barely be able to fire at them.

The red arrow is the way I have found the computer reacts most often which is to come at me then veer to put the wind(indicated by the black arrow) at their backs. I use my first group to pass them and then circle round while the second group goes out wide then doubles back. This allows for both my battle lines to pass the enemy fleet on both sides while the enemy fleet is turning into the wind. The first group is essentially in combat from their initial pass while the second group comes in late to decimate the enemy fleet. It has made fighting naval battles really enjoyable since I finally figured out a way to have some success.

[GabrielExea]

Ahh, very interesting Ardri, I like the tactics :)

The hardest battle I've won so far has been my 2 second rates, 3 third rates, versus 4 fluyts, 4 galleons and 3 brigs. This is on H/H difficulty - It was -very- close, and I had to micromanage alot to pull it off because the fluyts are so quick. They ran circles round my SOTL, but I got some good volleys in and manage to sink the lot.

I can also say that broadsiding, in my experience, is good only as a morale breaker. A full volley from a side of cannons does no more damage than that volley spread out over a few seconds, but the morale effect of having 40 odd cannonballs hit the ship at the same time is noticeable. I use broadsides at the end of battles, when ships are beginning to waver and the field of battle is all messy and horrible (inevitable in naval battles) on the last few ships that are resisting. I've found that a good hit with a broadside from a larger SOTL is enough to rout almost any enemy if they're hard up in the battle.

Just my 2c :)

[Meldarion]

This may be of interest to you.

[0rly?]

the double line is a good tactic, but it's hard to manage. if only the captains on those ships had some god dam brains and would stop sailing into each other the entire headache of naval battles would be gone! When i got this game i really expected ships to at least make some effort not to run into one another and get stuck. If your lines bump into each other or one of your ships decides to go walk about, it completely screws up your formation and you end up in a nice little pile for your enemy to shoot the out of.

But if you can avoid this cluster it is a good tactic

[Grumfoss]

Using the double line works well for me, however you really have to be careful tho. as collisions are easily done.As long as you keep the two lines apart then all will be fine as the two lines don't recognise each other and collisions can/will occur.

Also I have found that if you get a bit 'click' happy the ships can loose their line positions,(its not fun to see your very expensive fleet start to sail in circles) however clicking on the line button again puts them back in line and all will be well.

I have found that manual broadsides aren't the best either way too much micro management. Its much easier to just concentrate on helming and not firing the guns.

I have tried several times to use chain shot to try to bring the rigging down, but I have found that my ships take to much of a pounding so I just blat them with solid shot and that makes them stop pretty quickly.

[PBI]

With chain shot, I find it works much, much better if the enemy have full sail deployed. If they are sailing into the wind, they furl their sails (presumably to use their 18th century outboard motors ) which makes chain shot a lot less effective.

I tend to prefer chainshot to roundshot, since I find it seems to leave ships partially dismasted (and therefore effectively out of the battle) faster than roundshot will sink them, but doesn't carry the risk of making enemy galleys explode right next to your flagship. Also, roundshot only damages one side of a ship at a time; the AI ships seem to be annoyingly good at getting down to yellow damage on one side, then turning to expose their undamaged side. Plus of course you get the prize money for the captured ships and can add the better ones to your fleet.