Naval tactics!

[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.

[antisocialmunky]

I've always found it fun to take one ship and ram the first ship in the enemy line and have the rest of my ships go and pump cannon balls into the enemy fleet.

[Ardri]

I really haven't had any problems with ships colliding since I started spacing out my lines much further than normal. Also, I only rely on 1 line to make an initial first pass of the enemy fleet while to second fleet heads to an upwind position so that they can then come down at speed on any angle passing the other fleet. By putting a lot of distance between them and using the 2nd line in a doubling back tactic it allows the first line to clear the area and for the most part the ships don't come close to colliding. I think spacing is the key, I use to have too little space and my ships collided and piled up everywhere (needless to say I lost almost every sea battle); that really hasn't occurred since I started using wider spacing.

I've always found it fun to take one ship and ram the first ship in the enemy line and have the rest of my ships go and pump cannon balls into the enemy fleet.

Now that is making collisions work in your favor. I might have to build a few brigs just to implement in some of my upcoming battles.

[A Very Super Market]

Its the most fun to do that with Xebecs. Imagine them as fireships...