1.4 Naval Balance Observations

[Slaists]

Well, the upcoming naval balance changes were a hot topic on the forums since they were first announced by Jack Lusted. We have them now. Let's express what we observe (and how we feel about them). Here are my two cents from the first 2 campaign naval battles of the British (me) against France (AI).

1st Battle:

British: 1 5th rate, 2 6th rates
French: 2 brigs, 1 sloop, 1 galley, 1 indiaman
Outcome: British captured ALL French ships; none sunk

Notes:

1) On the battle open, it occurred that all my frigates display 400 range (for the round shot). This seemed to be the default range in the vanilla 1.3. So, either the display is wrong, or the "longer range" for frigates has not been implemented. Note that on the campaign map, unit cards for all ships display 400 range too... So, it just might be, CA has actually listened to the community.

2) The Chain Shot now has 500 range (versus the round-shot range of 400) versus the 400 range for the round shot and it is very (very!) dangerous. I switched to chain shot at the battle open and demasted the French sloop with the first salvo from my 5th rate. I did not switch to the round-shot throught the battle and the end outcome was, as mentioned above: all French ships captured... No "monster sloop" effect observed.

3) The left side of the targeting marker now is green, the right one is white. A nice touch.

4) The deployment rectangles now see to be more varied than before. I observed the french one being place diagonally relative to my British one.

2nd Battle:

British: 1 5th rate
French: 1 6th rate
Outcome: British captured the 6th rate

Notes:

Same thing as above. The battle was decided in the first 2 minutes by the first British chain-shot salvo that demasted the French 6th rate (Frigate).

Bottom line: I do not see the dreaded "monster sloop" effect implemented. On a different token: beware the CHAIN SHOT!... Maybe it's a tad overpowered now. Otherwise, I feel positive by the changes CA has made. What seems to emerge though is the AI's inability to cope with the changes. In my experience, the AI was just a sitting duck for my chain-shot salvos still trying to hit me with out-of-range round shots...

[peacemaker]

This reinforces my hopes to patch 1.4 as I wait to download it. I knew that before the patch, the sloops wouldn't be able to TERRORIZE the sea, they would be able to be slightly more useful than they are now. A bigger ship will still easily take them down, unless you happened to have a master admiral against you.

The chain shot is slightly puzzling, but I think it was underpowered before and half of my trade fleets in my other game were captured ships. Poor french can't build anything but indiamen, so they decided to capture a few dozen galleons from the pirates instead

[Elmar Bijlsma]

But the ships you took to battle were adjusted to be sloop/brig killers. So exactly as expected. SoL versus sloop is where it will get interesting.
Mind you, I don't expect the AI to know how to get the most out of theirs sloops in any case so for a practical purpose I don't expect to see all that much difference against a proper SoL.

But the principle of the thing still annoys me, regardless of how it ends up playing. To me it just seems so obvious that a greater fidelity to how things worked back then will automatically provide better balance.

Oh well... thank heavens for the modders, who can atleast in part undo the worst excess of this unimaginative C&C balancing.

[A1_Unit]

Try Sloop versus 1st Rate.

[Slaists]

Try Sloop versus 1st Rate.

My highest SOL so far (1712) is a 4th rate. So, tell me, what happens when you face a sloop with a 1st rate?

[peacemaker]

Well I should be going to sleep right now but I'm gonna go find out!

EDIT:well I was right. The SOL (2nd rate) didn't lose a single cannon. One broadside took out the first mast of a sloop(or brig, I'm not sure). A few more broadsides and the other was down.

Maybe if you had like 100 sloops, it'll be a fair fight. Until then, One or two broadsides and the sloop is out of the picture. A few cannonballs isn't gonna do anything anyway if you have a huge SOL vs SOL fight.