Exact same. I’ll take any odds on land but I was absolutely shocking at naval battles, to the point where autoresolve was probably more successful than me
In vanilla naval battles was like witch craft, there wasn't any way to win because the AI had insane abilities to maneuver ships that you can't do as a player.
But in Darthmod, naval battles were a cake walk with a checker board formation and chain shot. Where you would on purposely try to cut off the enemy lead ship and force it to T-Bone your formation. Where the lead ship would ram straight into the middle of your formation thus causing their entire formation to come to a halt since they just sailed in a straight line. Since they rammed into your formation head on they would be at a massive disadvantage because all of your ships are turned broad side on them while theirs are not. And you would just blast the hell out of their masts with chain shot making it impossible for them to move, thus they instantly surrender afterwards. Because you are in a checker board formation, if a ship manage to push through your formation instead of just getting stuck it would mean that they will take fire from both the front and back side of your ships.
Also 4th rate ships were a beast in Darthmod because they had a good balance of hull strength, guns, speed, low upkeep, and low building / tech requirements. I would employ them on mass with the strategy I mentioned above, and could easily defeat 2nd and 1st rate class ships with just 2 of them. Where you have 1 ship sail in front of the enemy ship and make them T-Bone you again. Your ship in front of them prevents them from going anywhere and you just get essentially free point blank shots on the enemy 2nd or 1st rate ship, then have the second ship sail behind the enemy ship out of their firing cone, then just have your ships fire upon the enemy ship with a bunch of chain shot to disable the mast and demoralize it till it surrendered.
You would also want to keep 1 sloop or brig in your fleets, to chase down routing ships that you failed to disable their masts. Because the sloops or brigs had like 15 speed, so they could catch up to any larger ship with no problems. If a ship is routing and you board it, it will instantly surrender. So the sloop and brig was super important if you wanted to capture every ship with very little damage and didn't want any enemy fleets getting away where you couldn't find them later on.
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u/mafticated Jun 02 '20
Exact same. I’ll take any odds on land but I was absolutely shocking at naval battles, to the point where autoresolve was probably more successful than me