Quote:
Originally Posted by sovr cat
anyone got tips for dammaging enemy sails?
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I practiced on the Man-O-War flagship and when that was too rough (early on) I used the forest of phantoms in Hinterseas (South of Kingshead.) The ammo types that work well on masts are: round shot, chain shot, firebrand, thunderbolt and fury.
Chain shot has a very short effective range and a very different angle of aim. In SvS, I've found I can do in six round shot, the same damage as four chain shot, but I don't have to switch ammo, nor vertical angle of aim. With chain shot, I often miss; with round shot, I rarely miss. Thunder has about twice the range of any other ammo type, once you figure out how to aim it. Firebrand and fury tend to expend their damage on the hull, instead of the sails, whenever they hit both the sails and the hull. Firebrand makes the sails burn amusingly, when you miss the mast.
For masts that have several tiers, I've found that knocking off the top tier first, then working my way down, slows the target boat down sooner. The masts seem to be divided by mini-crow's nests. The total speed a boat gets from any mast is still delivered when the mast is damaged, but not when a section of the mast splits off and falls in the water. (And what a gloriously gratifying sound, that is!)
Oddly, in SvS, blowing away masts has no effect at all on Full Sail and Ramming Speed. I've been both frustrated and delighted by this "feature." I've yet to see any effect of blowing away masts at all in SvS, as they tend to be repaired faster than the next section can be damaged (I target cheater-ships. No idea what happens if the ship is not cheating by repairing underway.)
For practice aiming your shots exactly at the masts, I recommend normal round shot, so you can see the puff of smoke when you actually do hit the mast. Larger targets tend to be slowed down noticeably; smaller targets sink before you can tell if they slowed down or not.