Ship

A ship is your vessel for moving pirates and/or commodities, pillaging, foraging, and holding other events. The various decks and rooms of a ship have the props to access the ship duty puzzles, configuration, and management.

From the ship's helm (or "navigation wheel") and navigation table, officers may configure voyage, manage jobbers, and view the officer bulletin board. The hold provides access to manage inventory, trade commodities, bid at the market, and access vessel records.



Construction
There are thirteen basic kinds of ships made at shipyards and several limited edition or design-based variations. Each one requires different amounts of various commodities, labor, and doubloons (doubloon oceans only).

* -- These ships require a design that matches the ship name.

Capacity
Each ship class has a different capacity of total pirates, duty stations, and commodities it can carry.



Ship handling and station performance
All ships move at a slow speed from league point to league point even if nobody works on a station, although damage and bilge will rise in this case (see floating). Assigning swabbies or pirates to some stations improves performance. This will raise the speed or keep damage and bilge low respectively.

With only swabbies working on stations during a swabbie transport the different ships can reach the following performance figures if the specified minimum is assigned to carp and bilge. Players can perform much better though the max and min speed of each vessel is fixed. (Referring to diagonal leagues. Horizontal are 40% longer)

Note that you get the max number of swabbies only with swabbie transport. With all other voyage types you will get only 4, with the exception of a sloop in which you will have only 3. (You may get some temporary additional ones if a player leaves in battle)

If no sails station is worked at any longer the ships will decelerate with time. Also they will accelerate to full speed if there are enough sailors working. Swabbies will always perform a high fine rating during the voyage, player ratings will vary depending on their skill. The following numbers assume swabbie performance.

Damage
Each ship class can handle a different amount of damage in battle. Maxing for swordfight damage (this is a historical name which predates the Rumble puzzle) will cause the occupants to have the maximum amount of black blocks in the Swordfight puzzle or lock out a large portion of the Rumble board during the melee stage of the battle. If the ships are at war, or in a sinking blockade, reaching full damage will cause a ship to sink.

A ship left unmanned in port will reset its damage and bilge to zero after 15-30 minutes. Stepping on board the ship will reset the timer.

Shot damage

Friendly fire
When ships from the same faction in a normal blockade shoot or ram each other, friendly fire applies. Friendly fire means that a "friendly" ship causes you only 50% of the damage that would be caused by a normal enemy ship. Friendly fire applies in blockades for all ships in the same faction, and flotillas for all player ships, but not in Brigand King blockades, or Atlantis.

Ram damage

 * See main article: Ram

When a ship runs into another ship, rocks, or some edges of the board, it also receives damage. The mechanics of ram movement are detailed on the Ramming page, including the amount of damage, included below.

Ram damage

Rock damage

Blockades
In blockades, each ship class also has a different influence diameter. When choosing which ship to use in a blockade, it is important to know the trade-offs between influence diameter, firepower, damage capacity, and manpower required to run the ship.

* -- Small shot equivalent

Historical notes
Prior to, there was no such thing as grappling. The swordfight began when both ships occupied the same square on the battle navigation board. Also, before this, the edges of the board acted like winds that pushed ships back onto the board.

The manage jobber control was added with, and vessel records were added with.

External/other links

 * Commonly discussed ideas from Game Design
 * Ship totals from each ocean (Feb 6, 2007)
 * Total ship counts 31st July 2009
 * Ship Graphics (Outside)
 * Ship Graphics (Inside)
 * Ships Types resource, listing Stations, Capacities, etc... by Baldwin