This has been baffling me throughout the game...

Ship attack/cannon damage rating: how is it figured?

My newest ship, a Marleybone galleon; shows an attack rating of 77-128 before upgrading cannon. When I equip my best cannon, (+11 dmg/+1 accuracy) it rises to 84-141 (not sure how the math works on that one).

But when in combat each cannon volley does 22-37 points of damage depending on what I am fighting. It almost seems like the higher the level of the opposing ship, the higher the damage. At no time however has my cannon approached the 100 point mark. This makes me sad, since blasting your opponents apart with canon sure seems pritatey to me.

Is this a glitch, and if it is not could you all give a little background into how ship damage is figured; some of us enjoy seeing how the game "works".

WulfgarVonFrost on Nov 16, 2012 wrote:

This has been baffling me throughout the game...

Ship attack/cannon damage rating: how is it figured?

My newest ship, a Marleybone galleon; shows an attack rating of 77-128 before upgrading cannon. When I equip my best cannon, (+11 dmg/+1 accuracy) it rises to 84-141 (not sure how the math works on that one).

But when in combat each cannon volley does 22-37 points of damage depending on what I am fighting. It almost seems like the higher the level of the opposing ship, the higher the damage. At no time however has my cannon approached the 100 point mark. This makes me sad, since blasting your opponents apart with canon sure seems pritatey to me.

Is this a glitch, and if it is not could you all give a little background into how ship damage is figured; some of us enjoy seeing how the game "works".

I dont know if thats a glitch or not, but ive found that adding cannons isnt all its cracked up to be.
I stopped buying them for my ships, if I get a drop, great, otherwise... i've noticed my ship fires cannons w/o them. Go figure.

Darth JT on Nov 16, 2012 wrote:

I thought the same thing, but I think I figured this out.

Ship Damage of 84 to 141, now think of your figurehead and your Horn, some have 1x damage, some have 3x damage, some have 3.5x damage and traps, etc.

I think that is how that damage if figured, so, if you have a 3x damage horn, you can do between 252 damage and 423 damage.

Hope this helps

As far as the powers go they defiantly seem to use the attack value as a base as listed. I am just wondering if it is in the design of the game or a glitch that cannons do about 1/10 of the attack damage range + whatever cannon bonus is. (rough estimate with my meager math skills)

I also see that we have an "armor" stat as well as a rate of fire stat, however at present these things are not used.
Armor when equipped does not show any value, it simply increases your ship hit points. I can only assume later on it is/was planned that there will be an "armor" that detracts from each amount of damage done (like armor for your character) and possibly a way to speed up how fast your cannon fire (will very much love this one myself!!!)

Granted I would also have loved it if they had incorporated "shooting arcs" - the relation of broadside vs fore & aft combat. Simply put facing your broadside to an enemy ship maximizes the number of guns you can bring to bear (since they primarily fire sideways) but at the same time gives your enemy a bigger target. A simple formula to give a bonus to cannon damage to an opposing ship if you fire a true broadside, and a bonus to "ship dodge" if a ship presents its fore or aft quadrants at time of firing. Though assigning a quartered fire-arc and the logic engine to it might be a monumental undertaking at this point.

I guess no re-enactments of Trafalgar then...

One-Eyed Jack on Nov 19, 2012 wrote:

A ship's Damage attribute is used to calculate the damage for any attack. Powers are a multiplier of this amount. The auto attack "cannon" does a fraction of the ship's damage.

We're going to look at clarifying some of the language on the display text to make it easier to understand.

Could you also please explain how (or even if) a Pirate's Nautical Level affects ship combat, beyond determining XP awards and being able to equip parts with minimum level requirements? Given identical ships & equipment would higher NXP give you more damage per hit, or increase repair rate, or what?