I've been an avid KI supporting for many years and have to say I love P101. It blends appealing play types very well. Kudos! Now on to the post.
Bugs or simply overlooked mechanics: Swashbuckler Poisons and bleeds do not stack, regardless of rank (Like rank 1 back stab and rank 2 back stab). This is terribly detrimental, in that, we HAVE to wait out the turns not to waste an ability, whilst taking incoming damage. Additionally this detracts from a strategic stand point because I cannot poison/bleed one opponent and let it tick away as I deal direct damage to another.
Broadside combat is terribly slow, this is only negated by attacking lower level ships with heavy figure head and horn spells, of which miss a lot when facing like level opponents. On the plus side, I love how the ships seem to notice their fellow fleet in distress as they will snail there way over to battle if the pirate is careless and does not pull them correctly, I have become rather good at this. My Idea to correct broadside combat tempo would be to add manual attacks for the cannons, like either chain shot, scatter shots and big shots, scatter could be less damage more accuracy, chain would be your middle ground and big shot would be you high damage low accuracy one. Horn attacks should be more well rounded and not so identical to figureheads, like you may keep them at 2X ad just make the chance to add tokens 80-100% to assist players not fond of ship sinking.
The Companion System is fun and very engaging. Fixed Training Book rates, the increase as you level is severely taxing, you already have a gold limit so keeping the high rates at high levels is unneccessary. Also, companions should share a portion if not all of the captains major stats (Str, Agi, Wis) if not at least there secondary (acc, dodge, armor. The talents just need to be reworked into percentages instead of +X Strength. Companions always appear with your flag colors, keep the tiles color schemes the same, but to have El Torro come out swinging wearing Cyan is emasculating for the poor bull, he smiles so much to hide the pain of embarrassment. Lastly, increase the gap between chance to appear in combat, at least to where between 10-15 your companions recieve a flat 0% instead of less than 1%. This allow more predictability for contigency planning.
Your ship should level as your Commander level increase and reflects the stats of the ships you would be required to buy now. each ship could gain abilities so as to allow for not just astetic differences, but strategic ones as well. For instance pirate ships would be more shady, in that they could cast shadows reducing accuracy or have added combat haste, roy navy more defense or added effect from indomitable you take creative license with this. Just require captains pay to have the ship upgraded at each stage, the gold amount would be similar to the cost of a new ship.
Captain Morgan, Black Jack Morgan - Keep your daggers sharp and one boot in the shadows.

Maybe they're bleeding from different parts of the body. This certainly wouldn't make it the first strategy RPG to have such a setup.

Health Wealth and ... on Dec 24, 2012 wrote:

Maybe they're bleeding from different parts of the body. This certainly wouldn't make it the first strategy RPG to have such a setup.

Please. Don't go there.