Okay, so I got tired of ramming crap all the time to sink it so gave a whack
at cannons. The short story: could the bottom end of the spectrum for
cannon combat be possibly tweaked up some?

The long story: I have a class 4 boat, just got cannons...only got 4 to see
how they work (so only 25% of what I coulda gotten). I just had 5 cannoneers
on, just bought them so were only level 4s.

My target: level 1 boat. I used standard and sure shot. Used more
standard so got more hits that way, but still either round seemed usable.
Over a 20 minute period I got 10 ?trim messages? (which seem to just be a near
hit, but no damage done vs possibly being something where you do shrapnel
damage because you were close), 1 rudder hit, 6 sail hits, and 2 hull hits.
In that time frame the boat just kinda sat there cuz it had no weapons and let
me shoot at it , so no risk:). I got was kinda bored so used a single ram to
sink it after the 2 hull hits (which took the hull to 10%). In the course of
it all, I had a misfire the damaged a crew member (cannoneer), which left him
?profusing bleeding?. That btw, seems to mean another equal blast will kill
him. So shortly thereafter I had a cannon explode and he died. Positive
note: I got to learn something new...how to do a funeral at sea! Oh yeah, I
used 141 standard shots and 54 sure shots for this combat, only targeting the
hull the last few minutes of combat. Now

I had a very newbie cannon crew, and I?m sure it improves much with levels
(like sailors and all others do), but I was wondering if we could up the
success of the newbies some? I know with a full complement of cannons (4x
what I had) I woulda have done the boat in 5 minutes of blasting... and
probably less since I was only shooting with 3 cannons a few minutes into it.
But compared to 2 rams with an experienced crew (or arguably 4 ram attempts
with a crappy one?) I could have gotten the same results. Also, in getting my
7k of loot and couple training points I lost a crew member and blew up a 22k
cannon. Now I imagine if I had a full complement of cannoneers, the odds of
2 blasts hitting the same guy would be cut in half, but still it?d be nice for
them to have completed a Safety 101 course by the time they make it to a boat.
I do plan to try cannons again just to learn the system more (targeting the
hull to see if that makes a big diff vs the ?let?s hope the shoot anything
targeting gets the hull? approach) when I have time to play around with it.
Cuz I thought it was fun!

So a less likely chance of blowing up if they are at least level 4?s would be
great. This would allow using cannons more practically while you wait for
trainers to show. And a better hit % would be great too!

Thanks Stal

Oh, apparently I blew up 2 cannons in those 20 minutes. So yeah....making
sure all level 4 cannoneers have Shoot Stuff Safely 101 would be REALLY great.

Okay so I tried again this time targeting the hull. After 2 cannons blowing up
(the ones I just replaced ), i sunk it in only 34 shots. By it I mean a
class 1 boat that just sat there and waited for death! So 8k loot for 45k in
cannons...good news is that the cannoneer that was injured (the same one each
time) musta been wearing his foam helmet or something because he only was
partially wounded, and I was able to clw him some since he happened to be on
deck. In another 6 months or so when i have better trained crews I'll try
again.

Stal.