Navy Guide v1.1 - For King and Country
http://www.king-and-country.comBy Korhal
Version Info
1.0 Initial guide created.
1.1 Added crew suggestions.
Contents
[01] Intro[02] The Test
[03] Your First Ship
[04] Hire a Crew
[05] Ammunition
[06] Weather
[07] Your First Raid
[08] Your First Capture
[09] Fleet Battles
[10] Crew Suggestions
[11] Closing
[01] Intro
The navy is a new aspect to The Last Knights (TLK), brought to life in Vincent's new edition of TLK, called For King and Country (KNC). It's easy to get lost when you're first starting out, so I'll try to set you straight and get you up and running with your first ship, and detail other stuff later.
[02] The Test
Wanna be a big bad mu'fuggin' pirate do ya? Naming your ship the "Black Pearl" or "UBERPWN" or somethin' so you can wreak havoc on the open seas? Well, you gotta start from the bottom of the shit pile. Yeah, that's right, Midshipman. Mud on your leader's boot is what you are. First, go take your Sea Lieutenant test at the acadamy, don't worry about how many tries it takes, just get 'er done. If you don't, you have to be a passenger on a buddy's ship until you get enough experience to level up, and that's no fun. I'm not gonna help with the questions, so don't bother asking. Read the FAQ on the website.
[03] Your First Ship
Alright, go to the Shipyard. See that nifty ship called a "Schooner"? Bet you can afford it, can't ya? Well, keep looking. You don't want it. The "Cutter" is what you're looking for, so type in the name and buy one. In fact, buy two, you'll earn double the experience since you'll be able to do twice the training runs (in theory). Cutters are easier to manage and are surprisingly more difficult to damage than a Schooner (due to the fact you'll be engaging easier targets), and your crew will be safer from cannon fire. You'll have to wait a tick, and they'll be ready, but before the tick turns over, you have to...
[04] Hire a Crew
You ain't gonna run this ship by yourself, so go back to the Harbor. You'll need a crew, and you don't want a poor one. You're not rich enough to buy a good ones, so you'll have to go with average crew for now. Each Cutter needs 8 crew members. You have 2 Cutters, so hire:
2 avg. Gunners
2 avg. Carpenters
2 avg. Surgeons
10 avg. Sailors
Now, go to My Ships on the left sidebar and click on Personal Crew at the top. You should see all your crew there waiting for your orders. Select 1 of the gunners, 1 carpenter, 1 surgeon and 5 sailors, scroll to the bottom and click "Employ selected". They'll now be shoved onto the ship that's highlighted at the bottom. Now, select all the unemployed crew and go to the bottom again, click on the dropdown box and select your other ship, and click on "Employ selected" again. Now your entire crew will be ready and able to do their jobs when the tick rolls over.
[05] Ammunition
Once the tick rolls over, you'll be able to buy ammunition for your ships, but first you have to embark on one. Go to the Harbor and you'll see your Cutters ready. Click on "Embark" next to one of them, and you'll make yourself Captain of your ship. If you look up now, you'll see the ammunition options available (if not, go to the City Center and back to the Harbor, sometimes the game fails to update these things). You want enough ammo to do enough raids, but not so much your ship will explode, so buy 10 kegs of powder and 100 cannonballs to start. For a Schooner (don't buy one, seriously), you could have 15-20 kegs and 150-200 cannonballs, and a Brig could take 50 kegs and 500 cannonballs... are you noticing a pattern? A 1:10 ratio of powder:ammo is good, but again, don't buy too much powder or you run a high risk of explosion when shot in a battle.
[06] Weather
Check the City Center; in the middle under the neat little picture
will be a weather update. [Right now for me out on the open
sea: Wind: Northern Storm (4.41). Woot!] If you see the weather at
2.4 or lower, you can put out to sea without risk of damage. If
it's a Gale (2.5+), you'll run slight damage when you travel, but
should be okay so long as the forecast doesn't show worse weather
ahead.
If it's a Storm (3.7+) or Violent Storm (5.2+), you definately
don't want to go out or you'll run a high chance of sinking. Every move
will
damage your hull and sails, and if your sails go below 50%, you
may as well kiss your ship goodbye. You'll sink and end up back at
port, since every move you make and every tick that goes by runs a
chance to capsize your boat (detailed percentages are in the game's
FAQ). Here's a breakdown of the types of weather you can encounter:
Calm: 0.0 - 0.5?
Light Breeze: 0.5 - 1.0?
Moderate Breeze: 1.0 - 2.0?
Strong Breeze: 2.0 - 2.5?
Gale: 2.5 - 3.7
Storm: 3.7 - 5.2
Violent Storm: 5.2+
(If someone could verify those top four, that'd be cool.)
These types of weather can run from any of 8 directions and factor in to how many move points it takes to travel in any direction. Moving against the wind is obviously harder than moving with the wind, and can cost a lot of move points, sometimes making it impossible to travel. In any case, for now, try to avoid Gales, Storms and Violent storms, and travel in fairer conditions.
[07] Your First Raid
Okay, you're all set. Ship - check. Crew - check. Ammo - check. Captainized - check. Go to the City Center and scope out the weather. Provided the weather is good (2.5 or less), click the Travel button and put to sea.
And now you're lost. Well, get your bearings by clicking on the Map. If you have it enabled in your profile, you should see "Your ship" somewhere on the map. That's where you're at. And now it's time to do some thinking on your own. Yes, I have to let go of your hand for a few minutes, so DON'T FREAK OUT. I'm going to assume you have some rudimentary knowledge of how to travel north, south, east and west. Now, check the wind direction (Northern means its blowing from the north, making travel to the south easier.. etc). If the nearest enemy village (the little grey thing that looks like a shield) is in a location that's going with the wind, then great, head over there (make sure to remember how to get there - count the blocks needed to get there and select the appropriate direction(s) in the City Center and click the Travel button. If it's multiple blocks away, go to the nearest friendly port (or you can even go to a neutral port in the same area as the village), and make it your Hometown by pressing the "Make Hometown" button at the City Center while you're in the port. Head back out to the village and you'll see a button called "Raid" across from the village. A "Spy" button will be there too, but it's greyed out and unavailable. Click the "Raid" button, and enter the battle.
Oh no, a Fortress! Haha, sucker. No, really, this will be a piece of cake. Select the Fortress as the target and Cannonballs as your ammunition, and click on "Attack". The first volley of shots will be fired from each side, with the defender firing first. You'll either do damage, or you won't, and you'll either take damage, or you won't. It depends on the skill of your crew, the skill of your opponent and a bit of luck. Attack the fortress again with cannonballs.. and again.. and again... Keep doing that until it's destroyed. You'll notice your hull dropping as you get attacked, and your sails will take a bit of damage, but as long as you have more than 40% of your hull in this first battle, keep fighting.
So you've destroyed the fortress (hopefully), or got your ass kicked or the battle went into a tie.. go back to your port and wait for a tick. Your ship heals 1000 hull points and 100 sail points while in a harbor, otherwise it'll heal 100 hull points and 10 sails. If you want, you could also just go to My Ship and fix your ship with your carpenter and heal your units with your surgeon and do another raid. Once you head back to port, so long as you're not injured yourself, embark on your other cutter and do the same thing. Keep raiding the village over and over, gain XP and gold until you have about 120k gold. Don't bother buying a schooner. If you want, you could hire some good crew members to replace your average ones along the way, but make sure you get 120k gold. Once you do, build a Brig (if you have to, sell one of your cutters after recalling the crew [do not dismiss!]). Build the Brig, transfer old crew/hire new crew to put onto it, and wait until it's built. Continue the raids until your crew is excellent/superb (you can check while on the ocean by Spying on yourself), and if you're comfortable with your ship and crew.. it's time to capture some ships.
[08] Your First Capture
For this, you'll need some crew replacements. Keep your gunners, keep your specialized units, but take half of your sailors and replace them with good-ranked marines (this is why you saved so much gold earlier). If there are any other crewmen below the level of a good-ranked unit in your crew, dismiss them and replace them with those of good rank. Now, you'll need some extra ammunition. Make sure to have 20 powder kegs, 200 cannonballs, 150 chainshot and 150 grapeshot. Head out to sea and navigate around looking for a ship just like yours.. if you're in a Schooner, find an enemy (or pirate) Schooner, if its a Cutter, find a Cutter, Brig find a Brig, and so on. Try not to engage anything that has a higher rank than you (you can get a quick guess as to the ship's rank when you enter an area; there will be a decimal number on the right side that gauges strength. If it's less than 1 (but greater than 0.5), it will be easier to capture, if greater than 1, it will be harder to capture. If the other ship's strength is less than 0.5, or greater than 2 (it might even be 1.5, I'm not sure what the cap is on attacking ships stronger than your own), you will be unable to attack it. In any case, find a ship near your strength, and attack it.
Engagement ensues. Your first task is to slow the ship down to enable you to get up alongside it and capture it. To do this, you'll need chainshot. Select chainshot as your attack type and select your target. Fire off your first volley. Load up chainshot again and fire a second time. Make sure you connect with it twice, then you can switch to cannonballs. They'll need a sizeable hole in their hull before grapeshot will do the trick, so attack with cannonballs until 1/3 of the hull is gone. Switch to grapeshot. By now your hull might be hurting as well, but don't worry about that yet. So long as you still have 40% or more, you should be okay. Fire off your first volley of grapeshot. You might notice that not much happened.. either you'll injure one or two, or it might say absolutely nothing. That's okay, it just means the shot spread around and partially injured a lot of crew. If you see that it damaged the ship by 30-40 points, then the hull isn't damaged enough and you should fire another volley of cannonballs. Fire grapeshot again, and you'll notice more injuries. Continue to fire grapeshot, and soon enough there will be only a few left standing, or if you're really lucky, the ship will be empty of crew. Now's the time to board.
Select the "Attempt boarding" option from the list of attacks and select the target ship. If the percentage to board is too low, you may have to fire another round of chainshot to slow the ship down even more, but by now the battle is coming down to the wire and you'll only have a couple more rounds to finish it before it ends in a draw. Attempt the boarding. If it fails and there's still gunners on board, they may connect with some cannonball fire and damage your ship. If you have plenty of hull left, ignore that and continue trying to board. Either you'll capture it before the battle times out or you won't, and that's where luck comes in. If it fails, head back to port and heal your ship and crew, because the ship you targetted now has 6 turns of attack protection. If it succeeds, then congratulations! You've added a ship to your collection. Well done.
Summary:
Chainshot the sails to 50% or lower
Cannonball the hull to around 66% or lower
Grapeshot until few or no crew are left
Attempt boarding
[09] Fleet Battles
Okay, so you know how to raid. You know how to attack ships. You know how to capture ships. So I'll tell you what I know about fleet battles... They're difficult, they hurt like a son of a bitch and you may even lose a ship or two. Never.. EVER take a fleet of ships in a raid. You'll almost guarantee the loss of a ship or even a commander (yes, both happened to me - RIP Nightstalker :P). Your best bet when taking a fleet of ships into battle is to battle another fleet of ships. If you have a fleet of ships strong enough (like, one or two Ships of the Line and the rest large frigates), you can try battling a city. Regardless, you'll be pitted against another group of ships (or fortresses when in a city battle). There's something to remember now about these battles. Normally if you have a ship, in a standard raid or ship vs. ship battle, you'll fire half of your ship's guns. 6 guns, 3 get fired. 32 guns, 16 get fired. Et cetera. Fleet battles will engage ALL of your ship's cannons, and they'll be fired in two seperate volleys. If you don't have enough gunners to support them, you'll only fire a few of the other side's guns during your second volley, or you won't fire any of them at all. Make ABSOLUTELY SURE you have at LEAST 1/2 of your ship's guns as gunners in your crew. If you have 32 guns, have at LEAST 16 gunners (in this case, 18 would be ideal). The reason for this is you want to do the maximum damage possible every single round, because if you don't, your chance of losing is extremely high.
So! Now that you've made sure you have enough gunners on your ship to fire every single cannon, you need to be in a fleet. Either start a fleet by raising a flag when you're a Senior Post Captain (it's in the My Ship section), or join someone else's fleet (at the Harbor). Take the fleet and head towards your target (or sit back and enjoy the ride if you've joined one). Engage the target like you normally would by pressing the Attack button. The familiar battle screen will come up, but this time there will be multiple targets on either side.
One important note: you can only fire on a single target two times per round; likewise, the enemy can only fire on one of the ships on your side of the battle twice per round, so use this to your advantage.
Disclaimer: These next statements are of my own opinion and may not necessarily reflect the opinions of others or even be the correct way to do this, but this has been my experience and if you're reading this, you're obviously looking for advice, so if you don't like it you can put a sock in it. ;)
If you're battling a group of ships, attack the biggest ships first. They're the ones going to do the most damage, and your secondary fire will probably end up hitting one of the smaller ships anyway, but you want those big ships taken out FIRST. Focus your fire accordingly and bring them down. It might be easier to chainshot them all first so you can make your volleys more accurate, but this is really only necessary if your chance to hit these ships is less than 78-80%. If you're looking to capture them, definately chainshot and follow the standard procedures to capture an enemy ship.
If you're battling a city, you're probably going to end up facing a minimum of 1 fortress, though you may face up to 5 of them. First things first, take out the SHIPS. Ignore the fortresses for now. You likely have more than just one fleet sitting around waiting to attack the city, otherwise attacking the city isn't going to do much good. There will be lots of ships to fight, and you will take a lot of damage, so hope that your secondary fire hits the fortresses, but make your primary focus the ships. The reason for this is that fortresses respawn every tick if destroyed, and they are subject to the 1,000 hull point healing the city gives, so taking them on first is quite dangerous.
[end disclaimer]
Continue your battle until you're ready to flee or you win. It's
hard to tell you exactly what to do and when to do it without seeing
the
battle firsthand, so use your intuition (you damn well better have
some) and go with your gut. If you have a ship that looks like it may
be
sunk soon, select the "Stay Behind" option for that ship and
they'll have a less likely chance to be targetted by random enemy fire.
The
downside to this is your other ships are more likely to be
targetted (duh). So "Stay Behind" to keep injured ships safer, use your
head,
use your gut, and good luck.
[10] Crew Suggestions
Below I've listed the standard ships and a few of the special ships and pirate ships, and my suggestions for each ship's crew. Don't like it? Well, kiss my ass. It works for me. The marines are only used when capturing ships, so if you don't plan on doing that, and don't plan on getting captured, you can drop the marines and substitute more sailors and gunners in their stead.
While in a fleet
Barque: 1 carp, 1 surg, 9 gunners, 6 sailors, 2 marines, 1 officer
Brig: 1 carp, 1 surg, 6 gunners, 5 sailors, 2 marines, 1 officer
Corvette: 1 carp, 1 surg, 10 gunners, 6 sailors, 1 marines, 1 officer
Cutter: 1 carp, 1 surg, 2 gunners, 3 sailors, 1 marine
Frigate/26 gun: 1 carp, 1 surg, 1 sailmaker, 15 gunners, 14 sailors, 12 marines, 1 officer
Frigate/32 gun: 1 carp, 1 surg, 1 sailmaker, 18 gunners, 10 sailors, 3 marines, 1 officer
Frigate/38 gun: 1 carp, 1 surg, 1 sailmaker, 20 gunners, 18 sailors, 11 marines, 1 officer
Galley: 1 carp, 1 surg, 1 sailmaker, 5 gunners, 5 sailors, 2 marines, 1 officer
Schooner: 1 carp, 1 surg, 3 gunners, 3 sailors, 2 marines
SOTL/60 gun: 2 carp, 2 surg, 2 sailmakers, 35 gunners, 22 sailors, 11 marines, 1 officer
SOTL/74 gun: 2 carp, 2 surg, 2 sailmakers, 40 gunners, 26 sailors, 17 marines, 1 officer
SOTL/80 gun: 2 carp, 2 surg, 2 sailmakers, 45 gunners, 34 sailors, 14 marines, 1 officer
Transport: 2 gunners, 2 sailors
War Galleon: 1 carp, 1 surg, 1 sailmaker, 18 gunners, 10 sailors, 8 marines, 1 officer
War Junk: 1 carp, 1 surg, 1 sailmaker, 9 gunners, 5 sailors, 2 marines, 1 officer
Xebec: 1 carp, 1 surg, 1 sailmaker, 14 gunners, 8 sailors, 2 marines, 1 officer
While travelling solo
Barque: 1 carp, 1 surg, 6 gunners, 7 sailors, 4 marines, 1 officer
Brig: 1 carp, 1 surg, 4 gunners, 6 sailors, 3 marines, 1 officer
Corvette: 1 carp, 1 surg, 6 gunners, 8 sailors, 3 marines, 1 officer
Cutter: 1 carp, 1 surg, 1 gunner, 3 sailors, 2 marines
Frigate/26 gun: 1 carp, 1 surg, 1 sailmaker, 8 gunners, 18 sailors, 15 marines, 1 officer
Frigate/32 gun: 1 carp, 1 surg, 1 sailmaker, 10 gunners, 12 sailors, 11 marines, 1 officer
Frigate/38 gun: 1 carp, 1 surg, 1 sailmaker, 12 gunners, 20 sailors, 17 marines, 1 officer
Galley: 1 carp, 1 surg, 1 sailmaker, 3 gunners, 6 sailors, 3 marines, 1 officer
Schooner: 1 carp, 1 surg, 2 gunners, 4 sailors, 2 marines
SOTL/60 gun: 2 carp, 2 surg, 2 sailmakers, 20 gunners, 30 sailors, 18 marines, 1 officer
SOTL/74 gun: 2 carp, 2 surg, 2 sailmakers, 24 gunners, 34 sailors, 23 marines, 1 officer
SOTL/80 gun: 2 carp, 2 surg, 2 sailmakers, 26 gunners, 40 sailors, 27 marines, 1 officer
Transport: 1 carp, 1 sailmaker, 1 gunner, 1 sailors
War Galleon: 1 carp, 1 surg, 1 sailmaker, 10 gunners, 14 sailors, 12 marines, 1 officer
War Junk: 1 carp, 1 surg, 1 sailmaker, 6 gunners, 8 sailors, 2 marines, 1 officer
Xebec: 1 carp, 1 surg, 1 sailmaker, 9 gunners, 10 sailors, 4 marines, 1 officer
[11] Closing
I hope all of this makes sense and is a help to you naval players out there. If something needs a better explanation, or if you think of something that could be added to the guide, send an email to pharlik [at] hotmail [dot] com with the subject "KNC Navy Guide" and I'll see what I can do to re-explain or clarify. Any other emails will get deleted. ;)