Apologies if this has been answered recently, but I can’t find it through Google or the forum search.
I’ve got a flensing weapon installed, the Britomart, but I don’t see an option for making flensing attacks in combat. Am I missing something obvious?
When you have a flensing weapon installed, all the attacks you do with that weapon are flensing attacks.
Ah, okay. I misunderstood the description. Thanks.
The problem you’re encountering is that you’ll destroy the ship waaaaaaaay before your flensing attacks reduce the enemy crew low enough to board.
I guess the intent is to slow down the opposing ship with its increased loss of crew? I haven’t actually used a flensing weapon yet so I’m withholding my judgment. Doesn’t seem promising though if you couldn’t just intuitively tell the difference.
edited by Neather on 2/10/2015
I’ve only found Flensing weapons to be better against creatures, never managed to get a ship down to sufficient crew to board…
Neither have I. I know the mechanic is there, but I still can’t get it to work. There is one other thing I can try, though: lowest iron possible and best gun – but for some reason even the flensing weapons don’t appear to damage crew consistently. I can fire three or four shots without my target suffering more than 1 crew loss, but the hull drops by 20 or 30 points…
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For the player, crew damage only happens when the hull is below 50 percent. i don’t know if this is the same for enemies. But, maybe that’s part of the problem?
It is the same for enemies.
If it wasn’t, it would be a way for flensing weapons to work, but then I suspect that only flensing weapons would get used… :( Balance, the question is always balance…
I think that’s the problem with Flensing attacks – prior to the Steel updated in early access Flensing attacks were too powerful because they damaged both crew and monsters – you never needed torpedoes or cannon because harpoons could kill off enemy crew faster than the cannon would kill off the ships, and monsters were more affected by the harpoons anyway.
Now we have the opposite problem: flensing attacks never kill crew and the ship-seizing mechanic is practically unattainable.
The solution is to make flensing weapons do far less damage to hull, so that they are still viable against Sea Monsters but take much longer against enemy ships. This would allow the seizure of ships and allow some builds where pirates could seize enemy vessels at the cost of it taking much longer. A ship with cannon and torpedoes would still be far more efficient at fighting enemy ships, but people who did it the hard way would be rewarded with the more complex privateer options or controversial pirate options.
That way, a frigate with both harpoons and torpedoes or cannon would be the most balanced vessels but far less capable of seizing ships. Meanwhile, builds designed to seize ships would be less efficient in combat, but the rewards would be greater. That would provide the best balance.
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I agree that there doesn’t seem to be much of a trade-off or hard choice between torpedoes vs. normal cannons vs. harpoons. Broadening the differences between hull, life, and crew damage might help.
I think that’s the problem with Flensing attacks – prior to the Steel updated in early access Flensing attacks were too powerful because they damaged both crew and monsters – you never needed torpedoes or cannon because harpoons could kill off enemy crew faster than the cannon would kill off the ships, and monsters were more affected by the harpoons anyway.
Now we have the opposite problem: flensing attacks never kill crew and the ship-seizing mechanic is practically unattainable.
The solution is to make flensing weapons do far less damage to hull, so that they are still viable against Sea Monsters but take much longer against enemy ships. This would allow the seizure of ships and allow some builds where pirates could seize enemy vessels at the cost of it taking much longer. A ship with cannon and torpedoes would still be far more efficient at fighting enemy ships, but people who did it the hard way would be rewarded with the more complex privateer options or controversial pirate options.
That way, a frigate with both harpoons and torpedoes or cannon would be the most balanced vessels but far less capable of seizing ships. Meanwhile, builds designed to seize ships would be less efficient in combat, but the rewards would be greater. That would provide the best balance.
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Well the fact that you can’t start to damage crew until you’ve brought the ship down to half health–which the flensing rounds do little to help with–solves the biggest problem with the pre-iron combat.
Honestly I think the damage threshhold, combined with the fact that you need to use only your forward guns, and have a much smaller firing arc is enough of a penalty to make flensing attacks reasonably balanced if they actually worked.
I went straight for the flensing weapons and I’m not having much trouble bringing hull down.
I think that’s the problem. Flensing weapons damage both monsters and crew. Cannon and torpedoes should damage hull faster than flensing weapons but damage monsters less. That way, you need a varied build to cover your bases, be better at certain things, certain tactics, etc.
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