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Pirates of the Burning Sea

Sea Battles

Ship-to-ship battles, both on the open seas and in ship-based missions, easily take the crown as the best part of PoTBS. It actually feels like the game was originally envisioned entirely as ship-based game without any of the land parts, and the latter were added to the mix to widen the appeal of the game (towards the crowd that is buzzing around World of Warcraft) much later on.

Time of day is randomly determined and can affect battles - it's very hard to hit anything at night.

Sail damage reduces maximum speed and turn rate.

Warfare on the oceans is outright beautiful, and simulates combat between sailing vessels fairly well. While a superior number of guns, better ammunition and better armor certainly helps, tactics, positioning and speed are also vital, and there is plenty of room for smart teamwork. Blasting away with big broadsides helps reduce the enemy armor and hull to sawdust, but there is more than one way to skin the cat. Smaller and faster ships can stay out of the firing arcs of bigger, slower ships while nibbling away the sails (and further slowing down their targets); or you can go for anti-personnel ammunition types, and decimate the crew of the target vessel before boarding it. You can split the ships roughly in three categories - merchant ships (aka "free loot"), nimble combat ships designed for boarding and bigger warships designed for devastating broadsides.

Each career has its own mix of naval skills, and most of them relate to combat. Abilities like temporary speed or agility boosts, reload speed increases, special shots that damage certain parts of a ship are available, depending on your career. You can also redirect your crew to concentrate on a specific task - sailing, gunnery or maneuvering. In addition to skills, you can use temporary consumable items, comparable to "potions" in fantasy terms, to get that small extra edge or emergency repair in a tight spot. Derelict ships, still floating after the battle, can be either taken over, salvaged for extra loot (Pirates) or sent back to nearest friendly port and turned to the national authorities for reward tokens (Naval Officers and Privateers).

Consequences in a Harsh World

While the combat in land-based missions is very conventional, and you can't really lose anything by dying, battles on the high seas are a completely different affair. If you get sunk or boarded, you lose all of your "unsecured" cargo, permanent fittings and a durability point off your ship. As you restore durability by spending additional ship deeds, each point is effectively one ship. A deed restores as many points as a fresh ship from the same deed would have, and if you lose the last durability point, the ship is history. Your consumables, stored fittings, uncrated ammunition and your personal items are safe, but the rest of the stuff on board is gone, and in PvP combat, the winner gets to loot your cargo.

In PvP you also have an option to surrender by offering a percentage of your cargo to the attacker - usually a fair deal if it saves your opponent the effort and ammunition that would otherwise be spent turning your hull and sails into something resembling Swiss cheese. Currently you can toss your cargo overboard to deny the spoils to your opponent, if it's clear that you are beaten, but this "feature" has raised some complaints and it's not exactly fair to the winner of the PvP encouncer.

It should be noted that in addition to any raw materials and manufactured goods, any unused ship deeds are part of the unsecured cargo, so be careful when sailing with them - the losses can be devastating. Deeds for structures are a special case: they are considered personal items, and stay on you when you get blasted to bits. Currently logging out on the open seas is not safe and your ship can stay around and get sunk, but this feels like an unintended feature and highly unfair if you end up disconnecting due to network issues and later return only to find yourself at port without your cargo.

The real consequences from losses in ship combat may sound harsh, but the inevitable penalties support a real working economic cycle - every player will need to replace his ship and upgrades often, so there will always be a market for these items. Every (non-basic) cannonball fired is a sale of another, every player ship sunk has to be replaced with a player-made ship deed, and so the wheels of economy keep spinning. Real PvP consequences are very much welcomed and PotBS is very similar to EVE Online in this regard.

Page 1: IntroductionPage 2: Factions and CareersPage 3: Gameplay FundamentalsPage 4: Gameplay - Sea BattlesPage 5: Gameplay - EconomicsPage 6: Gameplay - Faction PvPPage 7: Issues & ComplaintsPage 8: Technology, User Generated ContentPage 9: Final Thoughts and Scoring

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