best cannon

[ChadSimpKing]

hey guys what is the most cost efficient cannon you could equip on your ships early on, ive been using 4pders for a while but i want something a bit beefy

[Bischop]

I find that the carronades are very good. But you need to get close, very close to be accurate, but they are much more powerful than any other regular cannon in their size and weight class.

[Lakel]

blomefield is the best if you want the range and penetration, desagulers for light weight performance, gunnade is great if you want a blend of range and power.
Whatever you do dont use borgards. Only benefit they have is being cheap.

Otherwise as Bischop said, carronades are best if you want the most bang for the weight, and are comfortable getting close and personal with the enemy.

Ran a couple sixth rates with the 24 or 32pdr carronade i forget exactly on one mission I had to bring them, they practically one shot those poor Sloops.

Iirc EiC carronades tend to have a bit more range for similar weight, though they are pricey.

[Ninjasquirrel]

I like congreve gunnades, they have good range and penetration, have a high rate of fire, and are not heavy.

[Shenaldrac]

Yeah imo the Gunnades are the best of both worlds of high damage for the slot that can equip them and range. If you're looking for very precise accuracy and range then there are better guns for that, at the expense of damage, and vice versa, but overall I like Gunnades the best and boy do I wish there was a 48 or 64 pdr version! My 1st Rates don't need any fancy French re-bored guns, just give me super-sized gunnades!

[SpardaSon21]

That's actually what the French Re-Bored guns should be. The French pound was slightly larger than the English one, so the 42 pounder should be firing a 48 pound ball at a reduced powder charge because of the thinner cannon walls, but overall less weight than a gun that hasn't been bored out. The 32 pounder re-bored guns should be firing a 36 pound shell, with the same caveats as mentioned above.

[Hidden Gunman]

Originally posted by SpardaSon21:

That's actually what the French Re-Bored guns should be. The French pound was slightly larger than the English one, so the 42 pounder should be firing a 48 pound ball at a reduced powder charge because of the thinner cannon walls, but overall less weight than a gun that hasn't been bored out. The 32 pounder re-bored guns should be firing a 36 pound shell, with the same caveats as mentioned above.

I wonder why they didn't simply use a carrier with the equivalent English projectile, and extra wadding? Then they could have potentially had a ball driven by more powder, and with more energy, for the same ammunition expenditure.

[JaM]

Originally posted by SpardaSon21:

That's actually what the French Re-Bored guns should be. The French pound was slightly larger than the English one, so the 42 pounder should be firing a 48 pound ball at a reduced powder charge because of the thinner cannon walls, but overall less weight than a gun that hasn't been bored out. The 32 pounder re-bored guns should be firing a 36 pound shell, with the same caveats as mentioned above.

Re-Bored French guns kinda make no sense.. British pound was lighter (0.45kg vs 0.49kg French), therefore their 24pdr gun had larger bore than british 24pdr gun.. which means there is no way to "re-bore" it.. only option was to fire british 24pdr shot out of french gun, and therefore have less accurate gun..

technically, you could re-bore french 24pdr gun into 32pdr, but then such gun would be quite thin and susceptible to bursting, so you would have to use less powder with it, and have less penetration and accuracy...

[SpardaSon21]

That's literally what I said above... keep in mind you're not looking at a major re-boring. A French 32 pound ball was 34 English pounds and change (if I did my research and conversion math right), so you're only boring out less than 2 pounds of caliber if you go to an English 36 pound projectile (and they did have those, if in limited quantities), or about .3 inches overall, so .15 inches of material to bore out. You'd need to be careful you didn't add some stress fractures while doing so, but you'd also eliminate any wear defects that had appeared from use, so you basically got a fresh new cannon barrel. The US military did something similar at the start of the Civil War with its James Rifle conversions boring out bronze smoothbores to eliminate defects then machining in rifling grooves, and aside from the cast iron shot wrecking the soft bronze from travel friction they worked quite well.

To go from a French 42 to an English 48 you'd have roughly half an inch total to bore out, so .25 inches of boring since you're inside a cylinder, plus a little extra to account for the tolerances of the day, so well within safety margins, especially with a reduced powder charge.

[Vasya2423]

I like french re-bored guns for demasting enemy SOLs from long range. Since the enemy ship is far away it's going straight at you with no angular velocity, so it's really easy to hit its masts. I just had my bellona break 2 masts from enemy barfleur with just 3 volleys.

However, there are no long range guns that could fit into 3rd and 2nd rates middle-decks, so majority of cannons in my fleet are still gunnades. Some people on this forum mentioned having 32 pdr gunnades on barfleur's upper deck or on leda, but it doesn't seem to be possible in current version of the game.

[Ninjasquirrel]

Nope, barfleur class got nerfed. You used to be able to mount 32pdr congreves on all 3 gun decks, giving it ability to dish out tremendous morale shock in one broadside. Because of the uniform armament, there are no ragged broadsides, every time you fire you're hitting with all your guns, making it hard for ai to have sufficient morale recovery time.

It also had so much capacity with that gun setup that you can have 800 or 900 men onboard and still cruise around the map at 13+ knots.

Gunnades were also a lot more accurate back then so that ship was just super op.

[JaM]

gunnades were badly portrayed in old versions.. real gunnades were not liked by Navy that much, captains that used them in combat reported 24pdr gunnade to be worse than 18pdr medium gun, due to inaccuracy and insufficient penetration, while gunnade had quite terrible recoil and was found problematic when used in prolonged combat (as observed by captain of HMS Eurotas, a ship that was testing the new gunnades, when she met in combat French Frigate Clorinde in 1814.. overall, only 700 gunnades were produced, and they were withdrawn from service by 1830.. most of them ended up serving on EOC ships...