any strategies on plundering forts?

[Aki]

hey everyone, any advices you can say to me to plunder forts? i've tried in san juan, and i had luck because a french patrol was sacking the town at that time, but they hadn't the resources i was looking for, so it wasn't a good idea to lose rep with spain for it, so rolled back an older saved game, tried with another fort.... went to santiago, santo domingo, havanna and such... all of 'em beated the h3ll out of me and my fleet (i have a MoW, 2 1st lines, and a heavy galleon full of crew) also my other ships won't do nothing, they don't attack (they are manned by officers that don't have navigation skills so that might be the issue maybe) in my ship i have tichingitu as navigator, he's 100 on that skill, and a cannoneer with 100 cannons and 98 accuracy maybe. And there's no luck...
any advices will come handy, thanks!!!

[StormRangerX]

When your companions don't have high enough navigation for the ship they're manning they'll get massive penalties to all stats, making it so they move way slower and are a lot less accurate. You're effectively fighting the fort by yourself at that point. If you want to take down a fort slowly you can set up at long range and just bombard it with cannonballs to whittle it down over time, your fleet will be at low risk of damage doing this but it takes a long time. Otherwise you can get in closer and take it down more quickly, but the fort can easily retaliate. Make sure you bring enough crew as well, at least 1k depending on the defending garrison, I'd even go up to 1.5-2k for the bigger forts.

[Aki]

thanks storm! and how can I increase the official's skills fast? the're probably 75... maybe that's for a class 3 or 4... and I think that it's not a good idea to attack a fort with those ships and my MoW

[Dreadnought]

if you want to practice Fort assault Cartagena is the best Fort for practice.
use 18p coulevrines for you companion ships for long range and order them to use cannon balls since they have the highest range in combination with cannons.

Forts usually have attack range of 1200 but only a few cannons will fire at you.

Pay attention to the fort layout and the direction the wind is blowing.

Rewards are fixed and i mean you cant savescum for a different reward before/after the is destroyed and sometimes you dont get *special* rewards.

max bounty is 100.000 and each visit from fadey or priestguy is payed in 600 doublons and removes 20.000 from your bounty. sneaking inside the city and looking for a job to find stolen ship removes 20.000 from your bounty and gives you doublons chests.

there are other things that i wont mention cuz i dont remember so... good luck.