Is there a way to remove ship-to-ship combat from the game?

[Katie]

I honestly really hate it. I find it borning. I think the interface sucks. I think it's confusing. And even though I admit I don't really understand it, I don't care to learn since I am not motivated to care. I fire my cannons at 40% over and over, and they miss, miss, miss. When they do it, it does such pitful damage and it's just drawn out and boring.

To be honest, I've tried playing this game many times, and each time I created a new character and got out of Port Maej, I was attacked by a ship and it was the worst experience that I just stopped playing.

On my 4th try after like a year of owning the game, I managed to get to Nekatakah without being attacked, so I did all of the quests there and the game was enjoyable and excellent. i wish the whole damn game was like this. But now I need to go back at sea to finish up more quests...

Honestly, I just want a button to "skip this interface, board the ship". I just want to get out of the interface as fast as possible. I don't want to interact with it. If you're not going to find a way to do Assassin's Creed-style ship-to-ship combat in an isometric way, then I don't care and maybe it should not have been implemented. This inteface just doesn't work for me.

And I do see an option to ram the ship, but this causes all sorts of morale problems, hull damage and half of your crew getting injured. To be honest, maybe I just don't even care about any of the ship mechanics. This is a feature I just never asked for.

[Armanz]

Well ramming is a good option. Hurt people heal, ship can be repaired. It just costs resources, but the loot you gain from defeating the enemy crew makes up for that anyway. The only real downside is that you have to manage not gettick attacked more than twice in a row without havin some repairs.

[puppet74]

there mods that can do that , havnt used them myself. i just run away, turn the ship away from them and run. or you can go directly to the combat option and board to fight. Later on you can get a ship that stops fights , but thats late , late game.

[Storm]

Just keep hitting full speed ahead until you can board the enemy ship...

[Katie]

Originally posted by GOBLIN SLAYER:

Just keep hitting full speed ahead until you can board the enemy ship...

Before you posted, I eventually stumbled onto this myself. But you know what's interesting? I tried this the first time, and I dunno - maybe it was just the lack of wind, but I could not close distance so I thought the feature was useless.

Honestly, if pressing 1,1,1,1,1,1,1 is the most effective way to interact with this thing (and you're right, I think it is), why not just automate or remove it altogether? I see no reason to turn to port, fire cannons or interact with any of this. It's entirely unnecessary and pressing 1,1,1,1,1,1,1 is boring and redundant.

I wish they just started the boarding fight when you ran into another ship. Like seriously. They have a great engine for dialogue, quests, combat and exploration. They should play to their strength rather than the mini-map and the ship mechanics. This part of the game is dreadfully bad.

[puppet74]

i think i remember reading an interview with obsidian recently where they said they were going to scrap the system all togther as it wasnt working. but then it was added as a stretch goal and met and so they just put in what they had.

If im right i think they changed it recently in a patch to make it easier to just board and fight right away, so thats probably why you could not do it awhile ago.

[Viper]

It actually similates real ship combat very well. All you would do as captian is give orders. As far as winning battles. Its not overly difficult once you figure it out. You manouver to deliver a broadsides to the enemy without receiving the same from them. Its a lot of turning and manouvering. You also have to keep the optimum range of your cannons in mind.

[Katie]

Originally posted by puppet74:

i think i remember reading an interview with obsidian recently where they said they were going to scrap the system all togther as it wasnt working. but then it was added as a stretch goal and met and so they just put in what they had.

If im right i think they changed it recently in a patch to make it easier to just board and fight right away, so thats probably why you could not do it awhile ago.

It's more efficient on resources to press 1,1,1,1,1,1,1 rather than use the option at the start of combat. The repair damage is no big deal, but getting 3 crew members injured is a ludicrous penality when you're only motivation is to avoid interacting with a bad UI :(

[Bigsby]

The entire ship system is terrible. I just picked up PoE 2 during the fall sale, and that prompted me to (finally) play the first PoE, which I loved. Did all the side quests, had a great time. So I was excited to start Deadfire. And then it got better: the graphics were better, the sounds were better, all caster spells are "per encounter" instead of "per rest," the camera does cool slow motion & zoom stuff in combat... I was pumped!

Then I got my ship and was told to sail to Nekatakah, and all of a sudden I'm in a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ version of Sid Meir's Pirates? And the ship combat is text based? Now I need all these crewmembers that I'll never know anything about, and I have to keep up with ship upgrades & maintenance. I don't understand why they did this. The effect is a poorly done hybrid ship game & RPG. The world you have to explore in your ship is pretty empty too. Walk around an island to find some fruit in a forest, while your crew has already consumed that much in the meantime? Tiny little 'combat arena' instances on the islands?

I feel like they had a pretty good system in place for the world map in PoE1. Other games have managed this with islands, you just go to the docks and some dude is like, "Arrrr, I'll take ye to barnacle bay! Are ye ready to depart?" And then you fast travel to barnacle bay.

Instead they've put this super grindy, poor implemented mini-game in between all the parts of the game that I want to play.

Also, super rad of them to not show you the ♥♥♥♥♥♥ ship part of the game until a few hours in, after your Steam refund window has closed.

[Katie]

Originally posted by Nebor:

The entire ship system is terrible. I just picked up PoE 2 during the fall sale, and that prompted me to (finally) play the first PoE, which I loved. Did all the side quests, had a great time. So I was excited to start Deadfire. And then it got better: the graphics were better, the sounds were better, all caster spells are "per encounter" instead of "per rest," the camera does cool slow motion & zoom stuff in combat... I was pumped!

Then I got my ship and was told to sail to Nekatakah, and all of a sudden I'm in a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ version of Sid Meir's Pirates? And the ship combat is text based? Now I need all these crewmembers that I'll never know anything about, and I have to keep up with ship upgrades & maintenance. I don't understand why they did this. The effect is a poorly done hybrid ship game & RPG. The world you have to explore in your ship is pretty empty too. Walk around an island to find some fruit in a forest, while your crew has already consumed that much in the meantime? Tiny little 'combat arena' instances on the islands?

I feel like they had a pretty good system in place for the world map in PoE1. Other games have managed this with islands, you just go to the docks and some dude is like, "Arrrr, I'll take ye to barnacle bay! Are ye ready to depart?" And then you fast travel to barnacle bay.

Instead they've put this super grindy, poor implemented mini-game in between all the parts of the game that I want to play.

Also, super rad of them to not show you the ♥♥♥♥♥♥ ship part of the game until a few hours in, after your Steam refund window has closed.

I pretty much had all of the same thoughts. I seriously did not mind an overmap in the same vein as Baldur's Gate. It just works. If it's not broke and nobody ever complained about it, why "fix" it? I don't know how this ever came up as a problem to solve. I have followed these games all the way back from the original BG, and nobody asked for something different with respect to the overview maps. And I've read a lot of posts throughout the years :/

Once you learn the whole "1,1,1,1,1,1... -> board ship" thing, you will get enough resources and money that actually sailing and walking around doesn't put you at a net loss in resources, although I know if you're not currently active in ship combat, everything looks bleak resource and morale-wise - I was there for many hours. Ship-to-ship combat is honestly mandatory.

Also, at higher levels, the farms and berries do give you more food. I've had them give me 60 or 130x of a type of food, making that part a non-issue at least. I mostly just hate all of the sailing, and how ships get into combat with you constantly - especially when you're like 2 steps away from your destination and you're like "holy ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ ♥♥♥♥... ♥♥♥♥-off ship!" I really don't like it.

[Dragon]

Originally posted by Viper:

It actually similates real ship combat very well.

No, it doesn't, not in the least bit. Real captains don't fight their battles solely by reading text on a screen.

OP is right: the text-based ship vs. ship combat in this game is terribad.

[DaGuy]

Originally posted by Dragon:

No, it doesn't, not in the least bit. Real captains don't fight their battles solely by reading text on a screen.

Yeah, real captains point a floaty hand at stuff that tells them all the stats+conditions of an enemy and directs their party members to fight telepathically.

I mean, did you even think that comment out?

[Yosh]

I have always loved sailing and ship combat. I'm personally thrilled that its in the game. That said, even I think it wasn't implemented very well. The UI for it isn't very good. I could see how this system would be brutal or unpleasent to people who arn't familiar or interested with ship to ship combat. Some basic animations or graphics to the battles would have helped a lot I think. It would be nice to hear the cries and cheers of your crew during battle too.

[Baron Robie]

Worst part of the game; makes very little sense.

[Peter Bazooka]

https://www.nexusmods.com/pillarsofeternity2/mods/4?tab=description just download this mod and go right to boarding.

[Onx]

I thought the same thing until I watched a few YouTube Videos on it. I think it's pretty cool now, and you can acutally make life easier when you board and face the enemy. There is defintely a ryhme and reason to it if you take 20 minutes to understand it. I'll get you started with a great tutorial on it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5UMvzsFHlI