How should I outfit my expedition ship?

[pat]

I've all but given up on expeditions. I've read a few guides that are totally vague on how you should outfit expedition ships. Take some rations (I take that to mean food). Does it make a difference what food? One guide said bring some alcohol. Again, does type make a difference? How much firepower? A frigate? Ship of the line?

I try to outfit the ship based on the game's suggestion, and I always exceed 100%. But once the voyage is underway, I invariably get an endless set or predicaments where I'm given a few possible options, and next to each one, it says "You are in no way equipped to..."

[altarius]

rations = food. i usually take either canned food, schnaps or sparkling wine - whatever i have available on the closest island to the ship. After every event, you either lose 10 morale or way less when using rations.

alcohol is refering to either schnaps or rum. both are doubling as medicine with critical success in some events and can be used in cases of trying to convince people by offering them goods.

apart from these two i usually fill the rest with items or specialists. some navigation, some fighting power, some rhetoric skills.

regarding the ships: the more slots it has, the better, as one can find additional loot during an expedition which then requires an empty slot. I ususally take ship of the line and when possible switch over to steam cargo ships (8 slots) or the steam battle ship (7 slots)

[behemoth227]

Depends on the type of ship you're using, and the type and difficulty of expedition. I use beer as a ration personally, because it also gives a bonus to diplomacy. Mostly, look at the symbols across the top of the expedition screen, hunting likely, naval combat almost certain, etc, and add people and items that check those boxes. Different expeditions call for different items, and you can see what each items effect is by hovering over it.

[Zulfurlubak]

First of all, you want to dedicate 1 slot to rations. You can tell if the item is considered a ration by mousing over items in your harbor. It will say "Extra rations" in description. It's important because alcohol and semiproducts like pepper, raw beef or pigs are considered extra rations too. Imho, the best item for this slot is champagne. It gives you nice +30 diplomacy bonus for slot filled, it works as an extra ration item and it has high value in situations when you need to bribe someone or buy something during the course of an expedition.

The rest of the slots are best filled with character items, like admirals etc, preferably of rare or higher quality. It's pretty hard if not outright impossible to prepare your ship for every kind of situation but it is usually more that enough if you stack 2 or 3 parameters. For example, naval power, navigation and force. Then in almost any situation you gonna have good +% to your chances when making event choices.

[pat]

Thanks everyone for all the good advice. Perhaps my next expeditions will return something fruitful

[Ebin398]

IF you have two kinds of rations, the "morale decay offset" wanes slower.

In other words, two different kinds of rations will help you retain morale for longer. That being said, you have to give up another slot that you could have for another useful item, so it's a difficult choice sometimes.

I usually have one slot dedicated to 50 schnapps and another dedicated to 50 champagne (or beer if I'm not investors yet) because they have medicine and diplomacy bonuses on top of the ration bonus.

[Smokerbait]

When you can afford it, go to Bleakworth's Prison and grab specialists (be willing to spend money on rerolls). It can be a slog, but some Blue level or higher specialist are terrific because they usually have two stat benefits. I have a Doctor (can't remember the name) who has +40 Medicine and +20 Crafting, for example.

I use the Steam Cargo Ship for everything other than Pirate quests. Even if an archeology quest says Naval Power will be a factor, unless it's "Nearly Certain", I take the Cargo Ship. I use the two equip slots for Specialists and can get at least +55 to 65 from just the two slots alone (an Epic level Vice Admiral Adams is +45 Naval Power). Which leaves me six cargo slots for everything else.

I make sure that what I bring along is proportional to the likelyhood I'll encounter it. I know there's a bit of randomization to the encounters, but during the Starting screen it tells you something is Nearly Certain to happen, Highly Likely, Likely, etc. So I make sure that when I'm Min/Maxing my stats, I don't weaken my success chance on something Nearly Certain to happen, just to increase my odds of success for something Likely to happen.

Obviously it's a bit more complicated and a delicate balancing act then what I've described, but hopefully you get what I mean.

[Ebin398]

One thing that really helps with earlier expeditions when you don't have much money to spend, is the Royal Letter of Immunity. I wouldn't spend money on the rerolls, just let them happen naturally.

But if you're lucky, you can just spend 10,000 gold coins at Sir Archibald blake's harbor for it and it gives a 40 diplomacy bonus.

[Nenne.]

https://anno1800.fandom.com/wiki/Expeditions

[dropbearmango]

Lots of harbourmasters office items, as well as ship equipables and some trade union items give very nice bonuses. For example: I have a 'Former Corsair' Item which you can buy at the prison. He gives me bonuses to both naval firepower and navigation. He also has the trait 'Pirate' which grants a 100% (!!) success rate to certain events that can happen at sea.

[mar.sternb]

best crew for expeditionships you got from pirates .. they have the best captains and admirals

so .. play till you can make tradecontract with the pirat and then buy the stuff

best items you can find after an NPC-attack on the pirates base .. loot the items in the sea .. I got legendary stuff from there