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Although they barely make damage, the fact that any ship will avoid them can give you a huge advantage. When you throw oil barrels, you sure have noticed that any AI ships won't sail throw it (if they can make an evasion maneuver in time). Other way is to make them sail throw a specific route and concentrating in a point where you can attack them (I will explain it in the next paragraph). This gives you some seconds before they adapt to the situation, ideal for fast ships to bombing them (like the corvette, frigates or sloops of war).
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In this last one, when you attack a town, the wind usually adapts to you favor, making you in a windward position, and making enemy ships in leeward position (the wind comes from the west an the enemy is on the east, for example). You could destroy it's sails, or you can target it when they are sailing against the wind. And how do we do it? Well, there is always the possibility to hit other ships in movement as long as they pass throw the mortar mark, but the most probably thing is that you will only hit a few shots.Ī way to improve it's effectiveness is by "immobilize" the enemy. But we can also use it to attack enemy ships, especially big and slow ships like the First Rate. Usually, by instinct, we use the mortar when an enemy ship is chasing us in a strait line. That's why we use some tactics for a much effective use. But its difficult to hit moving objects when the projectile (bomb) takes so much time to land.
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Mortar are also very powerful against ships. This is a good tactic against strong, big and slow ships like the First Rate. When you are next to an enemy ship, independently of it's size (in fact, the bigger the better), you can throw the barrel from the size in order to make it landing IN the enemy ship. We all know how to commonly use powder: we throw from the back of our ship an make it a "sea mine". There are three of them I will share: Powder, Oil and Mortar.
There a some battle tactics you can use to sink ships.
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