Key Ship Stats

• Max Speed: 16.00
• Acceleration: 2.90
• Turning: 10.14
• Turning Accel: 10.00
• Armor/DR: 1300/6
• Sails: 2400
• Top Deck: 12 x 8lb Guns
• Gun Deck: 24 x 12lb Guns
• Defining Characteristics: Faster, better sailing characteristics and 10% faster reload over base ‘Tigre’ Frigate

The Tigre in Perspective

The ‘Tigre’, affectionately called the Tigger (for the lovable cartoon tiger), is the largest of the “true scouts,” and is similar in many ways to its smaller kin such as the ‘Mediator’, the ‘Cerberus’, the ‘Raa’, the ‘Capricieux’, and their illegitimate merchant cousin, the ‘Mignone’. The true scout line has a lot of diversity in terms of best point and armament, but what they all share is moderate to high speed, extremely high acceleration and turning acceleration, and poor armor/sail integrity. True scouts are popular for all classes and many roles, and are particularly favored by Cutthroats and Privateers for their 1v1 prowess.

The Tigre line differs from its kin in two important ways — first, it is a 180º best point ship (which gives it unusual sailing characteristics) and second, it has long range guns for a scout. In a past patch, the MC ‘Tigre’ was considered one of the most potent long range fighters in the game because of its balanced long range gundecks, its ability to quickly switch sides, and its ease of escape against traditional frigates. However, other than the brief surge in popularity of the MC ‘Tigre’ (which was promptly and appropriately nerfed), the Tigre has never been popular. Most scouts do not want to fight at range, and thus prefer the tougher and higher DPS ‘Capricieux’ or the smaller, faster ‘Raa’. Indeed, I can’t think of a time I have ever seen a player sail a sleek or heavy ‘Tigre’ in PvP.

The Sleek Tigre

The Sleek ‘Tigre’ lacks the armor of the Heavy ‘Tigre’ or the large, balanced gundecks of the Mastercraft, and instead adds in more speed/agility and a smaller gundeck. This brings the Sleek ‘Tigre’ back more in line with other scouts, and in my mind, makes it the most attractive of the bunch.

When compared to its closest rival, the MC Capri, the Sleek ‘Tigre’ initially appears quite unattractive. The ever popular MC Capri has better sails, armor, and DPS at all ranges while retaining very similar agility. There is no dispute, the MC Capri is a better ship in every combat stat… yet the MC Capri is a very risky ship to use in 1v1 OS PvP, because its low max speed (15.75) makes it gankbait for a pack of failboats. Although the Sleek ‘Tigre’ has similar top speed (16.00) its unique best point of 180º combined with the Freetrader/Privateer Before the Wind skill and Studding Sails makes for a ship that can outrun many gankpacks at 180º. When push comes to shove, avoiding gankpacks is the first major hurdle a 1v1 ship has to pass, and in this area, the Sleek ‘Tigre’ has a major advantage on the MC Capri.

In combat, the Sleek ‘Tigre’ feels much like any other scout. Its broadside is pretty light (though it tends to lose guns less quickly than most scouts), but its excellent agility can often lead to uncontested shots. Both in getting behind a warship and in terms of quickly switching sides to fire more guns than the warship can match, this ship fits the bill. Warships in general are pretty easy prey. Other scouts and hybrid scouts are another story. The MC Capri and the bundlehercs have a significant combat advantage over the Sleek ‘Tigre’, and even a MC ‘Raa’ could be deadly. The Sleek ‘Tigre’s frail defenses and limited firepower mean it can only win if it can avoid fire for a long time and, against equally quick but tougher scouts, that just isn’t gonna happen.

Also, the ‘Tigre’s unusual best point makes it feel odd while making combat maneuvers. On a traditional ship, it has the two best points at 135º and a dip in between. This makes it so if you turn from 135º to 180º to 225º, as your max speed drops relative to your current speed, which makes your turning faster at first (because you have a high current speed relative to max speed, which means you use your high speed turning stat), then slow as you round into the second best point (where your low current speed relative to a higher max speed means you are lower on the high/low turning speed scale). This means your turn is initially fast, then slows. The tigre making the same turn would see its max speed rise relative to its current speed from 135-180º, making the initial turn slow, but then as you moved from 180-225º, faster. This isn’t the best explanation, and its a relatively minor factor, but when I sail the Sleek ‘Tigre’ I notice the difference in turning behavior and polars.

I thought of the Sleek ‘Tigre’ as a slightly more beefy ‘Raa’ — like the ‘Raa’, it can escape from almost all gankpacks and still take out many smaller ships and high level warships (vanilla ‘Hercules’, ‘Mercy’, SOLs, ‘Deliverance’s, ‘Dauntless’, possibly the ‘Myrmidon’ family, etc.). Like the ‘Raa’, its an extremely difficult fight against a bundleherc or a MC Capri. While it lacks the ‘Raa’s quick reload, the ability to use large outfitting, some agility, and its lower visibility, it gains a different sailing feel (not better or worse, just different), longer range, and more toughness. For example, in my ‘Raa’ I often find myself at 250-150 yards circling behind my prey, trying to stay out of their gundecks’ field of fire. At that range, I have to make a hard choice — a chainshot/bar mix can fire easily out to 350 yards doing ~60% damage, or I can gamble and load star/chain (only 260 yards but 90% damage). You know the drill — take a chance at a 50% increase in damage but if I am not where I want to be my accuracy will screw it over or just be out of my range completely. In a ‘Tigre’, the decision is much easier because of the longer range and closer range spread. It also means that quite often the ‘Tigre’ can be firing one heavier type of dismantling shot with better accuracy than the ‘Raa’ could (or at least on the 2nd deck), so its effective DPS can be higher in many situations.

Oh, one other thing: its OS speed sucks.

Conclusion

So in sum, the Sleek ‘Tigre’ is something of a Pariah. It’s not as effective as the other true scouts in combat, and is noticeably weak against its larger kin. Yet the ability to escape from gank packs is terribly important, and that factor alone gives the Sleek ‘Tigre’ some value. Overall, it’s pretty similar to a ‘Raa’, but the subtle tactical differences can be worth exploiting or if nothing else, as a change for an experienced ‘Raa’ captain.

Enjoy!

1. A Vagabond is a spaceship, my ‘Raa’ Sleek Frigate is a sailboat.
2. I knew very well how to fly a Vagabond.

At least, I used to know how to fly a Vagabond; after the speed nerf, I’d be afraid to take a Vagabond or a Rapier out of the hangar (though I expect that this patch has made the previously-neglected Muninn a more popular “light sniper” platform? still not as good as a Zealot or Eagle, I bet). Not that fear ever stopped me (you might remember the time when I ran in against an Omen-class cruiser and Typhoon-class Battleship with just my little Wolf AF, or the time I went after the Apocalypse BS with the same odds and was actually winning - very, very slowly winning with Hail S ammo - until 3 or 4 of his corpmates appeared in Local).

Trial and Error and Error

So, at L36 I captured a ‘Raa’ Sleek Frigate from some random NPC near Matthew Town, took it in to outfit for speed and range, loaded up on Bar Shot and Bronze Shot and took it out on the Open Sea. I’d read a bit and asked around a bit, and had come to the conclusion that a ship this size can take on a large, less nimble ship if the captain manages to out-maneuver his target, dismast ‘em and pump shot through their stern. “Okay, then,” I thought to myself, “let’s go find something big and slow-ish.” When I saw a L50‘Trinidad’ Frigate I got a little carried away. Not knowing that the Trinnie is a modified ‘Conquistador’ (I thought it was something else) I maneuvered for wind and attacked. Imagine my surprise when I found myself having a very hard time trying to out-sail him! At least the ‘Raa’ didn’t cost me anything (though I did lose 20,000 doubloons or so on the outfitting).

And then, a few days later some of the other captains in Nine Winds were grinding OS fleets for cash and asked if I wanted to join them for a bit of power levelling. I wasn’t particularly in the mood for missions at the time and my ‘Stralsund’ MC “The Shameless Hussy” was nearby, so I said sure and sailed out to meet them at Irish Point. We were all quite aware that our activities were creating unrest and would produce a pvp circle in short order but we were fine with that. When the bubble popped, I took the Hussy in to Tortuga and brought out the ‘Algiers’ Refit Polacre that I’d recently been awarded from a mission chain. While she’s not very tough, the “Breath of Freedom” is fast and arguably the best tackling ship of her size (and overall) in Pirates of the Burning Sea… in the right hands. My hands, however, are all wrong.

One of our number was AFK (unfortunately, the AFK one was the most experienced of our small group in matters PvP) and as we came out of a battle instance with some NPCs we were greeted by three British ships who’d decided to wait for us. There was a bit of discussion and as they had us surrounded it was decided that our best bet would be to let them drag us into a battle instance and try to get out of it that way. Unfortunately, this plan changed twice.

They had two Privateers in their group and the Privateer has a lot of good speed buffs so they had no trouble getting hold of one of us so that he wouldn’t be able to escape. Forced to commit, we turned back to fight but our mate was taking quite a bit of damage and quite quickly so told us to let ‘em have him - save our ships. So, we turned to observe that most honorable pirate tradition. Then the AFK veteran returned and wanted to make a go of it, so we turned back again. Unfortunately, the vet had apparently underestimated how much damage our man had taken and when she found that his firepower had been removed from the fight, the order was once again ‘retreat’. I got out of it okay, as did the fourth member of our group. The first man’s ship and the vet’s, however, were both lost.

Now, they all know I’m ‘the new guy’. I was the only captain in that small flotilla below L50, so I’m sure that none of the responsibility for that poor showing rests on my head… still, I can’t help thinking that if I’d had a better idea of what was going on in all of that chaos I might’ve been able to take charge of the situation in the vet’s absence and things could’ve turned out differently.

It made me miss EVE, a lot. In New Eden, I knew exactly what ships could do and whether or not to engage and exactly how to engage if that was what we decided to do (at least, in small gang, sub-BS PvP) and if I didn’t, we never went out without a clearly defined fleet commander so I knew that one of those voices on Ventrilo knew wtf we were supposed to be doing and would make sure we knew when we needed to. It’d been a long time since I’d been in a PvP situation that could be described as ‘chaotic’.

Training Materials

So, I went to the PotBS forums in search of training materials to help improve my game. Just like any forum, to find useful information you generally have to dig through a pile of flaming and trolling to pick out a gem of helpful advice. This is how I stumbled over someone’s link to a video they’d made of one of their own solo failures.

In EVE, there are so many players and so many great fansites (like Chribba’s OMG Labs projects, for example). Being so new and with such a small community by comparison, PotBS just doesn’t have any of that stuff yet, so I had no potbs-files.com to go looking for videos on. I didn’t even think to try typing pirates of the burning sea into YouTube!

I was amazed at how much stuff I found - not as much as if you type in Warcraft or EVE, sure, but still a ton of stuff. One in particular that I found interesting was a 3-part video of two lowbies taking out a L50 in identical ships so I thought I’d share. Here’s the first one, it’ll be easy enough for you to find the second and third from there, if you’re so inclined. Enjoy!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Key Ship Stats

• Max Speed: 14.50
• Acceleration: 0.95
• Turning: 10.35
• Turning Accel: 5.85
• Armor/DR: 1972/11
• Sails: 2725
• Top Deck: 12 x 9lb Guns
• Gun Deck: 26 x 16lb Guns
• Defining Characteristics: Stronger, more resilient hull and 5% faster reload over base ‘Deliverance’ Frigate

Discussion

The Heavy D in Perspective

The Heavy Deliverance is a 38 gun warship intended for very heavy fleet battles, especially port battles. As a large warship, the Heavy D emphasizes armor and range at the expense of speed and agility. The Heavy D is easy to get/build, takes a heck of a beating, and packs decent firepower. It was designed as a cost effective way for Freetraders, Privateers, and Cutthroats to participate in Heavy fights.

The Heavy D resides in a pretty crowded ecosystem — heavy supremacy fighters. This type of ship is used in critical fleet battles, both on the OS and in port battles and faces off against the best ships, captains, and tactics the enemy can muster. These fights are usually high profile and high stakes. The Heavy D is the cheapest ship that can meaningfully participate in these fights without being a liability, making it good for beginners to learn with. However, because of the high stakes nature of port battles, the Heavy D will regularly be facing off against much more expensive and higher stat ships.

The Deliverance family includes the vanilla Deliverance (very rarely seen) and the Archelon. The Archelon is very similar to the Heavy D but with even more armor and a boost to reload at a much higher price.

The Heavy Deliverance

The Heavy D’s best asset by far is its toughness. It has more armor/DR than any non-bundle/MoV (Marks of Victory) boat, and more than most bundleboats. The Heavy D also has unusually fast turning for a ship of its size. Although its turning acceleration sucks, its turn rating is 10 unbuffed (many classes can get this to 15+). The Heavy D also has reasonably decent long range firepower. Its 16 lb guns provide decent DPS at 400-600 yards where most port battles are fought, and it has a high crew to board if it comes to that. The main weakness of the Heavy D is speed. 14.5 max speed is just awful, making this ship completely useless for solo play. Its slow enough that it will struggle even in mixed groups, so don’t even bother with this ship unless you are a heavy group seeking a fight with another heavy group. Its turning acceleration and acceleration are also poor, like other warships of its size. Finally, its sail integrity is quite low. So in sum, this ship is a victim waiting to happen in a 1v1 on the OS, but it’s a solid tank.

The Heavy D is best compared to its closest competitors — the Dauntless and the Alexander. The Dauntless has much weaker armor/dr, but has a longer range 2nd deck (560 vs 525), more overall DPS, and is much faster (due to its higher max speed and 180° best point). However, the Dauntless will stick out in port battles because of its weak armor and poor agility and will frequently be hit first. This leads a lot of Dauntless captains to tank rig, which negates their small innate DPS advantage. By contrast, Heavy D’s are a much lower priority target, making it possible to rig much more offensively. The Alexander has much more short range DPS, but has terrible agility and poor range. It is generally considered a fine tank, but is often ignored as it’s pitifully weak 1v1 and a low priority target in PB’s. Most people consider the Alex obsolete. All are cheap to make, and the Dauntless is currently the most popular cheap heavy, especially as an OS ship. Stepping up the food chain, the Heavy D would be best compared to the Mercy, the Heavy Herc, and some of the rated ships. Each of these will gain a significant firepower advantage over the Heavy D, and many of the frigates will also be faster and more agile.

The Heavy D should be rigged for damage and moderate toughness. I typically rigged mine with 2 tough sails, 2 accuracy guns, and 2 heavy armor (all vanillas, no greens). I would then use three damage mods (often Overloaded cannons, betrayers, and explosive). Because the ship is a low priority target and cheap to replace, I didn’t worry about losing one and would often lead charges and play very aggressively. I would also try to make a push at times and rageboard more expensive ships, taking them from the field and ruining their lines/ability to block.

I think of the Heavy D as racing a Lotus in a Chevy. It’s a long shot, but if you wreck him he will cry and your Chevy won’t even notice the bump. When you can play without fear of loss, you can often pull out big upset wins and make sacrifices when needed for the greater good. I noticed a major decline in the quality of tactics as the value of ships went up, which I attribute to fear (bundleboats make people tentative). Don’t underestimate the power of massed, skillfully handled vanillas. Several times on various servers skilled fleets of cheap ships have crushed massed bundleboats. This can be a major morale loss to your opposition, as well as effective economic warfare.

I included some screens from a Port battle on the Rack long ago. As you can see, Spain fielded a fleet of 19 Deliverances (most not heavy, most under 50) against a fleet of brits that included 12 4th rates and various other weaker ships. One of the critical moments came when our privateer wing of deliverances crashed their line, allowing the 2nd wing to split them and encircle them. I believe this is a good example of what skillfully handled cheap ships can do to a heavier fleet (and btw, no Ventrilo). The final count was 24 brits killed, 3 spanish lost.

Conclusion

The Heavy D is an underrated ship. Once a staple of port battles, it’s now rarely seen, even after its recent buff. Most people have replaced it with the dauntless/HH, both of which are very solid ships. Yet the Heavy D’s ability to soak up damage plus its low price make it a great, expendable tank, perfect for risky maneuvers (such as crashing the line or flanking).

On Port Battle Tactics

After the ‘Conquistador’ Sleek review was posted, Garbad got a private message from a player going by the screenname Otega. Otega asked:

In your opinion, is their any need for speed in a PB set-up for a heavy ship such as a deliverance? Also, Would a range mod help more than a reload mod?

I’m big on DPS (i grind in a heavy Raa outfitted with armor mods and reload mods on the general upgrades). However, i’m begining to think that in a PB, range would be a better allocation of upgrades than reload. I’ve been debating this in my head, and have solid reasons for both (at least, solid in my opinion). However, i’m very undecided on which would be more usefull in our standard line tactic.

Garbad replied in depth with his take on the state of ship-based PvP in Pirates of the Burning Sea and what attributes are more useful in Port Battles as opposed to OS PvP:

Speed is typically not valuable in port battles. People typically rig for armor, DPS/damage, range, and turning. On my Heavy D, for generals I use two armor and a range (teak armor, gunports, and artimis or w/e its called). For permanents, I use two armor hulls, two turning sails, and two reload guns. I do that because it gave me the best overall mix of DPS, armor, and damage. Range is particularly important on the Heavy D as it has somewhat mediocre range. Its DPS and armor, on the other hand, are excellent, making a Heavy D rigged in this way more than a match for any lesser vessel.

Unlike OS, armor and survivability should be your focus and not spike damage or speed. This is because when lines meet, the longer guns force the engagement (tactics being equal). Furthermore, when lines meet, both sides focus fire on some target — and high level privateers get it more than most (because you are both high damage and lack the defensive skills and structure repair of a naval officer). In that situation, surviving long enough to let your lines battle is more important than a slight increase in DPS (which is why I don’t run gun + gunpowder, for example). The teak armor I am using because I wanted to try it. 16 DR is quite nice in a lot of fights, such that a lot of smaller ships can’t even scratch you. YMMV however.

The other thing to keep in mind is playing to your strengths as a privateer. In port battles, privateers play a secondary role to navy — they anchor the middle, and you support the edges. Its quite common to have a heavy D first and last in line because you are expendable and relatively agile. Another nice thing about the D is when it comes time to turn, your burst of speed can quickly move some power where it is needed, much faster than a SOL can. Finally, your high damage skills (specifically all + unpredict) can hit so hard it scares off little ships in one blast, allowing you to displace or finish people when larger ships can only DPS.

What I try to do is use my spike damage, stuns, and the like to lighten the load on the navy and create line breaches. For example, in the battle of PdP (before this one), a guild mate and I boarded two french ships after we crossed lines, causing a huge french pileup that turned a battle. This was because I saw the opportunity to disrupt, even when I could not overpower, and our heavy hitters jumped on the opportunity. Another example of this was in the battle of NO, when the French line attempted to turn into us. The point where they would have hit was me, and we repelled them with 3 kills. But looking past them, I saw the remaining ships were substantially smaller than us at that point in the line, so I swung my section in close and started hitting with spikes on little boats and stuns. Sure enough, the lesser vessels scattered, which broke apart the french line and forced them to fall back. (As it turned out, they regrouped nicely but the point was still made). This was pretty much the only time the french line stood and fought for a long time, and was the bulk of their casualties.

The Heavy D is a very nice ship. It’s capable of out-DPSing most ships at long range, as well as having the toughness to stand in a line. When combined with your natural privateer skills, its great for line tactics, supporting the navy, and protecting and turning flanks.

This article was originally posted by Garbad_the_Weak in the Pirates of the Burning Seas official forum here.

“Pirates of the Burning Sea is a competitive game in which players take the role of adventurers in a romanticized version of the Caribbean in the Age of Sail, and seek fame, fortune, and glory for themselves and their nations.”

-FLS Isildur

Clean, simple, to the point. For the last month, I’ve enjoyed seeking fame, fortune and glory for myself as Cap’n Steven MacKenna, Master of The Shameless Hussy. But Isildur acknowledges that this vision statement is quite vague with regard to the questions that we’ve been asking on the forums. Particularly whether they’re trying to make a PvP game or a PvE game. In the dev log titled “Vision Thing,” FLS Isildur writes:

“We just believe that our best avenue for content is to put the tools to make fun gameplay in your hands. That’s the idea behind the PvP system, but it’s also the driving force behind the economy; looking to the future, it’s the inspiration for our port governance plans, the Skirmish mechanics, and other systems we’ve got lined up. Interacting with other players is what makes an online game compelling.”

So while the game is not meant to be 100% PvP 100% of the time, the emphasis is most definitely on letting the players make their own fun through the PvP mechanics that are in place and those that are not yet in place rather than taking the player by the hand and walking him/her through an elaborately scripted theme park ride. As a gamer who spent two fun-filled, enjoyable years playing World of Warcraft (and who may eventually buy WotLK to see that content, but isn’t planning on doing it any time soon), I gotta say that the biggest draw any MMO has for me now is to not hold my hand and walk me through scripted content.

I want open ended, I want freedom, I want to get back to the feel of playing Vampire: the Masquerade with my friends as a teenager, before MMO games ever existed. So far, no online game has presented that concept better than EVE-Online, so I was very happy to hear about the partnership between CCP and White Wolf Game Studios to develop a World of Darkness-based MMO. But even if PotBS isn’t doing the whole “player-driven story” as completely as EVE is, they’ve got the foundation for it and FLS Isildur’s Vision Statement breakdown includes Port Governance (which was, as I understand it, part of a “three-legged” player-driven economy system the developers originally intented - of which only one “leg” is in-game so far).

This Port Governance, to me as an EVE player, calls to mind epic battles for control of valuable territory like Deklein or Delve and that’s very promising. Sailing along the coast on the Open Sea, you see numerous forts, towns and caves that aren’t in use at all and it’s easy to imagine that those places might be the basis for a player-governed port system, but that’s the sort of thing that the wise developer keeps under his/her hat until there’s something substantial to say about it.

In my opinion, the important thing for a young MMO is foundation, and Pirates of the Burning Sea has it in spades. I’m excited to see how the new AvCom system turns out. I’m not so excited to see Skirmishes, but I’m hoping and praying that it doesn’t turn out to be WoW Battlegrounds with Sailboats. As an adult gamer, though, I understand that you have to take the good with the bad (otherwise, you’re stuck making your own MMO and I have no illusions regarding my inability to do so!). And when the developers of an MMO are willing to post such frequent devblogs and post long, detailed responses to forum threads the way FLS Misha did yesterday and be honest about it, then it’s a lot easier to have some confidence in the direction a game is headed!