NPC's taking the wheel

[GRAW2ROBZ 0]

Can I have a fleet?  Can NPC's sail my ships and follow me on a separate ship?  I never tried it yet.  Would I have to sail near them and whistle or have them on close follow?  I thought about building a couple spare schooners and load them with cannons and have them follow my Brigantine.  Sink a bunch of ships and recruit the sunken undead.  Rinse and repeat.

[Vurmis 24]

The biggest flaw in your plan is that a ship will drop anchor or set sails to 0% the moment an active player is no longer on them.

Which is very useful if you fall off your ship while out sailing in the middle of the ocean .... (or your game crashes).

[Geminia_Sierra 20]

having NPC sail a ship that would follow you would be kind of cool, especially in single player. of course you'd risk them doing something stupid like animals running weird paths.

Having an NPC man the steering wheel is possible, but I don't know how to make them sail the ship. I think there's some kind of autopilot

[DocHolliday 366]

You can have an NPC sail for you if you are on the ship.  Hold T for pinwheel of options.  If you jump off sails are raised and it stops as mentioned before.

[Vurmis 24]

1 hour ago, Geminia_Sierra said:

Having an NPC man the steering wheel is possible, but I don't know how to make them sail the ship. I think there's some kind of autopilot 

I wrote up an answer about this a while ago that you might find useful:

 

[Warspectre 141]

On 10/22/2019 at 10:09 AM, GRAW2ROBZ said:

Can I have a fleet?  Can NPC's sail my ships and follow me on a separate ship?  I never tried it yet.  Would I have to sail near them and whistle or have them on close follow?  I thought about building a couple spare schooners and load them with cannons and have them follow my Brigantine.  Sink a bunch of ships and recruit the sunken undead.  Rinse and repeat.

I like the idea of having a personal fleet sailed by NPCs but that's not a current feature of the game AFAIK. It would also require more automation than we currently have because you would want the crew keeping up with repairs while underway otherwise you might find your ships sinking before you could do anything about it personally. The micromanagement you have to do ATM would be a bit of a nightmare as it stands. 

[Geminia_Sierra 20]

On 10/22/2019 at 3:32 PM, Vurmis said:

I wrote up an answer about this a while ago that you might find useful:

 

I tried this out last night. That is really kind of cool. I wish there were more options though, like half and quarter speeds or percentages like if you used the sail options.

I like how the NPC's on the sails adjusted the sail angles as the ship moved and everything.

Thanks!!

[Slado 1]

10 hours ago, Geminia_Sierra said:

I tried this out last night. That is really kind of cool. I wish there were more options though, like half and quarter speeds or percentages like if you used the sail options.

I like how the NPC's on the sails adjusted the sail angles as the ship moved and everything.

Thanks!!

If you add a Lieutenant Podium to your ship and use that when you have an npc at the wheel, you have full control over raising and lowering the sails with the normal commands as if you were on the wheel.  The podium allows you to do everything that you can do when actually using the wheel yourself aside from turning the ship (as your npc on the wheel will be controlling the sail rotation and the rudder according to your heading whistles)  so you also have full control over your gun ports opening/closing, cannons and other weaponry too using the front/left/right etc. groups and the same menu you have when on the wheel.