Migolcow

There's pluses and minuses to NPCs as gunners. The main thing your human crew should be doing though is one on captain's wheel, one on lieutenants, and 2 on repairs...not having an active repair guy is such a huge thing, NPCs can do it but badly. The rest of your human crew should be focussed on boarding and salvaging, something NPCs can't do. Use the grappels, wingsuits, etc. Note that your "Human crew" can also be better Cannoneers if they are good at aiming and have the artillery talents, they can aim at specific spots and reload faster than your npcs. Finally, the other advantage toward the large crew is that they can just be home farming materials and getting other things done, then teleport to your various ships via beds in a hurry to help with whatever you're doing. You'll also need your human crew to "feed" your npc crew their Gold, having a good 15+ NPCs on a brig gets expensive, so treasure maps are a must, and NPCs aren't good there.

Gonna guess this is in O9?

It's not actually the weight but the personnel limit, IE we're at the limit of characters with us and our npc crew. The seagull "counts" as crew apparently

The above scenario happened to us yesterday. We were going along a coast, looking for a treasure map location, when suddenly we were overweight and sinking. Panic'd a bit, made sure all the ladders were up, scoured the ship for an enemy boarder, couldn't figure out what the hell was going on. Then we noticed a seagull take off, and we were fine again. Waited a bit and it landed, and we were overweight again... A 0.5 lb bird puts us over the limit? Please fix XD

Same happened to us on NA PVP. Worth noting that Crocs are apparently able to bite you through wood, on the top level of a brigadine when you try to get on board to get the NPCs off. I stood at the highest point and they were still able to reach me.

Spend a bit of time in O9. Everyone's getting sniped, windows or not, line of sight or not. This guy shoots through walls, shot me out of mortar range while I was prone on our ship deck with a railing between us, shot below deck where it would have to hit the deck first, etc. This isn't a skilled player, he's a very notorious cheater.

Yeah our tribe fought him several times and this guy and his group "Hunter" on O9 are just blatent cheaters. They took out everyone else on their island by shooting people who were inside of enclosed stone buildings and claiming them, and have aimbotted the entire time to maintain an advantage. I've been shot below deck, on deck prone under a railing, etc. When the cheating reaches this level it just breaks the game

Video evidence, this is from a week ago. Tried attacking last night with a big alliance, same guy (Shiina Xu from Hunter in O9 area) is aimbotting and taking out dozens of people behind walls, over ships, etc. Obviously either action is not being taken or it's very inadequate.

Keep in mind Mortars and their ammo especially are crazy expensive. Each mortar shot requires blasting powder, which requires Gems to create (Atlas logic) along with other mats. If you can make them use 3 mortar shots per wall you're winning the resource war by a lot. Are you surrounding it with behemoth gates too? They're even harder to get through and relatively cheap.

Same guy ("Shiina Xu") of Hunter in O9 is still doing it as of this morning. We had some allies attack with many people both at sea and on land (land guys went to take out their mortar). The entire land force of ~20 people was killed by this one guy using the aimbot hack/exploit. Please do something about this tribe if you want us to take this game at all seriously, this is just breaking the game.

Found the original Post here: Same guy, same name, same tribe. If the Devs want to be serious IMO they should just ban the whole tribe. They only got as strong and as big as they are now through blatent cheating, and are weathering assaults from much bigger groups as of yesterday with the same cheats.

This is the same player that had multiple videos linked a week ago. He's in "Hunter" on O9. That tribe wiped out many tribes over the course of about 2 days by aimbotting and killing people sleeping inside of enclosed stone structures, and took over a lot of the map with such cheating. Some people had said he was banned but obviously it was either false, a very short suspension, or just a reroll. Frankly, the entire "Hunter" tribe is only alive and as big as they are because him and 2 or so others are demolishing everyone with Aimbot who tries to retaliate. I died to him earlier this morning prone on my ship behind a railing with him on the shore out of mortar range.

They can man most anything I think, for base defense you probly want them on swivel guns pointed toward doorways from the side (so they have to go inside to attack), or puckle guns. Mortar and whatnot I'd be afraid to assign to them.

Bear

I'd imagine you'd want something with range, the puckle might but shooting an arrow while swimming in the water is probalby the best option.

Yeah I never took them off the ship, they're super useful on the ship though, sailing a 2-3 sail ship solo or even with a few friends is hell. Been thinking about equipping them with plate and good weapons but not sure if I wanted to risk them outside the ship.

We got all of ours from Ships of the Damned, the higher level the ships the higher level the crewmates are, got a few level 25ish from a level 20 iirc. The price varies but it took about 5-10 gold to "hire" them when they were swimming in the wreckage about to drown (lol), and then each one had a price that varied from 1 gold every 30 minutes to 1 gold every hour. One of our guys had the "Captain" skill tree and was able to make them cost less though. You just place the gold in their inventory and it'll go down automatically. You also need to feed them though they starve slowly, you can build a food larder (which while not as good as preserving bags and salt still makes food decay slower and auto feeds them). Or you can put the food into their inventory directly. Haven't tried putting coins in a food larder yet. Note that when they run out of coins there's a red text saying you need to pay them within a timeframe, and if that expires they go hostile. WHich can be hilarious as one goes hostile before the others, and the "for now loyal" ones all slaughter them.

Tried to build the catapult once, seemed incredibly underwhelming. Could have just been using it wrong, but it seemed very unwieldly (Iirc we did get it on the ship but couldn't hit with it). Haven't tried ballista, tbh I forgot about both because I automatically figued cannon would be better (in ark terms I figured the ballista/catapult were the equivalent of the glass water jar or such, just a lower tech item. Could be wrong? The TNT thing could be true though...not sure it'd be worth bothering with as opposed to just placing it though like some suicidal orc from the Two Towers. If someone has used either successfully and thinks they're worthwhile let me know and I'll add them to the list.

How do you get them to repair? From our experience, you can get them to man the sails, or you can bring them near a cannon and assign them to that (we use a brigadine and have 6 cannons on each side below deck, each manned by an npc). The captain or someone on the podium build can order them all to fire at once. You can also set them on puckle/swivel guns/cannons on shore as base defense, to do this you have to hold E and tell the STRUCTURE, not NPC (IE the cannon/gun) to only fire on players/tames. We also put the npcs on aggressive, not sure if that's needed. Been wondering about having them collect resources, also if I put guns/bows+arrows in their inventory would they use them?

Nice List. Would love another tab for comments that describes basic uses (for example using the elephant to farm trees or how the monkey slows enemies).

Ok, revised the puckle gun, disappointing to hear that it's also a bust; must have headshot the guy visiting us. Still waiting to hear if anyone's used the TNT barrel, that's the biggest question mark on my mind as if it doesn't do substantial base damage then the best route is a carriage cannon and a LOT of resources.

You were on the right track with the stone building. Putting a cannon on a carriage and getting it to your island already requires a lot of effort. And the cannons aren't "great" at taking stone down either, it takes a lot of cannonballs (which are a beast to make and transport themselves). What you need to do is make it even harder on them, and not worth their time. Build as far inland as you can, ideally up a bit on a cliff (not too high, just making it hard to hit with a carriage cannon) that you can reach with a retractable rope ladder. Build a stone base with -2- doors rapid fire as the only entrance, that is incredibly discouraging to someone who breaks down the first door only to see a short hallway to the second door that's harder to aim at and will take even more resources to break into. Build more doors inside, your resource cabinets (especially gems/coin) should be behind even more locked doors. Finally,surround your base with behemoth gates. They also count as stone and are hard to break through. It'll get to be second nature quickly to open door, open door, close door, close door, then open and close the behemoth gate. This is not completely impregnable, but breaking it will require a LOT of materials grinding on the enemy's part, and unless you're very wealthy or you've been making them very very angry, is not going to be remotely worth their time. The big danger is someone using a current exploit/hack/bug (unsure which) which can kill you through walls, nothing you can really do about that. Other than that though, you don't need all that much, if you want you can also set up a mortar which is ridiculous range especially on a cliff. edit: Also don't worry about grenades, they do such piddly damage to stone as to be essentially meaningless. You would literally need hundreds or thousands; test it for yourself.

When you say bad damage do you mean against ships/structures? The one time I've seen it used was when it one-shot a visitor when our NPC got bloodthirsty.

One note for new players on PVP: Stone is King. Forget NPC defenders, setting up mounted guns, taming wolves, or such. Just build a base out of stone that's not easy to target from the water and is enclosed on top, preferably put it against a large rock/cliff. Then surround it with behemoth gates which also count as stone. This is not completely impregnable, but it's -very very hard- to break through. Unless you seriously anger someone who's willing to grind and use a ton of mats to assault you, your base is safe (except from insiding, careful on recruitment). The only real danger is a current exploit or hack (not sure which) which some tribes are using to shoot sleeping players through walls.

One little thing I'll note as important: Make a stone trap near your base! Same as ark, a big gate and some pillars on a foundation, small enough for you to slip through but it'll hold creatures (even rattlesnakes). If you have this then alpha spawns, even of wolves, are a gift. You get a TON of experience once you trap them and start shooting them. We have the entire tribe that's online gather with some on our mounts for the exp bonanza (not sure if it's more effective, but we have our lowest level shoot them with a bow). Usually everyone gains at least a level.