Understanding ships

Every ship page follows the same layout. Here is what each block means and why you should care.

Overview

• Guns — total mounted cannons, with swivel guns counted separately. Broadside is the number of guns firing on one side.
• Crew — maximum crew. Crew are a hit location: lose enough and your reload and boarding suffer.
• Cargo hold — capacity in cargo units. Items list their weight per unit on their own page.
• Battle speed / Open sea speed — best speed on the best point of sail, in knots, in the two sailing modes.
• Turn rate — degrees per second at battle sail.
• Ammo size — the cannon and shot size the hull is designed for. Batteries take any cannon of that size.

Hull & masts

Damage is tracked per area: bow, port side, starboard side, stern, structure, and each mast. Each hull side has armor hit points and a soak value: while that armor is intact it takes that many points off every hit, and the soak fades as the armor is shot away. Losing masts slows you; losing structure sinks you. The full story is in How damage works.

Defense

Defense makes an area harder to hit: each point is roughly one percent off the enemy’s chance to hit it. See Cannon accuracy, or try the hit chance calculator.

Batteries

The default gun layout: which deck, which arc (port, starboard, bow, stern), how many guns, and which cannon the hull ships with. Follow the cannon link for damage, range and reload.

Deeds and how to get a ship

A deed is the inventory item that becomes the ship when you use it. The wiki only lists ships that have a deed you can really get, and the How to get it section of each ship page lists every version:

• Standard — built by players at a Shipyard. The recipe and its materials are shown on the page.
• Civilian model — sold for doubloons by the ship deed trader in town. A good way to get sailing quickly.
• Captured prize — what a Pirate receives for taking that ship in battle. Prizes are rougher than a built ship. See Capturing ships.
• Mission reward and other special versions — handed out by missions, exchanges or found as plunder.

Durability is how many times the ship can be sunk before the deed is lost for good.

Hull size and timber

Hull size (Small → Colossal) decides which outfitting fits. Some hulls have timber variants — Cedar is lighter and faster, Oak tougher, and so on. Each variant is a separate ship with its own recipe; the Related hulls section links between them.