Cruiseing styles

[Pinstar]

I'm personally a pounder but I'm curious to see what the rest of the board thinks.

[kingofny]

Does pounding or harassing yield more booty?

For me, I think it would depend on the military strength of the area.  I know from the manual you can't expect to get many (if any) prisoners or recruits after doing either 'cuz they'll be dead.  

[Pinstar]

On the contrary. I've gotten quite a bit of recruits and even more wealthy captives from a pounding mission.

[Mercator]

I prefer boarding them.  It brings in more loot (cannons especially) and quite a bit more scurvy dogs then the other two.

But it really depends on the skills of the crew. If they are great cannon ball tossers, I'll pound 'em, and save myself some deaths.

But even then, if I'm overloaded with pirates and not enough ships forthem, then I'll board 'em anyway. It'll kill of some of the weaker crew, make the rest stronger, and give me plenty of skeletons to raise

[DBear]

Depends on the situation.

Early game, I usually board, since all you need to board are cutlasses and its easier to build them than cannon or muskets.

If I can get a gunsmith/engineer or if I have a black market and money to burn, then I'll switch over, but the majority of the game is spend on boarding.

Of course I be watching the maps to make sure the danger level doesn't  get too high.

[FatScaryGuy]

I prefer using muskets. I usually like to train my crews  using schools, and having them use muskets cause its the best way to keep em alive for quite a long time. I hate it when a put so much money in training a crew, have them board or pound, and then more than half of em end up getting killed.

Also, I find that using harras em, I still get a decent number of recruits and captives.

[Rebel-Yell]

Pound them, since I'vo looked in the "T2GameDataConstants" in the map folder:

// Weights used in formula calculating the number of pirate casualties
#define GC_PIRATE_POUNDING_WOUNDS      "/data/game/crui/dpou"        // 8
#define GC_PIRATE_HARASSING_WOUNDS     "/data/game/crui/dhar"        // 5      
#define GC_PIRATE_BOARDING_WOUNDS      "/data/game/crui/dboa"        // 11
#define GC_PIRATE_WOUNDS_DIVISOR       "/data/game/crui/ddiv"        // 10.0

// Weights used in formula calculating the number of captive casualities
#define GC_CAPTIVE_POUNDING_WOUNDS     "/data/game/crui/cpou"        // 8
#define GC_CAPTIVE_HARASSING_WOUNDS    "/data/game/crui/char"        // 50  
#define GC_CAPTIVE_BOARDING_WOUNDS     "/data/game/crui/cboa"        // 4
#define GC_CAPTIVE_WOUNDS_DIVISOR      "/data/game/crui/cdiv"        // 7.0

Seems to me as the best compromise beetween pirate and victim casualities.

[Fingal]

Early in the game i will use board em. Later on i use harass emthe loot you get is uneffected i think? And by this time cannons arent a problem. I like to keep my crews and ships alive as long as possible and this seems the best way to do it.