When your ship sinks...

[Egg]

I always have this problem...

Usually early in the game you only have one ship and for me I use the sloop. Now the sloop has all its crew and the captain.

One fine day you send the ship out to cruise and it sinks... All the crew are lost and your captain makes his way back to the island. You'd have to build another ship, supplu it and press gang enough people to fill it back.

These press ganged people are lousy, and it'd be difficult to go on a cruise. Furthermore, wasting your precious captives early on in the game to become poor sailors (Who are going to sink anyway) is really putting a strain on your resources.

[Egg]

One more thing, there was once I sent 3 brigs out to cruise at different areas, and when they came back, I had an overflow of pirates. I had 27 new recruits... now I didn't have any place or resources to build houses for them and guess what? MAJOR REVOLT!@! I think they need a balance programme for this game...

[Severous]

Hi Egg

Loss of the first and only ship can be a real set back early in the game.  Hence the tempatation im sure many readers/rulers (count me in) to save the game prior to sailing.

Force yourself to pay the consequences by not restoring a save and your actions change.  A well rested and happy crew early in the game can make many missions back to back free of the temptation to take shore leave.  Use that period to grab plenty of unskilled captives on settlement raids and key specialists (if you have the cash).    

With those resources behind it the island can more easily stand the loss and has a bigger pool of unskilled captives from which to pick and choose who to pressgang.  Having a surplus of captives and pirates allows pirate resting/entertainment to be topped up whilst other pirates do the crusies.

[TJ]

My biggest piece of advice is to dump the sloops. I consider them to be the worst in the game. Schooners are much better at escaping large ships which can be a life saver early in the game. Once things get going I go for the brigs and frigates and usually try and pair them together while cruising.

[dirtboy]

To avoid pirate overflow, set your "Walk the Plank" edict to avoid taking new recruits.  If I have too many pirates and I have plenty of wood, I try to keep an extra port available and start building a new ship.  Then I find my largest ship and fire everyone but the captain.  This will allow other pirates from the shore to get on board.  They are usually much more poor than the seasoned crew, and therefore much angrier and much less skilled.  Then I send the ship out over and over until it gets captured.  This keeps a ship available for your captain when he gets back, and rids your island of scurvey-dogs.  Aaaarrr!!  Its good to be the king.