Nan o’ War CH6: Secondhand Smuggling

By Rutskarn Posted Wednesday Apr 5, 2017

Filed under: Lets Play 23 comments

To understand the 17th century Caribbean(!), you must first grasp the principle of mercantilism.

Broadly speaking, mercantilism means setting up all international trade to favor your interests over those of your colonies and trading partners. To understand why anyone plays along with this kind of rigged system, you must first grasp the principle of really huge navies.

It really was an ugly and extortionist system; if you’re a merchant native to the New World, you carry the yoke of second-class status your whole life. Thanks to cunningly tailored taxes, you can’t get a good deal with your mother nation. Thanks to a frighteningly inventive range of specialty cannon shot, you can’t get a good deal with anyone else. Is it really any surprise that some of these disenfranchised businessmen turn to smuggling?

Yes, it’s safe to say that these fellows right here have spent a lifetime under the boot of greedy, callous, contemptuous thugs from the Old World:

So, you know. At least they’re used to it. Beat to quarters!

So–is my heart really in this?

Mechanically, this is a no brainer. Every system in the game is broadcasting trash mob; farm for loot and XP loud and clear. There’s just that little mutter of historical perspective putting a damper on my giddy Errol-Flynn pirate romance. So what should I do? Should I chase that conflicted feeling? Ignore it? I feel like to get the most out of this game, I ought to be contextualizing my actions more or much less.

Let’s try on “much less.”

These guys have grey text on red boxes. Therefore, no-one loves them and I should kill them all for their stuff.

Mmkay. That wasn’t too bad. And how about “more?”

Every port I’ve been in was built on generations of endless, hopeless, absolutely unfathomable human suffering.

Fuck those red boxes, let’s git ’em!

Ah–this must be the naval battle screen. I figure I’ve got about forty seconds until this part is completely out of my hands, so let’s make the most of it.

On the top left, seems we’ve got wind direction–very critical information, since the nuclear engines that power our 17th-century watercraft are shut down for during engagements as a safety precaution.

At the top middle are some speed settings. Not the ship’s speed, mind; it doesn’t reef or let out your sails, it actually literally hits fast forward on the engagement. Like pretty much every speed-up-game mechanic I’ve ever encountered, the second I use it I can’t imagine life without it.

At the bottom of the screen you’ll see an MMO cooldown bar for my meager cannon collection. Unlike other pirate games, there’s no arcade style hand-holdy template showing you how far your cannonballs will go and where they’ll land. Instead, the mechanics authentically simulate being an idiot trying to figure out how your own cannons work in the middle of a sea battle. Figuring now’s as good a time as ever to start troubleshooting my imminent loss, I fire a blast experimentally. It lands…uh. I don’t know where it lands. I can’t actually figure out how to rotate my view to see what I was aiming at. So I might not know where my line of fire is, but I do know that if the enemy’s in it, I won’t see him.

I’d love to get further in-depth, but they’ve already boarding, which, thank Christ.

Looks like we get to define what kind of commander we’re gonna be. Mount and Blade does include controls for ordering around your warband; it’s actually a really straightforward and intuitive system for making your men do the Time Warp and then fucking die. To give you some context, ask the community how to issue orders effectively and they’ll let you know it’s really easy. Anyway, that’s why the first two options on the screen above make me mighty suspicious–being an officer doesn’t generally pay off for me. Anyway, let’s not bother playing Admiral Nelson until my navy consists of more than ten penniless volunteers in a big rowboat. I elect to go right into the fray.

Surprise! There aren’t any surprises here. It’s just Mount and Blade on floating platforms.

The ships are static levels connected by big fat gangplanks. You run around and get into third-person combat with the enemy, who, on this difficulty, are really easy to defeat. Just about the only thing that’s new is that if you hit “use” by one of the icons on the ratlines or crow’s nest, you climb up with the grace and naturalistic energy of a drummer boy in a creepy music box. In other words, it’s exactly what you were picturing when you pictured third-party Mount and Blade sea combat.

You, uh, might have to take my word for it. I'll fix future screenshots, but just so you know, the game really can be this murky.
You, uh, might have to take my word for it. I'll fix future screenshots, but just so you know, the game really can be this murky.

It’s really not too bad, though. I don’t feel especially nautical, but there are worse things in life than pirate-wallpapered Mount and Blade battles. The only real hassle is climbing up into all the nooks and crannies to kill the stragglers, who have generally busied themselves raining hogsheads of bullets down on such men as didn’t hear your order to jump to the left.

And that’s the last of ’em. I’m pretty happy with the results. Half the original guys I set out with are dead, but–come on. Half of everyone I’ve ever met is dead. When you’re a badass and a grandma, it just comes with the territory.

All in all, an honest day’s work. What say we take this loot to port and wait for the game to inevitably get weirder?

NEXT WEEK: INEVITABLY, THE GAME GETS WEIRDER

 


From The Archives:
 

23 thoughts on “Nan o’ War CH6: Secondhand Smuggling

  1. 1233456567 says:

    I have to say, so far this has been one of your best series, there is something very funny about how synchronized are the themes of 1) a pirate adventurer going in a great journey to explore the caribbean unknown to them and 2) you exploring this buggy game, just replace sharks, hunger and pirates for bugs, broken quests and bad design

    I’m very excited about how weirder it gets, pirate games tend to get amazingly weird

  2. Da Mage says:

    And a step to the right!

    1. Oliver Edleston says:

      Put your hands on your hips!

      1. SpaceSjut says:

        You bring your knees in ti-ight!

        1. Grudgeal says:

          But it’s the pelvic thrusts, that really drive you insa~ane!

          1. tmtvl says:

            I see you shiver with antici-

            1. Syal says:

              Agaaaiinnn!!

  3. Daemian Lucifer says:

    But did you try to jump overboard to see how the game handles water in ship to ship fights?

    1. Durican says:

      If prior experience is any indication, he’ll fall to the bottom of the ocean and then clip through the texture at the bottom.

  4. SpaceSjut says:

    I do wonder:
    Will the game inevitably get weirder next week?

    1. Durican says:

      I’ll be terribly disappointed in Rutskarn if it doesn’t.

  5. Grudgeal says:

    Wait, you won?

    Oh well, there’ll be plenty of chances to start belting out “Barrett’s Privateers” later I guess.

    1. Bropocalypse says:

      Mount & Blade becomes logarithmically better the more troops you have on hand, especially compared to the enemy. Basically, Granny Lackbeard didn’t have to outrun anyone because they were too busy ramming headfirst into mobs of equal intelligence, which allowed her player-blessed cunning to tip the scales.

      1. Isn’t that basically how Bethesda handles large-scale fights?

  6. Inwoods says:

    “17th-century watercraft are shut down FOR during engagements”

    #corrections

  7. Bropocalypse says:

    Troop controls in the vanilla game are somewhat obscure, somewhat fiddly, and a kinda unintuitive, but I wouldn’t say they’re hard to use. Most of the time you don’t have to use them for much else than putting your archers behind your infantry and controlling how far apart each soldier stands from one another.
    Then again, I’m the type of commander who parks them on the nearest hill and just lets the enemy run their asses slooooooowly into our Gibraltar. I guess this is probably why I like Rhodoks and Nords so much.

    1. John says:

      I do pretty much exactly that whenever I’m fighting an enemy with a fair amount of cavalry. So, everybody but the Rhodoks and Nords, then. Why chase Khergits all over the map like a sucker when they will inevitably run into your tightly-packed infantry, come to a complete stop, and quickly get hacked to death? The only bit of management that you have to do is to keep your own cavalry from running off across the map to get killed.

      1. Bropocalypse says:

        If I am short on cavalry, I usually have them follow me to help hunt down commanders. Otherwise I lead them around to lure the enemy into chasing us and thus letting our archers pick them off from a distance.
        Thank goodness the horses in this game don’t get tired.

  8. Warclam says:

    So, who’s that one “sailor” you have as your ally rather than part of your crew? I’m picturing either some strange technicality of how hirelings work, or else Sailor Neptune showed up and you got her killed.

    1. Perceptiveman says:

      I was wondering about this too. o.o

    2. Bropocalypse says:

      “Ally” means “part of someone else’s army/crew.” I guess it was an NPC who the pirates happened to be harassing when Granny moved in.

    3. Merzendi says:

      This game differentiates between Sailor-Crew and Soldier-Crew. Sailor-Crew are just called Sailors and only appear in naval battles. Soldier-Crew were the ones Ruts was running around with on land, they have actual variety, and appear in both land and naval battles.

      Because they don’t want your Sailor-Crew coming with you on land, they’re not part of your warband – so if they die, they appear as Allies, not as your troops.

  9. John says:

    Rutskarn, I salute you for being able to accomplish anything at all in that battle. I can’t make out a thing in either the naval battle or boarding action screenshots.

Thanks for joining the discussion. Be nice, don't post angry, and enjoy yourself. This is supposed to be fun. Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked*

You can enclose spoilers in <strike> tags like so:
<strike>Darth Vader is Luke's father!</strike>

You can make things italics like this:
Can you imagine having Darth Vader as your <i>father</i>?

You can make things bold like this:
I'm <b>very</b> glad Darth Vader isn't my father.

You can make links like this:
I'm reading about <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darth_Vader">Darth Vader</a> on Wikipedia!

You can quote someone like this:
Darth Vader said <blockquote>Luke, I am your father.</blockquote>

Leave a Reply to Daemian Lucifer Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published.