Thorfinn: I'm running into issues I must be misunderstanding.
I'm understanding that the bulk of ships some of the better players are amassing are captured pirate ships. OK, I can get a few here and there, but most of the time, I can't get pirate crews low enough to take them with a single crayer. In The Game Which Shall Not Be Named, I could load grapeshot and go after crew, but I can't figure out anything to do but send those pirates to Davy Jones' Locker. How do you do it? Ballistas? Catapults? What's the right way to grab those ships who don't already start at low crews?
Big catapults seem to work best against crew. No misunderstanding that I can see, they still damage the ship quite a bit, there is no weapon that only takes out sailors. A cutlass for everyone is a must, as is a really happy crew. A captain that's good at fighting helps a lot as well. If you fight with more than one ship, give each a captain, even if he's not the best fighter its better than none. You shouldn't need a big advantage in men then, even if it ends 1-0 you get both ships, of course its risky since the numbers for the opponent are approximate and if its one of those days they have a 7 skill captain.
Crayer against hulk is always hairy, occassionally one escapes to the fishes, they need to be shot down so much. (More training for the wharf in New... Edinburgh when I show up with another vaguely ship shaped pile of matches ;-)
Cogs are quite agile despite being slower overall, do as I say, not as I do and try fighting with them, all the pros fight with cogs, the added crew helps so much.
Or experiment with more than one ship? A full cog gets set to flee immediately but with half sails so that it stays on the map hopefully, the crayer does the fighting and for capture you bring back the big one. Its finicky not to sail off the map, try cogs first.
You could sacrifice a snaikka with no weapons, brazenly sail up to the pirate and try to enter, of course that wont work, they take the ship but by manning it remove sailors from the one you really want.
Hunting down the leftovers with a second fighter is risky, damaged pirates like to turn invisible and that every-ship-sees-two-others-limit doesn't make things easier. One for those cases when you really, really want this ship.
(two crayers and a cog taken with a single 28man crayer is my proudest achievement, took a very long evening of reloading to get that right)
Once you can build slightly bigger ships of your favorite type use those for fighting, every additional man helps. And practice not getting hit some more.
