Puzzle Pirates XOing and MAA Strategy on Atlantis Runs

Puzzle Pirates XOing and MAA Strategy on Atlantis Runs by AlfMason

Let me preface this by saying that all of the following are my own opinions, and do not claim to be the truth.

General:

What the naver wants to know: While stuck in the nav screen, the navigator is pretty much blind. You are his eyes on the ship. Navigators will need updates on the number of bellators and the number of defenders, so they know when to leave the board to shake them. Navigators may also need in-between updates on the amount of stock on the ship, as the run goes on – lots of runs are pretty much stocked for eternity, but it’s always good to know these things. This information should run via a designated chat channel (/o), or, if you have it, voice chat.

What the jobbers want to know: Ever so often, you see someone dismiss their station and wander to the booty chest to look what’s there. You can either yell at these jobbers, which is the stressful way, or you shout out the numbers at every break. Then the jobbers’ curiosity is satisfied, and they have one less reason to abandon stations – it’s win-win.
EDIT: this has been partially addressed with the reports now saying what has been hauled since the last break – a voyage total is still nice, though

10% what you’re saying, 20% how you say it, 70% how you look:

Jobbers dislike bossy XOs. Someone who’s constantly yelling creates a bad atmosphere on a ship. A good XO will give out praise lavishly, and bark commands sparingly. If it’s one person you’re concerned with, /tells and whistles are the way to go rather than adding even more to vessel spam.

MAA:

This can be done the easy way or the hard way. The easy way means you tell all lazers to defend, and start frays ever so often, as long as you substantially outnuber the foe. If the numbers run too high, tell the navigator to get off the board. – EDIT: This won’t work anymore since the last update, as dragoons won’t go away.
The harder way means more work for the MAA, but should ideally allow a ship to ward off bellators for longer: Get as many people as possible to defend and manage them manually. Gear the fray size to the challenge. If you have a fray against 4 belators you can of course send in 20 players, but that may not be so clever. If you do this, you’ll have 5 people per bellator, which means the bellators will mainly stall against attacks, and the fight takes longer. Try to have them outnumbered by a comfortable margin, but don’t overdo it. The number of your defenders should be less than three times the number of bellators, 1.5 times should be enough.
If the situation gets tight, pull people from stations sparingly to pad out your numbers. Contrary to what most think, the station you can take most people away from without hurting the ship is sails.

EDIT: Bellators will now hang around your ship if you exit, and come back once you reenter the board. To deal with this with high numbers of bellators, good communication with the naver is needed. Get as many people to volunteer that you can trounce them. A clearing fight like this can be done within the safe zone, without the risk of new bellators boarding. To get it over with quick, tell people to throw their challenges in the safe zone, if you’re gonna have a big fray, individual challenges will only delay the desired effect. Then start the fray, fight it out in the safe zone, and get a clear ship.

EDIT2: As the MAA is the person defenders should listen to, he/she can give out teaming strategies. I have personally found that it works to give out the strategy to kill allectus first, then eparchos, then kybernete, then bellator. These are their ranks, from highest to lowest. I could be mistaken about the effects, as I don’t have a reliable sample, but in my experience with this advice given out, the sea cucumber was beaten more often than with just “teams of 3”. The reasoning is of course, that with the hardest guys taking out first, while your board is still fairly uncluttered, the sum of attacks coming is decreased more than when you kill bellators first.

MOAR EDIT: Remind people to volunteer and re-volunteer. When someone accepts a 1-on-1 challenge they are automatically unchecked from the defenders list, but not rechecked once they finish, win or lose. Over time your defnders will get challenged, which can lead to dwindling defender numbers.

Also, allow people to re-volunteer: As you can currently only volunteer when there is no fray going on, and at some point you’re fighting frays back to back, give your waiting would-be volunteers a warning when they can get back in. Ideally there’s “fray about to end” and “those waiting, volunteer now”, which should be enough to catch people’s attention while not being too spammy.

If you make the effort to go that extra league and manage fights well, your ship should be better equipped to handle larger numbers of bellators, and the fights should for the most part be short and sweet.

Planking:

For some reason, people still like to put TH over the well-being of the ship. Generally, the rule should be to TH when you can, unless told differently. Sadly, this won’t always work. So the rule needs to be enforced. If someone runs to TH in a damage control situation repeatedly, do not hesitate to plank, and make it public what they did wrong. Even worse, if someone abandons a bellator fray to TH, they should be planked with swiftness.

Managing Jobber turnover:

One turn before leaving the board to reenter, the XO should make a ship broadcast for people to contact their hearties, so you fill quickly while at the LP. Jobbers should be told whether you’re leaving for port or to go back in, people who have to hop should be encouraged to do so right on leaving the board. I’ve seen it way to often that people don’t know what’s going on, spam “we gonna port?” for a while, then, when the naves shouts “going back in” decide to bail. Give them information, so they can make an informed decision quickly.

Don’t hesitate to job people from the battle board while on your way out. Inform them via crew chat that you’ll be out shortly and will yell. The shorter you sit at the league point waiting, the better for morale.

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That’s all I can think of right now, I’d very much appreciate discussion and the addition of what I might have missed the blatantly obvious stuff that somehow slipped my mind when typing this.

Thanks.

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