You have encountered another ship.

You can press the picture of your ship to view your detailed ship status and the picture of the other ship to see a brief popup about the opponent. During the battle, you will be able to see what parts of yours and the opponents ships have been damaged in the latest round of combat (red figures denote recent damaged).

Encounter Types

You will find that there are a number of different "types" of ships you will run into:

Encounter Phases

An encounter may go through three different phases: at distance, close up, and boarding.

At Distance

At distance, your ship has various possibilities.

Close encounter

Once the ships are close, the fight begins in earnest.

Boarding

When the ships are locked in boarding combat, the crews will be involved in a life and death struggle. The situation leaves three possibilities:

Defeating an Enemy Ship

In general, defeating an enemy ship requires that you reduce one or more of its attributes to 0 (crew down to 10 men or less). Merchant ships may surrender before then, but military ships or ships on a mission will fight to the bitter end. Keep this in mind before you engage them.

If your ship gets reduced to 0 Hull, it will sink. This will end your game, no matter which level you are playing at.

If your ship's Sails or Rigging gets reduced to 0, your ship can no longer move.

If your ship's cannons get reduced to 0, you can no longer fire broadsides (obviously).

If your ship's crew falls to 10 men or less during boarding combat, your ship will surrender to the enemy. Note that, during combat, your ability to fire cannons also depends on the size of your crew. You need at least 5 men per cannon that you will fire (note that a broadside is half of your cannons, so for a 20 gun ship, you need a crew of at least 50 to fire at full effect). If you have less than the full number of crewmembers required, your cannon fire will be reduced in effect.

Your fate depends on what kind of ship you were fighting; pirates will plunder your ship, while most other ships will take you away to be put on trial.

If you survive a battle in which one of your sails or rigging was reduced to 0, your crew will jury-rig repairs so that you can move again.