Hunting privateers

[moose1999]

The French privateers are harassing my coastlines and merchants and I want to give them a lesson...!

I've put independent frigates in all pirate-infested waters but I don't think they're doing any good...

How do I find out whether my frigates are helping against privateers - will there be a note in the event report if they damage/kill one?

Does it help to put more than one frigate in a sea-zone?

Also, I'm not quite sure how privateers work - do they take a part of the income of every trade route that goes through the zone they're in or do they only rob merchant fleets/ports?

[Hard Sarge]

for what they are doing

there are reports in reports pages

[Hard Sarge]

not really sure how to read that, but this one tells what you did and what was did to you

[dude]

I believe you should actually get a Battle prompt if you actually intercept a privateer with a frigate.  Then you can choose between Quick or Detailed combat to fight them.  Otherwise I don't think you are doing any good against them.  I know I've fought a lot of battles and eventually wipped out most of my enemy privateers... though it took awhile.  Even when I caught up to them I had a heck of a time sinking them or capturing them before they would run.
 
If I had too many frigates... they'd run to start with.  Too few and I couldn't get enough hits on them to cripple them before they would run.
 
 

[moose1999]

Hi Sarge,

Yes, I know about the reports, but I'm more interested in how the frigates are doing against the privateers.
I've been hunting privateers with my frigates for a year, now, and I have yet to see any battles or reports of interceptions/losses.
According to the manual an independent frigate in the same sea-zone as a privateer should have 33% chance of interception, so after a year there should have been lots of interceptions as there are lots of privateers about and my frigates are all over them.

[sw30]

You only get a battle prompt if you are at war with the dude.  The 33% chance to kill a privateer is against neutral privateers...  I've personally never seen a kill.  It's either not displayed or not implemented.

[moose1999]

ORIGINAL: sw30

You only get a battle prompt if you are at war with the dude.  The 33% chance to kill a privateer is against neutral privateers...  I've personally never seen a kill.  It's either not displayed or not implemented.

Okay, so at least I'm not missing something.
But if that's true we seem to be pretty defenceless against privateers unless we go to war against their owner.
Well, I'm playing Denmark - and I'm NOT going to war against France for a couple of bags of wool and a handful of coins...![X(]

[balto]

This is an interesting thread.

[WallysWorld]

And here I sent out major Royal Navy forces to hunt down privateers wherever my merchants ships were. Though it does make for an interesting decision to declare war on a nation in order to destroy their privateers.

[balto]

Crap, is this subect dead?

[PDiFolco]

In the first place privateers should not attack Neutral nations ships - if it is the case they become pirates and should be attacked on sight by any nation !
Remember that the guys got "Letters of Marque" allowing them to attack their nation' enemies, but noone else.

[Randomizer]

Don't forget that Letters of Marque allowed privateers to seize neutral ships trading with an enemy or bound to/from enemy ports.  The actions of French revolutionary privateers against US merchants triggered the Franco-American 'Quasi War' fought at sea between 1798 and 1800.  Perhaps CoG-EE is modelling this historical behavior?

[Joram]

Yes, privateers affect all shipping.  Regarding the actions of frigates against privateers, it sounds like what you are asking is that we need more feedback to the player.

[moose1999]

Yes, more feedback would be nice.
Feedback is always nice...!

[PDiFolco]

ORIGINAL: Randomizer

Don't forget that Letters of Marque allowed privateers to seize neutral ships trading with an enemy or bound to/from enemy ports.  The actions of French revolutionary privateers against US merchants triggered the Franco-American 'Quasi War' fought at sea between 1798 and 1800.  Perhaps CoG-EE is modelling this historical behavior?

Right... Hard to simulate. Problem is that it's abnormal to have say French Privateers attacking France's allies shipping !
Maybe a rule could be that Privateers don't hurt shipping of nations allied to their owner?

[balto]

PDiFolco - YES.  That and some feedback per Briny_Norman would do the trick in this area.

[glozier]

It seems to me that something is wrong (a bug?) with frigates hunting privateers. I had 9 frigates hunting 2 privateers in the same sea zone for several turns with no results. Every turn the privateers were stealing my exports and blocking imports.

The frigates were not in a fleet and I was not at war with the nation owning the privateers. In fact I was allied with the owners of the privateers.

If each frigates has a 33% chance of destroying a privateers then the probability that 9 frigates do not destroy any is 2.4%. Yet my frigates don't get any for several turn. Something is clearly wrong.

[Anthropoid]

It would be nice to have a very clear idea of what privateers will and will not attack, and also if this possible problem with the Frigates is addressed by the Devs.

[ericbabe]

I did find a frigate hunting privateer bug that sometimes made privateers invisible to frigates (metaphorically speaking).  Have fixed it.

I've also added a "Anti-Privateering" report to the end of the Battles Report that shows the roll and hit/miss results of every frigate.

[glozier]

ORIGINAL: ericbabe

I did find a frigate hunting privateer bug that sometimes made privateers invisible to frigates (metaphorically speaking).  Have fixed it.

I've also added a "Anti-Privateering" report to the end of the Battles Report that shows the roll and hit/miss results of every frigate.

Great! I am glad you found a bug. The report will also be appreciated.

I have a question. Should privateers in the game be limited to act as historical privateers and attack only enemy shipping? Or should they act like pirates and attack any foreign shipping?

Here's a quote from Wikipedia about privateers:

A privateer was a private warship authorized by a country's government by letters of marque to attack foreign shipping. Strictly, a privateer was only entitled by its state to attack and rob enemy vessels during wartime. The letter of marque of a privateer would typically limit activity to a specific area and to the ships of specific nations. Typically, the owners or captain would be required to post a performance bond against breaching these conditions, or they might be liable to pay damages to an injured party. In the United Kingdom, letters of marque were revoked for various offenses.

George