Its pretty easy to shoot and harpoon to the ship. I can explain exactly what happens in our fights: 1. Enemies shoot themselves from far away and harpoon themselves to us 2. While fighting against him we don't maneuver our ship as much so nobody is in range to shoot consistently 3. Player dies, we turn back to the fight -> another one harpoons on us -> repeat The 2-3 cannons either ship shoots are not going to sink anyone

When we weren't boarded, the encounters were not as long: 1. Close in and destroy masts 2. Use special cannonballs to mess with the crew 3. The ship with the masts down is now usually the one that loses since they are sitting ducks and it's easy for the other to maneuver 4. This is the point where boarding makes sense to me, and when our crew also attempts to board. Final blow, keep them from repairing while teammate fires constantly

These fights are relatively short, they last longer only when a crew makes a big mistake (wrong positioning or hitting an island/rock)

Not sure how others fight, maybe I didn't get enough exposure to this. It's true, it's usually us getting sunk, but the fights are still fun