A few words about combat XP

[Voltaire1512]

A few days ago I got to crafting level 8, meaning that I was able to build a Brig. Unfortunately I was still Junior Lieutenant with roughly 900 XP missing for the next level. Hence I decided to craft a Pickle and make a small journey. Here the route, which started at Key West counter-clockwise.

 

 

I think it does not come as a surprise, that I did not manage to make a full lap in one day. Or two days. And, of course, this was not just about sailing. I also intended to sink all single merchant ships I encounter. When I returned back home just now, the result was as follows:

 

25 ships. Not too shabby. So what is my rank now? Well, I am still Junior Lieutenant and 140 XP apart from the next promotion.

 

Considering the amount of time spent on these 25 encounters and that 25 successful missions would have generated a lot more XP, I`d like to say that those people who simply sail around instead of grinding missions are at a decent disadvantage.

 

Surely, maybe working as designed and intended, still I find this rather peculiar in a sandbox game.

 

Greetings

Edited February 1, 2016 by Voltaire1512

[Capt. Rice]

keep in mind that these ships are easy to farm and give at most 75 with out mission reward.  the rewards from a mission is what gave the grind a less grindy feeling. but thats just my opinion in this vast ocean of opinions.

[William the Drake]

A key thing to note here is that did you attack any trader variants of the above listed ships? Because the trader versions have less BR (battle rating) which results in less XP gained due to fighting. (I.e. sinking a Brig will generate more XP than sinking a Trader's Brig)

[jodgi]

All I will say is that if I am to grind I'm thankful for the convenience missions provide. I remember sailing for 30 minutes trying to find a suitable bot grinding candidate.

Be careful what you ask.

Not saying there's anything wrong in your observations, OP. Seriously.

[Voltaire1512]

A key thing to note here is that did you attack any trader variants of the above listed ships? Because the trader versions have less BR (battle rating) which results in less XP gained due to fighting. (I.e. sinking a Brig will generate more XP than sinking a Trader's Brig)

 

Well, I said I sank merchant ships, so I did not write "Traders XYZ" in the chart. My bad.

[Slamz]

Trader Lynx doesn't even have guns! XP is supposed to represent challenge and killing traders is not much of a challenge. It might be amusing if capturing them offered an XP bonus, though, because that's a lot more work than just sinking them but I think the bottom line is you only get so much XP from bashing basically defenseless ships. (On the other hand, if you capture them and take all their cargo I have found that frequently enough they have $20,000+ of cargo on board. I see traders as money farms rather than XP farms.)

 

I'm rank 4 and have gotten almost all of my XP from the open world, but a lot of that comes from things like tackling a Constitution while making sure a friendly NPC fleet of greater strength will get drawn in. Getting an "Assist" on a Constitution is worth 60 xp, plus whatever damage you do and potentially lots more if you get some good raking fire with grape to kill a bunch of crew. I've gotten over 300 xp from a single fight like this. The only tricky part is finding big fleets in range to draw into each other and then avoiding being the target a Constitution...

Edited February 2, 2016 by Slamz