Port Battles

A port battle is the biggest, most deliberate fight in the game — the scheduled siege that actually decides who owns a port once a conquest flag has triggered it. Two clans and their allies field capped fleets of a few dozen ships each, prepared in advance, and fight a timed battle around the port’s own defences. It’s less a brawl than a team sport with a scoreboard: you win by controlling marked circles to bank points, by destroying the enemy fleet outright, or — if you’re defending — by simply outlasting the clock. This is the war server’s premier event, and the reason clans exist.

What a port battle is

When an attacker plants a flag, a port battle is scheduled for the following day at the port’s set time. The clan that planted the flag is the attacker; the port’s current owner is the defender. Both, and their declared allies, then have a day to organise before the fight. Unlike the chaos of an open-world tag, a port battle is a known quantity — a fixed time, a fixed place, a capped number of ships per side — which is exactly what makes it a planned, coordinated operation rather than a scramble.

Who gets in — and screening

A port battle isn’t open to all comers. Only members of the attacking clan and its friendly clans, or the defending clan and its friendly clans, may take a slot in the battle fleet — one more reason clan diplomacy decides conquest (see Clans & Nations). The fleet is capped, both in ship count and in total Battle Rating — a budget of fighting power — so a clan can’t simply drown the port in hulls; it must choose a composition that spends that budget well.

Captains who don’t make the battle fleet aren’t useless. The attacking fleet has to travel to the port, and the defenders can field a screening fleet to intercept and savage that approach in the open world before the siege even begins. Screening is its own contest fought outside the port battle proper, and it’s where a great many players actually spend a conquest evening — a tool that lets a fleet jump straight to the battle can sidestep it, so the cat-and-mouse on the way in is a real part of the operation.

Preparing your ship

A port battle rewards preparation more than any other fight, because you know exactly what’s coming and have a day to ready for it. The principles:

• Sail fully crewed. An under-crewed ship fights badly — top up before you go. See Crew Management.
• Arm for the expected range. Long guns for a stand-off fight, carronades for close-in work, medium guns as the compromise — pick to match the role you’ll play in the fleet’s plan.
• Fit to your strengths. Choose mods, books, and perks that double down on what your ship is for rather than patching its weaknesses, and make sure your perks are combat ones, not trader or fishing perks.
• Carry enough repairs and ammunition to last a long fight, and set your ship knowledge after you’ve been placed in the fleet.

Fighting the battle: circles and points

A port battle is scored, not just fought to the death. Arrayed in front of the port are control circles and the port’s own fortifications — forts and towers that shoot at attackers and must be reckoned with. At the start the two sides spawn apart, the defenders nearer the port; then the contest for the circles begins. Control of a circle goes to whichever side has more ships inside it, and a side starts banking points once it holds a majority of the circles with no enemy contesting them. Sinking enemy ships and knocking down fortifications score points too. So the battle is a constant tension between holding ground and killing hulls — park everyone on the circles and the enemy fleet picks you apart; chase kills and you cede the circles and the points clock.

Winning and losing

There are a few roads to victory, and they aren’t symmetric. Either side wins immediately by reaching the target score, or by sinking or capturing the entire enemy fleet. The defender has one more: simply survive until the timer runs out. That asymmetry shapes the whole fight — the attacker is racing a clock and must force the issue, while the defender can win by denial, trading ground for time and refusing to be drawn into losing exchanges. As in any battle your hull, sails, and planking are patched on the way out but your crew is not, and a port battle is long and bloody enough that crew losses are a real cost even in victory.

Raider port battles

Not every siege is nation-versus-nation. Raiders — NPC fleets — periodically threaten ports of any nation, and the game warns everyone with a scheduled notice naming the port and time. A raider port battle works on the same circles-and-points footing, but the enemy is an AI force (with a few merchant ships salted into it) rather than another clan. For a port’s owners it’s a defence like any other: lose it and the port can revert to neutral, so even a clan at peace with its neighbours has to turn out to hold what it owns. It also makes a useful first taste of the port-battle format for players who haven’t fought one against humans yet.