Vagrus - The Riven Realms Short guide on Crew Combat

How Does Crew Combat Work

In Crew Combat, unlike Companion Combat, your whole comitatus takes part in the fight. Since it would be hard to manage hundreds of fighters one by one, Crew Combat has a more strategic approach and revolves around making choices on a larger scale. Sometimes you will be attacked, sometimes you will be given the possibility to attack.

This is how it works: when you are the attacker, you can choose a specific target as your objective(killing the enemy, stealing their beasts, enslaving them etc) and your efforts will be automically directed towards that goal. Same goes for the enemy, but you won't be able to know their intentions until the first round of combat is over. When you're attacked, you can choose to Ward something specific in your Comitatus to increase its defenses(fighting crew, beasts, cargo etc). Also, you can try to flee, decreasing the chance of sustaining losses with the Appease option(discussed later). Your enemy might try to flee as well sometimes. If you choose to fight, the combat is divided in three rounds, in each one of those you can choose different actions that have different effects. You can change your mind and Ward something else, or try to Flee even in between rounds. But mainly, you will adopt combat strategies that will boost stats. Having the Command perk unlocked will allow you to adopt better strategies. Keep in mind that they cost Resourcefullness. After every round, you and your enemy will endure certain losses. If both are still figthing after the third round, there is a final round, the Aftermath, in which one of you will certainly be destroyed (so try to avoid dragging the fights too much)..

General Combat Formula

The general combat formula is something like this: Comitatus Combat Strenght - Enemy Defense vs Enemy Combat Strenght. These 2 values(which the win-lose chance red and green graph on top is based on), together with a dice roll, define the amount of damage the Comitatus and the Enemy will deal. The damage will be applied with a focus on the target of the attack both for the Comitatus (which you can choose) and the Enemy(crew, cargo etc). Before being applied, it gets modified by bonuses(if any, for example from Combat Commands like Flanking Assault), and it gets reduced if the target of the attack has been Warded. After this, you get the total damage that will be randomly divided between single units, and every single unit damage will be reduced by its own Defense value.

Warding

You want to guess your enemies' intention and protect what will likely be the target of their attack. Warding something will reduce the damage dealt to it. You can protect everything equally but with a lower bonus.

Fleeing

If you don't wanna fight, you can always try to Flee: your Combat Stats get severely reduced but you are guaranteed to have to endure a single round of fight, instead of 3. If the odds of a fight are not entirely in your favor, you might end still fighting after 3 rounds which brings you in the 4th one, the Aftermath: here, one between your Comitatus or your Enemy will likely(might actually be guaranteed) be wiped out, and if that's you, well, it's Game Over.

Appeasing

You can increase how easily you can flee(even make it guaranteed to have no losses, which is what you will always want to do) with the Appease option. Certain enemies will crave a specific type of asset when they attack: money, valuable cargo, food(including fresh human meat from slaves), and you can offer them things inside the Flee menu. If you can't offer enough to make the Flee Chance 100% guaranteed, the enemy will still suffer reduced Combat Strenght, and you will lose less resources. Some enemies, for example territorial creatures(but not only) will be satisfied only when your comitatus is completely destroyed, so the Appease option will have almost no effect or no effect at all.

Enemy Grit

After each turn a roll is made based on grit, its outcome will determine if the enemy will try to flee or not. It gets lower as the enemy sustains losses, and you can further decrease it with specific combat actions. Some enemies are more relentless than others, and decreasing their grit might not be a viable tactic. Keep in mind that if the enemy starts fleeing, the combat will last for 1 more round and then it will be over, and if some enemies manage to escape you might get a smaller reward, so in general you might wanna try to avoid to reduce their grit too much too soon if in a winning position.

Source: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2428421722

Short guide on Crew Combat