Question About manning guns

[desirableroasted]

Originally Posted by Collin Dougherty

Okay your probably going to kill me,
But is it possible to fire the deck gun?
like aim it up yourself.
Because sometimes the AI acts like a freaking idiot and misses shots it really should not be missing.

Yes! One of the most enjoyable parts of the game, until the merchants arm up.

Hit the deck-gun icon on the left side of the screen. You will find yourself behind "your man" on the deck gun. Hit tab to take the seat yourself, then tab again to zoom in.

And fire away.

Best results:

• Be 1000-1500m away. Too far, accuracy suffers. Too close, you can't depress the gun sufficiently.
• Aim for below the waterline. In GWX, flooding is what kills 95% of ships. What you want to see is the shell falling short of the ship, then -- a second later -- a brief, dim flash. It may not look like much, but terribly effective.
• How to do this? If his range is 1500m, aim for 1300. Walk your way up by 50m increments until you have him ranged.
• Be patient. As little as five below-the-waterline shots, from stem to stern, can sink a Large Merchant. But it won't go down in minutes. Note his speed, make your shots, bear off and observe. If the speed drops from, say, 7 knts to 4-5knts in 10-15 minutes of game time, you probably don't need to expend more ammo. If he doesn't go down in an hour, or maintains speed, go around to the other side and give 2 or 3 new punches to help things along.
• But if you are using more than 10 below-the-waterline rounds, spaced evenly along the ship, on a Large Merchant, you are not being patient enough.
• Think of your shells as 20 free torpedoes. If you are blessed with good weather and unarmed lone targets, you can easily bring down 80K-100K just with shells.

If your crew is not shooting well enough, they are probably not skilled enough. Make sure your gun crew is staffed with gunner-qualified petty officers, and that your watch officer is gunner qualified.

Also, on the watch officer station, you can instruct your gun crew to fire only at short range, and aim for the water line.

Finally, make it easy on your gun crew. Bring your boat to a course and speed that keeps it at around 1200 m range.

And, even if you do the shooting yourself, always have an elite gun crew on deck. If nothing else, they will reduce your re-load times.