@Xerecs: Catapult is definitely better, but I feel it should be 2 points. I’d try to use it on an island, but it strikes me as slightly worse than a musketeer. I think a cost of 2 would allow it to see more usage.
On the other hand, I’ve realized that Ballista is OP. On a 10 master, you can easily gain TEN extra 3L cannons for just 5 points! (less than some marines!) On any ship with 3+ masts, it’s underpriced. I don’t think the drawback is enough to keep it that way. In addition, since they can fire from any mast, I don’t see how that would prevent someone from stacking all those extra cannons on the bow shot and get up to 11 shots from one mast. O_O Either it needs to scale in cost to how many ballista are aboard, or simply a hard cap such as up to 3 extra 3L cannons. Scaling it could get weird in terms of the wording, but 2 points for every 3L ballista placed on the ship might work – then it would cost 20 points rather than just 5 to double a 10 master’s firepower, but you could choose how many get placed (maybe tokens would be required), so you could place 3 ballista on a 5 master for 6 points. (which is still probably too cheap though…)
Since it’s equipment you could also put it on a creature with cargo, which makes for some strange ideas….
Ill Omen
Faction Affiliation: Mercenary
Rarity: C
Type: Ship
Point Value: 15
Number of Masts: 3
Cargo Space: 5
Base Move: L
Cannons: 2S-2L-2S
Ability: Mercenary. Fear. Crew with “specialist” in their name get +1 to their d6 rolls on this ship.
Link: Antoine Culot
Flavor text: Antoine Culot pilots his ship with a cunning evil. His reputation has grown with the body count. Although he has cargo to haul goods and defend them, he prefers to employ gunnery experts in order to cause his wartime opponents as much pain as possible.
Antoine Culot
Faction Affiliation: Mercenary
Rarity: C
Type: Crew
Point Value: 7
Ability: Crew killing. This ship gets +1 to her cannon rolls against ships without all of their masts. French crew can use their abilities on this ship.
Link: Ill Omen, Capitaine Bulbus
Flavor text: Born in France, taking payment as a killer for hire, and now in league with Cursed captains, Culot knows how to get around, both geographically and socially. Consistently serving on ships of differing nationalities, it remains to be seen if he has any true allegiance.
Historical Custom of the Day #349
Samuel Argall
English
Crew
14 points
Ability: Captain. Helmsman. Gold Capture. Parley. This ship gets +1 to her cannon rolls against the French. This crew can be assigned to any ship of the same nationality regardless of point costs; if this crew’s cost is greater than the ship, no other crew or equipment can be assigned to that ship.
You can find my custom sets here: Pirates of the Age of Sail and Pirates of the Epic Seas