Combat

Combat is a highly tactical affair in Abandon Ship, where smarts and tactics mean a whole lot more than pure brawn and ability to click faster than your opponent. Class-based crew greatly impacts performance in combat. Fortunately, the normally real-time gameplay can be paused.

Distance

 * Distance between ships affects visibility, chance to hit and usability of ship weapons, such as the mortar, cannons, and more. There are four ranges: Far, Mid, Close, and Boarding. Ships begin encounters at Mid (barring exceptional circumstances) and can close distance if the other ship doesn't try to stay away or has damaged sails.

Damage
Damage is modeled in three ways:
 * Hull damage: The ability of the ship to stay in one piece. Damage accumulates as a result of weapons firing on the ship, any fires spreading (which can be put out by the crew), and special events (such as the kraken latching onto your ship).
 * Water: If the ship suffers a hull breach, it starts taking on water and sinks if the gauge fills. The crew can patch the hull breaches and evacuate the water by using the water pump (automatic variants constantly remove water without the need for a crew member present).
 * Component damage: The ship's weapons and upgrades can suffer damage in the course of combat, reducing their performance. Each system has four states, from fully functional to destroyed. As the durability of a system decreases, its performance falls off at each threshold. The crew will automatically repair any systems they are manning.

Victory

 * The most basic way to achieve victory is to sink the other ship. This is achieved by bombarding it with weapons and once the hull is destroyed or the water fills up the ship, they are gone for good. Sinking a ship also reduces the amount of post-battle loot.
 * The most effective way to destroy a ship is to eliminate its crew. The usual method is to close to Boarding distance and deploy your own crew while supporting them with crew-damaging weapons. Fortunately, if you manage to sink the enemy ship while boarding, your crew will survive intact.