In order for a ship to sink, it must be piloted, and stay piloted while the wool/wood/iron is being destroyed. Every ship class has specific requirements that need to be fulfilled in order for the ship to even work.

• For all ‘ship’ classes this is 25% wood, 15% wool.
• For submarines its 5% iron blocks.

If these values fall below 1% (I believe), the ship will start to sink. This is why submarines are generally easily taken out, as you only need to destroy a few iron blocks, and they will go down. On the other hand, ships have much more of a ‘buffer’ – that being you need to either destroy 14% of the wool (leaving less than 1%), or 24% of the wood (leaving less than 1%) – you do not need to destroy both wool and wood.

The larger the ship, the more difficult it is to sink – ships with large sails are often pretty safe as cannons do not deal much damage to sails – sure you’ll get a lot of holes, but its very unlikely that almost all of your wool is shot off. Good tip here is to put some wool underwater, as cannons cannot damage the blocks here.

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For the actual sinking of a ship, you need to make sure the ship is piloted (aka, it says ‘Successfully piloted ship of size: 1234’), and it needs to stay piloted while its being shot at. Only a piloted ship can sink – if you are shooting at a ship that was not piloted, or was recently released; shoot cannons all you want, she won’t be sinking as the server doesn’t recognize the blocks as a ‘ship’ – this is what you’ll be seeing in the form of floating blocks in the sky.

When I come across a ship that I want to sink, I do the following:

• Remove most of the wool from hard to reach areas, and add just enough wool to say the decks so that the ship will work
• Pilot the ship
• Use Eff V shears and break the wool fast – if you wait too long without moving the ship, the plugin will think you’re afk and will /release the ship for you automatically
• Once more than 14% of the wool is destroyed, the ship will start to sink.

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As stated previously, ships tend to be harder to sink than submarines. We have lost several submarines during ship battles, but only one ship (Kai’s ship from the last battle was blown up, destroying pretty much all wool, and sinking it). The most important thing, it to make sure the ship stays piloted while you are blowing it up. You may have destroyed almost all wool blocks, but if that little message ‘You have released your ship’ pops up, that ship ain’t sinking.

Sorry that this answer is long, but here is the short hand version:

1. Ensure the ship is piloted, and stays piloted – move it around every 10 seconds or so, that way it won’t auto /release it for you
2. Focus on breaking any key blocks in a ship, such as wool, iron, or wood (if you have the patience)

On the bright side, if someone fails to sink a ship and leaves a wreck, thats one more ship you could own if you fix it up 😉

Hope this helped