I ran the Battle of Portland scenario, with success. I had the difficulty level set to "hard" and took the Dutch side (as usual). The Dutch won 57% to 0%, with the last surviving English ship being the small frigate, Nightingale, which had tried to run away.
I always maneuvered only using destination points, although on several occasions, I set a destination point for a single ship, either when it had become separated, or in another case, to be able to rake a larger English ship.
My tactics, as usual, were to first attack the single squadron, cruising to the Northeast, near the coast. In the real battle, this was George Monck's squadron. A nice feature of Ballhausen's book is that he has pictures that show the layout of the squadrons, as well as the starting wind direction.
In the real battle, the Dutch attacked the other squadrons, first. Frank Fox says that they came close to winning the battle on the first day, as they were able to board the second rate flagships. However, they ended up losing the battle, as they started to run out of ammunition, having wasted some bombarding land fortifications.
In any case, what I find are a winning way to fight, is to sail in such a way to divide the enemy fleet, by "breaking the line", or as is the case in Privateers Bounty, sailing in between ships that are generally sailing in lire abreast, towards your fleet.
As an experiment, I may try attacking the main body, first, before I deal with Monck's squadron.
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