So we've entered our first party water encounter and discovered something very game breaking. There seems that there's nothing in the rules that disallows an ally to man any enemy ship station (or vise-versa). Does that mean that if we're not ambushed, the players can actually man the enemy ship and subsequently quickly steer it right off the edge of the map for a party victory? Is there going to be errata released regarding this, as unless the party is ambushed, it seems to be a easy means to victory.

The last encounter was as follows:

Chill in the Air (*not* an ambush) on Doldrums. Enemy ship was on top left corner, player's ship setup as close to it as possible. The Overlord placed the Leader and one shade at the Captain's Wheel locations. On the player's turn, one character killed the white shade, another quickly hopped over to the enemy ship, then steered it off the map, resulting in the enemy 'fleeing' the encounter and a player victory.

Any ideas?

I'd have to look at the map, but something doesn't sound right about that. Unfortunately my stuff is at a friend's house. I don't recall anything in outdoor encounters forbidding the heroes from manning the enemy ship.

A few ideas:

1) How much movement did it take for the hero to get across to the other ship and then man the wheel?

2) What did the hero roll for range on the wheel and how many sails did the enemy ship have raised? IIRC, you can only move a maximum of twice the number of raised sails.

3) How close was the enemy ship to the edge?

Water encounters do seem fraught with problems - lots of problems, for both sides.

So far I have played 1 encounter only. It was the very constricted map that others have complained about before, where there is a narrow gap exactly as wide as the Revenge between two sets of rocks and a sideways current that could go east or west. As best we could tell there was no way the heroes could go forward without risking a TPK one way or the other, with no possible hero input into which way the currant pushed them onto the rocks.

No problem, the hero at the wheel simply spent fatigue on his wheel action and skipped the Revenge sideways off the map as the very first thing the heroes did. End of encounter, most unsatisfactorily. And 45 mins setting up and checking rules for 2 mins of action (1.25 ambushing monster ship turn, out of range of cannons and5sec hero turn).

One thing does seem slightly unusual...
There is very little choice as to where the heroes set up. Most encounters have only 1 green area (a small number have two) and eh green area exactly defines how the ship will be positioned with no options at all.
So when you write that the heroes placed their ship 'as close to the enemy ship as possible' it seems to indicate that the heroes had options? (Mostly the do not, on a few maps they have two options only IIRC).

You where playing correctly, heroes can control the enemy ship (and vice versa!). Though as others said you might have missed something else since it seems like a big feat for new heroes (but not impossible). If the ships are that close to each other the overlord needs to be very careful with deployment.

But I agree with Corbon, ship combat was a neat idea but it is just not done that well. Either it is going to be dead easy for the heroes (on certain maps and conditions) or it will be a nightmare that they can never win. From what I have seen there are few encounters that are equal and therefore challenging.