It's About Pirates Ship Controls Explained: Steering, Aiming, and Crew Stats

What It's About Pirates Ship Controls Actually Govern

Your cannons do the killing in It's About Pirates, but your hands on the wheel decide whether they ever get a clean shot. It's About Pirates ship controls really come down to three layers: where your hull points, which weapon slots can reach the enemy, and how much sailing speed your crew gives you. Get those right and an average build suddenly looks strong; get them wrong and even a wall of flamethrowers whiffs.

This breakdown of It's About Pirates ship controls uses the official Steam listing for It's About Pirates plus demo-era gameplay footage from a creator playthrough of the pirate survivors-like. Where the two disagree — mainly on aiming — we'll flag it clearly instead of blending them together.

The game is a survivors-style naval roguelike: you survive timed waves in an arena, hoover up gold, level up mid-run, and spend cash on weapons and items between levels. Steam's own description calls it a survivors-like where you blast through relentless waves, collect loot, and upgrade your ship for epic naval battles. Everything you "control" happens inside that loop.

Steering Is the Real Skill: Broadside Positioning

In the gameplay footage, the creator constantly swings the hull around so the side of the ship faces the incoming swarm, calling it the cool-but-annoying part of combat: you need to point your broadside at enemies to attack properly, and doing that while dodging is genuinely hard.

That single habit explains most deaths. Weapons fire from fixed slots, so your steering determines what is in arc and what is pointed at empty water. Treat the wheel as your primary input and the cannons as a consequence of it.

Sailing speed is the stat that feeds this. In the demo footage, hiring a sail maker raised sailing speed, and a pineapple pickup bundled sailing with vitality and repair. Faster hull means quicker re-angles, easier gold-barrel grabs, and less time pinned against the arena edge — which deals damage if you linger there.

Ramming is a legitimate tool too. The footage shows ramming ships as enemies and an item that grants a chance to heal when you ram, so a fast, heavy hull can turn collisions into healing rather than punishment. The demo loadout started with eight cannons and two harpoons, all of which needed the ship angled to matter.

Aiming, Weapon Slots, and Damage Types

Here's where sources diverge, so keep the distinction straight. In the demo footage, the creator complains that weapons cannot be aimed properly: a mortar cannot be told to focus the big bounty ship, and there appears to be one firing behavior that picks targets on its own. Steam's feature list for the released game, however, includes "Automatic or manual aiming." If precise aiming matters to you, that is the line to test in the build you own.

Slot placement is the control you do have. In the footage, the mortar occupies the center slot, flamethrowers and grapeshot sit in the side slots, and an extra cannon goes up front. That geometry is why broadside steering matters so much — a center-slot mortar covers a different arc than side-mounted fire.

Weapons also carry damage types: blunt on the mortar, pierce on harpoons and crosscuts, elemental on flamethrowers, often as a secondary type. Mixing all three is easy but not automatically efficient, since nothing in the footage suggests shared scaling between them.

One demo-era restriction worth knowing: the creator notes weapons could not be sold, so every purchase and placement was permanent for that run. Plan slots before you spend.

Crew Stats Are a Second Control Panel

Officers are hired at level-up, and each one quietly rewrites how the ship handles. The footage shows a crew panel where members boost plunder, repair, reload rate, and sailing — and those bonuses climb with every new body aboard, which is why losing crew hurts twice.

Crew members can die when the ship takes damage, not just when your hit points drop. Health barrels restore one crew member if you carry a life buoy, and sirens were shown wiping out roughly half the crew in a single pass — the strongest argument for staying mobile and staying clear of flagged threats.

Morale ties into this system as well, and the footage warns that some items trade morale or base damage for range and other perks. Read the negative line before you click buy.

Captain's Special and Cooldown Discipline

Each captain brings a special attack on its own recharge timer. The footage shows a homing fire attack that shreds everything in short range, recharging over roughly a couple of levels rather than seconds. That makes it a resource to bank for dense waves, big bounty ships, and the boss rather than a button to mash.

Positioning still governs it. The special is short-range and homing, so firing it at the edge of a screen-wide swarm wastes the charge. Steer into the clump, fire, then resume broadside angles.

The demo adventure closed on a Magma Turtle boss — a turtle with a volcano on its back — and the full release advertises 30 adventures, 10 captains, 6 factions, and more than 140 items, so expect the control layer to expand well past what the footage demonstrates.

What to Know Before You Take the Wheel

If you're buying in, here's the documented state of the listing rather than a guess at what it says now.

All rows above share the same source and cutoff: the It's About Pirates Steam store page captured on 2026-11-09. Prices, reviews, and compatibility status change over time — check the store for the live values.

Two practical notes. First, if you plan to play on a handheld or with mouse and keyboard, verify the current compatibility status yourself rather than trusting a snapshot. Second, the controller recommendation lines up with the broadside-steering loop: analog movement makes hull angling noticeably smoother than eight-direction keys.

FAQ

Can you manually aim in It's About Pirates ship controls? Steam's feature list for the released game includes "Automatic or manual aiming," while demo-era footage showed weapons firing with no per-weapon targeting. Test both settings early and pick whichever keeps your broadside honest.

Why does my ship feel slow to turn and reposition? Sailing is a stat, not a fixed value. Crew members and items raise it, and higher sailing means faster re-angles and quicker escapes from the damaging arena edge.

Can you lose crew members mid-run? Yes. Player experience from the demo shows crew dying when the ship takes damage, with health barrels restoring one member each if you carry a life buoy. Sirens can clear half your crew quickly, so give them room.

Does weapon slot placement matter for It's About Pirates ship controls? It matters a lot. Center slots, side slots, and front slots cover different arcs, so where a mortar or flamethrower sits changes how you must steer to bring it to bear.