Bilge Pumping
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Bilging is one of the skills o' piracy. Other skills you'll need on a vessel are sailing, carpentry, gunnery and navigation.
Bilge Pumping is a fine puzzle for young Pirates to start their sailing lives on. It's easy to pick up and soothing to operate. Just swap the pieces left and right to align three or more of the same piece in a row or column. Those pieces are then cleared as well as water from your bilge! More water pieces slide in, and there's more to pump. It's all about efficiency in staving off the flood, so clearing many pieces in one swap is the key!
All ships take on water as they become damaged from the wear of ordinary sailing, and particularly after they've been hit by cannon in Sea Battle. The more bilge in the hold, the slower she goes. So man those pumps!
Pumping Bilge by Making Rows and Columns
In Bilge Pumping you can use the mouse or the arrow keys to move the target around the board. Click or press the Space Bar to swap two highlighted pieces. Note that you can only swap horizontally, not vertically. Form rows or columns of three or more watery pieces and they are pumped away!
Combos
To do well at bilging, one should create combos featuring greater numbers of pieces. Obviously, creating rows or columns of four or five pieces would be best, but you can also multiply your combos by simultaneously clearing more than one row or column in one swap move. You will see different messages as you achieve greater combos - for example, "Arrr! 4x4." Combos are the most effective method of pumping bilge.
Chains
You will swiftly notice that it's possible to create chain reactions where clearing one set of pieces causes another row or column to fall into place. These accelerate the progress of your bilging; however, chains are often serendipitous, and are therefore much less valuable than combos.
The Waterline
You will notice a waterline across the screen. Along with the ship's water level dial, this shows the bilger how much work she has to do to clear the hold. Swapped pieces move much more slowly below the waterline. There is always a little water in a vessel no matter how hard you bilge.
Scoring in Bilge
Like all the Duty puzzles, bilging is scored based on your efficiency at clearing pieces and the bonuses from using combos and chains. The important thing to remember is that the efficiency does take time into account. So a balance of speed and strategy best serves the bilger.
The bilging indicator gives you an idea of how well you are pumping the Bilge at any moment.
The dark and sad bilge pump to the left is neglected, whereas the glowing golden bilge pump to the right is in the hands of a master bilger!
In addition, and in common with the other Duty puzzles, the font size of the message when you perform an action is a good indicator of how valuable that action was.
Blockades & Maneuvers
In blockades where maneuvers are enabled, bilging takes on an additional level of complexity. Pieces are still used to form and clears rows and columns of three or more like pieces as usual. In addition to this, if you are bilging well, the bilge pieces may include the top or bottom half of a maneuver shape in addition to their normal piece type. These halves may be aligned to form a whole shape, allowing your ship to earn progress towards a maneuver.
Although progress may be earned towards any maneuver, the navigator may request a specific maneuver. This requested maneuver is shown in the maneuver indicator along with the current progress of the bilgers, carpenters, and sailors on the ship towards that maneuver. The progress bar for bilge is shown in blue and wider than the others while in the bilge puzzle. Once each bar is filled to the top, that maneuver will be added to the navigator's tokens and the ship will perform its maneuver; moving with great speed or agility, firing powerful cannon shots, or dropping flotsam behind the ship to slow and possibly damage opposing ships.
Bilging Strategy
More than in any other puzzle, the key to good bilging is acquiring a good eye for the puzzle. The ability to quickly survey the pieces and plan out a strategy is invaluable to bilging and can only be acquired through practice.
In an efficiency-scored puzzle, you want to maximize your scores per move. You are best off trying to only make one or two swaps per clear. Only spend extra swaps getting to large combos (such as a Bingo).
Also note that the pieces fill from the bottom up. Thus, you should start your planning at the bottom so as not to disturb potential setups farther up the board. If, however, you don't see many moves on your board, you should make your clears at the top. High clears shuffle much more of the board, breaking up any gridlock down below.