Introduce a variety of changes and additions to castaways to give them more life and interactions.
Rescued castaways, instead of taking up positions on one of your cannons, would lie/sit down in the middle of your deck. If your deck is crammed full of cargo/chests, they’ll find somewhere else to rest, such as on the stairs of a caravel.
Introduce negative rep castaways because who said that everyone you pull from the sea is a guaranteed good guy? Good rep players can arrest them on the spot and bring them over to Silverhold/any future Navy bases for a fame and galleon bonus similar to current castaways. Bad rep players can smuggle them onto their ship and drop them off at Whitesummit or any future criminal hideouts, for identical rewards.
Ramming a castaway’s raft with enough force would destroy it. Im getting kinda sick of sailing at night when my ship loses 500 hp from a slab of wood in the water that I can barely see. The castaway would be forced into the water, and players have several seconds to haul them aboard if they still want to, otherwise they’ll slip under the water and drown.
New dialogue options such as “Where are you from?” or “What ship were you aboard?” when interacting with them, prompting them to give you a more detailed backstory such as being attacked by pirates or torn apart by a sea monster
When a destroyed ship despawns, there’s a chance one or two castaways may spawn in its place
Castaway rafts will drift extremely slowly in the direction of the wind, probably so slowly that it’ll be difficult to notice
Reason
Not sure how well-received this one’s gonna be but I do admit this should just be a minor priority if it even gets considered.
As with most NPCs in this game I think castaways also suffer from mannequin syndrome quite a bit (where all they really do is stand in one place completely motionless, although not as much as city civilians). I kinda want more interactions with them because they definitely have a more eventful past than some joe blow in Rubica, given that they survived a sinking ship.
I think that’d be pretty cool. Even if the backstory bit is randomly generated, it’d be nice flavor text to have in the game. Always interesting and fun to read through flavor text when you decide to slow down and explore. Also, the negative rep castaways sound pretty interesting. Perhaps they could try to attack you in the middle of your voyage if they are particularly powerful, but then you can subdue them to prevent an escape or your death and get extra rewards if you’re positive rep!
I like the little rework here, maybe negative rep ones could occasionally be actually fully healthy in an attempt to stowaway on a persons ship and pirate it and they could try and attach maybe?
I like this idea! I think it would add more life to it! All though, they should make the Ai for docking them more responsive first, because when my ship’s beached, they still ask me to get closer to land.
I think all of these are good, however I think castaways need a bit more in order to feel more alive and fun. Currently I usually skip or ignore most castaways because they are an extremely flat and shallow mechanic; you just collect them and forget about them. This would make them more lively but doesn’t do enough imo. I think it’s a step in the right direction though.
thats the worst analogy Ive heard in a while and Im too tired right now to fight you over it, so Ima just tell you to re-read it a few times and then ask yourself if it really does make that much sense
I mean getting a rare/exotic/legendary fish and potentially a good treasure chart from them is already very generous imo, so Id keep the rewards the way they are
So Im not the only one who had the thought of “Hey, what if the castaway was a criminal or a pirate?”, granted, that was a very brief thought I had when saving castaways one time and didn’t dwell too much on it. But seeing this post reminded me of that.
Though based off of this, plundering the castaway would still work the same and raise your fame/bounty based on the type of NPC that’s on there, right? I think it still works
Man, this one is just perfect. Now that I think about it, probably should’ve been a feature long ago. Adds more immersion.
However, they probs shouldn’t spawn if it was a ship that you sunk and you defeated all the crew on there. Maybe only add this feature IF a ship that was sunk still had NPCs on board. If there’s none, no castaways will spawn.
Anyways, I like this suggestion and gets a vote from me