Proposal
Pretty self explanatory. I think that each quartermaster should give a unique passive ability to the player’s ship when they are in an equipped slot. This would help to differentiate each quartermaster by giving them an extra function, which will be especially important when later quartermasters can begin giving similar stats to one another.
Details/background on your proposal
Quartermasters should gain their passive ability at the Rare rarity, and can potentially gain a second when they reach Legendary. These passive abilities are tied to the quartermaster.
If this could potentially be too powerful, you could also make it so that the player can only benefit from the passive ability of whatever quartermaster is in the first slot on the player’s ship, to prevent players from stacking abilities.
This would also give more variety to the stats on quartermasters, since there may be quartermasters who don’t give very good stats but make up for it by having a very powerful passive. This gives players a bigger decision to make on which quartermasters they want to take, past who gives the biggest numbers.
Since I’m suggesting the addition of these abilities, I also have suggestions for what these abilities could be for the two current quartermasters:
Edward Kenton
Ability: Knowledge of Construction
After having spent a lot of time dealing with the ships of the Grand Navy and its enemies, Edward is able to point out design flaws in their ships with ease. All ship attacks deal 15% extra damage to Grand Navy, Assassin Syndicate, and Pirate ships.
Edit: I should have noted before that this only applies to NPC ships. Player ships are not impacted, so as not to disincentivize joining the Grand Navy or Assassin Syndicate due to the extra damage you’d take.
Edward Kenton (alternate)
Ability: Sail Through the Pain
Edward knows a thing or two about keeping ships in good condition, no matter the situation. His knowledge extends to making sure a ship still functions at normal pace- even if it’s damaged. The penalty to ship speed for having taken damage is reduced.
(Specifically, the ship moves at top speed until it reaches 75% durability, after which its speed starts decreasing from there as if it had started at 100%. This means that if a ship has 1 hit point, Edward’s ability would allow it to move as fast as a ship without this ability that has 25% of its durablity.)
Enizor
Ability: Magical Overcharge
Thanks to Enizor’s knowledge of magic, he’s able to increase the resonance between Arcanium and the magic of your ship. Arcanium ship parts consume more magic storage when used, but in turn deal more damage, or take on other properties. (Faster magics would instead have faster speed- ram speed on rams or fuse length and reload speed on cannons, magics that apply dots apply stronger dots)
Alternatively, allow the player to charge these parts much like they would charge a spell, technique, or weapon skill to achieve a similar effect. This would be done by holding a button, likely Shift.
Reason to add/change
As stated above, it gives more variety to the quartermasters- especially if there are some quartermasters with weaker stats and stronger passive abilities. Enabling players to make decisions past who has the bigger numbers increases diversity in ship builds, especially if some passives can apply outside of ship combat and can provide benefits to non-combat aspects of the game.
As usual with my suggestions, I’ll make a poll in the first comment to gauge opinions. Feel free to put your thoughts down too, I don’t mind editing in more suggestions for quartermaster abilities if you guys have good ideas too
Edit to add extra passive ideas (not tied to any quartermaster, just my thoughts)
Shoving Ram
By modifying the ship’s sails, they can be made to push more wind around when ramming speed is activated. This reduces the speed multiplier of ramming speed, but provides benefits: you deal damage to ships just by moving close to them while under ramming speed instead of needing a direct hit. Additionally, if you land a direct hit with ramming speed the target ship is pushed further than usual and the effects of chain shot are applied to it.
Use the Scraps
A knowhow on how to use various otherwise useless materials can enable the ship to be repaired more easily and cheaply, even from the brink of destruction. All sources of ship repairs have their effectiveness increased by 20%. When the ship’s durability is below half, this bonus is increased further to 50%.
As a potential extra effect, when repairing at a shipwright the ship gains “overheal” equal to 10% of its maximum durability (which is lost if the quartermaster is unequipped)
Batten Down the Hatches
Thanks to the commanding training of insert quartermaster here, they are very easily able to order the crew around in times of stress. Brace reduces the ship damage taken more than usual alongside having a shorter cooldown, and ship weapons reload faster the more damage the ship has sustained
(up to 30% faster at 30% durability remaining, this also applies to how fast ramming speed recharges)