A few QoL changes that I believe would improve the general seafaring experience.
- Have ship save slots so you don’t have to re-equip and re-color everything when switching what ship you’re using. These slots would also save names, so you could have different names for each of your ships. This would cut down on time spent re-doing all aspects of your ship when switching ships MASSIVELY.
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- Will be most helpful when more ships are added as there would be more incentive to switch, but even now I know people who stick to one of the Caravel or Ketch and never switch because it’s such a pain to redo everything.
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- There could also be a gamepass for extra save slots, similar to file slots.
- Make dyeing NPCs not exclusive to merchant ships. I didn’t even know they existed until recently! (And I’d wager most people don’t unless they have negative renown/heard it from someone else). Maybe one at Palo, and one at Ravenna?
- Increase the frequency/and or duration (visibility) of the wind lines showing what direction the wind is blowing. They seem to be very uncommon, and when they show up they’re gone so quickly I don’t actually get a chance to look at them. Perhaps there could be a slider in the options to adjust visibility?
- Increase the range of the paintbrush. It’s currently quite annoying to paint a ship, with the player having to jump and climb and swim all over and around the ship just to get in that one spot that works well. And you’re basically forced to have your ship be moving when coloring the sails.
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- Edit: Additionally, an option to reset paint to default colors would be helpful to those who don’t have the more colors gamepass. (Credit to @Mortal for the suggestion)
- Either move where the cannonballs are selected/how they’re selected, or make it so gaining/losing renown while steering a ship doesn’t obscure the cannonball selection box. It’s usually just a minor inconvenience, but it can cause problems and should be fixed.
- Make obtaining ship parts earlier in the game (lvl 20-60) easier. Currently, I feel it is too difficult to obtain ship parts at a low level. Sinking ships really isn’t an option as the available firepower is not great, the sailboat (probably your largest vessel for most of this time) is relatively frail, and simply the idea of attacking another ship can be intimidating for newer players. Not to mention the strong NPC’s on board. Diving spots are also only really viable when you’re higher level and thus have more stamina and items, and treasure charts are time consuming, generally not worth the meager rewards given how far you may have to travel, and often only provide 1 sealed chest. Maybe add a quest at Frostmill or Palo where the reward is a sealed chest, quests that give you blueprints for the lowest level ship parts, or even make it so you can only get treasure charts for islands you’ve visited (thus making it far easier for lower-level players to get to them).
- In some way change the way cannons are fired. I think the way it is now is mostly fine, but lining up the angle of the cannons with your camera to get a “perfect shot” can be time consuming - all the while you’re not looking to see where exactly you’re going. Basically, your attention is split between your enemy and lining up a good shot and navigating, and sometimes you end up doing neither very well. I think an easy solution is to have the cannons be fireable wherever your mouse and camera are - the side dependent on which side of the ship and/or screen the mouse is on - instead of having a range of ‘dead space’ by the bow where, if your mouse is there with camera behind the ship, you can’t shoot. Certainly doesn’t have to be exactly that, but I think that’s the most plausible solution.
- Perhaps the most implausible suggestion here, but you could pay a shipwright to load your ship with cargo. Have an upper limit of cargo able to be loaded based on the available room of the ship and pay 5-10 galleons extra per cargo (the cost of loading). Or perhaps only certain ships with a dedicated cargo hold can use this feature (cargo hold mentioned in my upcoming ship balancing suggestion).
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- The cargo could have preset locations on the ship in a grid pattern. When attempting to load cargo a check would be made to see if there is any cargo in the way, and if there is the loading is cancelled with a message ‘There is cargo in the way. Remove all cargo before attempting to load again’, or something to that effect. If there is not, a UI is brought up so the player can choose how much cargo they want to buy, with the maximum being based on what ship they are using. After selecting the amount and purchasing it all the galleons necessary are removed from the wallet of the player, and the cargo is loaded onto the grid, 1 every 5 seconds or so, similar to the speed of unloading automatically.
