Ship Utility Attachments (Context for Dark Sea Compass)

Suggestions
Ship Utility Attachments (Context for Dark Sea Compass)
effort 4.6 5 quality 3.8 5 reasonability 4.0 6
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This suggestion is to elaborate and compliment a feature related to this suggestion: Dark Sea Compass ship attachment

Another way to customize your ship, making it more personalized to your favorite activities rather than being fast or good for combat.

Utility Attachments

Utility Attachments are a new ship customization slot, starting at Brig with more being added the bigger our ships get, separate from regular ship attachments. The difference is that Utility attachments do not provide any type of combat service like the harpoon launcher or add ship stats like the rowboat launch. They serve purely as compliments for niche services that help the player in certain activities of the game.

Additionally, they will make ships look much more unique by adding specific structures to them, rather than a copy and paste in a specific spot such as the hunting attachments and rowboats.

Below I will list a couple Ideas as to what these could be to get an idea of how they work and their purpose:

  1. Dark Sea Compass - Helps personalize the Dark Sea experience. Check top for that separate suggestion. I imagine it as a large, player sized compass that attaches near the front of the ship.

  2. Potion Totems(LVL 1-5) - A new craftable ship attachment. By utilizing max brewing and the shipbuilder, players can obtain totems which give a specific positive potion effects when near the ship such as clear-sight or warding(not healing). These totems can be upgraded to achieve higher tiers. They would not contribute to the positive status effect cap.
    When added, 4 would appear at different locations of the ship similar to regular ship attachments.

  3. The Bath - Instead of brigs having the bath be apart of their model, the bath would be an attachment automatically given to the player once they buy their Brig. This would make the bath be an infinite, free alternative to soap rather than soap being the alternative(which is used more by endgame players anyways).

  4. Skyship Docks - I know sky islands in the dark sea are a feature that is planned(At least last time I checked), so having a personal skyship dock being a Utility Attachment just makes sense to me. Since this is vetex’s idea, I’m just suggesting it would make sense as a utility attachment.

  5. Enchanted Lantern Oil - There would be two types “Radiating Lantern Oil” and “Concealing Lantern Oil”. These would cause barrels of oil appear around the ship, near lanterns.

    Radiating would increase ship aggression(not in the dark sea). It would increase your aggro range and(if possible) make ships spawn faster and near you. Helpful for those trying to add fleet ships. These would make the lanterns brighter and slightly larger.

    Concealing does the opposite: your ship has a smaller aggro range and enemy ships are(if possible) less likely to spawn around you, and notoriety ships spawn less frequently. The Lanterns become duller and disappear at shorter distances.

Purpose:

Having special attachments such as these (Specifically the dark sea compass since thats what inspired this suggestion) would allow players to have more choice over what they choose to do and really specialize in the things they enjoy. It also takes a step to make ships feel more like a home to players, something I know vetex wants to elaborate on in the future.

Additionally, I would just find it cool if you could look at someone’s ship, see the special structures/vanity added due to utility attachments, and get an idea of what their playstyle is like similar to how you can identify a fishing boat, cargo boat, etc, in real life.

And in the future, when ships have more utility attachment slots, that specialization and creation of an identity through your ship utility attachments would be come stronger and really add to the immersion that we players have “j*bs” within the universe and identities attached to it.

2

Nah, my character is homeless

3

But how many slots of these attachments does the ship have?

Why locking it behind max Brewing? Can’t it be any sooner? Those players who had just recently bought a Brig would benefit off of this a lot.

Also, how are the totems upgraded?

This is pointless. The brig’s bath at its usual spot does its job well enough. Besides, in one of mine suggestions, I just removed the bath and the soap outright, by cutting out the mechanics they were responsible to combat. A more fair outcome of the situation, where a simple click of a button invalidates the mechanic entirely.

Sure, that’s fine, but I heard we are gonna be tying the skyship to our masts.

This just sucks in every situation but the one you mentioned. What is the point?

Yep, much better now. However, I don’t like the visual change of the lanterns becoming duller - I love them bright and shining.

Sure, that is nice.

4

I really like the concept of utility slots for more customization options. The Dark Sea Compass and Enchanted Lantern Oil are very good inclusions imo, but I do have some concerns regarding the Potion Totems because it seems to me that the only useful ones would be clearsight and revealing. Warding doesn’t work because once you get on an island, the warding disappears. And if those are the only useful ones, why not just make a “Spyglass” attachment that give players those effects.

5
  1. I forgot to include but I’d imagine 1 or 2 slots starting at brig and every new ship adds 1.
  2. Max brewing just made sense to me, since again, these totems would be more of an endgame thing. As for the upgrading, I didn’t think of that, I was just throwing out basic examples since my main point is just to explain which utility attachments could be in regard to the dark sea compass.
  3. I may not have explained that well. When I say its not part of the brigs model, I mean it isn’t inherently there. It would still act the way it currently does, but if you unattached it from your ship, it disappears from the ship. Its not like a tool the player would have.
  4. I think it would look silly if you just had it floating above your ship 24/7, so I’d think it would look better if it was attached to the ship somewhere AND THEN you tie it to the mast in actual use.
  5. That one situation would help a lot of players, especially when starting or progressing a new file and needing to build up a new fleet. Also, some players just like sinking ships, like me.
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I was just thinking it would be like potions you don’t need to constantly re-brew but only are in effect near your ship when equipped. As for the actual utility of each type of totem, its the same as brewing potions. I don’t think there’s any use for poison vials but we have them anyways, its just about the freedom of simplicity of [this+this=this]

1 Like
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Why do that in the first place? Why detaching to make it into a utility attachment?

8

To add strategic decision making on whether you need the bath or not. It also evens out the addition of this feature from just being a buff to ships. But also, it just makes sense to me

9

For me - it doesn’t at all. And, removing the bath and the soap from the game outright, while also rebalancing Water Poisoning, is the best outcome

10

I do agree that would be better, but keeping my suggestion in mind if it is considered and implemented before yours, making the bath a utility attachment just fits with the theme of utility attachments

11

I like some of these ideas, But there’s a few question marks…

  1. This just sounds like permanent potion effects, which I think would just be kind of silly. I think a reasonable alternative would be that potion totems are their own attachments, and you can douse them in a held potion and get the duration of that potion * a certain multiplier (Based on the catalyst quality), and this could also be affected by a player’s potency too.

  2. Soap was the existing QoL, it’s probably wise to not just add a permanent version of it, you’re still supposed to be using a brig for Dark Sea IIRC.

  3. Genuinely I have no idea how this would work as an attachment, skyrowboat or something??

  4. I actually like this idea a lot, potentially can affect spawn rates as well? (idk if ship spawns are attached to the player whatsoever :shrug:)

12

Sure lol

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  1. Thats definitely another cool way to implement it. However in that case I feel like it would be more logical just to have a like “bucket of X potion” or something. My visual idea of a “totem” was a tiki looking thing with the engravings being lined with the potions color.
  2. I’m confused on what you mean by this. Im pretty sure soap was added after the bath, and the bath is already permanent. Im just suggesting you can unequip and re-equip it on your ship as a utility attachment.
  3. In my vision, it would be attached to the very back of the boat on it’s side, kinda like a rowboat, but a little bigger. Not a full skyship since its meant to be more portable. However theres also a chance we would have to unlock the frigate before the skyship dock so then we could have a full skyship attached.
14

Oh I misinterpreted the bath one significantly, idk I think that would just be added complexity that nobody really asks for. Attachments have their own dedicated slots on where they would be on the ship so adding the bath as one would be ???, same goes for the backside sky ship dock.