“Recently”, a change has been made to ships, where not having your cannons armed speeds you up. Thank you, Vetex, this was a very good change. Still, people keep finding transportation between islands to be lenghty and boring (despite underwater structures and sea monsters being a thing, idk what is wrong with those people), and I admit - Nimbus Sea especially is too vast. So, here’s an idea: War Seas Highways!
This is a discussion topic I held before making this suggestion. People mostly had good opinions on where the Highways should be, thanks for that. So, about the feature itself.
War Seas Highways are a series of currents flowing between islands that give ships a speed boost about thrice as potent as a fully upgraded Navigator deckhand’s ability (if X is base ship speed and Y is the added speed of Navigator, then currents make the ship move at X + 3xY, not (X+Y)x3). Going against the current will instead slow the ship down by the Navigator’s added speed amount (X-Y). Sailing across a current or anchoring on it will slowly push the ship into the current’s direction (at the speed of Y).
Two states: A Highway can be active or inactive - more on that later. Inactive currents do nothing, and are seen by a tiny ripple on the water - still noticeable enough to tell that a current might appear here at some point. Active currents are much more visible, about whirlpool levels of visible. When talking about Highways’ functionality, I will only mean active currents, since inactive, as I said, do nothing.
Using the currents: If your ship is anchored on a Highway, it will be slowly pushed off of it, so you can’t block the path for everybody else. The width of a current is about 1.5 times the lenght of a Brig, so you can maneuver and pass slower ships on it. You’re freely able to enter and exit a Highway at any point, just turn your ship and sail off. The current won’t turn your ship by itself, so if you don’t want to be thrown out on the nearest roundabout, you better still be paying attention when driving.
NPC ships: To remove clutter due to NPC’s bad AI, their ships will try to avoid sailing into a current when near it. They will still be carried by it if they get into one, but they will attempt exiting it as soon as possible and returning to the place they were at when they entered the Highway. NPC ships will prioritise exiting a current over fighting other ships, even players, so your Truthseeker won’t be flushed across half of the Nimbus Sea - it will even attempt to return to you! If an NPC ship is pursuing a player who sails across the current, however, it will continue the chase and cross it as well.
Logbook entry: When a player enters a current for the first time, a logbook entry explaining them will be unlocked. It is always good to provide your players with information.
Highway locations:
So this is the map we assembled in the discussion topic. Looks bad? Yeah, it kinda is, I’m not that good at drawing. Therefore, to not force you to break your eyes deciphering this, I’ll link every individual post where these routes originated from.
You might have noticed that they are coloured differently, and there is a reason for that. The locations of the Highways will be random.
Daily rotation: Every in-game day, at the time Agora publishes their newest issue, the game will roll for one of each coloured currents and make it active, while the rest will become inactive. Therefore, one black, green, red, yellow and blue currents will be flowing across the Bronze and Nimbus seas (4 for Bronze, 5 for Nimbus, since only it has a blue current). Whether or not they should be syncronised between servers, I can’t tell - I don’t know how that would work, and this isn’t even that necessary.
Constant currents: On the Nimbus Sea’s map, there is a noticeable oddity in how currents are placed - there is only one red and blue Highway. This is done on purpose - everybody in the discussion topic has agreed upon a current existing at the Vents of Aeolus, flowing south to the Ice Mines, so variety wasn’t necessary - this is a perfect placement of it. This and the blue one will always be active and won’t be rolled for each day. As for the blue, this has more of a lore purpose, as Makrinaos was made to be hard to find and reach, hence why the Veiling Storms were created. So, why not there also be a current blocking the path? Don’t worry, though - sailing across it, as I mentioned before, isn’t much of an issue.
Similarity to a different suggestion:
This is the Dark Sea Highways suggestion. Yes, the feature of it is very alike to mine, and the purpose is almost the same, but they do fulfill different roles, so they would coexist nicely together. I have taken inspiration from this topic, great suggestion overall 
.
Aight, this should be it. Go discuss now what yall think of this. One note, though - this was made before the locations of certain Nimbus Sea islands were revealed, so they aren’t accounted for. Not to worry - it can easily be altered later.