One of my crew mates has long wanted a faction that favors stealth over outright PVP. His idea would be that certain items have to be stolen to be valid for your faction/commendations AND you have do the steal with out sending any of the other pirates' to the ferry and/or sinking their ship. Seeing the hint for the next season looks like it has that potential.
It would be cool that if you were running that factions emissary (maybe grade 5, or voyages to collect the tools) you get a butch of extra tools/upgrades for stealth alone. For instance:
I saw suggestion a while ago for a reverse mimic dart that turns makes the enemy crew look like you. There was also going to be a sound dart that if fired into the capstan or ladder would make that sound. So if you are the smuggler faction you get these as an extra dart option.
When you emote as a chest, you can't be broken out of it by being picked up (you still can be blunder/firebombed), allowing you to be even trickier when it comes to sneaking. Maybe an emote that turns you into the closet type of treasure so you can more quickly blend in.
Make silent boarding a feature or slow scaling of an enemy ship (if its parked) up a non-laddered side.
If you lose faction rep you lose these abilities. Very rough idea with a butch of issues to consider but I do like the overall theme.
