Ok. I was at anchor on a small island and on the go. Suddenly another player shows up and sunk my ship. I was completely defenseless because I was at anchor. At this Point I thought it would be great to have such kind of a warning. In my mind something like a heartbeat, when another pirate ship is near you.
I think it where also cool, when you have to fly your pirate flag when you attack a player. If you don´t fly your flag, the heartbeat will not start. But when you attack someone without flying it, your Reputation sink and you get worse prices for your treasures.
The thing is, that every encounter with another player, whos not in your crew, ends in a pvp fight. In my opinion it´s where cool when I could start temporary partnerships. To say "Ay! The skeletons on this island are to damm hard. Lets work together and split the treasure." So you can fight and seek together. At the end you get two treasure chests and go your way ... or you betray each other, take both chests and accept the influence to your reputation. That would give the end of a quest a whole new ... tension.
Maybe you could combine it with a guild system. You can build a pirate guild to organize your play sessions and give the guild different tags, like "treasure hunters" or "bounty hunters". Your reputation can be influence your guild to "honorable" or "dreaded". When your in an honorable guild, you get treasures with better values. And as an dreaded guild your reputation sink slower.
With flying your flag, you don´t showing only your stat, you also showing your guild. When you sail with a flying flag, you take the risk, that other player can easier track you (thanks to the heartbeat) and fight you without loosing your reputation. But to sail with it, you raise the reputation from you and your guild.
