Sea of thieves is a game where you spend most of the time sailing around the map in the ever same old ship that you know so well and that the only thing you can change about it is limited to skins... I wish we had more!
So far we have 3 ships in game :
-The Sloop
-The Brigantine
-The Galleon
(granted there is the rowboat but it's still just.... welp.... a very smol boat)
Now, what if we could build our very own ship. Making our very own design and give it life into the game. Sails the seas with a ship you'd have created and facing other player's customized ships.
I'll try to explain my idea as best as I can and before I start I apologize in advance for grammar mistakes (english is my second language guys u gotta excuse me)
- The beginning
When you will find yourself in the main menu, a new section will appear. It will be named "shipyard". Upon clicking on it, you'll be send into a small editing room where you'll see your ship in harbor.... but it will just be an empty hull.
The game will ask you for how many player your ship is designed for (understand by this on which of the 3 actual ships you want your design to be based on). Depending on your answer, the game will allocate a certain amount of "tonnage" to your ship.
As an example, let's say you'll pick a 2 player ship, the game will give you 400 tons max.
- Hull
You'll receive a basic sloop hull that you can shorten (which will save a bit of tonnage) or make longer (which will cost tonnage).
Obviously by making your hull as small as possible you will make your ship less sea worthy, which means those situation when you'll deviate from your course will happen more often, and the ship will roll into the storm more frequently, tho you will be super agile and will be able to sneak into narrow rocks formations.
But if you go for the longest hull, sure you get stability but your turning circle radius will get bigger and you will have to (as mentionned above) spend tonnage points before even starting the proper customization (and the closer to the 400 tons limit your ship will get, the more clumsy it will get). You wouldn't like to have a sloop as clumsy as a standard Brig', would you ? ;).
- Sails (and other stuff)
Congratz! You've picked your hull and already spended around 150 tons, it's time to add sails, and again, depending on the top speed you want to reach, you'll have to spend more or less tonnage points (remember you only have 250 tons left).
Want more (or better) sails ? Alright but that will cost you lots of tonnage points, and don't forget you don't even have your guns and armor yet! Want fast and responding rudder ? Or anchor ? These will cost too!
- Guns
Onto guns now. The game will propose different types of guns with different calibers, reload time, and cannonball velocity and trajectory (if we wanna push even further you could even choose the type of gunpowder that you want to use but let's keep it simple).
-Note that in this concept, no matter the size of your gun, the ammo will ALWAYS be the standard cannonball found on islands barrels and crates
Now, I know I will make lots of peoples happy by saying that you will be able to put your guns not only on the sides, but also in forward position or maybe even backward, but remember what I said about STABILITY
If your ship has a big offset weight on one side or an another, or even forward or aft offset, it will greatly penalize you (even more subject to deviate and we can even imagine random hulls damage (like in storms) happening randomly). So make sure to balance your ship properly.
RandomPlayer4598625 : "Oh but I can put a gun at the front and one gun at the rear, and if the balance is still offset, I can add a small caliber gun to counter that-"
Well yes but actually no. Remember you have a TONNAGE LIMIT. If you reach 400, you won't be able to place anything else on your ship, and remember : the closer you get to the limit, the more weight your ship will displace, the more clumsy it will get.
And you still have to add armor...
- Armor
Now, when I use the term "armor", don't think of it as steel plates all around your wooden age of sails boat, but more as "wood resistance to impact"
The more armor you'll want to put on your ship, the more resistant it will be against damage from cannonballs, ramming, random mega bites or kraken slaps, etc...
There will be a new calculation around damage as well : Let's say that you have a non-armored ship and you take a large caliber cannonball shot. The resulting hole will be a big size hole that takes long time to fix up.
But let's say you have a medium armor and you get hit by a small caliber gun, the hole will be significantly smaller than the previous scenario and easily fixable.
Armor would also make the fire take more time to spread on the ship.
But remember that max. tonnage is a thing and as a sloop, don't expect to have a big armor to begin with
And with that said, you've designed a ship with a total displacement of 398 tons! (but with the 2 tons left, you can't really get much more added on your ship)
- Conclusion
Now I could go on forever with specifications and propositions. I haven't spoke about the angles of fire of a front-facing gun, or how your tonnage will affect the speed of sinking, where the player will need to put the ressources barrels (planks, food, cannonball), or maybe new types of armaments like mines (which would be small kegs transported by tiny sloops), etc... but this topic is already very long.
To sum ip up, you will have to make sacrifices in order to make your ship as reliable as possible, and that's when planning ahead comes into play. Your ship must fulfil a certain role. You might even want to make multiples designs :
-Want to farm chest solo ? Get yourself a tiny and agile sloop to hide well behind islands or a bigger-than-average sloop with 0 cannons but with an impressive top speed!
-Want to farm reaper's bounty with friends? make yourself a big battleship with solid armor and great armament... tho I hope your crew is well coordinate because these sails takes long time to be raised, and let's not talk about the very imposing anchor!
The possibilities are endless. And I personnaly think that this would be a nice addition to that "Captaincy Update" that was pushed back again and again. I think that would be a great reward for grinding pirate legend
But hey. Maybe it's only a personnal wet dream that nobody will think it would be a good idea to put in game xD
I am not a game developper and if Rare would ever introduce this concept into the game, they will have some balancing work to do. But I know Rare is always listening to the community so hey! It doesn't hurt to try! ^~^
I felt like I had to do a forum post about this concept. It's something that has been working on my mind for quite a long time by now. Again, maybe it's just a fantasm xD but maybe it can turn into something good.
I'd love to see what you guys think about it and if you have suggestions to add to this looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong post
Fair seas to you!
