I have had this idea for some time now and I would like to hear what others think of it; The ability to be able to change your ship when out of combat and outside of quests, in order to allow a friend to join or size down your ship when they decide to leave.
The way I see this is as a quality of life upgrade. This could be very helpful in a scenario where you start out alone or playing with one other person on a sloop. It happens way too often that after playing for a while and stocking your boat with supplies another friend comes along, unable to join without switching servers and changing crew size. Or when the opposite occurs; After a session of playing together on a brigantine or galleon, your crew wants to leave but you decide to continiue playing. You find yourself solo manning a boat too big to handle. The option to downscale to a sloop would be amazing.
As a balancing factor - besides ONLY being able to switch when not engaged in combat and having no active quests - would be to only carry over the consumeables (Food, cannonballs, bait etc.) and despawn loot-type items (Skulls, gunpowder barrels, chests, quest radial items etc.)
As I could imagine carrying over collectors chests, ammo crates, storage crates and items alike would hurt the "ecosystem" of the servers.
These are fairly rough ideas, but maybe, with a lot of work and thought they could have a positive impact on the playing experience!
