How to appear the most friendly to other ships?

@aprilautumn
Just be aware that whatever friendly crews use to show their friendliness, will be used by those that are not friendly but want to appear as such 😁 just to get close.

One thing that seems "funny" to the other crew should raise alarm bells, thus do expect to be greeted with more hostility than your behaviour might warrant.

Approach in a non-threatening way, no spamming of "FRIENDLY" in the chat, bring gifts (of the non-explosive kind).

I wouldn't do any of the things you mentioned because they all put you at risk of being attacked or blunderbussed during an emote. Just a personal preference, though I get where you are coming from with the cannons up and emoting.

Instead, as much as I hate to say it, use the "We're Friendly, Let's make an Alliance!" option from the megaphone as soon as you get close enough, and repeat it once if needed in case you weren't actually in range, not more.

If the ship is moving toward you very quickly, use "Friend or Foe?" after and if there is still no response and they are in chainshot range, you open fire.

Of course, using your mic is also a good option, but the prewritten dialogue translates to different languages so I always use that too just in case.

When you are the one approaching, stop at a distance from them, prepare a prewritten message (if you are on PC), and you can actually keep the message until you are ready to send it. Shoot over and then immediately send your friendly note and sit by your mermaid. Never board without permission, and of course something like lantern out blinking can sometimes help. Better than having a gun drawn at least.

I too enjoy making alliances, which is one of the reasons I play solo sometimes. It is a lot harder to make unilateral agreements with other ships and keep your word when you have a larger crew (who egg eachother on to betray, steal, etc).

Happy there are other pirates out there who appreciate the art of diplomacy.

@aprilautumn said in How to appear the most friendly to other ships?:

That's valid!

Do you mean be aware of what they find "funny" and see if those raise any alarms to me? such as like, if they're using racist slurs etc, that's obvs not who I want to play with.

Not talking about slurs of any kind; but imagine you do / equip 4 or so friendly things but forget that your canons have wraith balls in them. That alone would indicate (to me at least) that you might be using the 4 things as a guise instead and will open fire as soon as I am halfway the mast to raise the accept alliance flag.
Some might find an approach under water by your crew mate as hostile, some distrust combination of Reaper with Alliance or climbing ladders without permission &c.

Above this post someone mentions using the same Pirate Chat message twice (in case the first one was too far away) - that may be complete valid, but I would take that as trying to distract me with spam and would either sail away or open fire, not waiting for a third message.

Lights on, play a song