Here's a simple idea that would make the Merchant Alliance better to work for.... You go to a merchant, she gives you a bunch of stuff, gunpowder, tea, whatever... and says you have to deliver it to a different outpost and you have like 2 hours of game time to do it which isn't much. So you're actually racing there as fast as you can. It's a literal race against time, and if a boat attacks you or something happens it could delay you just enough to cause you to miss the deadline. The stuff you deliver is valuable like Spice, Silk, so other boats would want to attack you for it. It would at least add some excitement to the Merchants and seems pretty easy to implement.
The missions now obviously are pretty boring, and not to mention they give you way too much time to do them in. You have a week to find 2 pigs....
