What if..
Persistence - Your pirate's inventory, ships inventory, current Voyage and Livery persisted through logging off with some conditions.
- For your ship to save, you must log off at an outpost. Docked at the jetty.
- For your pirate to save, you must log off IN your ship, which is docked at an outpost.
- Any active voyages will persist as they have progressed with the exception of timed voyages, they will expire as they normally would IE off the server time.
- Your ships inventory will persist, with a twist.
Persistence cost:
While your ship is "docked" so to speak (persistently saved), shipwrights would be employed to maintain it's sea worthyness, you would give permission for them to access Wooden Planks to maintain your ship. Shipwrights would estimate between 1 and 3 Planks would be sufficient for each in game day. So a pirate would expect to return to their ship with a few planks missing, only to a minimum of (whatever the starting amount is).
Bananas don't last forever, while your ship is "docked" Bananas tend to rot, over time a pirate could expect to log back in and find some Bananas (or other food if it comes) missing or rotten!
Theft! The Outposts guards are quite efficient, but even they sleep. Cannonballs sell for a high price and a pirate might log on to find some missing.
The non "RP" version of the above, is basically - The longer you are "logged off" the more resources from your ship are drained. This is to stop someone logging off for a week for example and coming back to a fully stocked ship. Resource "drain" should be balanced accordingly.
When you log back on, the server attempts to spawn you at the Outpost you logged off at, if this isn't possible, it puts you as close as it can.
A simple little addition which would give players a sense of progression without breaking game balance.
While designing this feature, I would suggest a "disconnect" grace period be implemented. If the game detects a disconnect (anything other than an exit to main menu / desktop command) the ship and it's content, voyages etc are saved for 5 minutes to allow a pirate to log back on. The ship can still be sunk during this time.
Thanks! Upvote if you like the idea, Rare is like the Kardashians, they live for the likes.
