I have a few suggestions for changes that I think should be made to fishing.
First, I think that the galleon is way too large to only have one cooking station; now while I understand it may provide some unforeseen advantage for the galleon to be able to cook twice as much (if given a second cooking station), I don't think the effect would be that much more dramatic than just encouraging players who are focusing on fishing to fish on the galleon instead of other types of ships. I think that it takes very large amounts of time to cook all of the fish that are caught by a group of four players - especially when you consider that running a four-player galleon almost always leaves one person time to fish between voyages.
Another idea I had to remedy this problem across all ship types would be allowing players to cook two small fish in a single cooking station at a time, for a time period longer than that of cooking just one, but still quicker than cooking them both seperately. This would not only speed up cooking and make it a more feasible task (as opposed to a novel one), but it would also encourage players to keep catching smaller fish and to stock up on them to cook faster.
I've also had the thought of putting a cooking station at seaposts. I see potential problems with this, though. First, I think it would cause fishermen to crowd up at the seaposts, but that's virtually what most people do anyways by just staying on their ships to cook there. With that said, I imagine it could foster some more friendly interactions by bringing the (mostly) peaceful fishermen to seaposts to interact. Second, I understand that putting the loot and the turn in point at the same position might make it a little too easy on the player to max out on Hunter's Call and get to Pirate Legend quicker than via other factions. I just wanted to add this in here to give my input on it, as I'm sure it has been suggested plenty, but I can see plently of pros and cons for it and would not be opposed either way.
I also think it would be really cool if we could catch sharks somehow. My initial thought when I caught one of my first fish was that, since I could throw it back in, I might be able to catch a shark. That was not the case, however; I had just thrown it back in the water. Seeing as there's no advantage to dropping a fish back into the water, why not take that function and make it useful by allowing you to use a fish as bait for catching sharks? Sharks could be drastically harder to catch, and may not even need to yield as much food as they currently do when they're killed, but I still think that it would be an awesome addition if you could catch them and cook them.
Another suggestion I have would be fishing on the Ferry of the Damned. I think it would be awesome to be able to catch fish on the boat while you wait, and since it's a peaceful place (no PvP obviously), it would be a good place to foster some friendly connections between players, even if it's just while they wait until the door opens for them to leave. Others could stay on the ferry and catch as many fish as they can hold. My idea would even be to only allow people to catch fish's skeletons to fit the theme of the Ferry, but you guys could be as creative as you'd like with it; ghost fish, skeleton fish, glowing fish, etc.
Finally, I think that there should be a tackle/bait box. There are crates for all types of fruit, cannon balls, and wood planks, but there's no way to store bait or fish. I don't necessarily think that we need a crate that holds fish -while that would be nice, I'm primarily suggesting that we have a crate for bait so avid fishermen have an easily accessible box for what they need on and off the ship, not to mention it would make looting bait much more efficient.
That's all I can think of for now though. Make sure to upvote this thread if you agree at all, and let me know if you have any comments or suggestions below and I'll be sure to add them! Thanks for reading.
