War flag vs. Peace Flag regarding PVP

I concur that this system would be heavily abused. I personally do not see a need to make a flag system seeing as how we are all pirates technically and don’t exactly follow the rules. Flags are a great idea, however I do not think flags should be capable of activating or deactivating weapons, if players wish to acknowledge other crews flag signals or disregard them is all part of this awesome pirate experience.

I would however like to see a flag customizer for the ship flags to give crews some more creativity with their own banners.

Hell yes, my buddy and I were talking about this idea earlier. It would be super fun to run up different kinds of flags to communicate with other ships at a longer distance than shouting.

Examples:
The Jolly Roger: We're pirates, out for blood, taking no prisoners.

White Flag: We surrender, let's negotiate a peace treaty.

Yellow Flag: Don't mess with us, we won't mess with you

Green Flag: We're a party boat, come play music and chill

Custom Flags: More ship customization options. There are so many versions of the Jolly Roger to choose from:

Of course players could run up flags disingenuously, and honestly that adds to the fun. What if your ship is super beat up, and you put up the white flag to draw them in, but then unload all your cannons when they don't expect it? What if you're 2 people running a Galleon, so you run up the Jolly Roger in the hopes that people won't mess with you? You're still communicating over long distances with other ships. I'd love to be able to spot a distant ship, pull out my telescope, sight their flag, and have fun guessing at it's intentions. This is a super cool idea with a ton of potential for emergent gameplay.

@immortalcoag The way I see it, player interaction is important to the equation that is SoT. Essentially, doing this would allow players to take the player interaction they may get and cut it in half. That is to say, no more battles, but you might make friends. Also, what is discouraging players from raising the PC flag when they have a truck load of loot? It takes away a sense of danger and urgency to sailing around with a massive haul of booty. Perhaps, instead of the flags directly altering the game mechanics, they can be used to communicate. For example, a sloop is looking for another ship to team up with. Whether this is for music and grog, or for alliance in war, it doesn't matter. Another ship sees the peace flag and may negotiate a deal where they work together. Maybe they'll trade. Maybe they'll become friends.
Conversely, you could have the War flag up to tell players that you're looking for a fight, filtering out any cowardly crews. The only problem I see with my suggestion is people could put up the peace flag and trick other crews into a suprise attack. Either way, you have an interesting idea, but it needs tweaks.

I agree that flags should not affect the gameplay of the ship, like disabling the canons. That would break the fiction and not be as fun. I wouldn't callusing disingenuous flags "abuse", it's just something you'd have to realize when reading flags.