@redeyesith said in Pry bar?:
I could see this working by doing the following:
- Shipwright Repairs: For some cost of Gold you could restore a Ship at a Shipwright. This leaves a Gold Sink option, covers an often requested feature, and leaves a free method (via more work if you want to maintain Supplies) through a Scuttle.
- Boarding Axe: Treat this as a Weapon Slot suggestion. Primary Action would be to swing it that would deal less Damage than a Cutlass (say maybe 20) and maybe even a tighter Range than the Cutlass, Secondary Action would be Break that can be used on Plank Patches, Masts, Capstans, and Helms to mess up the Ship and takes both time (like the Storage Crate Transfer taking slightly longer than the Tier 3 Patch time, but opens a Tier 1 Hole) and causes a noticable noise.
This would add some additional consideration to loadouts when making a Boarding play and would open up more things a Boarder could try to do in regards to being a killing blow to a Ship more quickly (which could, in turn, reduce instances of Spawn Camping to see a Ship taken out). This would also promote the idea of regular care for your Ship and potentially motivate people to stop in at the Outpost more than just at Cash Out (which could also feed into people stopping in and nabbing stuff from the Quest Board while they are there to pad out a Voyage).
I think this could, potentially, have a positive impact on the day to day gameplay and be one of those smaller bits making for a bigger change to the gameplay flow that people have also been craving. Of course, my random thoughts on numbers and such might very well need some balancing but it is a place to start.
My only issue with this idea is that some crews (myself included) like the look of a battle-damaged ship- it shows that we kept our ship afloat despite taking a large amount of damage.
If, as I suspect, the shipwright also removed cosmetic damage, that aspect of the game would also be removed. Yes, I'm aware that we could elect to not use this service, but that would put us at increased risk from boarders.
I'm not opposed to giving shipwrights the ability to restore cosmetic damage, nor am I opposed to your suggestion for the mechanics of a boarding ax if it could break open the hull irrespective of pre-existing damage.