So, when it comes to skelly fleets, I feel like the -loot- value for them isn't enticing enough to actually make them a thing worth competing for from a single crew perspective.
The -play- value is always a blast, in my opinion. PL, Athena 10, yaddayadda. I'm really not one for making the game any easier than current. I can't stress that enough. I love the difficulty of the skeleton fleets and find some of them to be challenging still! Taking on 3 skoops at a time, or 3 waves of 2 skelleons, is always fun to my crew and I. But the loot value itself is a contributing factor in what makes these raids less desirable than skelly forts.
I'm sure the loot at the very end, if you managed to collect 100% of it as each ship sinks, equals out to that of a regular skeleton fort. However, the likelihood of that happening is pretty slim. On top of that, the amount of supplies it takes can be one hell of a burden too if you're a new player and you dont quite get how ship to ship combat works. And even as a seasoned player, these raids take you to the edges of the map. I don't care how good of a crew you are; without planks and cannonballs, the usual 5-8 grid squares back to an outpost is a daunting task on a populated server.
My suggestion is to weigh loot heavier on the last wave and split it between them. Instead of having one ship with all the loot at the end and hoping to grab the loot from the first two waves. split the loot between the last two ships that pop up and increase the value or the amount of loot pieces). No loot from the skelleons or skoops, or very very little from them on the first two waves. Put the onus on ending the raid, just like with regular forts!
And just like regular forts, this will encourage crews to supply properly, keep an eye on the horizon, and maybe even create alliances between new crews that haven't quite figured out how to handle skeleton raids/fleets yet.
Cheers!
