Gold uses - ship cosmetics

I am not sure about the weapons, but I love all the other ideas! I'd love to even recolor the captains cabin and maybe give me cannons a bit o' a shine ;) .

Everything about the ships looks could be customisable:

• planks
• lanterns
• cannons
• ladders
• the helm
• that long beam at the front
• that flagpole at the back of the galleon
• crows nest
• different interiors
• etc

Could work just like clothing sets and sails and hulls do now. So you could buy sea dog cannons and admiral lanterns and a sovereign steering wheel and so on. Eventually, no two ships would look alike. Pirate legends could buy ghost ship parts similar to the athena outfit, that would make their ship look like the ferry of the damned.

Maybe commendations and achievements could unlock more special skins. For example, when a player has actually turned in 1000 banana crates, he gets to buy a banana boat skin.
If a player spend 100 hours underwater he gets to buy the flying dutchman.

Just go crazy with boat cosmetics and you'd have an endless money sink. If that's still not enough, some sort of gambling. Tho idk if that's possible with the games teen rating.

@pumpkinkangaroo Thanks, yea I had a feeling the weapon one would be least popular. At the end of the day there would be no reason to add that if players had plenty to spend their money on, was just an idea :)

I have another view which is very controversial however, I think it should cost money to stock ships ready for a voyage. Not a huge amount, and a 'basic stock' should be free, but I think if people want more stock it would add another element of planning and be interesting... Obviously not a very popular opinion and I think part of the reason I feel this way is because I used to play a lot of puzzle pirates too. In that game you had I think two important things the ship needed to sail? Cannon balls, and rum (if you didn't have rum then the performance of your pirate was adversely affected), both of these were bought though. If you had no money you couldn't sail. Now that clearly wouldn't work in this game but I do like the idea of putting some gold towards the running of your ship :) I must admit, it does affect the realism a bit for me, randomly finding cannon balls, wood and bananas all over the place.... I would much rather buy the cannon balls from an iron monger NPC for instance. How about wood from a ship wrightery... Like I say, basic stock is free, but additional to well-stock your ship would cost a little bit.. But I mean that's not important for now and I don't want to go off on a tangent xD

I really want to see trophies that you can display. Be it a piece of the kraken, the skulls of other players, and other creatures. Also I would like to see portraits of the player that you can hang up in your cabin. Similar portraits can be found onboard beached wrecks.

@angrycoconut16 I am sure my son would love the weapons so I'm not sure it wouldn't be fun for a lot of pirates. I doubt I'd spend my gold on it, but it would be funny to watch someone swinging a mace (my favorite medieval weapon).

As for the stocking, I actually like the idea! Basic stock of course, but you can pay to fill er up! The biggest issue I see with it is who pays? One crew member? Spread out between the crew? Vote? I do like the idea though and would support it being added.

@AngryCoconut16 No weapon upgrades as this goes against what you said "I think it's important to remember that these should probably be non-combat orientated." Getting weapons also would be counter intuitive to Rare's horizontal progression system. As with the others, those are fine, but you can customize anything and everything on your ship if you want.
Here is some customization options I want:
Wheel
Compass on helm
Cannons
Captains cabin
Map table+voyage table
Flag
Brig
Lanterns

I also like the ship stocking idea, as long as the ship is close to the outpost, anchor dropped, with all crew on island. This is to prevent people jump ship to swim to the outpost to stock ship while the rest of the crew continue chases after someone/easily stocks before returning to fort

@bo-bilgebottom That's a fun idea! I will add that in!

@drewbob7 They aren't upgrades, they are varieties. There is a different between upgrading a weapon to making it stronger, and buying a new sort of weapon which is still just as balanced as all other weapons in the game.

Ok.. well two people have said they agree with ship stocking so I will add that in as a small extra I think..

@AngryCoconut16 It's not if they are balanced or not, it is only access to people with a lot of gold, and may scare off new players as they may not know how to counter those weapons. I am all for more weapons, only if everyone has access to them.

@UrihamRayne Exactly what I mean!

@pumpkinkangaroo Oh sweet, thanks. I guess I'll add that into this thread for now but if it gets a lot of traction and the topic is going off course I could make a new thread with it.

In puzzle pirates it was normally the captain but perhaps as there isn't really a 'captain' in this game, all pirates can control all aspects of the ship, perhaps one person buys it, but it can be anyone? I think that might be the best solution :)

@urihamrayne Well that sounds to me more like a balancing issue over anything else... And indeed the BB was very OP. If all the weapons in the game were balanced including those which needed to be unlocked I don't think this is going to be an issue. You don't need to grind for something, as the weapons you also have available are perfectly viable.

Although I suppose every player should be able to pick a weapon which suits them, and if someone prefers the BB, they automatically have it, whereas if someone prefers a locked weapon, it will take them a while to get it.... although this is like any game in my opinion where you have a few free things and you have to earn the one you really want.. I still don't think it's going to have a very negative impact so long as everything is balanced.

Weapons are strange, but I love the captains ideas

@wicki1984 We got a little off topic when discussing the "fully loaded" ships. I like the idea of adding an ability to purchase supplies before leaving port but I think we should always be able to scavenge for goods! It wasn't really meant for this discussion though. Maybe @AngryCoconut16 will make a topic about that one eventually.

As for the cosmetic changes in this thread I think I'd be so giddy if they announced they were adding some of them! The more I think about it the angrier I get at the Coconut for making me want it! LOL

@blam320 Yes! great idea! :) Added your suggestion to the main post. In addition I suddenly thought how awesome would it be if you could get an organ for your ship and it can join in on your crew shanties?!

@pumpkinkangaroo @WICKI1984 Ok I will make a thread about it tomorrow :) We can discuss this there....

@pumpkinkangaroo @wicki1984

https://www.seaofthieves.com/forum/topic/58118/buying-ship-supplies

More food for thought. What about different ship prows? Unfortunately I can't post pictures here but if you google 'ship prow' and look at the designs. At the moment all ships have the pointed prow. What about the potion to buy different prow designs? For instance a hawk, or gryphon head or a sort of rising, curled tip, like a viking ship. What about a serpent head?

The only thing worth considering is that currently the prow can also be used to board ships/piers so it could remove this functionality but the purchases are completely optional after all.. I'm sure not everyone would mind if that functionality was removed if they liked the design, and there is no reason new prow designs couldn't be incorporated into the same basic shape. For example one could have vines hanging down to go with the plant thread...

I must admit I haven't bought any hull colour yet, does this also affect the deck and/or ship prow? I'm not sure whether the hull colour also includes a change in the ship prow, but if not this idea is worth considering.

I love the new prow idea! I often use ours but for something I really like I'd be willing to use the ladder like a lady.

As for the hull paints, yes they change the entire ship. In the sloop the canopy changes as well.

And when I mentioned this to my oldest son he wanted to add designs to below deck. We may be getting carried away, but I do love options!

@pumpkinkangaroo Ahh fair enough. And yea, don't forget you should be able to equip/unequip it at any time... and if not that functionality needs to be added... thus if you thought you needed the added functionality of the normal prow you can unequip your figurehead and then equip it again when you just want to be cool or know you won't be boarding anything? For instance AI bosses, you won't need the normal prow for those i imagine, but for forts perhaps you will for PvP... (but looking at it another way enemies can't jump onto the prow to board either..)

The prow change would be another option, I know they have already added figureheads for BELOW the prow, but if for instance the prow itself became THE figurehead :) I think that'd be fun.

Designs below deck, what sort of things? At the end of the day I think it's difficult to go overboard with customisation. I mean certainly when you go below deck why can't you buy a few portraits to put on the side of the deck? Perhaps plants/statues could be abused as they could block the path.. but certainly things which can be hung on the wall should be alright?... trophy heads, portraits, paintings... what sort of designs did your son think of? I think I will add all of these under another section in my OP :)

@angrycoconut16 I'm not sure what my son's ideas were but we were talking about the captain's quarters and more along the lines of purchasing a theme. I do think there would be too many issues with placing furniture but again, options!

I like the idea of barnacals on lower decks. I love your idea of plants (seaweed perhaps?) and hanging things on the walls. It would make our ships feel more like they did for the real pirates of old, like home!

I have the Poseidon figure head that my family is kind enough to always let me use ;) . It can't hurt to show my respect for the King of the Sea in hopes of a safe voyage. I can believe it helps as we've only been sunk once by the Kraken in 4 encounters and that was before the figure head! Pirates were notoriously superstitious

@pumpkinkangaroo I'll add the idea of seaweed in. Personally I think it would fit into the coral theme more.. for the plant one i was thinking more jungle... shrubbery, vines, flowers.. perhaps some leaves on the deck, maybe some moss on the hand rails. My idea was a more extreme theme but there should definitely be some milder themes as well just to feel more piratey.

That could be a new hull decor design.. an older sort of colour, with barnacles all over the underside of the ship :)