During a supply run to a couple of the inactive forts, I couldn't help but notice that due to the number of canons and the very limited accessibility to these particular island that they would be perfect for some kind of alliance based king-of-the-hill type pvp. It would have 2 phases :
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A crew or alliance of crews does some kind of activity to activate the fort (i. e. Defeating waves of skeletons, or possibly paying for a special voyage/contract and bringing it to an inactive fort, etc.) An indicator/cloud would then appear over the island, signaling to the server that phase 2 has begun.
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Holding the fort from opposing crews /alliances for as long as possible, and after a certain increment of time, loot will spawn behind the closed fort door. The crew holding the fort could then either grab a key from a special holder at the top of the fort that would then trigger the timer to stop and no more loot to spawn. They'd use it to open the door, load up their loot and go... Or, they could press their luck, and wait another increment of time for double the base amount of loot, and then triple, etc. until a certain amount of time passes and the fort maxes out. My suggestion would be between an hour and a half to two hours (3 or 4 in game days) for the max reward (on par with the time it takes for a full loot Athena run) with a base amount spawning every 12 minutes (once at noon, once at midnight). The base and max amounts would be best be determined by the devs, but I would suggest maybe 1 piece of loot equivalent to a skeleton captain chest/skull (the end reward for skeleton ships ~1500-2000 gold) per in game day, maxing out after 3-4 in game days at 6-8 pieces of premium loot.
Of course, alliance size would have to be somehow limited for these activities, as would the frequency of how often they can be activated, so that they wouldn't become a broken gold farm, and to add balance, there could be skeleton spawns on the island to fight off if no ships come to challenge (which would then despawn if a non allied ship comes within banner range). Any number of tweeks could be added to balance time, challenge, and reward.
I have to say, to give my own personal opinion on my own idea, just the thought of 10 or so players manning canons on all sides of an island fortress, waiting to do battle and sword fight up the winding, narrow pathways, getting backed up into the fort itself under the merciless press by the enemy 10 or so players as they desperately try to guard the key seems like it would be one of the most thrilling experiences in any game.
