@mr-murder-0311
Considering the respawn distance has been increased a while ago, what would some benefits and drawbacks be to adding more supplies to the ship at spawn/respawn?
The reason that they haven't given you more supplies is because it would encourage people who just got sank to immediately come back and be at the advantage in terms of supplies. If you were given 100 cannonballs, 50 planks, and morefood than just bananas, it would allow people to immediately get back to fighting after being sunk and to be at the advantage. That's not fair to the people that just used up all of these resources trying sinking you, just to have you back with more resources than they do.
I find myself spending 15 to 30 minutes just stocking the ship before setting sail, and as a result, I find myself not logging on as often during the workweek because the startup time from power on to sailing is increased significantly by needing to stock the ship.
I am NOT complaining, however I think increasing the number of cannonballs and wood at least would increase playerbase and encourage more people to play even on a more limited schedule.
I would recommend not spending 15 minutes to stock up your ship at an outpost. You really don't need to loot the entire outpost to be ready to set sail, because whenever you get to the island your voyage is at, you have a pretty high chance of find something like a rowboat, storage crate, cannonball, food, plank crate, and of course all the barrels on the island have supplies too. Just grab maybe 2 - 3 inventories of supplies, then go set sail and get more supplies by finding barrels in the water, shooting off to islands, and at your island destinations.