Coming with the long-awaited Captaincy update is the Sovereign's hut. This addition, like the castaway's hut, positively impacts the outpost's footprint, making it feel just that little bit more alive. Strangely enough, this is most-true while they're in the process of being built. I can imagine a day when an outpost looks more like a port town, each building and shop being unique and useful, but for that we need three things. Demand, designs, and mechanics.
First of all is a highly suggested option; A building that allows us to change crew size mid-session. This is a highly suggested QOL feature for those who closed-crew and play long enough to lose a crew-member, without having to wrap everything up with insufficient crew members for your ship then leave your supplies, quest, and emissary to the depths.
My vision for such a useful installment is a small shack at the base of the docks, just where land meets the sea on the sand to the right. Alternatively it could be placed upon the opposite, unused half many of the outposts have. To use it, the entire crew must be in the shack and vote via the NPC for the crew type, as well as having an empty slot if you're shrinking the ship (quite obviously.) Captains have an additional line of dialogue with them which instead of opening a dialogue branch that contains the three (hopefully eventually four) ship types, opens a cosmetic-chest-like UI with your captained ships.
This building can have a skillion roof decorated with a sail draped over the corner baring the outpost's colors and logo to make it distinctive, as well as a nameplate baring the sigil of two different ship types.
As of now, all you can buy for your ship's food stores are bananas. In tandem with this unfortunate fact, do consider that the Hunter's Call both has no presence whatsoever on outposts and doesn't have an obvious buyer for all the tons of food we turn into them each day. Perhaps those food stores could be made not to go to waste by adding a place to buy better food than the crates of bananas from the merchants!
You'd be able to buy pork, snake, chicken, shark, and mayhaps monster meat (albeit at a notably higher price) to go. This, as well as the ability able to buy superior fruits like pomegranate, mango, and the sacred pineapple. Of course, these would be different than the bulk orders of the merchant alliance, perhaps only giving a pocket's worth or two pocket's worth (Five-ten. Perhaps both, and you could switch between the two with two different tabs, one being handful and one being bulk.) You'd be able to pick it up from the NPC just like merchant cargo at your leisure. The prices would have to be proportional to the gain, but it wouldn't go off of the same price metric as crates considering the lower portions. Doing some math, ~750 per piece of meat, ~2475 per piece of monster meat, and ~90(For coconuts,) to ~1925 (For pineapples) per for the different fruit tiers seems fair to me. This is in gold, however, with doubloons as easy-to-come-by as they are now, perhaps it would be interesting if we paid in them instead.
For location, there's an unused stall at every outpost that could be renovated for this purpose, but alternatively they could be set up near the sovereign dock, considering the status of who's going to be buying these premium cuts and the access to sea trade with the hunters. Considering the former, the stall could be first fixed up to be a proper, nice stall, decorated more like a butcher's in the wilds and more like a fancy stall with pies and stuff on display in the shores of plenty, with a sign stuck in the ground just in front out of the way of it and the path bearing the Golden Gatherer sails' sigil. If the latter, I like the idea of a proper shop with glass displays and many meals that are too fancy for us pirates to carry with us, maybe even some simple table and chairs and picnic benches outside we can sit at for roleplay and screenshot purposes. Outpost dwellers deserve something nicer than stale outpost bread, grog, and moldy barrel fruit.
Controversially, we could unburden the tailors of the world by dividing their workload betwixt separate shops as the quantity of things to stock is becoming inconvenient to scroll through already, especially compared to other establishments. Because of the sheer amount of different clothes and the like nowadays, it may soon cross a point where it would be far easier to navigate by hopping between vendors, to help not overwhelm new players who the current "have or have not purchased" sorting system would not-at-all benefit.
This one is fairly open ended. It could be a home for all doubloon cosmetics (Which would hopefully inspire more cosmetics that require that currency considering it's mostly forgotten at this point,) or splitting the tailor into vanity and clothing, or even as specific as clothes, dyes and makeups, hooks and eyepatches, tattoos, etc..
Because it's the least specific of the ideas, I cannot pin a design to each of the variations presented. However, I do think it would be interesting if instead of whole-new buildings, the clothing shop just expanded into a much bigger and nicer establishment with multiple NPCs in one building, including a tattooist that aligns themselves with the cartographers to drop lore and make all but the Umbra Tattoos themselves from Umbra more accessible. Then, equally as controversial, this could inspire the weaponsmith and equipment shop owners to move in together in a similar deal to make more room on the outpost. The weapon and equipment shop expansions aren't as implausible (Or at least unprecedented) as one might think, considering the whole situation with the warsmith and salty, a weaponsmith and equipment shop owner, working closely together in the past.
One more non-establishment feature you could add to the outpost are loiterers. As of now, the only person who only lives at the outpost and doesn't work all day is Larinna. This makes the outpost feel like an absolute ghost-town, especially with how few buildings there are now.
Perhaps when an outpost is rendered in, five NPC's are spawned in randomized locations, like leaning against a building, or standing by a sign post, or browsing a shop, or standing by one of the company reps, filling a bucket from the water-tower.. Stuff like that, stationary and out of the way.
Depending on the outpost's region differently designed inhabitants will live or stop there based off their theming, and their animations will be according to that. This would be a good use for all the promotional pirates displayed in the material, or whole new designs for the loiterers in specific. Perhaps they'll come with more regular and humble clothing in the shop? Anywho, the function they'll serve is to 1: add to the outpost atmosphere, and 2: add more in-game sources for lore and tips for those who seek those things. Depending on their spot and who it is, the dialogue should be slightly different, or at least one of the options should. For an obvious example, you should have the option to talk about weaponry if the NPC is loitering in the weapon's shop. Or less obviously, you could ask an NPC standing around for the lay of the outpost. We could also get legendary loiterers down in PL hideout who tell tall tales and drink with the pirate lord's crew. (Including ghost Demarco, should he ever leave the Sea of the Damned!)
Three and a half, considering how in-depth I went on the mechanics and designs of these ideas, should be far more than enough. With every addition and change to an outpost like this, the outpost feels more like a civilized port town with real people in it, rather than a military checkpoint where you deposit loot. And without an NPC overhaul, minigames, or anything of the sort, these additions might help make the outpost feel less hospitable to tumbleweeds and crickets, and moreso to pirates and thieves.