I'm new to the game and I was super disappointed to find that I can't capture ships.
I'm especially disppointed that I can't capture pirate ships because I'd really like to use one without constantly respawning skeles... I'd settle for just this being possible.
Anyway, I'm sure it's a combination of technical (despawning the previous ship) and gameplay reasons.
So I think I have an idea of how it could work.
Add another flag to ship up top, so you have one above the other with the vanity flag you chose from flag box.
The new flag is basically your crew flag, that ties the ship to a group of players.
This new flag is what ties and enables respawning to that ship.
To capture another ship, you need to lower their flag and replace theirs with yours. Each action would probably take 10-25 seconds each.
Holding a flag would be like holding a chest or another item.
Respawning when your crew's flag is not on a ship and not held, ie if you took it down and failed to capture another ship, would despawn the flag and attach it to a newly spawned ship and then sink the ship that has no flag after some time.
So the actual process of capturing a ship is that you go to the crow's nest and lower your flag to hold onto it and transport it, which means you can no longer respawn at your ship while it's lowered.
You then need to go to the other ship you want to capture, and hold the action to raise your flag while lowering theirs.
The ship that is defending against capture is obviously at a huge advantage since they can respawn at their ship while the attackers can't until the capture is complete.
