How hard would it be to give each ship a fortress to 1.) semi-custom by ship captains (1 traditional layout for uncaptained ships.) The layout would have a few must place sections and then a lesser few optional sections. 2.) Allow that fortress to setup as a beacon for other ships to raid? One active on a server at a time.
It would be like a mini Veil event where the invading ship needs to sink your towers and ramparts before you sink them with the fortress cannons. Each ship would have their own fortress 1/6 on the map. Defenders sail to their island and setup as needed BYOSups. Then once they lift a raid flag for the defending faction (one fortress on a server at a time) it can be raided by ships in server or diving to it. Players who successfully defend get rewards, players who successfully destroy towers and then raid a vault with sizable loot. Defenders choose 1 out of 4 puzzle options that defending players can try to solve in order to open the loot vault.
Defending players who die respawn at fort until 7 amount of fortress sections and cannon towers are defeated. If they lose they server merge. If they defeat a ship/destroy the fort, they gain new hour-glass type faction points. (Defenders of Fortune / Looters of Fire) Make this a limited time voyage where people are only given so many of these a month.
I know it has a lot of potential for bugs, cheats, and everything else to go wrong. But if it could be doable, would the community find it interesting or not?
It would add another island like FotD into the mix. These would be 6 forts around the map that you know belongs to your ship (and potentially other ships) from the beginning. You don’t spawn there until you activate it. Minimal loot spawns there. You can park your boat inside incognito in order to drop off sups. Once the defender's boat is parked up inside and the fort is activated the defender’s boat is locked down. (Or just despawn it and respawn it at a nearby island at the end of the battle if the defenders win.)
If anything this would add 6 more interesting islands to the map. These island could also just have lesser vaults with puzzles or until activated. Another option is that you gain more defense experience if you bring more loot to your vault.
Players could choose between 12 different pre-fab layouts and customize various themes and 3 building layouts within each of the 12 builds. Allow players to save 3 different layouts. It is also enough of a change that it would feel like the attackers have to learn the layouts each time they attack with 1728 different layout possibilities. 12 bases each having 3 different buildings to change out. The other 7 buildings are stationary to that layout. 7 buildings have to be sunk. Loot Vaults are the one building that can be moved around on a snap to grid.
Grids and locations
1.) shores of plenty = palm flora N.W. / jungle flora S.W.
2.) wilds = fortress N.E. / palm flora N.Central.
3.) devil's roar = fortress S.E. / rocky island E.Central.
Players would be able to customize their island with trinkets, limited basic wall colors, flags, barrel layout, and themes ect.
This could provide interest for more player types, pvp defenders or attackers, pve for the islands not activated yet, sneakers who attack, it also pokes interest for "build players" which SoT hasn't tapped into, this also provides for different layouts that are not the same boring layout. Attackers don't just KNOW what kind of island base layout they are attacking.
Being customizable this makes more use for gold, ancient coins and blue doubloons.
