Sid Meier's Pirates! upgrades

Yes exactly what I've been thinking after playing SoT. Don't forget the "specialist crew". Could translate to some kind of class for players. The following is from Pirates! Wiki

Cook
Cooks prepare tasty meals at sea, which helps to keep crew morale up. This allows you to stay at sea for longer without the crew turning on you. Always a good thing.

Cooper
Coopers help you preserve your food in barrels. This means that Food takes up less space in the cargo hold, allowing for more 'useful' goods to be carried.

Gunner
Gunners train your crew in fast reloading. Your cannons will be ready to fire much quicker with the Gunner, and the difference should be evident immediately.

Navigator
Navigators increase the speed of your ships. This helps make voyages between ports less tedious and ship battles a bit easier to win. Combined with the Cotton Sails, the Navigator can help make your fleet a speedy force to be reckoned with.

Quartermaster
The quartermaster enforces discipline at sea. This helps keep the men in order and reduces the chance of a mutiny.

Sailmaker
The Sailmaker can repair your sails at sea. At the start of each month, Sailmakers repair 25% of the sail damage on all your ships, similar to the Carpenter.

Surgeon
Surgeons can treat injured crew members. In ship battles, half of the people lost during the sword fight return to duty afterwards.

@horizonlegendo said in Sid Meier's Pirates! upgrades:

Upgrade | Sid Meier's Pirates! Wiki | Fandom

Upgrades are special pieces of equipment or material installed on a ship to improve one aspect of a ship's performance. Upgrades are only available in Sid Meier's Pirates! (2004). Upgrades can be...

I loved playing Pirates! as a kid and I feel like these upgrades would work really well with this game:

Copper Plating: Moderately increases the ship's turning rate.
Cotton Sails: Moderately increases the ship's overall speed.
Iron Scantlings: Slightly increases the ship's Durability.
Chain-Shot: Enables the ship to fire Chain-Shot during combat. (Damages sails)
Grape-shot: Enables the ship to fire Grape-Shot during combat. (Damage hull)
Fine-Grain Powder: Significantly increases the range of the ship's Cannons (with all ammunition types).
Bronze Cannons: Increases the accuracy of the ship's Cannons (with all ammunition types).

This would remove the entire point of the balance in the game, the thing the devs have said is a primary basis of the game, that a brand new person has all the same equipment as a player who has 500 hrs into the game. These upgrades are all vertical progression, the devs are against vert progress, and want to only do horizontal. The issue with vertical progress in a game like this is that it would be like having open world PvP in wow in every area. The 500 hr pirates (lvl120) would just smash the new player (lvl 1) with them having absolutely no chance to win or escape.