Hey everyone! After the addition of randomly spawning skelly ships with their treasure, I've come to think about the ways that this system could be evolved.
What about merchant ships that spawn randomly around the world, sailing between ports and/or islands, and carrying some trade goods like satin/rum/plant crates, animals or banana crates? So either something players could use on their ventures or sell to merchants.
It would be awesome to be able to hunt those ships down like real pirates, steal all that's aboard and sell the stuff for gold, or maybe even trade with those merchant ships at sea or at a port.
To make things harder they could either protect themselves with cannons or be escorted by armed ships. It would be cool to have some variation, though, as for example skeleton ships are almost impossible to solo and I think everyone should get a chance at some merchant's loot. You could also combine this with a "reaper's mark effect" so that ships that have sunken a merchant ship will be visible to other players on the map.
In my opinion, this would break some of the monotony of sailing around and being attacked by hostile players or skeletons.
