Currently no one wants to keep too much treasure on-board which reduces the chances of rewarding PVP engagements. Why not encourage crews to not sell all their treasure right away and add exciting depth to the game? Here’s how:
Say you find a Chest of Thousand Grogs. You could sell it, OR you could obtain a Villainous Skull, put it on top of the drunken chest and now, if an enemy boards your ship the Villainous Skull will use its dark powers to make enemies drunk while on your ship (thanks to endless supply of grog from the chest). The only way for enemies to counter this effect is to drink grog and effect goes away, but if friendly crew member plays a shanty the effect comes back.
Say you find a Chest of Sorrow. You could sell it, OR you could obtain a Villainous Skull, put it on top of the weeping chest and now if you hit an enemy ship with a cannon ball it will deliver a bucket of sad tears into the enemy ship (using dark powers of Villainous Skull and endless supply of sadness from the weeping chest).
Say you find an incredibly rare… Castaway chest… You could drop a piratey tear of happiness and keep this precious gem from the dirty hands of Gold Hoarders OR you could obtain a Villainous Skull, put it on top of the precious chest and now the evil skull will be forced to patch every 3rd hole punched in your ship, but after 8 patched holes the precious chest will tragically cease to exist and you’ll need to find another one to feed to evil skull of destruction in order to patch holes in ye bathtub.
We can go on and on in what perks you could obtain by placing certain combinations of treasures into specific areas in the ship, bottom line is the chance of finding ships with actual treasure on board will increase; possible strategy variations will increase, you’ll be able to adjust your play-style at least a little bit, will be encouraged to take risks and for once chances of rewarding PVP engagements will go up.