Morale system, preventing "surrender exploits", and other suggestions

[Random]

 Warm greetings to both the developers and the community. I would like to offer several suggestions that I have been mulling over in my head for a while now. Captain Lord Cochrane beat me to the officers' suggestion, so here're a couple more regarding morale, NPC pirates and finding crew on open seas, and potentially dealing with the “surrender issue”.

 

Since we already have morale play a role in boarding, I would suggest implementing the general morale system that would in effect produce morale for boarding actions. I envision a simple system of morale status from “joyous” to “mutiny” with minor bonuses/penalties in crew transfer speed, sail raising speed, etc... As I see it, crew morale should decrease following a defeat and increase following a victory. Several factors can be implemented that would affect the degree to which it would either increase or decrease, so that, for example, being ganked would result in a minor loss of morale, losing a closely matched PB would moderately decrease morale, and winning a fair PvP fight or PB would significantly increase morale. Other factors that would influence morale could include number of crew lost in the battle, profits made from a voyage (especially for pirates for whom that could be one of the main factors), successful escape from overwhelming forces, etc... This system could also solve the “surrender issue” by penalizing surrendering with a moral decrease. This way, since sinking is already punished by a durability loss and crew loss, surrendering would be similarly penalized by two factors: durability loss and morale decrease. In essence this would enable the transition from monetary rewards for damage to rewards based solely on ship destruction/capture from the admiralty and prevent exploits with people surrendering to each other to grind cash as their morale will plummet and they will face high risk of mutiny (more on it in follows) and decreased crew performance for any real battle.

 

I would also love to see lower levels of morale progressively increase a chance of mutiny (which can be decreased by the presence of Marines on board and officers' perks). In the case of mutiny, however, I would want to see a captain lose his ship and be left in a rowboat (perhaps with a makeshift sail to facilitate faster return to nearest friendly port). This rowboat model could also be used to generate random shipwreck survivors that could be found in the open seas and picked up as free crew; this will help to liven up the seas and provide some free crew on occasion. The mutinied ship, would become NPC pirate ship and could be programmed to actively seek out and attack trader ships while avoiding and actively trying to escape battle with warships (perhaps admiralty rewards for capture of such ships could be introduced as well). Of course, mutiny and low morale levels should be extremely rare occurrences that would not deter players from enjoying the game. It can, however, add a bit of flavor and serve to prevent exploits. One should be able to increase morale from low to neutral levels through token “tavern expenditures” in port and victories over AI, so that high chances of mutiny will be attained only through neglect or extreme folly such as losing a warship to a trader in a botched attack. Essentially this system would provide minor bonuses (1-5 % range at most) to captains that take care of their crew and create a remote possibility of mutinies that would produce Pirate NPC ships and extra content.

 

Ideas to improve these suggestions or potential problems/reasons for not implementing them are, of course, welcome.