Ixal

You already do not receive PvP marks for sinking basic cutters.

Or just allow cutters to be still attacked.

So except for 3 ports you can only get the resources required to build lineships when you win battles with lineships. Right, no problem with that at all....

And what games would that be?

One possible (not sure if it would really work, just an idea) solution to the crafting time sink would maybe be if we could pay other players to transport goods for us like in EvE. Alternatively, let people chart ships to transport stuff between all outposts a players have, but those ships are actually travelling on the OW and can be intercepted by other players, so there is risk (AI escorts cost extra).

Hauling around all materials I need already eats up most of my playtime. My interest in playing the game of gank and be ganked in the time that is left (or when I lack the fine woods to do anything) after that is waning. Especially as combat now is just an endless turning to rake. And if I dont want a gank I am left with fighting NPCs which means either sailing around for an hour to find an NPC fleet which is in my range (and also fun to fight) or doing the same combat missions over and over again.

Where did you get that nonsense from? The Santissima had been in battle for hours already and what made her surrender was the loss of a mast and not because a rake killed too much of a crew. Compared to history the crew loss by rakes in NA is completely over the top. It took 11 rakes by 3 deckers for the Bucenteure to lose as much crew as you can kill with 2 rakes here. And there were also enough instances in history where a rake only wounded a few sailors and did nothing else.

Gold ships? I am unable to craft green ships as I had gathered 600 logs without any fine log at all. And sorry, but before I spend a day or more hunting down fine logs all over the map which sell at ridiculous prices with a trade tool that is completely useless to find available goods I rather stop crafting completely and buy grey/green ships from NPCs at prices no crafter can match or just capture them outright. If you want to change that everyone only uses gold ships you would have to remove the color system and instead implement something else which is not so easily visible, for example allowing crafters to assign points into the various attributes during crafting with the number of points depending on crafter level and resources used (both quantity, quality and extra resources).

The problem with capturing the loot has already been mentioned. I think to get what the devs want you need to increase the time it takes to loot a chest. Instead of wrecks that can be looted with a click have them to be on sunken ships and to get them you need diving equipment (weighting 2000+). The chest themselves are light. And to get several chests from a wreck you need 10 minutes of standing still. That way there is plenty of time for PvP and you can get chests in a warship. If you think that this is too boring for the ones with the diving equipment you can use NPCs for that each nation has to protect (or maybe an unattackable NPC which work for whoever nation controls the area king of the hill style and slowly fills its hold with chest 1-2 at a time people can then loot).