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I'm new to this forum, so excuse me is this idea have been already made somewhere else. I have notice the difficulties to make money when we can't do big benefice with the commerce of resources. So I had the idea to put some profession to gain more money so here we are: (Sorry in advance for my mistakes in English) When we reach the rank of Lieutenant, we can choose between one legal role and have the 3 or two others one illegal. Legal Ones Merchant: The merchant have the right to put the stamp of his nation on the barrels of legal resources. With this stamp we can have better prices at the port for the resell at the cities of his nation. Producer: The producer have the right to produce legal resources at lower cost of extraction in his building. He can also have one more building of production in any of his outpost. Also all of his resources he produced can be sell via and only via the merchant because he can't stamp his barrels of resources. Ship Builder: He is the only one with the right to produce ship. He got some discount with the cities for the bought of resources. (Only those in relation with the crafting of a ship) Also his shipyard has his cost of construction decrease. The War-Man: He choose the war to gain gold so he got the right to have special quest of the nation. Those quest are more dangerous but with a better gain at the end. Also those missions can only be join by War-Man, he can't be helped by non-warman. The War-Man has also the ability to “inspect” any ships near him.(See about illegal roles) The cost of repair and kit are reduced. The illegal ones Illegal Merchant: He can transport any resources of his choice but he can't stamp them. He can resell them at full prices only in the enemy cities or pirates ones. He can perhaps sell them to the cities of his nations but at a lesser prices and with a bribe. Also if a War-Man inspect him in the open world. His cargo will be set a contraband one and every people on the nation can attack him. But he will not be set as pirate since his lose his cargo & ship(only if his lose all of his durability) Illegal Producer: He can produce what he want but with a quality reduced. Also he can't sell his resources to legal merchant. So he need to pass them to illegal ones. When he do that he will only have the money for his resources only when the merchant succeeded to sell them somewhere. If his merchant get caught, he lose everything. The illegal Builder: He can craft every boat he can, but have no help in the cost of his resources. Also every ship he craft have only 3 durability and also can't be sell in cities and only in hand to hand. Another possibility is to permit every man to change his legal profession but with a high cost and a countdown of time. If you have any question or idea to put or modifies this feel free to respond even if you dislike this idea. ! (Also made a reddit post: https://www.reddit.com/r/NavalAction/comments/4cth04/suggestion_profession/)

It would be cool if there could be coop crews where everyone had a role to play on the ship (1 captain, 1 helmsman, a few handling the sails, etc). This would probably attract role players and open up the game to a whole new clientele. Another feature that would play into my first suggestion, would be the ability to walk around your ship in first person. What do you think?

So, as everyone playing the game knows, you can outfit your ship with officers, I've got a few suggestions and would also ask for some player feedback into what officers roles should be and how that would affect your sailing; if they go down with the ship or have a chance of getting onto the longboat and paddling to the nearest pirate port, whether they can be injured, gain XP and rank up just like you; or just simply be modules you plug into your ship, leaving all the captaining and micromanagement to you, though captaining a ship would be no easy task. Firstly I'll take a look at navigation. What I'd propose is, with an officer who fills the role of your navigator is access to your captains quarters (though in a 'locked' isometric position) where you would get to see your map spread out over a table, along with all the ports and their flags. When asking a basic/low level navigator where you are he would simply reply "Nearest to <portnamehere>", however as you got better navigators (or your navigator got better) a circle would appear around your ship on the map like GPS on your phone with bad sattelite reception, as the navigator gets better and better or the best one is got the circle would shrink until you had a very reasonable idea of where you were, along with the navigator telling you where the nearest port is provided it's on the map. Officer of the watch - This officer would stop you having to buy a 72" 4k TV to tell if there is a ship in the distance. Of course like the navigator not all officers are as good as others so you may still have to keep an eye open for ships he might miss. However, he would be tasked with one other important thing, logging ships and fleets into the ship's map a lower-level/rarity officer would have them as lines coming out from the ship indicating heading, but not exact distance, somewhat like the sonar map in silent hunter; as he gets better he will begin to mark the lines red, white or green according to whether they are neutral, an enemy or an ally (He would start with black lines), eventually he would work his way up the skill/rarity tree to map the ship's approximate location, heading and speed he would also give call when land is spotted and if it's uncharted you could have him and your navigator draw up a rough shape (accuracy dependant on how skilled both officers are) of an island that was not on your 'original' chart. As a pair the navigator and officer of the watch can map out shallows and put them on your map too. Bosun - (or whichever way you want to spell it), generally keeps the morale of your crew up and gives shipwide bonuses if morale is high (almost as if you had added more crew), he keeps you aware of your crew's status, if any are sick (if this is added in the future) or if they are annoyed to the point of mutiny due to a series of failed encounters and not having a captain of the correct rank controlling the vessel. Your bosun could also double as a carpenter or surgeon, the carpenter getting more effectiveness out of repair kits and allowing you to repair about 20% of your armour if in survival mode, though patching a ship up with bits of shattered ship takes time. Him doubling as a surgeon would reduce crew loss in battle and reduce crew loss during boarding and regain some crew who would have otherwise died during boarding, they would mend slowly over a matter of days depending on their injuries. If he is acting out other roles then shipwide bonuses would Gunnery Officer - Pretty simple this one really, firstly you can set him to fire broadsides if you wish, possibly manning starboard and firing salvos at an easily hit ship while you pick off the little guy in a gunboat. If he isn't on firing duty he would assist with aiming, giving you somewhat of a trajectory arc, as all other officers some are better than others. As well as that a modest increase in gun damage would be nice as well as the ability to have him suggest where to shoot (eg armor, rudder, sails; though this may be very difficult to code) if trajectory arcs are a bit too Assassin's Creed for you then let him widen the little red line, essentially adjusting guns on the fly to hit where you may have just missed. Just to add a quick edit here. Should ships with multiple gundecks benefit from only one gunnery officer or should you have to have one for each gun-deck or set him as a ship-wide gunnery officer who's task is just to maintain the guns and keep the firing crews trained, giving less bonuses to all the guns on your ship than say 3 gunnery officers for each gun-deck of the HMS Victory who would actively be running fire control for each deck. Edit: one more thing he would do is tell you how close your ranging shots are to the enemy ship rather than you having to fire and get a spyglass on the ship (a feat impossible/very very difficult in real life if you are controlling the gunner's aim first) naturally as the officer got better by way of experience he would be able to tell you how far you missed by, by saying "Your shot missed her" at the beginning to "You hit just short/long of her cap'n" to giving more accurate descriptions of how much you missed by such as "You only missed by a few yards short cap'n" as well as letting you know how well you are damaging the ship from telling you whether you scored a hit to whether the shot hit her sails (though ball going through sails would not count as a hit when he feeds back to you), her mast or her hull (higher levels would be able to tell you if you hit her on the waterline and higher levels yet would tell you if you have created a leak) essentially a high level gunnery officer takes you away from mundane tasks and allows you to focus on things like manual sails. Boarding commander - takes care of boarding tasks, gives a modest increase in turn rate and fire rate prior to boarding(once again increasing with experience or rarity) during boarding he gives a recharge rate bonus as well as a morale and damage bonus. If there are any roles I've missed, let me know and let me know how you feel about things. Main questions would be: - Should officers be bought from the store as an item or hired from the tavern (Yes I got most of those roles from Age of Pirates 3 City of Lost Ships; a great game with mods, though it is somewhat buggy). - Should officers require pay to function (a good bosun would lower their wages by keeping them and the crew happy)? - Leading on from this, if officers have an XP based levelling function should they level automatically (thus requiring you to pay them more) or should you need to promote them. However officers that have gone a long time with max XP and no promotion may get a little annoyed and demand you promote them or you part ways next time you make port. - Should officers die upon sinking? Or should those that make it to a boat in time (wounded officers are slower) so having "fill boat" and a countdown running until all officers are on board (at risk of your ship sinking and you losing all your officers if it's taking on water fast) then a command to "Scuttle ship and escape" Any and all feedback is much appreciated, even if it's a link from a devblog going deep into officer mechanics and you calling me a fool for not finding it (I used both the forum search and Google, neither turned up anything like this so I'm sorry if I'm making you read the same stuff twice) anyway, that's all I've got to say for now until I retreat to the batcove and think of moar stuffs.