Cargo should be much more essential to sustaining a ship.

[Aetrion]

Currently there is absolutely nothing you actually need to carry in your ships cargo hold to stay in combat for a really long time.

 

 

Water, provisions, ammo etc. basically don't exist at all in the game right now. Sailors simply pop back to their full number even after a fight where 90% of them died. There is no need to ever look for more of them, nor can additional troops be kept on board even if you have cargo room. Repair kits have their own special counter that stores them somewhere other than the cargo hold. Special equipment a ship would take on for specific missions currently doesn't exist, but that would also be kept in the various holds of the ship. Basically there is absolutely nothing that ever goes in your cargo hold except for raw resources, but that doesn't make any sense, the cargo hold of a ship at the time was it's staging ground for whatever mission it was going to undertake. A warship carried munitions and provisions and troops in the same place where it might have carried sugar or passengers during peacetime.

 

I think the game should put a lot more emphasis on cargo, even for ships that are in combat. For one, cargo vessels always play an essential logistics and support role in naval warfare, but because you don't need cargo space to do anything in this game there is basically no point in having cargo vessels be part of your fleet. The game would be a lot more interesting if there was a logistical aspect to it where sinking a fleets supply ships would severely cripple them and force them to head back to port, and that would do all kinds of wonders for making fleet composition more interesting and give small, fast ships a way to actually do some serious damage. Generally shifting the logistics aspect of the game away from "Stockpile 100 ships!" toward actually having to maintain supply lines of actual ships having to ferry actual goods to the front line would make the game a lot more interesting, because that's an actual tactical element, not just lame grind.

 

At the same time, concepts like blockading a port would become a lot more valid if it was actually possible to sustain a fleet at sea indefinitely as long as the supply lines stay open. There simply shouldn't be any reason why a trade ship can't bring you more repair kits while you're out at sea. 

Edited February 28, 2016 by Aetrion

[Kavoro]

While this shouldn't become a priority for the devs until a while from now, I do like the idea. It'll make disrupting enemy supply lines actually sting, not just for traders and crafters but also the 'grunt' in the line of battle.

[SKurj.]

how often do people actually spend more than a day at sea.. bet the majority of players never do.

[Aetrion]

Well there isn't a whole lot of reason to stay at sea, right now, and any port can instantly do full repairs at a super cheap price. If they want to actually expand the tactical depth of the game those are things they will have to change IMO.