Proposal for change to shipbuilding - dockyard bribery

[Shepherd]

I was suddenly struck by an idea that, to make things perhaps more really reflect these times, crafting notes could be renamed "bribes" or "dockyard bribes". It seems that corruption ran wild and bribery could influence the construction or outfitting of a ship. If more crafting notes means a better ship, why not change crafting notes to bribes since they are doing the same thing?

 

Another change I have been thinking about is the ship crafting, even with the recent change to low-mid-high-grade crafting notes. The more hours and resources are required to build a ship, the less crafting notes influence the cost of building a ship. Right now crafting notes directly affect the number of upgrade slots and the quality of the built-in upgrades, with some random chance.

 

I propose a change where crafting notes (or bribes) give you a certain number of points to spend on upgrading your ship. These points could then be used to alter the ship's upgrade slots, built-in upgrades, speed, and whatever else may currently be influenced by random chance or the number of crafting notes. Perhaps you could even use the points to add additional built-in upgrades instead of just choosing one.

 

The more crafting notes you use, the more points you have to improve the attributes of your ship. Each individual ship would require a different number of points to improve its characteristics, with smaller ships requiring less for each improvement added to it. For example, the number of points you get from a single crafting note can do much to improve a Lynx but will do less to improve a Snow, and they will barely let you improve a Frigate. Perhaps to keep things from getting extremely steep, four high-grade crafting notes should still be balanced to let you fully or almost-fully upgrade a 3rd rate of 74 guns.