Removing Durability and Other Radical Ideas

[WilsonMG]

So, with Naval Action hurting for players, I've got some ideas I'd like to toss out.  After all, even though some of my ideas change things up quite a bit, I really don't think it could get much worse...  The game world is massive, and with so few players, with most people either avoiding PvP entirely, only getting into PvP unwillingly due to unfair numbers, or only participating in Port Battles and Events, it's just not a lot of fun these days and the numbers reflect that.  My hope is that players might return, PvP could be the norm for once, and people wouldn't be as afraid to lose their ship if they did choose to fight.  Losing a ship should still have a marked impact, though maybe not always a permanent one as to cause players to avoid it all together.

http://steamcharts.com/app/311310#All

1. Remove Ship Durability and replace it with a Repair Timer

• Example Repair Timers: 1st Rate = 7 days, 2nd Rate = 6 days, 3rd Rate = 5 days, 4th Rate = 4 days, 5th Rate = 3 days, 6th Rate = 2 days, 7th Rate = 1 day.
• Possibility of paying down the timer for a multiplier based on remaining time, up to "a whole Hell of a lot" for a 1st rate with maximum time remaining.
• No ship could go below a certain minimum wait time (2-4 hours?), so as to avoid people with a lot of gold just sinking and going right back out in the same ship.

2. Implement Towing

• When sunk, allow captains to choose between paying a fee to be towed by the game (automatic, but costly), being towed by a friendly player, or scuttling their ship and losing it forever.
• Once back in a friendly port the Repair Timer begins.

3. Ships could still be lost forever to boarding actions by other players, when the other player chooses to take the captured prize.

• Add in a button during boarding to intentionally scuttle your ship to avoid it falling into the hands of an opponent.  Would behave like Disengage, etc.
• If boarded by an NPC and the player loses, it would be treated as a sinking and the Towing System and Repair Timer would apply.

4. Remove Officer Lives

• Remove the 10 "lives" and instead add in the ability to rename them, and retrain them for a fee.

5. To make up for fewer lost ships, add more random properties back into crafting to keep people producing ships chasing the ideal build.

• Possibly reduce and normalize all ship building materials to a set amount for each ship, and remove the ability to select traits and quality and instead have non-location-based traits be random, and the quality be based on overall trait amounts.