Suggestion: "Pirate" Freeport Server (Official)

[Vexus 15]

I was thinking how there is no time for a break in Atlas: no time off can be had without losing everything. Islands need gold maintenance. Ships at Freeport need repairs. Leaving ships on your shoreline during Combat Phase results in them sinking. The game is constantly grinding against you and if you leave for a few days, your work is gone.

 

I understand the need for some of these mechanics, however it would be nice to be able to focus on ship combat and not have to maintain a massive infrastructure of islands if you don't want to. Running a single ship with your crew every day should be an option - with again, the ability to take a day off.

 

I propose a Pirate Freeport, where instead of decay on your ship, your ship costs more gold the longer it is anchored there. If your ship runs out of gold, your NPC crew quickly mutinies, and after ~48 hours of not enough gold on the ship, then the decay sets in.

 

This would allow people to stock up on gold on their ship and go on vacation, or take a break from the game for a couple days (provided they don't have other in-game obligations like islands). The cost could be increased the longer you remain parked, so eventually if people neglect to log on, they would lose their ship, but at least they'd have some known period where they could take a break.

 

As the cost should increase over time, it wouldn't be efficient to park a ship there as an overweighted "freeport shack". In addition, the increasing gold cost would prevent people from storing dozens of ships in this Pirate Freeport - better to park those Freeport Fleets in decay areas where repair materials are available right on the nearby island.

 

Thematically, your NPC crew is spending a lot of gold in town the longer you sit around in port. But whatever.

 

This kind of thing would probably work as a standard mechanic for every single freeport, solving a lot of the issues revolving around people living out of freeport. People would have to leave to get gold or to reset their ship's increasing gold cost in zone if they wanted to 'live' there, disincentivizing that kind of behavior. It's something that might work for every freeport, and since new player rafts and ramshackles would have no gold and thus begin decaying right away, it doesn't affect those too much either.

 

Overall I think an idea like this would allow people to run a ship or two and focus on the ship gameplay over land so much.

 

Thanks for reading!