A few gameplay and content suggestions

[LunningStooks 2]

After watching the livestream, I was inspired to write up a list of neato things i'd like to see in the future.

Firstly - Gameplay mechanics

1. Commodity trade routes between freeports - A simple, tried and true sailing game mechanic.  Buy X product for Y coins in Freeport A, sail to a freeport in a different biome, sell for Z amount of coins. I can see the player-trade system being used for this, but it'd be nice to be able to purchase a hefty amount of biome-related goods from freeports, and have to haul them to another part of the world in order to turn a profit (Providing player shops are region-locked, instead of being accessible anywhere). Thinking about it, this would probably provide a more predictable way of generating merchant ships, that patrol between various freeports.
2. Better NPC crewing - Simple things, like assigning riflemen to the fighting top to act as snipers, and a "Weapons storage" item similar to the resource chest and food pantries, that allow NPC's to grab weapons and tools automatically to repel boarders and the like, as well as an improvement to their AI that stops them manning a station if an enemy is on the boat and within stabbing distance
3. Regional diseases - Add communicable diseases that can travel between NPC's and players alike. Simple things like scurvy from a lack of vitamin C with varying stages, to pneumonia from being consistently cold for too long of a time, and malaria as a risk of living in a tropical region. Maintaining a proper diet (Vitamin balance) makes catching diseases less likely.

Now, Onto the more content related stuff

1. Rifle sized pepperbox style weapons - Multi-barreled firearms were commonplace on naval vessels, for the same reasons why shotguns are considered a CQB weapon today - More bullets in a tight space makes stuff deader. In this instance, would provide more shots between each reload, but have a long reload time, whilst doing the roughly same amount of damage that would be expected of a pistol (Most firearms like this fired pistol balls). 
2. Unique loot items - Weapons and such similar to other MMO's, that have a unique look or attributes based on where they were looted - for instance a more ethereal looking sword from the ghost ship, and who wouldn't want to shank someone with a piece of whale bone? Could be either in blueprint form, or as a one-off dropped item. Could also including unique and rare bowspirits to show off how tough you are.
3. Ship-to-ship grapple: A big-ol' cannon that fires a grapple, pulling two ships closer to one another
4. Ground-based NPC work camps: A simple implementation of getting NPC crew to work on the ground as harvesters without strip-mining an island single handedly. Add various construct-able structures, similar to the lighthouse and tax bank, that act as NPC work stations, these provide a reasonable radius where NPC's will automatically go out and harvest the resource for that station, providing they're kept paid. For instance, a lumberyard where 3 or 4 NPC's could be assigned to continuously harvest trees within a few hundred meters. Add a slightly larger exclusion zone that only allows one to be constructed to prevent abuse/spamming for these structures. Player would have to set up reasonable defenses such as setting guards to prevent workers getting mauled to death by the local wildlife and/or rival companies.
5. Player gambling activities - The thing asked for in every other game these days now has even more getting asked for. Could be simple things like liars dice, to more advanced card-games like Whist.
6. Some larger landmasses - A stick-on solution to the other solutions around land claims, adding more, and larger, landmasses would see more use for using mounts and such to get around. It would probably also add some more challenge to navigating waters, as well as some interesting ideas for leading a raiding party across a larger section of land, rather than having to blast through naval defenses.
7. Private journal - A simple item that allows players who have aged out to resume their quest from roughly the same point - minus the xp progress to the next level they have. Players would have to craft this, acting as a 'save point' up until that point (So if its written at age 50, with level 40, you'd resume from that and all the skill point allocations, even if you had made it all the way to age 100 and level 100)

And finally, an idea or two for dungeons:

1. Isle of the Damned - An island, surrounded by mists and dangers, housing vast treasures. Jumps around to any random piece of ocean x amount of distance away from any landmass, large enough to house it, similar to the fountain of youth.
2. AOD raids on freeports - A low-level based encounter where a weak, noob friendly AOD force attacks a freeport for 10-15 minutes before retreating. Defeating them gives a moderate reward similar to sinking a SOTD to make it worth it for players to participate, without being overly incentivised for outside players to swarm it.

Will probably update with more, and edit to be less ramble-y once its not 3 AM.