NPC maintenance crew ports

[Bleakwise 6]

The maintenance crew port would help single player captians especially of larger ships enjoy the game by reducing the amount of work required by PC players to maintain a ship.

It would fit on a cannon port, and would provide the NPC with tools needed to repair the boat while at sea instead of just docked. It would also give the NPC a water bucket to throw water out of the cannon port if the ship started to flood. If the port/plank were broken, this feature would be removed, but the NPC would still be able to repair the boat.

The NPC would also prioratize healing his port over the rest of the boat, so chances of his port breaking would be lower than on say a cannon port.

You could be able to have 12 of these on a brig or 10 on a schooner, or many more on a galleon.

The water-throw mechanic would also begin to fail after the water level was half way above their deck, as water would be able to leak in through the cannon port at that point. On a galleon you would have the option of putting them on multiple ship levels to chunk out water as each deck flooded. The NPCs underwater would either be disabled or only able to repair at this point.

This would be a quick thing to implament as all you would have to program in would be the NPC game logic, and add the models for some kind of toolbox and a water bucket which he would grab and throw water out of the port as the ship sank.

This combined with giving NPCs the ability to repair structures on a boat would greatly improve the quality of life of ship captians and crew, as crew could focus on fighting instead of running around doing maintenance work, tho a human repair person with a hammer, water bucket and some extra planks with repair fiend would likely still be a huge asset in PVP.

Also, make repair-fiend give every maintenance NPC on the boat a bonus for 6 seconds if used on the captian wheel or add a perc you could pick up to advaned efficent repairs, soemthing like Rally the Troops but a perc just for NPCs, perhaps a passive for if you have both advanced efficent repair/repair fiend that makes repair fiend operate ship-wide.

I like this last idea actually, and think it could apply to other skills a captian might be speced into. Perhaps something like Advanced Rally the Troops, which would let you use medic skills like savior ship-wide, allowing you to heal every player/npc on your boat.

Either this or just make such feats ship-wide while you are on the captians wheel or leutinent podium, which would greatly improve reasoning to put one on yoru boat, as your deck-hand might then opt to pick repair fiend and medic from those skill trees and still be a pvp oriented character that is contributing to the ship. Might even have more than one podium on your ship for your player characters if this were the case.