so was reading the road map and saw the devs are looking at vastly increasing the time players spend at sea and thought that was a great idea so i figured i would list some suggestions that would personally see me spending alot more time at sea then i currently do. please note i only really play on single player so alot of these suggestions will be with that in mind.
first suggestion: a fleet system for single players to command up to 4 ships of a lower class than the one they are on. as a single player i hate the fact that theres no real reason for me to have more than one ship and when i go somewhere i can only bring one ship at a time. i would love to mount massive expeditions with a fleet or even just to send my fleet on an expedition to another island where i have a base without me. for this i would suggest giving captains the ability to tell an npc captain to follow another ship and "protect" it. to make this fair i would suggest limiting the number of ships that can follow any given ship to four and make it so they have to be a lower class ship so you dont have to deal with four galleons at once. i also suggest giving the option to tell npc crew to sail to specific islands either by themselves or with their fleet. this would enable you to get your ships from one island to another with relative ease without you always having to go with them.
flotillas instead of or as a part of ship bases. so one thing i am afraid of is that this game will forget its piracy roots and start going off in a weird direction where all the sudden we have floating castles instead of ships. one way i think this can be prevented is by allowing for a flotilla type base system. this would essentially be a large gathering of your ships at sea that you can travel to and from the different ships via dingy or rope bridge you could connect them with. i would suggest making it so you could assign certain roles for ships. for example have a ship that acts as a naval farm that is responsible for growing crops on the deck and having a ship that acts like a mobile hotel where the crews of the other ships can sleep. make a deep sea anchor that acts as sort of a claim zone at sea and create a system where players can create a mobile self sufficient naval base that uses multiple interconnected ships and the fleet system mentioned above instead of just having one giant castle on a floating raft. to deal with the need for going to land for getting resources i have a few ideas. one is attachments for your ships that passively gather resources that "float by" like a net for fish and cargo. another is by creating trade ships that you can supply with coin and order them to travel to a free port in order to trade for the resources you need. i really like this idea because it poses the risk of not only loosing the coin if the ships of the damned sink your trade ship but also losing it to other players if they decide to play pirate and attack your merchant ship on route to its destination. the more ships you send as an escort the more likely your ship is to make it back alive but the more you have to loose if pirates attack. creating a real risk to doing things the easy way. also to prevent seas from being to crowded have a max number of active flotillas per shard and if necessary limit flotillas to shards with no islands like the ones i mention below.
as for exploration some times less is more when it comes to end game exploration. it is always nice to have an island near by when sailing the seas and it certainly makes you feel safe but one of the thrilling parts of exploration is the fact that you dont know if you are going to find anything or if you are going to make it back. for end game exploration i would suggest creating a situation where the further you move away from the center of the map the less islands and resources on the islands their are. make it so at the far edges of the map you are dealing with mostly open seas and desert islands and even entire shards where theirs nothing but water. and at the furthest edges of the world make islands rare but also make them the richest in resources and big. this would create a system where you truly have to plan for and look for these islands and when you do find them you would get the genuine sense of discovery and accomplishment that comes with discovering a new world. also to really hit home the fact that this is undiscovered land make the flora and fauna seem different than anywhere else on the map. almost alien to what you would expect to see given what exists at the center of the map but not so alien that it looks like something that should not exist on the same planet. also make it so unique variants of certain species of animals appear only on these far off lands. this would allow peoples tames to show where they have been and give them more of a reason to explore. examples of unique variants can be anything from variants of the animals with a different color scheme then what appears in the wild like a wolf that has a color scheme that resembles a fox or zebra and for the rarest of beast variants give them some kind of special ability others of their species dont have like a wolf with a howl attack or that gets a stat boost at night and during a full moon.
under water caves, temples, and lost cities in the open sea. so one thing i noticed as soon as i started playing atlas is how cool it is underwater but also how there is little to no reason to explore the vast landscape of the ocean. to remedy this i would suggest creating underwater temples and lost cities where you can find rare resources and treasures if you look hard enough and i would also suggest having under water caves that lead to large chambers that air has been trapped inside where you can find some resources and even build a base. this would create incentive for exploring the underwater areas and offer more areas for people to set up bases in secret which given the limited land area is desperately needed. also and this is important. make sure these cities, temples, and caves dont show up on the map. these are lost cities and temples and undiscovered caves after all. so giving players an idea of where to look for them would sorta ruin the whole point of the discovery.
and finally carrier ships for tames. this would be a class of ship that is used specifically to carry tames either for transportation or combat purposes. it would have a big door on the deck you could open to enter a large space underneath where you can store multiple tames and if possible a partially submerged deck for storing sea tames although this one would be harder as you would need to make it in a way thats believable so people dont question why their ship does not sink. one reason i spend alot of on land is because thats where my tames are. a ship that you can assign to your fleet via the system mentioned above thats sole purpose is as a carrier for tames would go a long way in limiting the amount of time i spend on land. i saw on your road map you guys are looking at making tames less important. i personally think this is a mistake as one of the biggest draw to these kinds of games is the tames. instead i would suggest better implementation between the tames and the naval aspect of the game to the point where tames can almost be seen as an expansion of the naval combat. a ship class designed specifically for combination naval tame combat would go along way in achieving this. now you can already pretty much create tame carriers given the ships and ship building system that are in the game already. but i think a ship built and designed with this aspect in mind could do alot more. it could have extra hatches specifically for launching your tames from the top, front, side, or backs of your ship or even using some of your tames with ranged attacks as turrets. and given your road map mentioned a boarding meta game i think theirs a lot that could be done in that regard as well. after all who doesn't want to board another persons ship while mounted on a wolf with a pack of wolves following them. i even have an idea for design inspiration for the ship. make it an ark. how cool would that be!
of course i dont expect all or even any of these things to actually be implemented. but if they manage to give the devs any ideas or insights into what their players would like to do at sea then i will consider the time spent making this post worth it. also if any one has any ideas they have that they think would make them want to spend more time at sea please post them below. also i apologize for any misspellings or poor grammar in my post. i have a disability that makes things like grammar and spelling very hard for me to learn how to do correctly so bear with me.+
