Guz De Silva

Dont build what you cant afford to lose. Its really that simple. I am opposed to making bigger ships stronger than what they already are because it only serves to consolidate power to the larger groups.

This is foolishness, fire should be extremely effective against wooden ships. The problem is protecting them while they are docked. Not sure what the mechanic should be but right now they are sitting ducks while offline. While online they can be guarded but players must be extremely vigilant in spotting and identifying incoming ships, ready to rally a defense at a moments notice. To buff ship defense to the level of stone walls would make them only able to be destroyed via offline raiding and reduce any viability of small ship raiders, further increasing the power of larger groups. Not sure that the balance isnt ok right now except for maybe reducing the effectiveness of tools on ship planks. As a follow up, having a large ship with no one watching it, as you stated in the OP, is an idiocy of its own that shouldnt need to be addressed in this thread. Maybe a how to play thread would be more appropriate.