Perhaps you should allow the player to ally with certain ports, and deposit cash there. Or bury cash on islands (which other pirates could dig up?) Anyway, I think when they lose, depending on who they lose to, they could lose anywhere from nothing (if they promise to ally?) to everything (including their life, if they are extreme enemies...) I think politics would play a huge role in what the player is left with, and allowing the player to place gold in spots around the map in a bank kind of system would be very beneficial. Hell, let them buy a port :D

That was sort of rambly-ish. Sorry.

Edit: Whoops, already mentioned more or less. Ah well.

First, pirates bury their gold. A player should be able to "bank" some/all of their gold in this manner, and then retrieve it later (such as after your ship has been sunk). To force this, you can make gold be counted as cargo, meaning there is only space for so much gold in your ship.

You'd also want to include some basic NPC based missions that can be accepted to earn gold - like the take A from X to Y. This can be integrated such that they aren't useless once you are passed the newbie stage - NPC missions might be the only way to encounter or participate in large battles (i.e. you pay the NPC at the bar to tell you the course a big shipment of gold will be taking)

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Original post by Mr Grinch Wavinator, thanks for the encouragement!

You bet, I think games like this are all too rare!

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I do intend to expand the role towns and the land will play in the game. I'd like to allow the player to leave his ship and wander around on land looking for treasure, and let towns be raided.

What I really like about this is that it opens the door wide to possibility, even if you can't fulfill everything. On the ocean, there are only so many reasonable scenarios you can run into unless your world is fantastical (mermaids, cities on the backs of giant sea turtles, etc.) But on land you can expect maybe ruined cities with traps and treasures; shipwrecks (maybe haunted); strange tribes; and a mix and match of any number elements from the known universe (such as buccaneers, missionaries or enemy soldiers).

When you mix even the possibility of such a wide variety of encounter with the seafaring aspect, you may have a game whose very point is land exploration with seafaring to enhance the journey (you may or may not want this, again it depends on whether or not your aesthetic focus is on war, exploration, NPC questing, etc.). Towns in the mix are really great because they're apt to be more dynamic than an empty beach, a shipwreck, or even ruins-- after all, any group of ne'er-do-wells could be hiding in the town.

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Once we get nationalities, we want to have governors to go talk to, although (unlike Pirates!), we have talked some about letting the player effect international politics. What exactly that will look like still needs to be figured out, though.

I like Iron Chef Carnage's idea about money and reputation influencing politics. This might create another form of leveling, especially if you have a Freelancer style faction system where raising rep with one faction inevitably lowers it with another.

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What do you mean by "mission based"? We plan on making it open-ended (much like Pirates!), although we may add a plot in kind of like Privateer, or GTA3-style. Is that what you meant by mission based?

I'm happy as long as I don't have to do missions just to progress. Many of todays games, even when they claim to be open-ended (like GTA) lock you in a play area and tell you you must do missions to get to the next area. Often they do this because they don't know how (or don't care to) create self-sustaining gameplay with its own embedded objectives. The forced objectives are a way that games like GTA or Deus Ex can keep the game fresh and interesting, but I really find them confining.

Out of curiosity, any possibility of founding outposts or towns for repair? It could be another way of leveling and investing in the world.

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Would a pirate crew really bother to go rescue their old captain? I'm not sure I'd count on my ruthless band of pirates to also be loyal to me... Perhaps along with some kind of rating for crew moral, I could have a loyalty rating. The more loyal, the more likely they would come rescue you or rejoin you later. Otherwise, you're left fending for your self.

You could also make this fun and lighthearted, like Errol Flynn swashbuckling. The crew simply rescues you because you're the captain, and then that solves the problem of what to do to restart. You could do loyalty, but in my own experience with ship & crew design stuff, when you add personality you either have to make it a major element or it's just another status bar to manage. (Again, fine if resource managment SHOULD be a focus.)

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What do you all think about this idea: if you loose a battle, you get sent out in canoe (I just happen to have a model canoe already). You can go back and get into your savings in towns, or dig up buried treasure if you have maps, and buy a new ship. You also could steal a ship from a town, but that would raise its' hostility towards you (which is something that needs to be flushed out, eventually, too). What do you think?

How often would you expect someone to lose? And is there a saving system to restore? These are critical to answer because they'll determine if all your work is for nothing.

Personally, if I lose a battle and get dropped into a canoe, I'm not going to accept it unless I don't have a choice (usually always bad design) or unless it leads to some interesting possibilities. Otherwise, I'll just reload.

OTOH, you could create branches to interesting events which would make me less likely to just restore. For instance, you have six or seven fates that can befall someone who loses a battle, each of which could change the game's simulation components (loyalty, missions, money) in different and unexpected ways. This could be as simple as presenting a dialog box with a picture:

• Washed ashore on a strange beach = Random restart on an island with the map blacked out (emphasizes exploration and orientation in order to get back to civilization)
  
• Hung at dawn = Restart as an escapee from a prison in an enemy town, with the possibility of stealing a ship
  
• Rescued by allies = Restart in a weaker ship, but with a crew in good spirits because they rescued their captain
  
• Hijack the ship = Ooops, being transported back as prisoners but the guards didn't secure you properly; rescue your mates, blackjack the guards, and take over the ship!
  

etc... You could also use the canoe idea with or without the above, but impose some interesting range restrictions on it. Perhaps like triremes in Civ, you can only travel in shallow waters. If you do this, placing pirate stashes then has a strategic element because you'll only want to put them in places where you could possibly reach them.

(Sorry for the long post, but I love this topic![smile])

Just some brainstorming (no order, no priority) what could happen when you loose a battle and how to restart the game:

-men of your crew get killed
-always start the game with a minimun of gold
-the bank gives you always a certain credit
-the player can place money on a bank account
-a friend / nobleman / relative / lady sponsors you with some money
-you are stuck on a lonely island and find the way back to a city some weeks / months later
-somebody offers you a small mission and pays gold on successful completion
-player gets prisoned and can escaped / serves a sentence