Not pirates, per-se, but have you watched the Russell Crowe movie Master and Commander? Good inspiration there.

Shooting albatrosses while standing on a bucking ship deck.

Becoming a naturalist and discovering different kinds of new animal species.

Trying to scavenge supplies off of islands - need to discover what herbs are edible Oregon Trial-style.

Trading at ports - piracy always involves merchantile-ness as well. Gotta unload that cargo somehow, and gotta procure more supplies.

Upgrading your ship, getting caught in storms and having to repair your ship while at sea or via resources scavenged from uninhabited islands.

Hunting a specific enemy vessel - whether it be a more powerful military vessel or an elusive merchant vessel. e.g. you could be aware that the Spanish Silver Fleet is in a specific ocean, but you'd have to scour the ocean to find it. Maybe you have the barest idea of their sea course, and can try to find them along it somewhere.

Can also be flipped - once you have become famous enough of a pirate, powerful government vessels can start hunting *you*, and you better know the sea very well, and all the islands, because the more powerful of their ships outgun you substantially.

On 1/24/2018 at 2:54 AM, suliman said:

 

• Build your ranks with the 4 nations (Spain, england, france, netherlands). You mainly do this by completing missions, but also for sinking their enemies' ships.
• Get better ships and larger convoy (2 skills can be upgraded: prestige which allows you higher level ships, and command which allows more ship in the convoy, max 5).
• Hunt down rival famous pirates.
• Find the rival pirates buried treasure
• Find lost cities and loot them

Interestingly enough, these have been done by the Uncharted Waters series. I suggest you download and play the 1st and 2nd on DOSBox.

It even features some kind of alliances between the nations, ability to invest in cities (so they produce better goods to trade and better ships). You can hunt down pirates, rival nations, or just be pirates yourself and attack every ship you see. Or, mind your own business and travel around the world and discover artifacts and treasures. Or, just do them all since you have unlimited time and it's open-ended.

There's the MMO version of that game, which I haven't personally played. But I played the 1st and 2nd quite a lot back then and really liked the open-endedness of the game.

You can definitely draw more inspirations from the series.