just a tought but why not give the player the option (in a free to play scenario) to become a navy officer by going to the naval acadamy?
Alternatively, why not observe that there's already a free play scenario with a naval character, "Nelson's First Command"?
I still think the privateering is to easy in this game. When you are a privateer and you attack a ship from a nation which is not in war with the nation you got your letter of marque you should lose the letter and be branded a pirate.
If we're going to start trying to be realistic, I'd like to first see you penalised if you fire on a ship without first hoisting a flag hostile to that ship, even if the other ship has recognised you as an enemy and started firing first. Loss of reputation for a start, loss of letter(s) of marque as well - the letter of marque requires you to behave to some extent as a naval officer, meaning you abide by the rules of war, meaning you have to hoist a valid flag before you start fighting. That would also solve the problem with forts not joining in the fight. Either you hold fire, accept the damage from the enemy ship, keep your false flag up and the fort ignores you; or you raise a hostile flag to return fire and have to contend with the fort as well; or you return fire under your false flag, the fort doesn't know which of you is the real enemy and keeps out of it, but you are penalised for fighting under a false flag.
Also when you are a privateer you should pay part of the loot you gain to the gouvernor.
When you are a navy officer you should return all the loot you gain from taking the ship.
Navy officers and crews did get a share of the prize money. In reality the ship would be disposed of by the admiralty court and shares of prize money paid out, and that goes for privateers too. In the game, you get a pitiful fraction of the ship's value when you sell it at the shipyard (see how much you get, then see the price of the ship on sale). The difference is what the government keeps. Of course, the same applies if you're a pirate as well; perhaps this time the difference is the shipyard pocketing the profit in exchange for not turning you in as a pirate, then paying some lawyer to do shenanigans to put the ship legally up for sale.
When you are a privateer you are in service of a specific nation so the other nations should be hostile to you. Same goes for the naval officer. The privateer should also be able to pay for getting better relations.
A navy officer wont get to pay for better relations, if he really wants to visit a town he has to find another way.
Only those nations which are hostile to your nation should be hostile to you. If Britain and Holland are allied to each other and neutral to Spain, and you're British, then you should have no trouble getting into a Dutch or Spanish port. If you really want to enforce national law then you'll also need to prevent enemies from attacking you in a neutral port, and penalise you if you attack them. (The only knowledge I have on this matter isn't from the age of sail, it's from WW2, specifically the Battle of the River Plate. When
Graf Spee was in neutral Montevideo, it wasn't allowed to attack British merchants there. In fact, it wasn't even allowed to sail within 24 hours of a British freighter departing, so it couldn't just lurk there waiting for something to leave and then go after it. Britain used that to keep
Graf Spee from getting away before reinforcements arrived by having a freighter leave every day.
)
As I mention in more detail further down, a naval officer is acting under orders. If he needs to get into an enemy port, it's because some sort of governor quest sends him there. The quest can deal with whether he gets relations improved via background diplomacy, the officer needs to pay someone himself, or he has to sneak in the back door. It can also deal with putting him into suitable clothes, because in reality a Dutch officer wandering around a hostile French port in Dutch uniform will not be wandering around freely for very long...
If you are a navy officer you shouldn't need to pay for any ship related stuff, so also repairing your ship should be free (at least on islands of your nation). But you shouldn't be able to hire crew in the taverns.
True, you don't
hire crew from taverns, you get them without paying. Ever heard of press gangs?
Officers can be hired from taverns as usual, or you can get them from a naval academy free of initial charge.
When you are a privateer you can go to the gouvenor to get a ship hunting quest and we should also include town capure quests on higher levels too. I would really like it when you could also recruit some other privateers to help you with your quest (they should work as compagnions) that would make things more interesting I think.
You can already recruit another privateer, though not specifically for one quest. You hire an officer and put him in charge of a second ship.
Being a pirate you can attack whatever ship you want and make sure you get all the loot and spend it however you want. We should have a guy pop up in the pirate settlement once i a while to grand you amnesty and you can choose to become a naval officer or privateer then again.
You already have that. He's called a diplomat. You have to pay for the amnesty, though.
But the real difference between a privateer and a naval officer is that the privateer can go wherever he wants, whereas the naval officer is subject to orders. Short of confining naval characters to tightly plotted storylines, the only way I can see this working is to have more quests received from governors. Perhaps a naval officer can
only get missions from a governor, specifically escort and possibly cargo or fetch quests. Having completed the mission, you have a time limit in which to report back to the governor, otherwise you lose rank, pay and possibly the game. It's possible for you to be released for a fixed time; the "Assassin" quest has a couple of interludes in which you aren't given a specific job and are told to go and amuse yourself at the expense of Spain's enemies for a while, so perhaps the governor could do something similar. When time is up, you have to return to a governor for another mission.
