Greetings,
Flagships differ quite a bit in capability and features. In principle this uniqueness is awesome. However, I don’t believe current flagship design is balanced. To illustrate this I would like to look at the differences between The Leviathan and the Guldorand Galleon / Tempest (the two flagships I am most familiar with).
===Stats===
Armaments, HP, speed, and armour are identical.
===Storage===
The Guldorand Galleon has access to a total of 100 units of storage on the ship. 40 of this storage is on the main deck, and can be accessed without heading below (and thus without temporarily losing a crew member). None of this storage is part of guild house quarters as the ship is not a guild house.
The Leviathan has access to a total of 60 units of storage on the ship, and 40 units of storage in the Custom House in Cordor. The 60 units of storage on the ship are all below deck, and are split in 3 chests of 20 units each. Two of these chests are part of guild house quarters which by server rules have to be held by players as their quarter, and thus cannot easily be counted towards the ship’s supply storage space. The 40 units of storage in the naval barracks are accessible through an easy climb check and get farmed regularly. The rules on theft from these chests are unclear as the climb check can bypass the quarter door.
===Accessibility===
The Guldorand Galleon is accessible only through the regular ship boarding process. That means the ship is invulnerable to quarterbreaking, and can only be boarded by people without a key / keyless access while it is out at sea, away from the central quadrant.
The Leviathan is accessible both through the regular ship boarding process and through an NPC in the Cordor Custom House which provides direct teleportation to the flagship to anyone, even people without ship access. This NPC is behind a quarter door which is tied to the Leviathan. This provides minimal convenience and makes it possible to quarterbreak into the ship.
===The pain points===
- The Leviathan is vulnerable to quarterbreaking.
- Unlike other ships the Leviathan must have its locks upgraded to mitigate the quarterbreaking risk. This costs 500.000 gold in addition to the 200.000 purchase cost, for a total of 700.000 gold every time the lease changes hands.
- The Leviathan has less useful and far more vulnerable storage
- Weapon swaps on the Leviathan involve more risk due to the need to either head below deck, or store weapons and munitions in barrels of player inventories (the latter is not in high supply on most sail crews) and risk server crashes wiping out potentially months of stockpile in the case of +4 and +5 munitions necessary for ship PVP.
- The Leviathan is a guild house with extremely unappealing quarters which must per server rules be filled (though in practice this is nearly impossible to reliably do manage).
- The above makes the Leviathan an extremely unappealing option when other flagships are available. Due to the high crew requirements of flagships, typically only 1 or 2 manage to sail regularly with a full crew. People have other options, and thus crewing the Leviathan becomes extremely hard.
===Suggestions===
With the fear of entering suggestion territory in mind, I would like to offer some possible solutions.
- Make sure all flagships have identical storage options, split between the main deck and below deck areas.
- Make sure flagships are not guild houses, or at least make the quarters very appealing and provide ample storage for ship supplies.
- Remove the option to climb into the quarter area of the Cordor Custom House
- Remove the teleporter from the Cordor Custom House or implement similar options for other ships (Make all ships vulnerable to quarterbreaking).
