How about tradelanes not working for compassboats. The current playability is
fucked if the boat is making loops around a continent, You boat will just
chase the compass never catching it.
Other option would be to make navigators smart enough to understand the
situation and start chasing them on tradelanes and automatically ram when
they can. So instead of checking compass every time boat moves and trying to
go in the proper direction, just drop compass to navigator and tell them to do
their bloody job.
++glaurung
compass
ps. now my boat is chasing a compass pirate from a continent to another. Not
via tradelanes.