Having the pleasure of getting the first bite of new ship fighting with NPC
boarders and ship-grabblers and ship poll (poll 56) open I couldn't help
myself to ramble a bit on the subject for your regen fodder. Cause post mainly
random rambling, its like should be in bs-group. If you are tl;dr fellow, feel
free to skip now.

For starters: that first taste was getting insta-grabbled next to roth
tradeline about 20 rooms away from ferry by a agro pirate npc ship and then
watching helplessly without a way to break grabbles, defend or retaliate (that
could figure) while the NPC kept on pounding my golem/crew with boarders...
until I abandoned my ship and brought my personal armada to take that bastard
down from its back! Hah!

I'm personally all into this rethinking of shipfighting that is been going on
and with system that was really really oldschool. BUT there is few things to
keep in mind.

System where it is hard, slow or resource draining to get rewards/progress but
where the lose of your progress is next to impossible is generally good. On
the other hand, system with fast+easy rewards but that are easy to lose is
also considered good. You can easilly figure that mixing these wont end up
that well. Fast permanent awards -> no challenge and fast "played through" or
hard system where you lose stuff in wave of your hand -> not motivating.

Now when it comes to shipcrew (crew and golems) we have been playing a
slow+hard developement system. Training points are slow to get and take much
time, golems you need to hunt for quite some time and the cost cash and
reviving them is costs resources and pots are hard to get (I know only one
single player, Malacoda, where to ask and they cost a steep fortune). But the
other side of the coin is that crew damage has been utterly rare and you only
very rarely have had the need to revive golems. If you ask me this has been in
nice balance.

Now we don't know what it is to come but if you mix into this slow system with
fast+easy losses all the progress we have fought for loses its meaning fast. I
don't know about you others but it would make me cry to lose my highest crew
leader that has something like 1 years work worth of training points into it
alone. Just because some mothership sized juggernaut grabbled my class3
motorboat that never stood a chance.

Continues in part2 a bit...