my suggestion on how to ballance sol.... shipload of hp turns like a brick and is about as fast as a brick(6 or 7 knots) counting guns on the npc ones they look like to have less broadside guns perside than a war galleon as is
Funny enough, Ships of the Line (in current time) have the exact same amount of Broadsides that are available to War Galleons, with the exception of the HMS Goliath, which only has 9 guns per side (totaling to 18).
I won't really get into ship balance on this post (Perhaps another post solely on this discussion is in order), but I do think it would be a finicky balancing process, which may involve modifying characteristics on other ships to better fit their playstyles.
So first of all I think it would be really cool if pirates who have mastered sailing could buy Ships of the Line and have them be like 200k gold.
Also increasing the maximum level on pirates to level 60 would be awesome and weapons to 40.
For the Old Islands, I think it would be cool to have a quest where you have to find a portal on Isla Escondida where you can go back to the old islands since it would be a bit awkward to have them in the same area as the new islands. Another thing is that some of the NPC's were removed after the main islands were redone but some of them appeared as ghosts in Hallowed Woods so it would be cool if that could be explained.
As much as I think the addition of post-Level 50 content is interesting, there's no finite way to do it without first adding a buffer, at least in my opinion. Ships of the Line would most likely take a considerable amount of balance testing (if at all.), and as
@Ned_Reddavis stated prior, adding a further cap to weapons (and therein skill points) is a bit of a lackluster process without the further addition of the extra weapon skills, or perhaps a larger gap in skill mechanics to make some more viable.
Level 60 would be cool, I guess, but again provides no sufficient advantage minus a little bit of an HP raise, and perhaps decreasing the difficulty gap against current in-game opponents (Such as gold room, Forsaken Shallows, etc.). And to the final idea regarding the implementation of the previously styled base-game islands, I don't think it'll be a problem for them to add them into the map as their own entity, as they won't have anything to do with the current game's Port Royal, Tortuga, or Padres. <-- (This is where I invite a content developer to drop hints.
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That being said, that's kind of my mindset in regards to a post like this, but ideas are always appreciated.
Fair Winds,
Misha