And the list goes on... I as well had this idea, after playing a game of Sea Dogs on a friend's computer, and then EVO and put the two together.
Has anyone ever played Sea Dogs? This is an excellent game to base an ev sea adventure on, mechanic-wise. I love this game and there are loads of similarities between the two that would be easy to borrow.
For example, ports are on islands, as people have described before, as a way to make the map.
Cargo in Sea Dogs includes all sorts of cargo from wheat, silk, coffee, tobacco, rum, ebony, sailcloth and planks. (Just like cargo in EV.)
In Sea Dogs you can hire people for your ship: a first mate, carpenter, master gunner, etc. Each man had advantages (and sometimes disadvantages along with them, like a blind master gunner) Such a thing could be setup with equipment as people (hehe) but say, able to find at a bar.
You could only work for maybe one faction (like the French, English, Dutch, etc.) and you could only land at ports that were friendly to you. (sound familiar?) You also had a mark, or papers for such a thing. Occasionally there would be agents in the tavern that would allow you to purchase illegal papers. And yes, there are pirates! And merchant vessels. And convoys.
Weapons and ammunition work similarly as well - there were an amount of cannons equal to the ship specification, and different types (for power, range, etc.) There were four types of ammunition, some at preserving the hull and others for slowing the ship down by cutting through sales.
Boarding, although different as it is simulated in a subgame "duel", upon success, you had the option to keep the ship or even make it your own (again, does this sound familiar?)
Missions also were similarly conducted; destroy ship X, defend island Y, talk to man Z and investigate, etc.
So yes, not only is it possible, but it would also be very playable.
If I were to work on this project, I believe the first thing to do is research ships and decide on a general time frame for an appropriate era. Ships in Sea Dogs included everything from Barks to Sloops to Battleships. I would then get art together somehow, while simultaneously figuring out how to base the adventure. (In Sea Dogs, for exmaple, they actually used the Spanish, the French, etc. but made fictional islands in the Caribbean. However, you could easily make up your own fastasy countries.)
A sea TC plug-in wouldn't have to be all that big of a world - maybe just a dozen islands or so, perhaps a few more if you were really up to it, but in a small part of a sea kind of setting it wouldn't have to be very large.
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