Pirates of the Burning Sea: Single captain looking for first mate to "bury treasure"

Hrm. That's somewhat disappointing. :-/ I'm not sure what I really wanted though.

Or rather, I know what I wanted (6v6 reasonably close battles that had some impact but didn't require trawling for hour and hours to setup) but I'm not sure how to make it work. All I generally found when I played was 6 player gank squads who would run from other squads.

I had a fair bit of success prowling in PvP zones for solo fights back in the day, with a little bit of speed fitting and good awareness. Even when I did get caught, I was only out a captured Myrmidon MC, and those were basically a dime a dozen.

Yeah, I did that too. I didn't find so many solo targets hanging around the red zone though. I had much of my fun smuggling goods into contested ports. Being the target/bait wound up being more fun, as you could more reliably find some action.

I also spent a lot of time making low-level ships and outfittings and hauling them to Marsh Harbor. It was actually a decent moneymaker; the wee buccaneers and cutthroats had an appetite for ships, and I hope I was making the game a little bit more newbie-friendly. That went by the wayside after they took away any sort of cargo ship from my cutthroat, alas.

I used to make money mostly selling ammunition and some arms in Matthew Town. Which often involved hauling stuff from factories westward and on the mainland. I was one of the main shot vendors for some time on... Bonny? Damn if I can remember the server name.

What did they change so that Cutthroats couldn't have Cargo ships? I remember I used to take some reasonably fast frigate with speed and stealth upgrades but still some cargo when things were hot, and then some stodgy Bark or Galleon at off hours. Can you just no longer pilot such ships?

They added cargo ships to the list of ships permaflagged when a pirate is driving (along with rates and class-specific ships; buccaneers get a cargo ship exemption). I had a Sultan flute that was more than enough for my purposes. I had (well, still have, I guess) an Abaddon's Will, too, but that's only 500 cargo vs. 1140, and since the Abaddon's Will was a PvP/port battle boat, I usually had about 150 tons of stores aboard. There was a buccaneer I was leveling, but that was toward the end of my time playing, and when they decided to wreck my main moneymaking operation by limiting the cargo I could carry, I figured it wasn't really worth sticking around to get the buccaneer up to level 50.