Please, before commenting here, please wait for the rest of the ideas, plus the main article. It is going to take some time.

An admiral will be activated at each Fleet as a person you can give orders on fleet behavior.

The initially proposed orders set is:

• Surrender on plunder attack
No battle takes place. Attacker receives half the original bounty (paid normally by the defender). Defender trade route does not pause. No battle is recorded at all. DR changes like as if a battle was fought (no changes).

• Fight on plunder attack
What currently happens.

Players will be able to select this per fleet.

It seems a defending pirate would set this at Surrender to reduce his/her losses after a raid. As no battle is then recorded, would the win ratio not show as 100% as the defends would not be recorded?

There should be various reason to set this. Perhaps it can also be conditional based on fleet overall shape.
The win ratio would be helped from this setting, indeed. But someone might lose an attack, even if he never fights on defense.

We should count such tactic though at a separate statistic (like Surrenders,something like this). This way, everyone will know who is the free cheese. In this sense, a 1 cutter fleet could profit from such a defender.

This was actually a real tactic used back then. Ideally, perhaps attackers should decide whether to accept the surrender or not. If such is scripted though, the Denial of Surrender will come with a flip of a coin; if flip is lost, then the defender will get a defense bonus. Crew based most probably.

In case of such a fight, captain orders should still be carried normally so every player should have an interest to set these.

Perhaps this is the most fair way to script this.

If set to surrender then perhaps a loss of crew experience is needed as well or full reset.

yeah a separate statistic sounds good

I like the idea. Perhaps a few more options can be brainstormed.

How would this affect ship level loses? If there is no battle, would a ship still lose a level? If not, that would have some implications for ship plundering