Just a brainstorm i came up with in the slack channel. No solid perimeters set up yet but heres this:

Negative/Cursed Ship Traits: ship traits that are accumulated over long periods of time being used/sailed or battled. Can also rarely appear during ship-building. Time frame not yet determined.

A few traits brainstormed:

Rotten Hulls: -1%-15% ships hull health (depending on the accumulation of the cursed trait)

Rusty Cannons: -1%-20% accuracy of shots fired (also dependent on accumulation of the trait)

Bloody Oak: Slightly lowers Morale and overall fighting capability of the ship. (Blood Pathogen exposure makes the crew sick occasionally from blood absorbed splinters in the wooden structure of the ship.) [only gained from battling a LOT]

Ruined Decks: holes in the floor boards now lower cargo capacity over time. Total loss ranges -1 - 40 cargo slots lost (depending on accumulation of the trait.) [only gained after hauling cargo/immigrants for long periods of time repeatedly.]

A few ways to possibly counter some of these traits would be to:

Resell all cannons and repurchase new cannons

Add a mechanism to replace/purchase hulls

Add mechanism to replace/purchase cargo bay floor boards

Traits, like bloody Oak may not be repairable due to the blood being absorbed into the pores of the ship itself, and there wasnt biohazard containment back in the piracy ages. Furthermore, you could always just purchase a new war ship.

not a bad idea. I think another idea would be to have positive traits like we have now, negative ones like you suggest, and cursed ones being traits that, give good bonuses, at a cost. Something like.

Battle Rage-the ship's crew can enter a battle rage, where they can fire twice as many shots, but lose all evade chance. Or halves evade.
Speedster-ship moves faster, but has less cannon space.
floating rock-ship has double hull strength, but half speed.

Bloody Oak - maybe it could be transmitted between fleets that skirmish / plunder a lot?
And how visible would these be on the Ship Market? Could undermine confidence in sales!
BTW - isn't this sort of thing already accounted for in the risk of ships losing levels if they lose?
Not convinced that players won't just sell ships so afflicted back to the Shipright. I certainly would.

Oh that’s a good point Jim..imagining bidding on a ship in the ships market only to find that it’s a cursed piece of junk. Then can’t imagine trying to shipwrighting something you just bid on. It’s hard enough moving ships as is. SOTLs are selling for 2 credits when they used to go for 8 a few months ago. So many that just don’t sell on market so just don’t build them, sail them but..maybe if this were a cheap voodoo card? A common one you don’t wanna waste purify on? Or maybe..but then it’s like Swarm?

I like the idea, but would these traits be applied before or after att distribution, or would they cancel eachother out?