Currently, as I’m sure everybody with more than a passing interest in this game knows, killing off the enemy crew and sending their ship back to port is pretty much impossible. While it can theoretically happen with modding of weapons stats, as far as vanilla players are concerned it might as well not be in the game. Rather than creating weapons specifically for this, I think it would be better to use boarding events.
These would work by running into the enemy ship, and would bring up a standard event sheet with choices. There could be various options based on different stats, but the primary option would use an equation involving your crew, your iron, and the enemy crew. There could also be items or equipment added that affect these stats, such as grappling hooks.
It’s an interesting idea, but it would be a bit redundant with island events and combat. Sea combat is already it’s own thing, and this would just make it more like something else the game already has.
It would be a bit of a drag to encounter an enemy ship, ready your weapons, maneuver into position, and then suddenly get a pop-up event denying you the real time combat you so eagerly anticipated.
Perhaps it would work if it were purely optional, and triggered by hailing nearby ships with your horn. And only some ships would accept your request to negotiate and others would keep on shooting at you. It seems a bit easy if you could escape all real time combat unscathed if your stats are high enough.
better solution was this: as special boarding item which you can buy. Like some grappling hooks. you need some crew members and those grappling hooks to board an enemy ship and it should be also related to iron and luck or veils if you want to use a less bloody way. And it would be great if you could buy ships from other factions as well, like the khanate or at least get them from the adimirality or other faction quests. Because right now you do highly risk strategic work for as good as free and not even the supremacy of the factions get you new ships which just makes no sense at all. Because an fleet admiral would want that his followers have good ships to bring london back to glory and there would be so many great storyline ways to get this happen.
so in theory it would be like this. you grapple an enemy ship which slows your ship down. Also to increase the fun that grappling hook canon should need some foward or deck spot on your ship, so you have one less canon slot. While you grapple the enemy ship your ship is much easier to hit by their canons. And your chances to win the crew fight increase with the lesser hull the enemy ship has. Every second one of your crew members walks with that hook to the enemy ship and increases the chance of boarding but there is also a chance you lose that crew member permanently. So in the end it should be a tough challenge to board big ships but with a high reward if you made it.